We would like to thank the guild that sent us those lovely unlabeled candies (we think they are candies...). We sent them to the team for the month to see what kind of creative changes we could make and boy were we very productive this month. Many 20 hour work days slaving away at greatness. We hope everyone enjoys.
Audio
- Added audio support for karaoke machines; all players in the vicinity will hear you.
- Major audio track changes made: players can choose alternate tracks instead of the current 'mood music' for battle and crafting. Choices include Top 40 Elevator Tracks, Justin Bieber's complete playlist, 70's TV hits including the monkees and the partridge family as well as theme songs for Hogan's Heroes and Gilligan's Island.
- Due to copyright infringement, Rick Astley songs have been removed.
- Known Bugs: We are aware that the alternative tracks of music are all stuck on Kids Bop (albums 1 through 87) and are working on the issue.
- Hired John Cleese for voice overs.
Character Creation
- Sliders in the character creation screen now have effect on your basic character stats:
- "Muscled" --> Stamina + 2, Intelligence - 1, confidence - 1
- "Thin" --> Agility + 2, Strength - 1, Max Stomach Filling - 1
- "Buxom" --> Momentum + 1, balance - 1
- "Codpiece" --> Confidence +100, Intelligence -50, Agility -3
- "Thick Headed" --> Willpower + 2, Friends - 2
- "Buxom" now adds +10 to confidence
- "Muscled" now also adds +5 to Strength
- "Buxom" has been changed to reflect real life and now adds +4 Entertainer and -5 Balance
- Use of the Buxom slider on males will apply increasing stacks of "Distracted". At 5 stacks the character will never leave their house.
Combat
- Added Polo Death Match; this dueling option is not instanced and supports single player or squad based polo matches on sharks equipped with lasers. Losers are perma'd as the ocean is currently out of judair upload range.
- Added support for Nacoot Duels to the Gladiator Areans in Plymouth and Freedomtown.
- Mechs now have the ability to join together with other mechs, forming a giant mech; pay no attention to the Power Rangers music in the background.
- Every instance now has a Heroic version, each of them has a minimum gearscore requirement.
Engagements
- Added natural disasters to the weather system. Your city has a 1 in 5 chance of been destroyed each game year. Other effects are still being discussed.
- Added Godzilla to the fire, flood, earthquake, tornado, asteroid strike and horsemen of the apocalypse natural disasters
- Added Locust Swarms to the game; this is a persistent engagement that moves throughout the entire map, eating everything green as it goes. Please be aware that hydroponics labs do not keep them out.
Graphics
- Added a series of cool and hip t-shirts to the cash store, so that your ingame avatar can look cool and hip, with slogans such as "Keep Calm and Clone On".
- Added models for Armored Pug-a-Saurus Rex and Sego-Ferret pets.
- Replaced all Gun models with Walkie Talkies. We hope this change will be enough to earn the Teen rating we're aiming for despite the hard drugs, alcohol, and ladies of the night wandering Plymouth.
- Nacoots have been replaced with ferrets, setlangs have been replaced with pugs, and all other mobs have been replaced with PADUB!
- Due to tester feedback, we have removed darkness from the game. The gamma will be set to 'bright' and 'overexposed' for night and day visual effects.
- We have removed daylight savings time from the game, all time zones will be concurrent with Antarctic diurnal schedules.
Hardcore Server
- Added Russian Roulette as Mini-game to the hardcode server. You either gain Ultimum Fame ... or permanent death. Not for the carebears or other tree-huggers.
- Removed the cash shop from the Hardcore Server; the server will be sub-based. A $10 USD fee is require monthly to access the server. As an alternate method of payment, 1000 kills or 1000 deaths in 30 days earns you a free month.
- Looting drones have been added to the hardcore server. This allows those who like to loot during combat the ability to do so without missing out on any combat.
Items and Fittings
- All alcohols provide a bonus to Singing skill, at least until you sober up.
- Added the following new items: Wand of Destruction, Elixir of Greater Mojo and Flippo's
- Added a Staff that casts Magic Missiles. This is only useable on Darkness.
Missions
-
Added Epic Quest Sequence - The Adventures of Ding Veisel!
