Azusa RP Online

by Inutaishos
Azusa RP Online
New Game Mode: Battle Arena, and Free to play steam period!
ID:2369178
 


Before we start, forgive my terrible english, long time without practice made my usual bad english worse.

As promiced here is the update log for the version 1.0.5, and before we start I have alot to talk about and have alot of explains to give to Azusa playerbase, so as promiced here we are;

At first we had a downtime to release Azusa v1.0.5 but we decided to make this downtime longer untill the game is finally ready to steam; (woow)
Basically alot of bugfixes and features must be finished before the steam launch and its more efficient to work toward it without two official servers to admin;

In the last weeks Azusa have been through alot of brainstorms with players and staffs to redesign the game and deliver the future playerbase the best experiences Azusa has to offer; these discussions usually happen at our official discord, so if you want to be part of it, jump in!

But this downtime will also bring us some actual changes, first one will be at our Lifetime Subscriptions; let me be direct: lifetime will stop being sold!

Everyone who has lifetime subscription will continue with it eternally as promiced, and the perks will also be the same, (never removed)

I always seen Azusa lifetime subscribers as Azusa funders, and always wanted to stop selling the lifetime at some point, so everyone who have lifetime keys will have their key value increased as the time pass and the game grows, and they become rarer (lets say some day you will maybe be able to sell your lifetime subs key for a bigger price)

So if you believe in Azusa and that it will grow in steam and other markets in the future, go on and grab your lifetime subs before its too late

-Lifetime Subscriptions will continue being sold untill may 27 2018-

Now the other subject is, Azusa will have constant test servers some will least more then one week, to find and fix every bug that could be annoying for steam playerbase, but also to help to create alot of materials such as screenshots, videos, and whatever can be used in the game's marketing campaign

These test servers however will be accessible only for byond subscribers and Azusa's Patreons. (Wait what?) Yeah, by the end of this week we will have our patreon page, to help funding Azusa's marketing campaign of the steam pre-launch; there will be some neat features that I will announce here with better details whenever the page is ready to go.

You may be asking yourself how long this is going to take, well, to be honest I am asking it myself, but even while I have an urge to release it as soon as possible, we all know we must be carefull with every steps from now on.
With that said, With this 1.0.5 ready and working, I will start doing the closed tests to fix the bugs and create materials and will hope this second phase will take around 2-3 weeks; and while we are at that, I will be designing the game's marketing campaign that will probably take another 2 months; first month probably pre-release and the second one after the release;
So, the game may be back in around 2-3 months (added one extra month cuz, reality is rude, and will always shove us down some big bugs to fix in the last minute)

But, keep in mind those are estimative time, its not a deadline! So keep up with the discord channels to know more about our progression!

Now the last thing is, even while I am announcing the update log for v1.0.5, its not going to be the final version for steam, alot of new features and bug fixes and balancing changes will happen, and till then we may update this update log or create another, depending on the amount of new content!

With all that said, lets talk about whats new!!



Hello you that TLDR the downtime topic, if you follow Azusa's devlog you probably know we don't usually make logs for .5s, but due to the current needs this .5 got way bigger then the usuals and need its own log!

Well, before we start talking about it, its always important to explain the needs of each big changes, so, I would like to talk a little about Azusa before we go on; Even while Azusa can be easily described as a Online RPG, Roleplay Enforcered, Medieval, Saint Seiya inspired game, Azusa focus isn't any of these;

Azusa is a universe where alot of abstracts feelings or things are constantly personified into characters, A universe where you can grow up to punch Death's face; and with that said, the Great wars is usually big conflicts between said abstracts feelings, (for example a war against Athena x Poseidon can easily be seen as Friendship x Egoism, in Azusa's universe).
humans usually fight in these wars to what they believe in and to define the future of the world, and, well, to figure out that even the normal human characters ends up representing some of those "abstract feelings"; growing its feeling up can turn this character even in one new custom god himself, lets say for example god *insert gods name* of justice?
it all depends on the global development and worlds needs;

With that said, Azusa isn't a simple roleplay universe where you are meant to go around making farming/bathroom rps, the universe expects you to develop your character into feelings and, end up having alot of feels as your character finds challange (lets say a proud lion armor guy ends up having to fight his long gone friend that is now the personification of despair.) and, as these stuffs happens this is the kind of experience Azusa players usually receive when playing through the generations;
The possibility of dramas in Azusa's universe is not just endless, but, the universe almost beg you to feel it.

