The next patch to hit the test server, #188 is here! Check out the notes below, and then the link through to the discussion page! Go get testing the Faction Warzones!
Dear community,
here we go again, the next patch in the R#184 releases. Taking a more agile route in terms of feature development. Instead of developing features completely at the drawing board, implementing them and in the end releasing them just to notice that they are s... uboptimal, we will in the future realease new features earlier, while being still on the drawing board. This means that new features we implement will feel incomplete, because they are! We want to gather your feedback as early as possible, to adjust the route new features take as early as possible to be as much fun as possible!
FACTION WARZONES Faction warzones are a new feature which allows whole factions to work as a team, capturing sectors of the gameworld to reap the benefits. However, benefits have not yet been implemented. We are still discussing on how an what kind of benefits should be implemented. For now only Dome of York Sector 10 is a Faction Warzone. We limited the number of sectors to one to focus testing. To conquer a sector 4 security layers will have to be hacked. No access to the hacknet is required for now. The members of the owning faction of the sector should be notified in case someone tries to take over their sector.
MISSIONS
Further tweaks have been made to the Twilight Guardian Epic Mission.
Twilight Guardian VERY EASY and EASY CityCom Missions have been adjusted to reflect new mob availability in the Canyon Facility Caves.
Further tweaks have been made to the Reza's Calling Mission bringing the German and French versions up to date.
GAMEWORLD
Further tweaks have been made to the Twilight Guardian Guards placed in the Canyon Sectors of the Wastelands.
Canyon Facility Caves have been renamed to Canyon Caves Lvl 1, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 12 to reflect new mob loadouts.
Mob selection, distribution and density has been modified for the Canyon Facility Caves.
CopBots have been removed from the Pepper Park Subway Station.
MISC
Terror Leapers now drop suitable loot. Rare Parts have the same drop rate as found on Warbots.
All varieties of Cave Crawler are now physically smaller.
Several fixes have been made in the Dialogue of Master Hunters.
Known issues:
The signs distributed over the sector to indicate who currently owns this sectors are a little bit too short, therefore long faction names are cut.
In case you have downloaded T#188 between thursday and today 17.15 CEST, you have to reinstall your testserver client. You can verify whether you downloaded the correct T#188 patch by looking at its size. You can find a fille called cp000188.pat insed the patches subfolder of your testserver client. In case it is around 1.1MB in size you are fine! Sorry for that mess!
Another test server patch has been released over the last couple of days, which features a major re-working of how unressed rare parts stack. The patch notes can be discussed here .
MISSIONS
Fixed a bug in the Twilight Guardian Epic Mission.
RARE PARTS
Un-researched Rare Parts will now stack as L, T and E parts, regardless of what part they will become once researched.
Un-researched MC5 Parts will now stack in a single independent stack, regardless of what part they will become once researched.
GAMEWORLD
Tweaked positions of Twilight Guardian guards in Canyon Sectors (introduced in T#184).
Static Warbots in the Juggernaut Facility are no longer inside out.
MISC
Added appropriate dialogue to replace place holder 'Damn! Locked!' messages related to SL changes.
Fixed a bug which caused players to hold weapons in the wrong pose.
Character Creation now correctly lists 'Canyon Facility' as the starting location of Twilight Guardian.
Character Creation now correctly lists 'Outzone' as the starting location of Brotherhood of Crahn.
Yesterday, the Neocron servers (Including IRC and the forums) went offline due to an IO/Hardware issue. A further update has been posted on Facebook and Twitter.
"Due to the extent of the hardware issues at our data centre, #Neocron will unfortunately remain offline this weekend. Head out and enjoy the sun for the next couple days. We'll let you know if we can get back online any sooner.
Needless to say, as always, Zoltan is putting in some insane hours to restore the service. So, think of him while you're in a beer garden this sunny weekend!"
So no Neocrack this weekend. However for those needing to talk about Neocron, you can always use the THN forums
Update: 28th July all servers are back up and running.
In the mean time, feel free to drop into the THN Forums for a chat.