This quest line will see players embark on a wondrous journey with Ding Veisel, Rhyldans' first mega movie super star! Follow Ding as he assembles an all star cast, designs costumes and convinces people to give him money for production costs for his new film, Death Planet Extreme!
Missions in this Epic Arc Include:
"Follicle Folly" - Ding has the player collecting various hides from the local fauna of Rhyldan in an attempt to cover his shiny head.
"Point Blank Stare" - Ding will teach players how to deal effectively with various situations when asked questions of science, maths or politics.
"Re-spect-acles" - Short-sightedness is no laughing matter! Help Ding to stop tripping over and gain some respect by having a set of spectacles crafted!
"All the Animals Were Harmed During the making of this Film" - Help Ding dig lots of shallow pits for the corpses of the 682 vultures and Setlangs killed during filming.
- Have translated all mission text into Elizabethan iambic pentameter.
- Changed requirements for missions, all missions will now be given only in one of the three main cities, and each step of the mission requires you to physically travel back to the main city in order to get instructions for the next step. We understand this is going to slow down mission completion so we have increased the rewards for missions by .025% to make up for it.
NPCs
- Added Ding Veisel to the game
- Added Ding Veisel's camera and production crews to the game. These are nameless, faceless NPCs.
- Added Ding Veisel's co-stars to the game. These NPCs have faces but we can't remember their names right now.
- Removed all other NPCs. They just weren't as cool as Ving.
Pets
- Pug-a-saurus Rex and Stego-Ferret are now available as craftable non-combat pets.
- Some changes were made to how pets work. Forgetting to feed them regularly will make them grumpy at first, then nettled and finally starved at which point they will turn on their owner.
- Also added pets to the cooties system. Watch out for flees and rabies!
Skills and Abilities
- Added "John Woo Grip" to Handguns skill list. Allows players to look extremely cool when killing stuff. Must have Achievement - Asian Action Movie Aficionado as prerequisite.
- Added "Gastro Intestinal Relief" skill for all players. A constant diet of setlang steaks and raxin ribs has led the general populace feeling bloated.
- Added karaoke machines to bar settings used to advance a new Singing skill.
- Nacooterskates - added the ability to tie nacoots to your feet and use them like roller skates to the Survival skill line.
- Bounty hunting has been added to the game. You must be a grandmaster in 16 skills including Assassination, Survival, Robotics, Swimming, and Acrobatics to begin this skill line.
- To keep in line with the john woo grip we will be adding nacoot-chucks for the Bruce Lee fans. Now you can kill setlangs in style with nun-chucks made of nacoots that shoot fire from their tails to incinerates griefers with permadeath and insta bans trolls. Use with caution, rolling a natural one results in a critical failure which perma's your character. Rolling a natural 20 provides an instant I-WIN button for the game.
- As it proved to be too much work to balance both PVE and PVP, we now only focus on PVP. This is for both skills and gear.
- Added Rubber-hose Cryptanalysis ability to the Intimidation skill line. This requires having a rubber hose equipped in at least 1 hand when the ability is used.
Trade Skills
- Removed factories from the game as they made crafting easy mode.
- Reverted changes to dihydrogen monoxide
- Looting Drones have been added to Robotics; these drones serve no purpose on Normal but you'll still have to craft 700 of them to move from Elite to Master.
-
Added the following Recipe to Metalworking:
- Velvet Lined Handcuffs -
Added the following recipes to Tailoring
- Leather Face Masks (half and full)
- Leather Bodysuits
- Leather Whips (Flogger and whip)
- Silk Rope
- BDSM Kit - Added the BDSM Kit recipe. This recipe is a rare drop from 'The Dominatrix'. Found only in dungeons.
- Added factories, no skill required to run them, no power or maintenance costs associated with them.
- Added Rubber Hose recipe to Artillery.
- Added a segment of 'exotic' dances to the Entertainer line. These moves are learned in and useable only in the exclusive 'Rhyl's High Club'.
- Added schematics for club medicinals to 'Rhyl's High Club'. These are not drugs, they simply make your experiences more intense. Removal of these medicinals from the club or an attempt to craft them outside the club will result in jail time and hefty fines.
