Jan. 14, 2024
It's that time again, only, a bit different—this announcement does not focus on a big new update regarding the modlists, but rather, it explains new changes to the team, community, and development process that we have decided to try out.
We are going to mainly inform you about three things in this blogpost, starting with the way we handle the news about the modlists, as there has been some significant internal discussion about the matter. We have seen that our past approach frustrates many in the community, and we have decided to change things up. Secondly, we are going to change up how we handle the updates of Somnium and Librum in a similar manner, as we have noticed a similar problem. Finally we are going to summarize the work that has been done for Somnium’s 2.0.2 Beta and Librum’s 3.1 Beta, as well as the development progress of Librum 4.0 and some of its mechanics. For any questions regarding these matters, feel free to start a discussion in the relevant Discord channels or threads, and also feel free to ask The Blue Templar in Discord.
As it may have been hinted to you, both from the recent survey and the addition of a community manager to the dev team, we are looking into ways to improve the communication between the developers and the players. Before moving on, we would also like to thank everyone who participated in said survey—your answers and additional comments were very helpful and interesting!
After much thought and discussion, we’ve decided to try out a number of changes for a few weeks, to see what works and what doesn’t. We emphasize that these changes are not necessarily permanent; we are going to try them out and see how they work for both developers and the larger community. Here are the changes we are planning to make:
The focus of modlist-related news is still going to be on Discord, but we are going to share some of the information out on our other media. We hope that the increased news frequency, along with a steadier schedule and the organization of the Subreddit and thise webpage, will help everyone in the SRG community keep up with what is going on.
You may have already learned about this if you are following the Discord server closely, but we’ve also changed how we plan to roll out updates of both projects. We’ve seen that the long times of relative silence between large updates cause much frustration, so we’ve decided to split the larger updates into smaller, incremental ones. We’re also going to split development efforts better between Librum and Somnium (effective immediately), and, after the next Somnium update, focus primarily on developing Librum further. More details about this can be found in our recent Discord announcements.
As announced in the Captain’s Log, Apoapse is currently working at reconstructing Librum from the ground up, to resolve structural issues that make developing 3.x difficult. Right now, he is reimplementing everything that Librum currently has (mechanics, scripts, features, etc.) but in a far cleaner and more streamlined manner. After this is said and done, all new features (some of which are already ready-to-go) will be implemented. We currently have a “skeleton” of Librum 4.0 in place and working (chargen, respawn, and mod startup are working)! Here are some screens showcasing the current state of the project:
For another interesting bit of news, work has started in earnest on Mare Stellarum (our own original perk rework) and on rewriting a Librum-specific version of Spell Research from scratch. These will both be slotted into the internal Librum version, once it reaches an appropriate stage. More info on both efforts will follow in the coming weeks.
As you can imagine, both of these, and Librum 4.0 in general, will take lots of time to complete, so don’t expect these updates anytime soon [insert soon™ joke].
First of all, we want to extend our thanks to everyone who participated and is still participating in the open betas of Librum and Somnium—your help and feedback has been very helpful to improving both. Already, these betas have solved a huge amount of bugs and (QoL and balance) issues with the current versions of the projects. Here, we are going to highlight some of the most interesting and important changes, and for more details, please feel free to check out their respective channels in the Discord server. While we have just released the newest beta of Somnium as a stable version, the Librum beta is not complete, and things are subject to change. Of course, anyone interested is encouraged to participate!
Librum 3.1 Beta has incorporated tons of fixes for both Librum SE and VR. The aim of this beta is to polish the current version of Librum, so it can be at its best state as we work on further updates. As of now, along with numerous bugfixes and tweaks, there have been a bunch of important combat changes (like locational damage now being optional, health and stamina regen tweaks, slightly reduced dragon breath damage, and,at least temporarily, disabling reviving undead due to bugs) and tweaked gameplay mechanics (like Frostfall being more lethal, or some standing stone effects being rebalanced). As stated above, you are encouraged to read the detailed changelog in the Discord if you are interested.
Somnium 2.0.4 has been pretty thoroughly analyzed in the most recent announcement in Discord, so here we will highlight the most interesting of those changes: nighttime is far shorter, AF no longer increasing in shadows during the day, the mutagenist class is now working properly, the lantern recharges once each dawn and dusk (instead of in sunlight), anomalies are rebalanced, sleep is only available during the day, and you can no longer dodge while overencumbered.
Note by Apoapse: I’d like to extend a huge thanks to Reyqune and to Coachwickwack for taking charge of these two betas. They’re in good shape, so I encourage you to try them out!
