Because of significant life changes I did not get around to documenting every change of any significance here; as such the entries here will be prefixed by the date they were implemented into Imagica. In the future I will try to do this should the news here be different from when they were made live.

08 October 2016: Changed 'display diag' and 'display diag2' to be 'display diagnose' and 'display percent' (respectively).

08 October 2016: Add workaround in custom prompts for clients that remove spaces at the end of the command: '% ' (without the 's) will force a space to be added to the prompt.

08 October 2016: Several bug fixes and typo/spelling errors fixed.

14 October 2016: Numerous bug fixes (custom prompt parsing and various internal fixes) and typo fixes (weather messages in particular).

06 November 2016: The command 'scan' no longer shows a room twice (this happened when a builder linked a room to itself for illusions etc.) and it no longer shows your own character (this is implicit through not showing a room more than once).

- ALL HERO players (level 90) can train more skills/spells. Any class which has Cleric in it (e.g. Arch Mage, Crusader, Avatar) can get every spell/skill/etc. that Clerics can. But: even those of the basic classes (Magic User, Cleric, Thief and Warrior) will find themselves able to learn some skills and yes even Thieves and Warriors can learn (some) basic spells; but remember: they aren't spell casting classes and they also have very little mana. Why this change? Because in the rewrite of the MUD (from scratch) with an entirely new class system, this is how it is done: I've brought many additions and changes from the rewrite here and vice versa (many of the features I've implemented here over the years are in the rewrite).

- You can now search for zones by keywords: the 'zones' command searches not only as before ('zones' shows a complete list 'zones ' shows more information about the specified zone [if there is a zone by that number]) but now it searches the name, the description and the builder. So if you want to find all zones built by Lunah you could do : 'zones lunah'.

- Chat history system implemented (thanks for the wonderful idea Mithrandir!) which allows for viewing recent messages (of all chat types you have access to) including those that you might have missed while in combat or even when you get disconnected (but if you log off or you get idle-extracted [60 minutes idle]) you won't see them and they are NOT saved to disk. Yes, this means you can now receive tells whilst linkless and you can obviously send tells to linkless players.

Usage: chat <list | clear> <type>

You can abbreviate list and clear like most other commands and subcommands (which means 'l' 'li' or 'lis' would act as if you typed 'list' and so too would 'c', 'cl', 'cle', 'clea' imply 'clear'). To see a list of chat types (these include gossip, shout, tell, quest, etc.) simply send 'chat' to the MUD. 'chat list' allows you to view the 20 most recent messages of the chat type specified and 'chat clear' clears out the specified list. When the 21st message comes in the entire list is cleared out (so that the thread can be followed). See also 'help chat'.

- Many other bug fixes and internal improvements.

- To be more like the new version of Imagica (will hopefully write news on that soon too), anti-class, anti-race and anti-alignment on objects have different semantics: if an elf wears a ring that would have in the past zapped them (stock circlemud behaviour), they won't be zapped and they can wear the ring. It isn't useful to the elf, but they can wear it if they so choose. The same applies for classes. Alignment is no longer relevant to objects: we have long maintained that it is a poor system at best and it has finally be eliminated here, just like the rewrite.

- Weight and heights for characters have been changed. While it is not perfect by any means, it is more accurate
than it was. It should be noted that most races - if not all - have had their expected (adult specific) height and weight adjusted. This means
that the calculated values will be different from before, by quite a bit. Help files for the races have not been updated yet but are unfortunately
in much worse state (an artefact from the original races descriptions).

- Several bug fixes and internal changes have been implemented (there have been additional updates than documented here).

- Fixed several bugs in the MUD

- Descriptions in rooms can now evaluate the character that is looking in the room and show the position they are in. While only one zone has had this implemented more will follow in due time. Yes, this means that descriptions which are worded in a flawed manner (e.g. "You are standing ...") can now be more dynamic and indeed accurate.

