PlaneShift 0.5.8 released!!

[Talad]

After a lot of sleepless nights we are proud to present the 0.5.8 release of PlaneShift!! This is another major milestone in making the game more fun and graphically appealing. The best way to support us is to join our development team!

Art

    The main section of hydlaa has been remade! We remodeled all the houses to look better, and we updated all the textures to be higher resolution. You should see a big difference compared to the tutorial.
    Thanks to his popularity, Harnquist's shack has been replaced with a new larger blacksmith building. Looks like he is having good business!
    Some of the wall textures in Hydlaa have been updated to higher resolution.
    The Laanx temple has been remade, with higher detail. We still don't like too much the textures applied, and we are going to improve that soon.
    Hydlaa main now has bump mapping applied for more realistic surfaces.
    Improved the position of the musical instruments when wielded by adding a rotation. This is still not optimal, and will require an engine change to fix it completely (planned).
    Many new spells effects including: Healing Rain, Rinse, Icy Ground, Mephitic Haze, Water Barrier, Icy Blast, Phantasmal Voice, Hand of Doom, Mind Drain.
    Updated enviromental sounds of : Tutorial Map, Laanx Temple, Tavern de Kadel, Sewers, BlackFlame temple, Ojaveda Road, Gugrontid, Hydlaa Arena, Death Realm, Magic Shop, Hydlaa Winch, all 3 caves levels.
    Added sounds for musical instruments: lira, lure, drums.
    Improved icons for natural resources, like ores (gold, iron, ...).



New Features

    Added the ability to play musical instruments. You can actually compose a musical score in game and then play it with your musical instrument skills. Try to play with other people, and create a band for special events!
    Merged a new, heavily refactored and improved, sound system which is now entirely plugin based (adds a dummy soundmanager and a normal soundmanager)
    Added support for pictures in setting books and help pages
    Added support to individually enable/disable each tab of the chat window from the options panel.
    Made the spell checking based on hunspell a plugin too and made it configurable on supported platforms (linux/macosx). Additionally it can now spell check more text fields in game
    GM events: It's now possible to change the npc AI plan at runtime on the npcclient
    GM events: Improved support for morphing, which now actually changes the race and not only the mesh. This way also the speed of the actor might be affect from it.
    GM events: /impersonate now supports triggering an animation
    GM events: Expanded area commands to support a whole sector and regular expressions for name based search (area:type:map:mapname/here)
    GM events: Added a new flag which allows certain items to have the "no pickup" setting only applicable for GMs. This will allow easier setup of events.
    Added support to lock/unlock the quickspell bar
    Added a /version command to print the client version
    Added mute and freeze script support (could be used for spells later on)


    Fixed quest menu not being shown when items are given
    Fixed problems from attempts to add invalid buddies in the buddy list
    Fixed alliance text ending up in main even if disabled
    Fixed truncated map names in map list shown through admin manager
    Added support to spawn creative items from /item instead of having to use an npc to do it
    Added support to show entity labels only when an entity is targeted
    Fixed gm/dev login when the server is full
    Improved the quest menu to avoid to cut out parts of entries
    Started migration to sha256 for password storage. md5 is still used for client login, sha256 is already used for npcclients login.
    Fixed combat music continuing to be played after combat is ended
    Added warnings on group join in case the group is under a group challenge (see the wedding assassination problem)
    About 15 others fixes and improvements on the server side


Setting and background

    Published the prize quest for the guild quest contest: "Right on the mine"
    Roleplay info: enhanced the race pages with background information, history, culture, religion, main characters, architecture, ...
    History of the world: added new major events in the planeshift time line.
    Major change: Xacha removed and merged with the lemurs
    Major change: Diaboli removed from playable races
    Major change: Stonebreaker and Hammerwielder became two clans of one race: the Stonehammers
    Update: Magic way quests have been polished
    Update: Guards chain quest have been polished
    Update: Science chain quest have been polished
    General fixing: 43 quest bugs fixed confirmed from bug tracker reports


Rules

    Added musical instrument skill, added trainers and rules on how to progress. The more skill you have the less errors will be done while playing.


Installer

    Added OpenAL (sound) installer to the standard PlaneShift installer on Windows to ensure all clients have the right dlls.

[Gilrond]

Firstly, thanks for your work!

I hope you accept some constructive comments on the update? Since Harn's smithy drew so much attention, I'll mention one point there: two extra furnaces nearby used to be easily accessible, since old smithy had two entrances. Now they are behind the building and one can't get there without going around. May be you can make a passage through similar to the one before, or may be move the furnaces to the front of the building? Thanks.

[bilbous]

the railing on harnquist's porch means that people will be walking through each other to get to him. Perhaps at some point steps and an opening at the other end could be added or the railing taken down completely and steps extended the length of the porch.

[LigH]

I really hope and believe that the placement of the furnace onto the porch is only temporarily, and will be replaced by an "inside" with a lot more space.

[Roled]

Hydlaa looks great! 
And Harnquist, well he's gunna be so busy he'll need a LOT of apples to keep his strength up!        

Looking forward to exploring- thank you artists, developers and computer gurus!! Like a kran you ROCK! 
RR

[Vakachehk]

Before I start. Hydlaa and 0.5.8 looks great!! A job well done to the Devs!!!

At some point possibly, recreate Harns and make a more 'smithy' looking one. The current building looks like a government building, it's too flash to be a blacksmiths... ok sure making a dumb story 'that the Octarchy paid for it' to save yourself isn't going to appeal to new players who haven't read it yet. (note: The artist that did it is talented and it looks like a very well done building, artistic wise. I have nothing against the artwork of the building).

The building can still be used, possibly as the Octarchial residence? Or as another random building around the Plaza dish.

If you choose to keep the building as Harnquist's smithy, I suggest what everyone else has already said, and also making a path (instead of grass texture) to the main door, and maybe even to the stairs as well.

[Onilise]

All the updates are completely awesome! Can someone upload some flute notes? I want to play my panflute better I have a flute if you need them.

My disappointment was not being able to go inside Harns. It's so big I thought for sure it had an inner area like Trasoks upstairs. It is hard to get to Harn now if you walk through all the people working on the porch.

The ivy is beautiful. The sounds are awesome! The ability to create music sheets is phenom. Love the new stairs by William. I do miss the shortcut to DOX guild house by going up through the tower I love the stone walls

Thanks for all your hard work guys   

[Mordaan]

All the updates are completely awesome! Can someone upload some flute notes? I want to play my panflute better I have a flute if you need them.

Ask and ye shall receive.   
Some new pan flute art has been released in 0.5.8.2.
(unfortunately, the patch fails and just redownloads materials.zip and meshes.zip, which makes it seem like a huge update).