However, the game mechanic doesnt. (there we are)
And this update tries to fix that, and enforce mainly the feels/experience and directions a players should get to find the best possible experiences in the game. (And all its possible dramas)

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v.1.0.1-1.0.4

Salamander Armor

Thanks to Hoboman11, Yeppes, GigaBtyteWide and Blue_IA, Salamander Armor was created as a Fire armor, its skill is based off a whip that doesn't use AP, and can drag your foe 4 tiles away to you;
Its skill can be used in many other ways and combine with other skills such as metldown (so you can drag your enemy to the lava pit in a single turn)

RPP changes
1.0.0 changed alot of Azusa's features, and these first fixes required alot of rework/rebalance in game mechanics,
One big problem in Azusa was a disbalance in the class, and mainly at how the players to players dependence turned into hell with a low playerbase, forcing players to be stuck without progressing.

These problems were solved with a roll of RPP changes, the first one is solo rps are now rewarded if theres an admin online with RP HOUR on, (RP HOUR is a toggle that allows admins to read every rps posted by players) So the admin can control and, if needed, ban people trying to trick the roleplay rewards systems;
Solo roleplays gives you half the score as real interactions, but atleast now you can progresss your adventure without the constant need to be afking near the crowded cities.

Every non civilian class will now be able to use RPPs and unlock ONE RANDOM civilian trait;
So for example its possible to be a fighter and roll Building trait, and so on;
This was changed because we never actually had a playerbase big enough to fill every needs of the classes, so balancing a little the civil class through the other ones helped alot the game fairness; keep in mind only civilians can have all of the traits at the same time, still giving them their fair advantages.

Now new players can spend 5 rpps to learn a training method if they don't have any; they will get a random AFK training method, most commonly get shadow spar, and rarest being charge cosmo; this was added because, sometimes wheres no ranked players around to teach, the playerbase ended up stuck without any training method, this atleast spread some basic ones.

Now you can use roleplay points to earn the first % of a training method mastery, this is great to jump the hardest part of the active training method (the frst %s) and go straight to the good gains.

Welcome Back Knockback!
To keep up with the game's dramas and feelings, its crucial to be able to see some dramatic knockback in action; so...
Now damages above 200 can knock back someone 10 tiles aways (it caps up at 10 tiles) and each 20 damage = 1 extra knockback;

Gale fist now have 10% chance to give dizzy effect; extra detail since knockbacks are in, gale fist became trivial, so now gale fist is good to make ppl dizzy


Big roll of Bugfixes
*fixed bugs related to divine privation
*fixed bugs related to big icons statues (sculptor perk)
*fixed bugs related to character creation (getting multiple classes)
*fixed bugs related to civil trait through rpp (ppl could get multiples)
*fixed bugs in dragon lair spikes trap (ppl could dash through the walls)
*fixed bugs related to gold coins decimals
*fixed bugs with hell rivers (ppl could use kappa dive in them)
*fixed bugs with active trainings at dreamworld (it bugged the gain rate)
*fixed knockback with npcs (now the max. knockback against a npc is 5 tiles, so you wont end the battle)
*fixed a bug with salamander armors colors
*fixed a bug with spamming blasts through macros
*fixed a bug with pandora not gaining god powers
*fixed a bug with flamingo armors meditation icon
*fixed a bug with test reflex training method not being teachable
*And now login/logout messages wont show up to non admins
*forgot some other bugs but they were fixed


Underworld Re-Balance

Its easier now to become a reaper, and Suffering won't send ppl to nightmare world as cosmic slumber does;
if you don't have an armor, and use suffering till concentration lvl 5 (doesnt matter your level) you will go to nightmare and do the trial to become reaper, aka, kill your good side;
If you have an armor (reaper or dark armor), you won't ever go to nightmare world with suffering.
This change is to balance the flow of becoming reaper if you are a strong player, so you don't need to quit or grind till 100% suffer mastery just to become a reaper.