- Socials now can properly show hers while also showing his (could not do that without this change because it would have shown his as hiss).

- Pixies now have a new ability (learned at level 26). Called 'flutter', the pixie will flutter his/her wings rapidly, dropping some dust on the ground. Whatever he/she catches will be very much like a potion of fly, only you sprinkle it on yourself. One may ask why a pixie would need that. It's not for the pixie per se - it's for others. But this is a nice thing for Pixies to have (as they have too little currently, imo). Note that you must be flying at the time of use. More race skills/abilities will follow in time (hopefully sooner than later).

- Nicknames have been added. Help has not been updated for this (though the skill mentioned above is in, I forgot this). Just do 'nickname ' (if you don't specify a name, you will either remove your current nickname, or it'll tell you you don't have one). You cannot choose a nickname already taken or use a nickname as a real name of a character or anything else that is not possible in names, but aside from that ..

- You can now poison weapons. Yes, this has the effect of at times, poisoning the victim you strike.

- Rooms have health. If there is a fire, for example, and there is an exit down, you may actually fall through. Speaking of such, you'll also find that weather can damage rooms, also.

- There's also been several bug fixes, and other internal changes that make little to no difference to players.

- Migrating from non-linear exits to randomly generated exits. What this means for the player : you may find some paths are not quite as you remember. But, then again, it's not like they made sense before, anyway, so no harm, right ? :) They indeed made no sense, and can cause an issue in many ways.

- Spell botching! *evil grin* Oh yes, you may have some fun with some spells, in that things will not happen quite as you remember in the past. Don't believe me? Go ahead - try to cause one of the worlds biggest natural disasters! - earthquake! See what happens at times ...

- Portals improvements. While some are only import to builders, there is one that is possibly of interest. Portals now have the ability to 'stay active' after someone enters, as well as being used while carried.

- BUG FIX: Channels should work properly again when you are on the channel.

- Practice/learn command change : Now automatically takes you to highest obtainable of the skill in question (based on how many practice points you have).

- top gold / top exp. Others may follow.

- New item wear slot (shoulders).

- House item limit upped slightly due to new item wear slot.

- Room affect 'frozen' now slows characters down.

- Some other bug fixes and other things I cannot recall ... :)

Cheers,
Metgod

There was another major code update in January of 2005. The majority of the changes are player oriented and the following report should therefore be read by all players.

If you experience any problems with the mud, please contact me (Metgod) as soon as possible so I can help solve the problem. If it is a problem related to houses or the world (which were also updated), you can contact Lunah or me (or simply mail impteam).

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- Storage vaults. If you ever need more space, and your house is full, or if you are renting and you have too many items, there is now a solution.

Below the Teldar Bank you will find a new area filled with storage vaults. They are free to create, but they do cost some gold for usage. The price depends on how many (20 max) and which items you have in your vault. In fact, it works exactly like renting at the inn:

Every object's cost per day value in the vault is added up (any item that has no rent will be free). This is done automatically when your vault is saved (every real life 5 minutes, or when you 'save' inside the vault).

There is a set of commands to use, to create your own vault, to get in to it, etc.

The command is 'vault', and has several sub commands :

vault enter

This command will check if you have enough gold to pay your rent, and if so, the goblin will take you to your vault and leave you to it to do whatever you need to do. This is the only way to get in to your vault. Also note that you cannot summon anyone into vaults.

The gold is only checked when you use this command, so if you need to catch up on rent first, do that or you will lose your vault in the same fashion as not enough gold at the inn.

See also 'vault offer'.

vault new

This command will check if you have a vault, and if you don't, it'll create a new one for you. If you already have one, you will not be allowed to create another one.

vault destroy

This command will first check if your vault is empty. If it is, the vault will be destroyed and will be available for the next person who wants a vault (which could even be you).

vault info

For those with houses, this command is similar to 'house info'. It will display how many items you have in your vault (assuming you have a vault). That's all it does.

vault offer

This will display how much you will owe before you can enter your vault.

vault total

As a slight variation of 'vault offer', this command will show you how much gold you will owe per day, much like 'offer' at the receptionist.

