Hey everyone, I'm Drake, and I'm a newcomer to the Project Rubi-Ka team! I joined the team a few weeks ago as a developer and I've been mostly working on bug fixes, but I noticed that this website was sorely in need of a news update, and I thought what better way to introduce myself and breathe a bit of activity into this website at the same time?

If you haven't already, join our Discord server and get involved with the project. We'd love to reminisce about old times and talk about that time when Funcom accidentally added +15000 Stamina to a random perk action with you.

Remember when ICC looked like this? Me too, because this is how it looks on the Project Rubi-Ka server right now!

Dynamic mission system (ACG)

We've (well, it's mostly been @Unknown, to be honest!) been working on adding support for the automatic mission system and we've made good progress! We have a playable static mission which you can pull from a mission terminal, and it has the outrageously well-dressed Rubi-Ka citizens we all know and love.

If looks could kill, she wouldn't need nano programs.

@Unknown has made good progress on generating the room layout and making those little tetrominoes fit together in just the right way so that it's playable and familiar to all of us. I don't know about the rest of you but I've blitzed probably thousands of missions at this point, so if something was off about the generation, it would probably be noticeable. That isn't to say that we can't make any changes or improvements, though, but at the moment we're mostly just aiming for accurately replicating the original game.

This is a visualization of how rooms will be placed for the dynamically generated dungeon - this is a surprisingly difficult task to accomplish, figuring out how doors should overlap, and so on, is a tricky problem to solve!

Items database

As some of you may have noticed, unfortunately, one of our favorite resources, AOItems, has been suffering from issues and isn't usable at the moment. We really love the debug feature of AOItems because it makes it so much easier to track down and diagnose issues and implement new features, so not being able to use it really is a pain.

So, to alleviate this issue, Portaler has been cooking up a Project Rubi-Ka items database. We used to have one of those online some time ago, but due to refactors and so on, it hasn't been available for some time. That has changed! The items database is now accessible through the player portal, but it's still very much a work in progress.

You should take every opportunity you can to share Anarchy Online's finest grenade weapon far and wide.

Of course, this database is using the resource database version which we currently have on the Notum server (15.5.2), so it's quite a bit different from the live servers, which is another reason that it's good to have our own version. Portaler is working on improving it as I write this so I'm sure it'll be an indispensable resource before too long!

Other changes in the last month

New Features

• The tp command has been expanded. Type /tp help for more details.

Bug Fixes

• Weapon shops no longer sell invalid weapons.
• Character deletion has been fixed.
• Fixed an issue which caused session drops when zoning.
• Players who teleport or login to an invalid playfield are safely transported into the Grid instead of being lost forever in limbo.
• Fixed a bug where leaving a playfield would leave behind “zombie” sessions.
• Fixed a number of issues surrounding drop rates and loot tables.
• Fixed damaging nano programs (such as NT nukes) to actually cause damage.
• Fixed Grid terminals so they teleport you into the Grid.
• The costs of nanos/effects which cost credits (such as engineer robot nanos) will now be visible when you cast them.
• Nascence chimeras now have the correct skin texture
• Various other bug fixes and improvements.
• Head meshes have been fixed.

Join our community

That's all from us for now, and probably for all of 2023. The Project Rubi-Ka team wishes you all a fantastic New Year and we look forward to all of the exciting bugs that we'll accidentally introduce in 2024!

If you'd like to get involved with the project, join our Discord and say hi!

— Drake