Mokurenji


Mokurenji Lore: As in Azusa almost everything abstract gets a physical counterpart; Before the creation as the universe as we know, when Zeus created Death (to work as a second chance incase he lost the fight against Chronos), the Tree of Life (that represents death) was created on Olympo, and its counterpart, the Mokurenji (that represents life) was created in Underworld;
However not Mokurenji neither the Tree of Life are simple as life/death symbols, as they are not its plain concept;
Hard to explain, but they are more like consequeces of both abstract things, Death concept is widely explained as Thanatos (the god of death) and Hades (the one who rules over the death) and many other abstract representation in Azusa's universe, and Mokurenji/Tree of Life are just one of those.
When death was created, the underworld came as a hideout/ preparation place for Zeus, however it was never used this way, as many ages later Hades rebelled, Hades redesigned the underworld as the hell we know, and its designed as a punishing place to show and enforce humans faults;
Tree of life exists in Olympo, a place filled with cosmo and living energy, however its fruits represets the other side of immortality, (also known as death) however, the Mokurenji is the only living thing to grow in the underworld; (not unlike the fake gardens or suicidal forest) Mokurenji fruits are the opposite of the forbidden fruit, its fed by the Phlegethon river (made of blood), and was meant to be used as a key out to of the death,
(Aka represents hope and re-starts), however since hell was redesigned, gates and portals developed, its main use was lost.
However these fruits are still filled with powers and can be insanelly usefull to the game's meta.

And thats the second thing we are going to talk, the Mokurenji Recent Meta is used to seal and remove Hades' powers through the deads army; its possible to craft a rosario out of 108 mokurenji fruits, said rosario is so powerfull that it can seal said powers and limit alot Hades powers toward his reapers;
If theres a Sealing Rosario in the universe, Hades can't use his "Bring the Dead" technique, and Reapers loses their immortality.
Basically the Mokurenji meta is one method to seal these reapers powers, and because of this, the tree located between the sixth and seventh prison is heavily protected by reapers as invasors constantly try to steal its fruit to get an advantage in the wars.

TLDR : *If theres no Sealing Rosary; and Hades is alive, Reapers and Dark Guardians won't lose status if they die; Allowing them to oppose as constant threat and villains, even not being strong enough; attacking earth and generating roleplays as they should.
*Once a Reaper dies, they need to wait 1 IC month to go back to earth, to avoid the reapers to go back to battle before the battle actually ends.
*Mokurenji the only real living thing born in hell; located by the blood waterfall between the sixth and seventh jail of the underworld;
*Admins will define when the Sealing Rosary is active or not, allowing more player freedom while roleplaying/interacting with it;
*To create the Sealing Rosary, someone must collect 108 fruits of the mokurenji, and a ritual (with or without sacrifice) meant to be decided by the admins;
*The Sealing Rosary Item created, and is map-savable.
*Mokurenji Fruits can be collected only by alive people or demons, and can only be eaten by demons/angels giving the same nutrition as the forbidden fruits;
*Fixed alot of bugs toward Limited Cosmos in underworld;
*Blessed Relics are now a thing, a type of custom relics that are supposed to be made by gods; with admin aproval, this item gives someone a temporary bless similar to the eighth sense;
*Fake Death added; dieing with eigth sense, or blessed relic; will trigger the fake death (each player can do this only once); and will send him to the underworld alive, keep their armor, and their normal cosmos;
*Cancer Guardian now have a new skill, called Yomotsu Portal; a skill that gates him toward yomotsu and reality, working similar to the yeshua key; however you can only walk through the portal out to earth if you also wealked in through it; grabs are allowed to take/rescue people from/to yomotsu using this skill.
*Jumping in hell from Yomotsu, and you not having eight sense or blessed relic, (Even if youre Cancer Guardian) is a no returning path, unless youre rescued.