That's all there is to vaults.

- Gigi the pixie, Roger the dwarf (and Iam the giant).

These are weaker versions of Iam for the lower levels. Just to remind anyone who forgot, these monsters will teleport to a random room, and quest say (quest channel) the room they teleport to. The idea is to find them for one token, and kill them for more tokens. Once you collect enough tokens, you can buy items in the quest token shop, just north of Teldar.

Gigi is available to levels 31 and under. If you are higher than this, you will not get any quest tokens, and you will be unable to kill her.

For those who are 31 and under, you will get one quest token for finding her, and two quest tokens for killing her. Anyone that is fighting her and is a low enough level, will get the quest tokens when she dies. She will then teleport immediately, just like Iam the giant does.

Roger the dwarf is also a weaker version of Iam but stronger than Gigi the pixie. Any level can get tokens from Roger, but the token count will be less than Iam the giant. You will get 1 token for finding Roger, and 3 for killing Roger.

Gigi the pixie teleports every 30 minutes and will be restricted to lower level zones (though perhaps not right next to newbie zones themselves).

Roger the dwarf will teleport every 20 minutes. He is not restricted to any zones.

Iam the giant will teleport every 15 minutes and is not restricted to any zones.

All of them will come back to life and teleport again immediately after they die.

- Objects in general have been extended. This was done to allow more functionality for FURNITURE. Although this is entirely up to the builders, FURNITURE can now act as CONTAINER and FURNITURE together. This means the beds that are now containers can be made into furniture, where it would be possible to sleep/rest/sit on them, as well as put objects in to them.

I would like to clarify some things that may not have been mentioned last update.

To sit/rest/sleep on a piece of FURNITURE, you must specify the command and then the object you would like to sit/rest/sleep on.

For example, if you have a chair and it is FURNITURE, then you can type one of:

sit chair
rest chair
sleep chair

It is possible for the builders to specify which actions you can use relative to the item. So while it may be possible to sleep, sit and rest on a bed, it probably won't be possible to sleep on a chair.

There is also the possibility that the furniture will not be able to hold you. If there is a limit on how much weight or how many people can be on the item, then you may find that you can't get on it. You may also find that you will knock a random person off and you will be on it instead.

Lastly, your regen can also be effected based on the item you are on. It can be a penalty or a bonus, depending on what the builder specifies. Bonuses can be a max of 15 points to mana, hit and movement.

- Many new building and scripting possibilities have been added. Mails are regularly sent to the builders, so hopefully as more zones are added, more new features will be in them. I can hint that in this update, there is at least one zone that includes a feature from the last update.

- Clan stuff

DIE clan members will now be given quest tokens when in dragon form. SoS skills have been added (including one that uses upkeeps!) OBC's 'wound share' skill has been added.

- Monsters are no longer effected by fire in rooms (conflagration).

- Elementals now have penalties and bonuses. The below explains each elemental and what was changed.

Though the fire elemental may cast fireball, they will not survive on or below water; they will die instantly if they move on/in to water.

The earth elemental will cast the spell stones (non-mortal spell), but can be shattered to pieces if someone casts an earthquake directly at them.

Air elemental will always fly. They will also (though they may fail at times) use the whirlwind spell. They will also feed fire. This means that if there is fire in the room (conflagration), the fire will last longer.

Water elemental will cast rain of frogs (another non-mortal spell), will fight with non-permanent fire (conflagration and consequently, the fire in the room will disappear but so will the water elemental). They can walk on water. Lastly, they will not live as long if they are off water.

- There is now a command to abandon charms. If you want to get rid of an elemental/charmie, then use the 'ditch' command.