- Added T-Rex and Stegosaurus DNA so mad scientists can make the armored Pug-a-saurus Rex and Stego-Ferret pets.
- Factories now use low level resources to create crates of 10,000 finished products at A9 quality.
- Reduced the time it takes for factories to work, it now takes 1/100th of a second to craft end products.
- Removed factory components from the vendors, factories can only be produced in a factory
- Added a 300% skill increase to anyone willing to work in Pharm. We have several new diseases spreading through the game we can't even pronoun and we'd like them eradicated before Beta.
User Interface
- Added 'Sharks with Laser' to the Duel Option; this allows players to be instantly transported to the ocean for a polo death match using sharks with lasers
-
For greatest customizability the new UI XML sheet looks like this:
<xml>
</xml>
Players will need to fill in the rest themselves. - Changed XML language support from English to phonetic Aramaic
Vehicles and Mounts
- Added the ability to piggyback ride other players.
- Removed all other vehicles from the game as they just didn't compare with piggyback rides.
- Added fittings slots for piggyback riding. Don't ask where we put them.
Website
- We will be instituting a Forum troll buyout system as an alternate fundraising device. When the community brands a troll, they will have the option of 'buying out' the trolls continued presence. Dollar amounts will vary by trolling frequency, behaviors, and number of rule infractions the troll has.
-
Reworked the Forums to more accurately display the topic discussed; We believe these changes will make it easier for members to decide where to put a topic
- Player Nations is now 'People who Like Repop and Bacon'
- Hardcore Ruleset is now 'Casuals GTFO'
- PvE is now 'Gankers are Big Meanyheads'
- Crafting and Collection/Extraction is now 'This is how SWG Did It'
- AI/Combat is now 'Polls about FPS and Targeting in other games' - A new cash shop item, an optional monthly ($15.00) subscription fee for the forums. Players who pay the subscription fee will get access to a new section of the forum called 'Anything Goes' This will be a completely unmoderated section where trash talking, XXX pictures, and flame wars would be allowed. Reporting a thread for breaking the rules will get you laughed at by the moderators.
- Added in a credit card check to validate age over 18 for the new 'Anything Goes' forum subscription.
- Deleted 1642 contribution forms for people that misunderstood the thought behind "Repopulation". Statistics showed that 85% was male[13-18].
World
- All lakefront housing plots have been removed due to the natures of erosion.
- We renamed ingame credits to bitcoins. You can mine them with the hacking skill and sell them in our RMT. We take a 20% cut.
- As request by our fans we have added two new dungeons. In these dungeons you will meet a npc which will ask you to hand over your weapons for the choice of a Magic Staff/ Flaming Sword/ Poison Bow. Pets will also be confiscated and instead given dwarves as a replacement. Unicorns and Griffins will be given in place of mounts.
- However, to keep theme with SciFi. The boss mobs and trash mobs within the dungeon are still SciFi characters. Good Luck! We hope to hear the feedback of how your raids turn out
- There is a new mini-game in both Plymouth and Freedomtown: Nacoot Fighting Ring! Place a bet and make some easy credits. Or enter your own pet and become King of the Ring.
- There is an entire film-set in the wilderness with giant pipes made from resin to look exactly like iron corroded industrial pipes. It was created right after landing to make a film about alien intervention on Rhyldan so that the ship would move on from landing and head to the next planet.
- Added a new world boss: The Dominatrix. She harms only male players who have been very bad boys. This boss has a very rare chance to drop her intact outfit on death. Only equippable by female characters.
- Due to high ownership desire, all player cities will now be built to 1/100th scale so that everyone may have one. Please be careful where you step.
- Added a new zone "Candy Mountain". YUM! YUM! YUM! YUM!
- A new minigame will be available for player bars and arcades, a variation on 'whack a mole' called RePop goes the Weasel.
- We added the exclusive "Rhyl's High Club" to the top-floor of the apartments building in Plymouth. Membership fees are extravagant, as is the entertainment. Special dance moves and 'medicinals' are available only in this elite membership club.