this is the basic Mokurenji role's main features, they are simple but pose up a huge gameplay change, forcing players to interact more with the world and players around them; reapers being able to attack freely earth without fearing loss of status while the Sealing Rosary isn't made, forces the survivals to work up in a underworld invasion to gather the mokurenji fruits, and once the sealing rosary is made, it forces the reapers to invade and try to destroy it; opening a huge new meta to the game's wars.


Azusa original soundtrack

Thanks to @Tuuh, Azusa now have its own sound track; a pack of background songs composed directly to Azusa will help the players to feel a complete new immersion to the game;
the songs are organized by regions in the game, a new buttom in the sounds/chat submenu allows you to set its volume (wich is average by 60); the battle songs halts the bgs songs, once the battle song ends, bsg goes back;
*Heracles Theme ; Played at Heracles, Northen Plains, Heracles Undergrounds; Northen Plains Undergrounds;
*Dungeons Theme; Played at Deep Forests, Caves, Deadlands, and Deadlands underground;
*Desert Theme; played at the desert, and desert underground;
*Hells Theme; Played at underworlds jails, Underworld Castle, Limbo, Yomotsu; and Nightmare World;
*Character Creation; Played during character Creation, and Olympo;
*Atlantis Theme; Played at Atlantis;
*Athenas Theme; Played in the Zodiacal Houses, Athenas Temple, Athenas plains; Athenas plains undergrounds;
*Asgard Theme; Played on both maps of Asgard;

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v.1.0.5

As we talked before, this update's theme is to focus in the best Azusa has to offer, I usually call it by "THE FEEEELS" we have after watching a well developed character ends up facing the many ironies and dramas of this universe we all love.
However I am well aware of the game's flaws and the many things that also stops these feels to be experienced properly, even while the Mokurenji Meta helps and forces the players to jump into these dramatic wars situations (one side trying to invade to get the fruits, the other side invading while they can to kill the most while they are immortals)
Azusa still lack alot of the DYNAMISM needed to give us epic experiences, and we end up insanelly bored of the LIFE x DEATH main war theme the game have.
Even while we have Custom Gods, these have been very little explored and the wars and game's sagas continued to rely only in the classic Zeus x Hades thing; To fix these flaws and lack of dynamic generations and changing roles, this update tries to allow the game/players to develop new gods that can actually develop their own realms and sagas and metas to provide great and always changing themes;

But I believe these things will be mostly fixed through the small things, little details that ends up guiding the playerbase to the right directions (without limiting them) so they can feel the best out of this Universe.

So lets start out with Little details, Big changes resulted by the rework in the building systems.



This gif alone already says alot, but calm down, I will explain everything with details here so you know exactly what to expect whenever the game is released. You probably seen this building style in other games out and in byond community, and probably likes it alot, but first lets understand why this change was needed;
-first reason was > noob huts. -
Not that this kills the noobhut, it doesn't. But this new building system keeps everything cleaner. and the maps beautifull as they should be;
-second reason map sizes -
Azusas icons and houses are usually way too big to fit confortably in its maps, ever noticed that our Heracles (main city) only fit 1-3 houses? like, a city out of 3 houses rly? And the game ended up having an insanely crowded/unorganized building that ended up just simply as a map filled with half destroyed noobhuts after 100 years. This was ugly and also ruined the game experience.
-third reason: destruction feels- this new systems allow me to give the player a proper -FEELS- whenever a city or a house they grownup in gets destroyed, a beautifull destruction systems is crucial for a dramatic game like Azusa.

