Entropia Universe 17.0 Release Notes

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A major overhaul to the graphics engine of the Entropia Universe client is featured in this release. DirectX 11 has been implemented, please see below for associated changes and features.

While many areas and scenes will show major improvement with regard to lighting and realism, some content has not yet been optimized for the new system, particularly Planet Partner content. Upcoming Version Updates will build upon the additions and capabilities introduced in this release

These changes to the graphics engine may cause certain textures, items and areas to look slightly different or introduce unexpected graphical issues. Please report any graphics-related issues by submitting a support case under the Technical -> Video and Graphics category.

  • The rendering API now uses Microsoft DirectX 11, which requires Windows Vista or later. Windows XP is no longer supported.
  • Physically based rendering is now used throughout Entropia Universe.
  • Physically accurate falloff from light sources.
  • Gamma corrected output.
  • Filmic tonemapping.
  • Overhaul of the glow and bloom systems.
  • Reworked camera auto exposure.
  • Improved shading for vegetation, water, glass, skin and hair.
  • Brightness slider now applies brightness before tonemapping.
  • Contrast slider has been removed from the options menu.
  • Fullscreen mode is now always windowed fullscreen.
  • A new VR action has been added to the Action Library, which launches Virtual Reality for Oculus Rift. (Note that this system is still experimental and not fully supported).
  • To avoid any issues the graphics settings are reset to default during the update, make sure to select your prefered settings after logging in.

New Features
  • Enhancers inserted into (L)imited items will now break much less often.
  • 100% of the Trade Terminal value of enhancers is now returned in the form of Shrapnel when an enhancer breaks.
  • Increasing the Tier Level of an item during the Tier Upgrade process is no longer dependent on the Tier Upgrader profession. All tiering attempts will now automatically succeed.
  • 100% of the Trade Terminal value of the ingredients required to increase the Tier Level of an item is now always returned, in the form of Shrapnel (none of the required ingredients are returned).
  • A second decimal place has been added to item Tier Levels. All existing items have had a 9 added in the second decimal place. For example, an item that had a Tier Level of 3.9 will now have a Tier Level of 3.99.!
  • It is no longer necessary to drag items from inventory to the Tier Upgrade interface. Items from your avatar's Inventory as well as from an open Storage Terminal will automatically be used in the Tier Upgrade interface. Items in storage containers, vehicle inventories, etc. will however not be used.
  • It is now possible to increase the Tier Level of an item in storage.
  • Destructible environmental items now provide loot in the form of Shrapnel. Destructible explosive items that cause damage to nearby creatures transfer their loot to the damaged creatures.
  • The current Trade Terminal value of attached attachments is now displayed in the base item’s tooltip info.
  • For better visibility, common warning messages are now displayed in the middle of the screen rather than in the chat window.
  • It is now possible to “protect” equippable items and attachments, preventing them from being traded, dropped, placed on auction, exchanged with NPCs, or sold to the Trade Terminal. To protect an item, toggle “Protect Item” icon in the Item Info panel. Items that are protected will show a “P” on the item icon status bar.
  • It is now possible to attach and remove attachments and enhancers to/from items without unequipping the base item.
  • The name of equipped weapons and tools with a condition below 10% is now displayed in yellow text in the dashboard.
  • The currently viewing avatar’s name is highlighted in orange text when viewing scoreboards.
  • Added Buy orders to the Entropia Exchange (previously “Share Center”). Buy orders always match the lowest available price first. Buy orders will match older Sell orders first if there are multiple Sell orders with the same price. Buy orders can match qualifying Sell orders regardless of remaining Sell order quantity.
  • Added market history graphs to the Entropia Exchange
  • Added a Transactions tab to the Entropia Exchange -> Holdings view that displays a history of share transactions and revenue payouts. Double click on the company name to view history.

Changes
  • The Share Center has been renamed to the Entropia Exchange and can be accessed by right-clicking on the PED Card or via the Action Library.
  • Global and Hall of Fame loot values no longer display decimals.
  • It is now possible to toggle the display of private messages in the Main chat tab.
  • Smoke trails have been removed from spaceships.
  • Creatures killed by automated turrets, drowned, or despawned by the system will return loot in the form of Shrapnel, when appropriate.
  • The Tier Upgrade icon is now only displayed in the Item Info panel if an item can be tiered.
  • It is now possible to deal and receive damage of values less than 1.
  • Added visual and sound effects to the Codex when gaining a new rank.
  • Improved the display of information in the Global Events List.
  • Added icons for and improved the display of Codex notifications.
  • Improved the tooltip information provided for Action Library icons.
  • Prices and markup are now displayed in the tooltip when hovering the mouse over items in a shop or shopkeeper.
  • Damage over time effects no longer cause creatures or the targeting reticule to flash.
  • Tier Upgrader skills are no longer gained when increasing the Tier Level of an item.
  • The arrival safe animation has been removed.

