Publish Notes from 2006-06-30

Publish 41

UO Team 15 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST

With Publish 41, we will be adding a new feature to the game, Personal Attendants. They will first be available as part of a SKU available in the Japanese market, then later will be available elsewhere as a micro-transaction.

There will be four types of Personal Attendants:

• The Guide – Need to find the Tailor in Britain? Got lost wondering the streets of Vesper? The Guide will direct you to the location of your choice.
• The Fortune Teller – If you just need to know what seeing your reflection in that moongate this morning really means, the Fortune Teller can help satisfy your curiosity. She'll deal the tarot cards, but the interpretation is up to you.
• UO:Lucky Dealer – Got a bit of gold that's burning a hole in your purse? The UO:Lucky Dealer is what you need.
• The Herald – From greeting visitors in your home to following you around Sosaria announcing, well, whatever it is you want to announce, the Herald never loses his or her voice.

Personal Attendants will be on a test shard soon, so stay tuned!

General Characteristics

• Doesn't engage in combat
• Passable, so it can't be used as a block/shield
• Will not block line of sight, targeting, etc
• Invulnerable
• Attendants will have no backpack space (they are not extra inventory slots)
• No pet slot usage
• Only one Personal Attendant in use, anywhere, at a time
• Contract cannot be stolen
• Upon a player's death, the Personal Attendant will re-deed itself and go into the player's backpack
• Anytime the character exits the world, the NPC will re-deed into the player's backpack
• NPCs will have a persistant name randomly chosen from a list on creation from the contract

Obtaining a Personal Attendant

• Players will receive a token which, when double clicked, will present the player with a contract for a Personal Attendant
• When this contract is used, the player will then select the type of Personal Attendant they want to place in the world

Types of Personal Attendants

• Guide:
  • Helps players find services and merchants in towns:
    • List of locations for each town in the game
    • Player can select nearby shops/locations
    • List will dynamically populate based on the characters current location, and shopkeepers available in the city
      • Will lead the player to the specified location
        • When double-clicked, the Guide will:
    • If the player is not in a city, the Guide will tell the player they are not in a city
    • If the player is in a city, the Guide will present the player with a list of locations in the city
    • If the player disconnects when en route, the guide (like all NPC Attendants) will re deed to the backpack. The player will have to bring the guide out and select the destination again.
• Fortune Teller:
  • Always Female
  • The Fortune Teller's functionality is accessed through the context menu
  • Tells your fortune via Tarot cards:
    • The player will ask the Fortune Teller a Question
    • The Fortune Teller places three cards on the table gump, representing the past, the question and the future.
    • The gump will contain three cards in a traditional layout (Note: The cards currently are represented with placeholder art, and will be replaced before the feature is published.)
    • The cards will be selected randomly (or are they?)
    • There will be Inverted Cards chosen at random
    • The gump will also have a text area below each card that will display the card's meaning
    • The interpretation of the cards will be left to the players
  • UO:Lucky Dealer:
  • The UO:Lucky Dealer's functionality is accessed through the context menu
  • A gump will display the choices of dice to choose from:
    • Dice sets are d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100 (up to four)
    • You also choose the number of dice to be rolled
    • The Die Roll will be barked out by the UO:Lucky Dealer, and will appear in the journal as well
  • Each die will have its roll displayed, separated by commas
• Herald:
  • Herald can be placed in a player's house
  • Will greets people visiting your home
  • Can be placed in both public and private houses
  • Only the house owner may place a Herald
    • Conforms to any legal placement rules for a single tile object (on steps etc..)
    • If house if traded or demolished, Herald will re-deed to the players inventory (or bank if inventory is full)
  • When placed in the house the Herald will not re-deed when the player logs out or disconnects
  • When not placed in a house, the Herald will follow the player as any other attendant.
  • The Herald will make announcements periodically
  • The player will be able to set the Herald's messages by entering the greeting and announcement text in a gump
    • the gump will be accessed by using the Choose Messages option in the context menu.
    • The gump will contain two text entry fields marked In House Greeting and Herald's Announcement.
      • Each text entry will be filtered through the Profanity filter before being validated for use.
        • If the text is not valid, the gump will return an appropriate error and ask the player to enter a new line of text
  • NOTE: The personal attendants are a feature that will be introduced in Japan as part of a boxed SKU and in North American as a digital sales item. More info will be released on them soon.