I've only got a week left here in PA, I'm sure going to miss my girlfriend, but I'll be back on cable Internet, and maybe I can do some test hosting of Maeva. I just recently added group formations to the list of things you can do with your non-player group members. I plan on extending this behaviour to player group members as well, to make it easier for parties to stick together. I need to do a bit more work with path finding, however. I've got a lot of things in Maeva that aren't exactly a "wall", but mobs generally shouldn't be trying to pass through them. Doors are another problem, and whether or not a mob is able to open doors, AND if they should smash them down in order to get to who they're after. Added "cooldown" timers for special abilities so I can limit how quickly they can be used easily. Redid encounter system a bit. Instead of Maeva just randomly choosing a turf in a zone to spawn mobs to, encounter nodes are placed in areas that make sense for mobs to appear next to. I'll probably extend this so only certain encounter types will spawn on certain encounter nodes, or perhaps add modifiers such as "if mobs are spawned here, spawn them as asleep" and that sort of thing. I've made plans, really only mentally, to take more multiple-server standpoint on how Maeva will be hosted. I'm figuring I'll have the main places of business (cities mostly) persistently hosted, while dungeons, mountains, forests, etc. will be loaded as needed, perhaps even spawn their own private servers. I'm thinking I may just group zones into "regions", and have a seperate server spawn per region, and the non-persistent regions can just shut themselves down when not in use. I'll need to do some testing on how feasible this may be, but it'll sure beat having to wait for areas to load for other people, even if it's just a few seconds. I've done considerable work redrawing and "remastering" icons, and it's really improved the visual look of Maeva.


On another note, I am still looking for help in building the actual world of Maeva. I have a lot of concept maps, but with the implementation of my zone system, Maeva is now totally open to pasting in new areas wherever. If you are interested in designing a part of Maeva, leave me a comment or contact me via AIM, my screenname is the same as my BYOND key. Maps can be added to Maeva pretty much on the fly, I plan on having a seperate computer for generating swapmaps and the like that can be placed into Maeva while it is running. I eventually also plan on allowing in-game construction, so larger clans and whatnot can create their own guildhalls with "real-world" resources.