Okay fuck the reasons, lets go on; Now to build a house depending on its type you will need a certain amount of resources, however this update includes a bunch of new resources to work with. And these resources are spread around the world;
Each map have a certain resource more then the other maps; this basically will promote the commerce between cities and help the games economy; but mainly opens up a whole new travel system (we will talk about it again soon).
The materials are initially organized this way:

Athenas: Wood, Copper and Granite
N. Heracles: Leather, Stone, Clay
Heracles: Wood, Gold and Quartz
Deep Forest: Wood, Clay and Leather
Dead Lands: Stone, Clay, Marble and Diamond
AsgardFinal: Granite, Silver and Limestone
AsgardStart: Stone, Quartz, Copper
Desert: Stone, Sand and Limestone
Hell: Stone, Gold, Quartz and Marble
Atlantis: Stone, Clay, Limestone and Sand



Keep in mind those are the materials with bonus gains in each map, in every mine vein its possible to find Stone, Sand, Iron, Copper and Diamond (ofc its boosted gains in said maps)

Each house will have its costs, but to understand it we also should talk about the architecture system
There are starting out 4 types of architectures in this first version, each one spread on maps but new ones are currently being made, the idea is to have atleast 2 architectures styles per map.
But by now we have
Athenas: gray roof italian style
Heracles: red roof italian style
Deep forest, North Heracles: Wood cabins style
Asgard and everything else (cuz we dont have alot of styles yet) has: Light gray stone style.

When you become a builder you will learn a architecture style depending on the map you are at, but later on you can learn another style by using rpps after visiting another map, more architecture styles you unlock more rpps you will need to use to learn the other ones; once you learned a style you can build its housings wherever you want.
Housing exteriors can be furtherly customized with House Addons

Okay, now that we talked about the exterior looks and architecture, its time to move another step, lets talk about the Procedurally Generated interiors.



Yeah I have to repeat, procedurally generated; finally. But first, when you create a basic normal house you will have a cut space to build in, this space is procedurally generated, and saved in the map. player have full freedom to customize the interiors as the interior building don't cost resources itself, so -no excuse to noobhuts- also as you can see, we have opacity again over the roofs so its not possible to tell whats hidden behind a wall/door. The house interior shape and design are all up to the player as they are given a nearly blank space to work at, giving a huge dynamic amount of houses and interiors to explore; but this doesn't stop there, lets go on:



Some bigger houses uses this procedurally generated space to allow players to build "extensions"; in theory an admin can even edit a house to allow it to have any amount of extensions, like a underground tunnel etc. but the preset houses start out with limited amount for obvious reasons;
Extensions can be used as extra floors or even as custom dungeons, underground tunnels etc.
Everything up to the wipes story and progressions;


My favorite part, the Destruction, (kinda sadic? yeah.) But its not dynamic at all if we don't have a decent destruction system right?
So, while destroying a house interior may be similar to the old azusa system, the exterior is a bit more complicated, when you destroy a house exterior, it breaks and spawn fires, these fires spawn smokes that can be seen from a decent distance; but the main deal is, a destroyed house can be easily invaded, the closed door breaks and loses its density;
A destroyed house remains in ruins for 5 IC years, if no one repairs the house for 5 years it will colapse, and every extensions and interiors built in it will be gone for good.
The costs for repairing may vary around 1/3 or 1/2 of its original price.

I can even emphatize that the main reason for the new building system is this new destruction, Azusa is a game where we war against gods and personified abstract stuffs, (punch the face of death) and being under a gods wrath IS a big deal, and, this wrath MUST LOOK GOOD! so we can feel it! so, fires, blood, and corpses all around represents alot of what Azusa is...
And I am finally kinda proud of it now! (still gotta see some sorrow rains all around to have even better FEELS in this! Haha) Oh yeah, now when someone dies, its corpse spawns ( no more random coffins )



Okay okay, got the basics right? houses, procedurally generated interior, but what can we actually do with it beside all these preset things? You may still be thinking that you are loosing freedom with all of this new system; so lets get this to a whole new level;
ready?
Okay, my second favorite part: "Custom Exterior Buildings".