- Ghost zombie gnomes have taken over some swamps with strange pipes.
Miscellaneous
- Achievement 'Asian Action Movie Aficionado' added; prereqs include 23 hour Bruce Lee Movie Marathon and Biggest Chow Yun-Fat Fan
- Added Achievement "Do You Even Lift, Bro?". Awarded to players who can lift heavy things, hhnngg....
- To prevent botting using third party tools, we have added an autoplay feature. This will fight for you, loot, heal and go to town to sell up and get new entertainer buffs. This option will be available in the cash shop.
- Renamed the servers "Softcore" and "Hardcore"; rulesets will now be deemed 'Fluffy Bunny Paradise' and 'Kill or be Killed'
- After having more than tripled our 2nd Kickstart goal, we can now move the transition to Super Expensive Alpha Engine 0.6. This should not postpone our promised Launch date by more than a month at most, so we are still aiming for a 2014 release. Don't worry about the fact that it's an alpha release; we'll customize it so thoroughly you won't even notice.
- We are experiencing some minor difficulties with the laser equipped sharks after someone released a large quantity of iridium into the ocean causing them to grow legs. Returning them to their previous state should delay development no more than a couple of weeks. We are on track for a Oct 2016 release date.
- We will launch our third Kickstarter on April 1st.
- Finishing up on the "secret unlock" skills. Uncovering them all unlocks the title "Wizard".
- New transporter pads added in major cities; these provide randomized results ranging from permadeath to million credit deposits to cybernetic, laser equipped body parts.
- Added Achievement 'I subbed' to the game. This achievement is earnable only when a character is defeated and teabagged by a female wearing the Dominatrix outfit while wielding a whip.
- Added Glow Bats to the cash shop since Psionic Soul Knife and light saber is copyright infringement.
- Added new afflictions: coccidioidomycosis, aspergillosis, erythroblastosis, heterokaryosis, lymphogranulomatosis, paedomorphosis, serodiagnosis, thyrotoxicosis and a few more that we don't know how to spell or pronounce. As we have no fricking clue as to what they do, we just let them do random stuff. Just ... make sure to avoid them.
- The hamsters in our servers died. Alpha 3 has been delayed for two months.
- Replaced the hamsters in the servers with Nacoot, alpha 3 will only be delayed 3 months
- Implemented code to block "Git'er dun" and its ilk.
- Now reticulating splines. As soon as we figure out what that means.
- Above & Beyond Technologies is considering a buy-out offer from an anonymous social media giant.
- Above and beyond technologies is currently in a bidding war between an anonymous big name game company that recently declared they will develop a sandbox game, and a large social networking corporation that has expressed a desire to expand their advertising abilities into new media. Creative control may be retained by the current staff as long as they are employees of the winning company.
- By popular demand from our testers we have now added health and momentum potions, available in the cash-shop only.
- Added an option for offline training and crafting. These require tokens from the cash-shop.
- To draw in the more casual players, we added an "Auto Combat" option to instances. AI will take over your character and complete dungeons for you. Drawback is that you will receive less loot.
- To be able to easily port The Repopulation to consoles, we've simplified the GUI and controls to be usable on controllers. You can now play the game with 4 buttons.
Bug Fixes and Security
- We decided to implement an API for Google and Facebook so they can monitor your ingame shopping behavior and social activities. We will use this data for our in-game vendors to send you targeted offers and to suggest new friends to you that match your profile, also outside the game. We will not use this information for our cash-shop offers ... honestly!
- We finally got around to implementing anti-cheat software. This is a DLL that is hooked when the client is started. You will hardly notice it's there and it's limited to only scan your process-list, hard-drive, email, twitter, facebook, google+, linkedin, surfing behavior and geographical location for your client computer and all devices attached to your network over cable, wifi or bluetooth. To fund new features, we will sell this data to the highest bidder. Every 60 seconds it will take a snap via your webcam to verify that you are the actual account owner. All this just to protect you.
- Fixed a few things that were working as intended. Good luck finding them. Job security!
- Found a bug in the chip cloning procedures, which explains the 200 Agent Smith's in game. We have no idea how to fix it. Can someone call Neo please?