Fixed Issues
  • Fixed an issue causing unexpected results when using sorting options in the Codex.
  • Fixed an issue causing message tabs to not reliably highlight when receiving a private message.
  • Fixed an issue preventing crosshairs from updating properly after entering a mothership.
  • Fixed an issue causing avatars to be unexpectedly removed from dynamic Mayhem instances in certain situations.

Known Issues
  • Avatars will sometimes glow unexpectedly after receiving a skill boost. Going into first person mode and back to third person will fix this.
  • Certain modeled terrain features, such as the roof of the second Gauntlet, display unexpected bright borders between detail textures.
  • The Polished Chrome Texture does not display correctly.
  • Codex rewards can only be chosen when opening the Codex interface via the Codex action icon.
  • The effect of “Tier increase rates” is currently not working as intended with the tiering changes.
  • When adding an attachment to an equipped item with another attachment on it (e.g scope + laser sight), the effect of the secondary attachment (laser) is not applied until the item is re-equipped.
  • Codex rewards cannot be claimed, but progress is not lost.


MindArk and the Planet Partners strive to ensure a smooth and problem-free Version Update. Nevertheless, even after extensive testing some issues may arise after release. Such issues are often addressed via mini-patches directly after a release and in subsequent patches. If you feel that the possibility of encountering minor issues or bugs directly after a Version Update affects your gameplay to an extent that Entropia Universe is not enjoyable, please wait until the mini-patches have been released and any last minute issues have been resolved.


Originally Posted Here
 
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cool.

Now open the gates and let the hordes in! :wtg:
 
Start servers so we can shoot.
 
ok, first impression:

Texture fucked up. As expected.
My zinc and silk texture on my sleip are broken.

Screen looks bleak. Like a fog everywhere.

*edit* even on very high setting the graphics look fucked up.

BLOODY IRRITATING RED LINES SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SCREEN!!!!
GET THEM OUT OF THERE!!!!!
 
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haven't read all yet - am going to place my bets on this one being popular lol!

For better visibility, common warning messages are now displayed in the middle of the screen rather than in the chat window.

Protect option - great! ty

Buy orders in share centre and market history - ty as well!

Creatures killed by automated turrets, drowned, or despawned by the system will return loot in the form of Shrapnel, when appropriate. - an interesting one this! lol
[could this just possibly mean an unlooted mob will pay in shrap when it disappears? - testers pls amongst those already in...]

It is now possible to deal and receive damage of values less than 1. - interesting too!

Finishing on an ouch! - Contrast slider has been removed from the options menu. This may prove to be a patch request???

so, just need to get in game now - and see some of it all in action...
 
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Awesome Update.....eager to try out stuf....also THX for the Protect thing on items :yay::yay:
 
It is now possible to “protect” equippable items and attachments, preventing them from being traded, dropped, placed on auction, exchanged with NPCs, or sold to the Trade Terminal. To protect an item, toggle “Protect Item” icon in the Item Info panel. Items that are protected will show a “P” on the item icon status bar.



THIS IS HUGE AND HAS BEEN ASKED FOR ABOUT 16 YEARS !!!!
 
So far so good, and nice xmas gifts this year!


Good work on a big update without really any problems so far.



On max settings, it looks ok. About what I'd expect from just turning on PBR without updating any of the materials/lighting/textures to take advantage of it. Particle systems need some love.
 
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Nice Update
 
Looks like a big QOL update! Can't actually wait to update and play tonight
 
HOLY SHIT!!! Item lock function :eyecrazy: Something for the players...
 
wait till you all log in.

graphics seems to look far far worse than before the update!
 
BLOODY IRRITATING RED LINES SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF MY SCREEN!!!!
GET THEM OUT OF THERE!!!!!


Yes, this text is pretty annoying and as far as I can tell it cannot be disabled, unless it's in a less-than-obvious option.


I'm pretty sure there's going to be a lot of complaints on this one and they will make it configurable in a hot fix.
 
Clothing Really Messed Up

For those of us that spent time and tons of ped developing different textured clothing (particularly if we sell it), many of the textures are royally messed up. All of the Cyrene crystal textures are messed up (among numerous others). Some of the most expensive textures are now "ruined". I hope this is fixed and soon.
 
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Yes, this text is pretty annoying and as far as I can tell it cannot be disabled, unless it's in a less-than-obvious option.


I'm pretty sure there's going to be a lot of complaints on this one and they will make it configurable in a hot fix.

wait till the texture shitstorm kicks in.

It looks like all depth and texture has been removed.

My custom sleip looks sad.
My nemesis looks like a big orange dot without any depth.

And yes, running on very high!

As I said:

For those of us that spent time and tons of ped developing different textured clothing (particularly if we sell it), many of the textures are royally messed up. All of the Cyrene crystal textures are messed up (among numerous others). Some of the most expensive textures are now "ruined". I hope this is fixed and soon.


Lol, try your explorer truck!!!
Feels like you took some LSD when you see it!!!
 
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WOW. Lots of goodies in this update for sure!


Global and Hall of Fame loot values no longer display decimals.
:lolup: I can literally hear the guy on entropialife screaming right now. They just applied the update to account for decimals in those things.

