[July '25] Improvements & Bug Fixes
Rolling update of fixes from July 2025

TRYING TO PUT MORE MONEY IN WALLET THAN YOU HAVE

This will now give you a failure message when you don't have enough money.

GRID SIGNUP BUG FIX

Fixed a bug where after signing up for an account it wasn't redirecting you to a logged in page.

@ACCESS UPDATE FOR BRIEF_ROOM

We had an option for not showing the full room description when transitioning between rooms, but we had not integrated it with @access. It has been added so that those with screen readers don't have to experience as much scroll when moving around the game world. Typing 'look' will still show the full room description.

I have updated the code to show the contents of items integrated into the room (cars, bikes, signs, terms, etc). As well as weather and graffiti.

If anyone using a screen reader has feedback, I'd love to hear it (I worked with one player but more input is always helpful).

COMBAT CHANGES -> GUARDED, PARRY, MULTIPLE ATTACKERS

Parry is a last chance to block an attack that is otherwise going to hit you. Different postures have different mods to your chance to parry. Weapons have parry mods as well, with some parrying better than others. Guarded had a very high mod, which has been reduced. It now gives you a 40% bonus to your parry score.

When being attacked by multiple attackers, your chance to parry was reduced. I have increased the penalty per attacker, to better represent the chaos of being attacked by multiple people at the same time.

There was a bug in the code for counter attacking in guarded, likely introduced by me, which was doing an OR instead of AND. Essentially, any time you successfully parried an attack while in guarded, you would counter attack.

This was not intended, and was making guarded WAY too powerful. Counter attacks were only meant to trigger on a critical success for parrying. Essentially it was happening 99% too often.

Guarded is not intended to be a posture for winning a fight. It's intended to be a posture for holding on long enough for the situation to change (backup to arrive, someone already injured to bleed out, etc).

So, what do all these changes mean? They mean that guarded is not nearly as powerful, and the combat meta will likely change as a result.

I tested this with several NPCs and a player, using a cross section of stats/skills, dual wielding, etc. Generally speaking, guarded vs kamikaze will result in the person in guarded being defeated, albeit more slowly. At least if they were likely to lose the fight already. Stats and skills still play a major part in success or failure here.

In one situation, I took a max UE combat NPC, using their preferred weapon, and had them attacked by 3 middlebe statted people. The 3 went kamikaze and the 1 max UE went guarded. There were zero counter attacks from the MAX UE character over multiple combat rounds, though there were a number of parries and dodges. And occasionally one of the attackers would land a hit. This seems balanced, in that 3 characters working together should be able to take down a stronger character. Adding in a 4th character would have tipped the scales even further, and a 5th even more so.

I recognize this is a big change to the way combat works, and will keep an eye out for any disparities and issues. Feel free to include your feedback in the feedback thread.

(Edited by Slither at 12:13 pm on 7/10/2025)

ROBOT INSTALL/UNINSTALL UPDATE

There was a bug in the code that checked your skill when installing/uninstalling parts on robots.

Different parts defined skills that were used, some used the best of auto tech or aero tech, some just used electro tech.

The bug was that if you had ANY aero tech, even 1 point, when you tried an install/uninstall, it would instead use your electro tech skill.

This would cause 2 issues when installing or uninstalling a part that used the best of aero or auto:

For people with good aero tech and bad electro tech, they would fail to install/uninstall.

For people with bad aero tech and good electro tech, they would succed to install/uninstall even when they shouldn't.

I've fixed the bug but it leaves us in a weird place where people who were succeeding for years at something would now be failing. I didn't want to punish these people, as looking through who has what, this could have impacted a bunch of people.

Instead, I've simply made all robot parts installable/uninstallable using the best of aero, auto, or electro skills.

For most people, this should result in no change as you were already seeing most of this stuff work due to the unintended side effect of the bug, for those that were failing when they shouldn't you should see it start working again.

GRIDWORKS UPDATE

Fixed a bug in gridworks where the wall screen was not showing incoming notifications due to the data coming from a security object in the same room, thus getting caught in loop back protection.

Removing mods from weapons

Was bugging out because it was looking for a skill that doesn't exist anymore. It now checks for the right skill, and you can remove your mods from your weapons now.

ÚwÚ

PDS Scripts

I wasn't going to announce this in hopes that people who currently roleplay without OOC fear/objections/whateverWordYouPrefer would go out and find the change organically and appreciate it. But from recent posts, I can tell that there are people who have trouble getting past OOC objections about PDS and experiencing it or consequences for loading up on chrome.

So, as of 4 days ago, all 3 levels of the PDS scripts have been updated with new ones that have different messages and symptoms, giving a broader experience and depth to the roleplay.

I will continue to update these in the future to keep things fresh and cycle things out depending on feedback.

Staff Command Improvement
@random improved!

Got tired of @random showing repeats often, so made it better with some refactored code that now stores the last 50 'quotes' that were used so that they don't get used again. This should stop any noticeable repeats doing @randoms.

@randoms = The random Sic messages you see sometimes.

(Edited by Mench at 8:00 am on 7/29/2025)

NO MORE BIOMOD CONTROLLERS

Due to popular feedback, we have removed the need for biomod controller cyberware. Previously, cosmetic biomods could not function as body parts without this piece of hardware. Now the PDS cost borne out by the cyberware applies directly to the biomod culture.

GRID PROGRAM PARSER -> EXECUTE COMMAND FIX

Fixed a bug that was causing certain programs not to compile or run properly.

GRID BACKGROUND/FOREGROUND COLORS

Fixed the issue with foreground/background colors on the Grid, as part of figuring out and fixing the 256 color issue. Should be all good now.

NODE PARSING FIXES

Fixed a few of the error returns in Node Parsing that were not returning the proper error values, which was causing TBs.

FIXED A TB WITH DELETE MAIL

There was a bad state that you could reach in delete mail that would cause a TB. I fixed this by handling the bad state with an IC error and added some debugging to help identify how the bad state was reached.

THEME DOWNLOAD TB FIX

Fixed a TB that would occur if you tried to download a theme from a non-existent node.

UNREAD MAIL THAT WAS DELETED

Fixed a bug where unread but deleted mail still showed up in the count of unread mail when you used 'g'.

FIXED DELETING MAIL FROM UNREAD

If you viewed g mail unread and then tried to delete mail it gave an IC error. Fixed so this works now.

SCANNING HIDDEN STUFF

Fixed a bug where you could scan hidden things you had not found with 'search' if you used their exact name.

CRAFTING WITH TERMS

This was possible previously but broke when I changed the terms parentage. I've fixed that and the crafting options are restored to what they were previously.