Posted on UOHerald.com

FoF: Festival of Fireworks
Jeremy Dalberg
29 Jun 2007 21:32:50 EST

This week's Five on Friday has some gameplay stuff, some KR stuff, and an announcement about our next event!

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June 29, 2007

"Why do elementals suddenly have spawn animations in 2D?"
It's a bonus! Actually, we were trying to make spawn animations work in KR, and discovered there was a server-side bug that had been around for years that had prevented the animations from playing in 2D - when we fixed the bug for KR, it brought back the old 2D animations, too!

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"How, exactly, does the talisman bonus % to success and exceptional work?"
It's straight addition - the percent bonus of the talisman is added to your natural percent chance.

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"Is there any way we can get the Windows taskbar to be shown in KR?"
Other than running in windowed mode at a smaller resolution than your screen resolution, not at this time (although that setup does work fine.) We have a fix for this in the pipeline that will allow players to "maximize" their window but still be in windowed mode, so you can see the taskbar, etc - this should be showing up in a patch in the next couple of weeks, depending on testing.

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"I downloaded KR, but I'm getting the following error: "This application has failed to start because d2dx9_30.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem." What do I do?"
OK, we can't figure out why the web installer isn't connecting anymore, but here is the full DirectX download - grab that, unzip it to a temporary directory, and run the installer. It *should* get you updated to the very latest release of DirectX 9.0c, which should fix the error. (We're putting out a new installer with the different method of installing DirectX, but all you need is the installer above - you do NOT need to redownload/reinstall the whole client.)

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The Ohio Town Hall is next weekend!
The Ohio Town Hall is fast approaching - it's the same weekend as the Origins convention, although not part of it - you are welcome to come to the Town Hall whether or not you are attending the convention! If you're in the area, please do come see what we have to show you - we should be able to give you a sneak peek at some pretty awesome stuff we have planned, including the new female paperdoll!

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UO's Looking for A Few Good Britannians!
Looking to get into the industry? Love UO and want to personally help make it the best game it can be? Have some writing and scripting skills? Well this could be your lucky day! We have openings on the UO team for designers! Experience is preferred, but this could be your chance to get a foot in the industry door without starting in the CS or QA pit. Get your resume together and email it to EDalberg AT ea DOT com, with the subject line "UO Designer Resume."

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Fireworks Festival
Citizens of Britannia! In honor of the founding of the Royal Council, set forth by that great hand that united our peoples, we announce a festival of frivolity, a commemoration of friendship amongst the cities of Britannia! From the shores of New Haven, onto the walls of Trinsic, and even as far as the colonies of Malas shall the celebration pour forth!

These shall be days in which no work shall be performed except that which is needful. All are invited to attend the opening fireworks in Castle British, and transportation to further festivities will be provided at no expense to our guests!

The Festival will begin on July 3rd on TC4 and will run for several days, taking advantage of all new effects and new abilities in the Kingdom Reborn client. Opening ceremonies will begin at Castle British at 5PM PDT (12AM GMT).

Features:

• Fireworks wands with all new special effects
  
• Individual firecrackers that spawn on monsters. The quality of the firecracker reflects the creature’s Fame
  
• Firework Shows throughout the kingdom, with gates available at Castle British
  
• An hourly event where players can destroy Luna with cannons

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Bit short this week, as all of my usual go-to guys for gameplay questions have to be physically pried away from the KR code to eat and sleep - I don't want to break their groove. Check out the new KR patch, and have a good weekend!


- Jeremy

Fireworks Festival starts today - July 3rd on test center 4 ... (2pm HI, 4pm AK, 5pm PT, 6pm MT, 7pm CT, 8pm ET)

Anyone else planning to attend?

I'll try and make it tonight. But not til 7pmPST. I wanna see Luna

Is it recommended to attend in KR for the new effects? I want to go!

I tried going but didnt find gates at the castle or anything