It is now possible to deal and receive damage of values less than 1.
Curious what this means for the deflected message/system now. And the ability to deal less than 1 damage - what gun could possibly do this low of damage, what is even the point? lol

Creatures killed by automated turrets, drowned, or despawned by the system will return loot in the form of Shrapnel, when appropriate.
This is my wow factor add. This is something I wished was in the game since I started playing. No more fears over half killed mobs lost to the turret. Though a question now comes in... how is the value of the return handled? Is it and exact cost of input? Is it a random amount of return like regular loots? Does this loot still get multiplier added to it? So could you global from it?

A second decimal place has been added to item Tier Levels. All existing items have had a 9 added in the second decimal place. For example, an item that had a Tier Level of 3.9 will now have a Tier Level of 3.99.!
Is this just the display of that number? Was that number always in use in tiering? Or will having this extra decimal actually make tiering faster?

100% of the Trade Terminal value of enhancers is now returned in the form of Shrapnel when an enhancer breaks.
Super happy with this - now we just need the markup on those suckers to drop.
 
Every time I open storage I crash, inventory is working ok
 
wait till the texture shitstorm kicks in.

It looks like all depth and texture has been removed.

My custom sleip looks sad.
My nemesis looks like a big orange dot without any depth.


Yea for sure, but I already predicted this was going to be the case in the other thread so I'm neither surprised nor disappointed. I was actually expecting much worse results than what I'm seeing.

More importantly, I haven't run across any huge game-breaking bugs so far, which is a really welcome change for such a big VU. And there's quite a few really nice QoL changes, so overall I think MA has done better than what I would have expected on this.
 
...
[*] It is now possible to “protect” equippable items and attachments, preventing them from being traded, dropped, placed on auction, exchanged with NPCs, or sold to the Trade Terminal. To protect an item, toggle “Protect Item” icon in the Item Info panel. Items that are protected will show a “P” on the item icon status bar.
...

Finally :yay::yay::yay:
 
Yea for sure, but I already predicted this was going to be the case in the other thread so I'm neither surprised nor disappointed. I was actually expecting much worse results than what I'm seeing.

More importantly, I haven't run across any huge game-breaking bugs so far, which is a really welcome change for such a big VU. And there's quite a few really nice QoL changes, so overall I think MA has done better than what I would have expected on this.

well, I've seen some updates before in my time, but for sure, this one looks the most horrible ever!!!1

Like exactly EVERY visual detail seems to be broken now!!! :mad:


I see that MA also implemented climate change.
There seems to be a permanent fog now.

I guess all oil consuming vehicles will be banned.

Did they actually TEST it before they put it online?!?!

Common, seriously, this is the biggest JOKE ever!!!!
 
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Big adv screens not working neither
 
It is now possible to “protect” equippable items and attachments, preventing them from being traded, dropped, placed on auction, exchanged with NPCs, or sold to the Trade Terminal. To protect an item, toggle “Protect Item” icon in the Item Info panel. Items that are protected will show a “P” on the item icon status bar.

A long requested feature.

Fantastic!!
 
My FPS went from 60 to 30, hunting around Fort Cayuze
 
well, I've seen some updates before in my time, but for sure, this one looks the most horrible ever!!!1

Like exactly EVERY visual detail seems to be broken now!!! :mad:


I see that MA also implemented climate change.
There seems to be a permanent fog now.

I guess all oil consuming vehicles will be banned.

Did they actually TEST it before they put it online?!?!

Common, seriously, this is the biggest JOKE ever!!!!


Dude I hear ya, but I still say this should not have been a surprise. As I said before, a complete and proper overhaul to take advantage of PBR would probably take years for a game with this many assets and such a small team.



I agree, the new bar scene doesn't look very good. PBR has very different BRDF inputs and is only as good as your textures and lighting, both of which are pretty bad in this game. I'm not sure what this release will entail, but based on MA's history my guess is that this is just an initial port to the new engine and basically switching to physically based shading without fully revamping the textures, materials, and lighting to fit with the new shading model. Hopefully I'm wrong, but considering such an undertaking would have likely had to have been in the works for years now, I doubt it. They likely just ran the existing textures through an automated conversion. The result is going to be that mostly this will initially make a lot of the game look perceptibly worse to most people. PBR is fantastic in the right hands though, and moving forward hopefully MA has resources allocated to take this where it could go.
 
seems i cannot claim codex rewards anymore, anyone else with this problem?
 
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Finally, protect items from sales - TY
 
Dude I hear ya, but I still say this should not have been a surprise. As I said before, a complete and proper overhaul to take advantage of PBR would probably take years for a game with this many assets and such a small team.

I know, the last time they updated the graphics they broke half the textures.
Most of them never repaired.

Now it seems they have destroyed ALL textures.
So not just the custom applied textures but even all armour textures are gone now.


Graphics from storage items look horrible.

And, try to summon your explorer truck!! :laugh:
 
seems i cannot claim codex rewards anymore, anyone else with this problem?

WTF!!!

I had 4 unclaimed rewards and they're gone now!!!

Support case sent!
 
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