DevlogNo more stutter step, spawn tools for game masters, and taken names handled properly

A day for how it feels to move, for the people who build the world, and for one bad moment at character creation.

Your own character no longer stutters when it runs. Your body was moved sixty times a second but drawn as often as your screen allows, up to 165 times a second on a fast one. On most frames it stood still, then jumped ten centimetres at once. The legs judged your speed from that jerky movement, so a steady run looked to them like a speed wobbling either side of the point where walking becomes running. The animation flipped between run and walk about 45 times a second, each flip starting the clip again: the stutter step. Your body is now drawn smoothly between those steps, and once you are running you keep running until you have really slowed down. In the same test runs the flips went from 948 in 21 seconds to none, and the shake against the camera fell from 44 millimetres to 3. Other players' bodies flip far less too. Where the game moves you on purpose, such as a teleport, you are still drawn there at once rather than gliding.

Game masters can place and tune creatures from inside the game. Typing #spawntools, or a new button on the game master window, opens a classic-style window with four pages. Mobs lists every creature, searched as you type and sorted by any column, and can spawn one where you stand or at your target. Point sets what stands at a spawn point: how many, how far they spread, their levels, which way they face, how long they take to come back and how much that varies. Groups lets a point roll between several creatures by weight, so a rare named creature can turn up now and then in place of the usual one. Zone lists every spawn point, nearest first. Creatures can walk a path that loops, turns back, runs once or wanders at random, with pauses, or roam inside a box. While the window is open, that game master alone sees a marker at every point, its paths and boxes, and red where nothing is standing. Every change takes effect at once and is kept, and each game master can undo their last twenty. For players this means camps, patrols and rare spawns can be set up and adjusted much faster. Editing a zone also no longer brings a creature back early while it waits to respawn, nor turns a rare or named creature back into an ordinary one.

A name that is taken keeps you on the creation screen. Choosing a name that belongs to another account used to say so and then carry on anyway, to a view of the city with the interface up and no character. Now the screen waits with "Creating..." until you are really in the world. If the name is refused you are told "That name is already taken. Please choose another.", and everything else you chose is kept. A name already on your own account is refused at once instead of loading that old character. If no answer comes within 90 seconds, or the connection drops, you are taken back to your character list with the reason.