If I have an elemental following me that I want to get rid of, then I can type 'ditch elemental' and the first elemental in the room (if I control it) will disappear. Remember that you can specify which elemental/charm by prepending a '#.' before the name (1.elemental, 2.elemental, etc.).

- Pet items! All the way east from the Pet Market entrance, you will find a new shop with several pet items for your pets. The item will survive MUD reboots, etc., just like the pets themselves. Each pet is restricted (for now) to one pet item.

- Imagica now has a new channel -- the newbie channel -- which can be used by any level. If you are a level one player and need help, then you can ask on this channel. If you are not on the channel, then you can turn it on by typing 'nonewbie'. To turn it back off, you can type 'nonewbie' again. To use it, just type 'newbie ' where is the message to say.

- Shipping (mailing objects) code has been slightly changed. Previously, items that are NOSELL (!SELL) could not be shipped. This block has been removed, and the only items you can't ship are QUEST flagged objects.

And please remember that shipping objects to your other characters still counts as multiplaying.

- A new skill called 'toss' has been added. This skill allows one to throw someone out of the room and into an adjacent room. This works on mobiles (monsters) and players. If you fail on a monster, there is a chance that you will be attacked. If you succeed, the monster will be thrown out of the room and into another room (up to 5 rooms away).

You must be able to carry twice the victim's weight, the monster must be a toss-able monster, and you must be a higher level. Otherwise, you will fail. The weight goes for players as well. Also, for players being tossed, if you land 'on a monster', there is a chance you will be attacked by them. Further, if you fail on a player, there is the possibility that you will be tossed instead.

If the next room in the said direction is a death trap or a house, or there is no exit, then you will hit the wall instead and stop moving.

The syntax is 'toss [direction]'

Direction is optional. If the direction is not specified, then it will be in a random direction (which may be a wall).

The following races and classes get the skill:

Troll
Orc
Ogre
Giant

Avatar
Battle Mage
Crusader
Warrior
Rogue

Example:

toss mender south
toss metgod

- For 'sanity', the following group of people can no longer be attacked:

Shop Keepers
Vault Masters (new, above)
Guild Masters
Post Masters
Bankers
Cryogenicists
Receptionists
Trainers (new, below)
Station Masters

...and one that will be used in a future update (temple)

- The spells system has also been extended. Examples include allowing skills/spells to skip pets, check monster/player numbers, and allowing spells/skills to target both caster and victim at the same time.

- Light sources will be turned on when worn in any position. Previously, lights would only be useful if you held them with 'hold'.

- Blood will now flow from room to room if there is a certain blood level in the room. It can flow in any direction (except up) and is is completely random.

- More fun and games. You can now gamble with a slot machine and a lottery system.

The slot machine scans through the wizlists (immlist and wizlist) and adds each name to a list. Then, it randomly selects three of the names. If you get at least two of the same names, then you will win something for your time. If you get three of a kind, the prize is even greater.

Some special prizes are mentioned below.

If you get all three as Aragorn, you will receive a special voucher. You can then give this voucher to either Lunah or myself (Metgod) and we will note it. In return, you will have the opportunity to design your own object. This needs to be clarified, though.

This prize works exactly like the old rp weeks first place prize. You will give us an object you currently own, and we will make you a new object. This object will have the same stats as your old object, but it will have your own description and name that you give to us. So your item can be made into anything so long as it has the same stats.

If you get all three as Venice, you will get a special prize that many have seen or heard of.

If you get three of any impteam member, then your prize will be the same as any three immortal, only in greater quantity. These prizes include:

gold
quest tokens
a lottery ticket
experience

If you get two of any imm or imp, then the prize is similar, just in even lesser quantity. There is also the possibility of a couple potions (bless or cure critic).

The slot machine costs 10 golden dukats to play. To play, go to the slot machine (below the mysterious man who owns the quest token shop just north of Teldar) and type 'spin'.

