Server Improvements
The past few days we've dedicated many more work hours into server efficiency & improvements.
Working on the very foundation of the server & it's back-end components is a large & time consuming task.
As previously mentioned in a recent update post, we have been performing tests on the live server
from time to time to identify inefficiencies & while this can be annoying in the moment, it's for the betterment
of the server long-term. We've made incredible progress so far. Our latest work includes:
The Quest tab & timers. In the patch notes before this we mentioned a complete rewrite of this system.
We've had to dive back in and rewrite a few other miscellaneous components, this included timers.
Timers were previously done server-sided sending more data & packets between the client & the server.
We've changed this to be completely client-sided for more efficiency & reliability.
The Cache. We've completely re-hauled how your clients download, handle & read from your cache.
Previously, when teleporting or moving around the world the client would have to download that region
from our server back to your client's cache & then save it there. We've noticed a discrepancy in which
some specific regions were not saving to your cache properly. In the name of a better experience
we've changed this - upon your first launch of Ely, the client will now download the cache in it's entirety.
This may remedy the issue when teleporting to certain regions and getting stuck on a "50% Loading" screen
for a minute or two before loading! The second part of this update is previously when playing on more
than 1 client, so having 2 or even 3 open - the client would have a specific cache downloaded for each instance.
Now all clients will utilize the same single cache, and only save the different preferences set among the clients.
This is good for your experience, having the full cache pre-loaded & ready to go, while also freeing up our server's network.
For sake of a really long post I will summarize the rest of our changes & adjustments made here.
We've changed other things with the Quest tab only sending packets to update when necessary.
We've made some great changes to the client in response to the recent error logs we've been sent by you.
This has so far had a very positive impact. We've also patched an error & possible memory leak related
to pots & immunity to poison & venom.
All in all, these changes have been huge for the long term health of Ely.
We will not stop here, we will continue our monitoring and testing to identify even
more inefficiencies and patch them. This will be a long & ongoing project to make
Ely the most reliable, stable & efficient server online today.
Misc. Changes - Skill Guides, Quest tab
You may have noticed the recent adjustment in our Skill Guides interface.
Previously, we used the ugly & quite confusing 718 Skill Guides. However, they were also annoying.
They took up the whole screen, they were difficult to navigate & more. So we took
a step back in time & added these more easy to read, navigate & not take up your whole screen, interfaces.
The "More Info" link in the top right will take you to the Ely Wiki.
Quest Tab
We've also made some beautiful changes to the Quest tab itself. Look at the before & after below:
We've cleaned up the interface to look a lot more smooth & modern than previously.
Also in this change we've changed the placement of our Quests to be more fittingly found in the..
Quest tab. We hope you enjoy these changes
Lastly, here are the few other changes we haven't posted about here yet:
Barrow's gloves for Ironmen has been fixed
Noted Vials of Water added to Skilling Shop for Ironmen
Blessed D'hides now have +1 Prayer bonus per piece
Graetorian Recurve bow can now be dyed purple
New teleport options have been added:
;;tele jungle to jungle strykewyrms
;;tele desert to desert strykewyrms
;;tele ice s to ice strykewyrms
;;tele asgarnia to asgarnian ice dungeon
;;tele snowy to snowy knights updated
;;tele skeletal to skeletal wyverns
;;tele watchtower to watchtower
;;tele arandar to arandar
Completely re-wrote the "teles" list descriptions for better direction & uniformity
Arranged in alphabetical order correctly, again
We really hope you enjoy these changes & please give us some feedback below!