DevlogThe world moves into its database, zone fixes from where you stand, and more than one world

A day mostly spent under the floorboards: the world's contents moved into its own database, game masters got tools to fix a zone in place, and the server list learnt to hold more than one world.

The world's contents now live in its database, not in the game's code. Items, spells, recipes, factions, starting kits, creatures with what they drop and sell, quests, rules, world events, mounts, mercenaries, doors, lifts, zone lines and camps all moved. Every record was checked against what the game said before the move, and they match. For you it means that when something in the world is changed, the zone you stand in and your own client pick it up within seconds. Before, you kept the old version of an item or spell until you next zoned. Your client also keeps what it holds on disk for each world, so coming back means only the differences are sent.

A few things now come in a different order. A spell scroll's tooltip names its classes in the game's own order of classes, so 185 of the 518 scrolls read differently; who may use them is unchanged. If you /give or hand in by typing a few letters of a name and two of your items match, it may now take the other one. Say two keywords in one line and a creature answers the longer. Three quests list their two wants the other way round, and four pay their two factions the other way round. A spell new to the world now finds its way into its classes' books, starting kits and merchants' shelves, and can drop without waiting for a restart.

City people look right at a distance. Within 42 metres a dressed person wears their fitted armour pieces. Further off they are painted in plain cloth of their outfit's colours, with only the shield, cloak and weapon as models, which keeps a crowded city quick to draw. Tellers wear robes and are of races tall enough for the counter. Horses stand at the front of their stalls, lamps keep clear of where people arrive, and Dreadhaven's watch wears a lighter grey.

Game masters can fix a zone where they stand. #prop and #land move scenery and shape the ground, and the /zonefix window, opened from a Fix button on the window bar, does the same with buttons and a list of fixes to undo. #door, #lift and #zoneline place and change doors, lifts and the ways between zones. #volume makes water to swim in and places that hurt: lava, acid, spikes and crushers. #station puts down a forge, oven, loom, kiln, pottery wheel or brew barrel. Each change shows for everyone in the zone at once, is saved to the world, survives a restart and can be undone after one. Edits no longer cause a hitch: the moment after one now costs about what any other moment does. #bake folds the fixes into the zone's own scenery.

More than one world on the server list. Each world can show a description, a language and its population. A world that needs a different client is listed in grey and says why, and your client keeps each world's things apart. A client from before today is told to update. If the world sends you to a zone that cannot be reached, a message box says so on the character list instead of leaving you waiting. Whoever runs a server can now make, copy, start, stop and archive worlds, and a test played two worlds side by side with one client, with a rule, a creature's level and a camp changed in only one of them.