The lottery works similar to the lottery in real life (for those who remember what that is). Basically, when the object is loaded (MUD boot up), the object will set it's initial value to 1000 golden dukats. Then, it will randomly select 6 numbers and set them on the object. Finally, when you request a ticket (or are given a ticket via the slot machine), the lottery system will generate six random numbers, and give you a ticket with those numbers.

The ticket will look something like:

There is a 12 at the top of the ticket.

19 19 5 16 8 14

The 12 at the top of the ticket is to let you know the day of the draw your ticket is for. The other numbers are the actual numbers the lottery system will compare (with its own values).

A little more explanation may be necessary.

If I get 12 at the top of the ticket, it means it is the 13th day of the year (starts from zero). On the fourteenth day of the year (13), I can check the ticket.

Put simply, I buy a ticket one day, and then I must compare it the next day (which would be the next drawing). The time/date is based on the Central European Time zone (which is GMT + 1/PST + 9/EST + 5 hours).

What can you win if you get the same numbers ?

If you get all six numbers, you will get receive the initial 1000 + how ever many tickets were bought (golden dukats).

For example, if 100 tickets were bought (each ticket costs 1 dukat) since it last reset itself, then I get 1100 dukats. Then, the slot machine would reset itself back to 1000 golden dukats, and it'd start all over.

If you get five numbers, you will receive one half of the jackpot, and the system will not reset itself. If you get four numbers, then you get one third of the jackpot, and the lottery system will not reset itself (i.e., the system only resets itself to 1000 dukats if someone wins the jackpot).

Each ticket will be of type TICKET with a special flag on it, specifying that it is a lottery ticket. Tickets without that flag are still used for the coach stations.

- A card shuffling special procedure (for objects) has also been added. If you have such an object, then you can use the following commands to play cards:

shuffle
(this will shuffle the cards in a random order).

deal
(this will give you the next card on top of the deck)

Then you can play any card game you wish.

- A special extension to the guild system has been added. It is now possible for lower levels to spar with special mobiles/monsters, in order to learn skills and spells. The use is that these players can learn their skills without getting hurt or dying (if they are violent skills/spells). They can also learn how the Imagica fighting system works. Sparring individuals will not gain experience, but they also will not get hurt at all.

To spar a spar-able monster, your level must be level 20 or below. Simply type 'spar ' and you will start to spar them. Type 'spar' to stop sparring. For example, above the Teldar's Fighter Guild, a man named Gus the Brave can be found. To start sparring him, type 'spar gus'. To stop, type 'spar' or 'spar self'.

- For those frustrated by the long duration between each coach ride, your prayers have been answered. The time was cut by more than half.

- Pixies now have the ability to stay on their feet if they want. All a pixie must do is stand, and they will be on their feet. To go back in to the air on their wings, they can type 'float'. That's all there is to it.

- Several bug fixes and improvements on data handling/processing, etc.

- The help file has been updated some again.

- The prison has been changed some. No longer will Bull the riotstarter be loaded more than once. The same goes for the other prisoners. The prisonmanager will only summon a certain amount of guards, and that is it until the counter is reset.

- The 'top' command has been extended to allow for ranges. For players, this means that you can get the top quest and top arena based on level. This is only optional, so you can still get the entire range without using anything new.

The new syntax is below.

top [min] [low]

option being either arena or quest. min is the minimum level. Any level below it will not be included. max is the maximum level. Any level above it will not be included.

You do not have to specify maximum if you specify a minimum (in this case, it'd only check the lower bound).

So three examples:

top arena 50 91

This will display the top arena for levels 50 through level 91, If the person is level 49 and below, or 92 and above, then they will not be included.

top quest 1 100

This will display the top quest for any level. It is the same as 'top quest'.

top arena 50

This will display the top arena for anyone level 50 or higher.

- And lastly, some things for some future updates (including player shops, skills for those shops, and religions) have been started.

If there are still any problems or if you have any questions, then please let Metgod know as soon as possible so that we can fix the problem/help out.