Saturday, June 20th, 2009 Contraband Scanner, Ships Tab, Secrond
A new piece of equipment, the Contraband Scanner , is now available to EPS pilots. Those who have it installed will be able to scan the cargo holds of nearby vessels, searching for any signs of illegal goods onboard. If detected, the findings will be automatically forwarded to local faction authorities, who will take over the investigation and may seize contraband found on board. Findings from scans performed in neutral zones will go unreported as there are no ruling authorities in those locations.
The "Other Ships" tab on the navigation screen is now customizable, offering different ways to sort ships displayed there. Additionally a new icon has been added to ship portraits indicating if the player is online, and for Premium users, the refresh rate of the middle frame, containing icons about new messages, logs and other information, refreshes every 30 seconds instead of 60.
As a result of extensive experimenting and testing of AI methods for the Feral Serpent NPC, developer Werner "Bladefist" Bayer has created and released Secrond, an open source scheduler unique in its ability to handle tasks in intervals of seconds without any measurable impact on CPU usage. Now Feral Serpents may not only roam the universe at will but also can pick their targets with care and choose to fight or flee when attacked depending on a variety of factors. We would like to thank all our players for helping us test Feral Serpent AI, as well as all the Feral Serpents who gave their lives in the process.
As in the previous months, a number of minor improvements and adjustments have been made; it is now possible to search the news for NPCs, Pardus weapons will no longer misfire regardless of their condition, cookies will now store universe-specific settings, NPC ranges and quests for them were recently widely expanded, sector-wide building indexes were added, and much more. See the Announcement Forum (must be logged in) for a complete list and details.
Contraband Scanner, Ships Tab, Secrond
, is now available to EPS pilots. Those who have it installed will be able to scan the cargo holds of nearby vessels, searching for any signs of illegal goods onboard. If detected, the findings will be automatically forwarded to local faction authorities, who will take over the investigation and may seize contraband found on board. Findings from scans performed in neutral zones will go unreported as there are no ruling authorities in those locations.
The "Other Ships" tab on the navigation screen is now customizable, offering different ways to sort ships displayed there. Additionally a new icon has been added to ship portraits indicating if the player is online, and for Premium users, the refresh rate of the middle frame, containing icons about new messages, logs and other information, refreshes every 30 seconds instead of 60.