Update 17/6/2013 13:28BST: No official word yet nearly all systems are back except the Neocron API. Update 17/6/2013 13:40BST: Looks like the API is back online, so the Stats DB and the Neocron Information System are back. Update 17/6/2013 14:47BST: Spoke too soon. API is down again. Update 17/6/2013 19:16BST: Test server isn't online at this time. We have also found this Facebook update (6 hours old)
"Servers are currently being migrated to a new host. We will have more information for you soon. Please sit tight, your Neocrack will be back online as soon as possible."
Update 18/6/2013 11:40BST: Late last night, the forums and IRC got moved. Both are back up and running.
Update 18/6/2013 13:12BST: Titan is currently being migrated. No ETA for when this will be done.
Update 19/6/2013 10:00BST: The data transfer was succesful and the data is currently being reloaded. No ETA yet for when the servers will be online.
Update: 20/06/2013 19:18BST: The servers were up for a while, but there is an issue with UDP packets in the new infrastucture. More info in this thread .
Tonight has seen the latest patch onto the Titan retail server, patch Retail#181!
Patch notes: Technical changes:
Fixed several exploits
Used an approach similar to splines to smooth interpolation
Several further tweaks to the interpolation
Fixed rubberband bug
Fixed hacknet mobs not dealing damage
Fixed parsing of default options for several NPCs
Fixed a buffer overflow when updating world actors
Raised Neocron's bandwidth limitations
Fixed several reasons for invisible damage
Fixed an error which lead to items dropping from the trade window back into the player's inventory
Music should now play independent of the windows compatibility mode setting
The damage of beam weapons should now be calculated correctly
Fixed beams not showing on several weapons
Gameplay changes:
Added the techlevel of the item to construct to blueprints
Law enforced players are now buffable by non law enforced players, but not vice versa!
The existing speed cap has been adjusted so speed tapers off more dramatically at higher livels of agility and athletics. Players with extreme speed setups will see a reduction of speed.
Last week, Patch 179 was released, followed by patch 180 to address some stability issues introduced. You can discuss the patch here.
Technical changes:
Reworked netcode (see known issues)
Window mode now supports very high resolutions as well (numbers must be multiples of two)
Fixed a number of exploits and critical security issues
Fixed a number of bad world data causes
Fixed an issue with the loginserver
Fixed a number of gameserver crashes
Fixed incorrect team money distribution
Team money distribution is now calculated at once instead of receiving all money first, then paying a share to teammates
Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to retreat from combat
NPCs now use a line of sight for targeting that is comparable to that of player characters
Fixed drones not launching in a number of situations
Reduced wait time between drone launches, in case a launch failed
Appartment passwords may now contain the ' char
Account passwords may now contain the chars . and #
Slightly tweaked/increased overall performance
Content changes:
High level Plasma Pistols can now be obtained from the Canyon Smuggler.
Misc. smaller fixes
Known Issues:
Netcode/Clipping: The reworked netcode is much more accurate than any previous version. While this is great in many ways and will reward good movement in PvP, it also introduces a problem: With player movement not being the soft pulp it used to be, the uncapped Evol 2.2 runspeeds can now make it very difficult to keep lock on your target. We feel that it may be benefitial for PvP to tone down ultra fast runspeeds even before we get to the greater balancing. Of course, we appreciate constructive feedback regarding the matter and will continue to observe how things pan out on retail.
Server stability: The patch introduced a number of new issues of which we have contained many, but not all. Naturally, a fix for the known issues will be provided at the soonest possibility.
Well hopefully you have all have a Merry Christmas, and are looking forward to a Happy New Year celebration!
Despite this holiday season, the Neocron Support Team have still been hard at work.
The IRC server has now changed, from irc.neocron.info over to the new domain for both the forums, the micro-site, and IRC server.
If you use the online web-chat from the Neocron Forums, then this will be updated accordingly. If you use your own IRC client, then you will need to update your server to: irc.neocron-game.com
The channels are the same, so hop onto the new IRC server, and join #neocron channel!
In other news, the team have also released on the PTS Patch #177, and there is a pretty good rumour that work into the next retail patch is also under way!
Neocron Game News 