*breaths* Castles, Temples and even Dungeons can be built, however you will need an admin authorisation to build those; (usually admin will set up a price depending on the size your building will be) and will let you customize it as you want; and also the admin will define the amount of extensions and sizes your castle/temple/dungeon is going to be;
Remember the other things we talked so far, try to put it all together and puke rainbows with me; procedurally generated castles interiors, dungeons, hideouts, and....
Links. yeah, links, admins can allow links using these new systems, lets say you can hide a entrace to the bandit hideout cave inside a statue! or, a entrace portal behind a wall from underworld to olympo? all of this is also possible, of course depending on the global tramas and developments...







The custom exteriors allow to build really dynamic temples and castles with multiple floors that can be walked through, while the proceduraly generated maps allows huge interiors to be explored and even new metas (similar to the mokurenji's) to be created as new gods are made, secrets to be hidden, as doors hidden behind stuffs that can be revealed by the usage of an key item;
AND everything developed/created ingame as the story progrides!

Roleplay and possible experiences in the game got multiplied with this new building systems, and if you still think I am overeacting, then brace yourself, theres more.





Buildable Naturals summed with the procedurally generated interiors; allows admins and gods to set up and make custom realms, entire maps and dungeons that will be saved in game, not just with the usual buildable tiles, but also with a huge pack of natural tiles, such as lakes, water, mountains caves, and dungeon stuffs like relic treasure boxes!
Its hard to talk about custom realms/dungeons without the most important item of them, Custom Bosses and NPCs are now a thing!
these bosses or npcs respawns and save in map like the normal preset ones!
admins can customize its size, status icons and even overlays, edit the npcs god to define who will it automatically attack and what not!

*breaths again* Okay, now that we went through most of it, you may be asking what this building system has to do with the update theme, but the building naturals and the destructions dynamism shows all of it, simple details big gameplay changes, and mainly it points all toward the game's main focus.
Dynamic Possible FEELINGS and diffrent wars and themes your character can dive into, can you imagine a Custom God of Fantasy trying to destroy the reality by locking everyone in a custom realm inside the dreamworld?
And a whole saga of guardians going into this war of Fantasy x Reality?
Its just an example of possible new war/themes through all this new systems, now theres no excuse to assume Azusa is locked inside its repeating cycle of Hades x Zeus, cuz now with this system with our custom god system all together will deliver you one of the most dynamic dramatic feelings you will ever experience in an online game.



There are more new possible dramas to the game, and yeah you are looking at a Poison Flask! its now possible to pour poison in someone's food! beware with the evul traitors civilians wanting to kill you!
the poison damage stacks and varies on the amount of poison poured int he food; but I assegure its almost a certain KO for those who eat something poisoned.
Making it way easier to kill or kidnap someone way stronger then you!
Dramas, feels everywhere!



Thanks to Gamingmanga, Marchosias, Rettopneb, 69_Loreboy_69, NotAFanPerson, Zoom526, MeesterKoKo we finally have a Monkey Armor!, known ingame as Simius Armor is fire based, and its techniques relies in fighting with a clone hidden in his shadows;
The clone is called Monkey King and when he fights for 5 turns ticks (or get KOd) he explode and the floor around him melts into lava; when the monkey king is called, your real character will hide in the shadows and you can position yourself to confuse your enemy.

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Final notes

Thanks for reading all of this, mainly struggling to understand my limited enlgish; and sorry again for the downtime (even while its needed and will be properly rewarded)

If you want to keep up to our next steps don't forget to join the discord channel; and later this week we will announce our patreon page and step foward into the materials and bugfixes!


https://discord.gg/FYsMm7g

And download the latest Azusa's client!
http://www.azusarp.com/play

Sounds pretty awesome. XD this is has come a long way, good luck in the future too!
Good luck, my brother!

Before the steam release, however. I strongly suggest you clean up the UI. It looks messy and semi-confusing. Main reason why I never stick around for long.
Meme, the 1.0.6 and .7 actually goes toward remaking the UI; I hope you like the new one, its way cleaner and organized ;D