Controls, animation, 3D sound, German and timed corpses

The big patch of the 23rd: two control schemes, the character turns in place and no longer skates, real 3D sound, full German, prices on one rulebook, timed corpses, and a new launcher and new loading screens. Update required: the world checks the client version on connect.

Death and corpses

• Dying no longer leaves your bag, copper and gear in a lootable corpse, unless the dead one has karma (red name). A death without karma keeps everything; the experience penalty and durability wear stay. The risk of losing it all is now for those who kill players.
• Corpses no longer stay forever: the killer has 2 minutes to loot them; after that only the owner sees them, and at 10 minutes they vanish with whatever is left. A corpse nobody touches costs the network nothing either: it sleeps until someone opens it.

World

• The night wolves are out at any hour. They were the only thing a new character could level on, and by day there was nothing to hunt. When there are more starting creatures they will go back to their schedule.
• No night for now: Surya is back to its original daylight, with its usual transitions and effects. The HUD clock is gone until the cycle returns.

Vendor prices: one rulebook

• Until today every item carried a hand-written price (over 700 of them) and they had drifted apart: a wolf's meat sold for more than an epic piece and a level-45 hide for the same as a level-8 one. Now every price derives from one curve, and vendors pay what that rulebook says.
• Gear: the price climbs with the tier. A tier-8 weapon sells for 383 copper; a tier-25 one, 2619. A chest is worth more than boots, and a jewel five times its tier's anchor.
• Materials: worth what the lowest-level creature that drops them is, times their rarity. Wolf meat drops to 2, wolf hide (Rare) sits at 9, and a level-20 material is around 270.
• Crafted items: the sum of their ingredients plus 25 %. Recipes: twice what they produce. Backpacks are worth their slots. Refining stones, scrolls, the premium store and quest items keep their price.
• The dropped copy still multiplies by rarity, quality and refine grade; the vendor still charges twice what it pays. Every item of the wiki now shows its sell and buy price.

Controls: choose how you play

• Two schemes in Options → Controls. Classic, the MMORPG standard: WASD moves, left click selects, right click interacts and attacks, dragging with either button turns the camera and with the right one your character turns with it. Click to move (default): left click walks, selects and attacks, as before.
• Everything can be rebound: movement, primary and secondary click, zoom, party ping, with keys, mouse buttons or the wheel (mouse buttons are now recognised when rebinding). Camera sensitivity and inverted vertical axis.
• E selects the nearest enemy and, if something usable is next to you (a corpse, a vendor, a fallen player), uses it. Tab opens the bag (I too). R attacks the target.
• Attacking or pressing R runs your character to the target, but moving cancels the chase at once: no more being stuck while you try to leave.
• Skills pressed while another one is finishing are queued and fire on their own as soon as they can; no more pressing twice.
• Fixed: WASD stopped responding when entering the world, changing character or after an ALT+TAB. Options remembers the last open tab.

Camera

• Turning with the mouse no longer stops at the edge of the screen: the cursor hides and you can turn without limit.
• When you release the drag the view eases back behind the character slowly and smoothly (about 2.5 s), without the old whiplash. The smoothing adapts to the sensitivity, and the keyboard arrows move the camera too.
• New option Camera returns on its own (Options → Controls), off by default: with the primary click the camera stays where you leave it, like a free camera; turn it on if you prefer it to swing back behind the character.

Animation

• Turn in place: standing still, turning the camera makes the character take the 90° or 180° step instead of sliding round. All four lineages, men and women.
• The legs run at the real pace of each animation: no skating while walking, running, sprinting or moving sideways. The animation's direction follows the key you press, also while you turn with the mouse.
• Casting on the move no longer skates. Directional jumps for the Yodha and for every woman. The Yodha woman stands upright (she leaned forward).
• Footsteps sound when the foot really plants, also when turning in place and when braking.

Creatures

• Every creature's blow connects on the exact frame its animation lands: the impact moment and the reach are measured on the clip itself (jaw, claw, weapon) instead of a hand-written value. No more biting the air a metre short, no more damage before the hit.

Combat text

• Damage numbers jump as they appear and fall in a cascade to the sides while fading; crits hit bigger and stay bigger.

3D sound

• All of the game's audio is three-dimensional: footsteps, hits, skills, projectiles, creatures and voices come from where they happen, with sides, real distance and the far away muffled. You hear where someone is fighting before you see it.
• Your own character sounds the same with the camera far away: the ear goes with the body, not with the camera.
• Proximity voice chat: full at 10 m and gone by about 40 m.

German

• The whole game in German: quests, skills, items, interface, tutorial, website and emails (4,760 texts). Voices stay in English. Pick it in Options → Language, or it follows the system.

Launcher

• Automatic system language, German included, with flags; options panel in the game's blacks and reds; custom resolution dropdown.
• The Sahira video as background, the logo in high quality and the radial shadow of the login.
• Signed in: editable profile photo, My profile and Community buttons, and the website opens already logged in. Two buttons on the title bar: the globe opens ashram.live and the Discord logo the invite. Up-to-date news and "Open alpha" status.

Loading screens and logo

• After the intro and on entering the world, the art of one of the four lineages at random, at full resolution.
• The red Ashram Online logo, with its shadow, on the login, the register, the character select and the character creation.

Tutorial

• New controls step: it teaches the two schemes, rebinding, the action key and how to revive.

Website

• New front page with video, Steam and Discord buttons, the Brainsoft logo, account in "Alpha". The wiki shows buy and sell prices.

Server

• Fixed: the world restarted several times on the night of the 23rd because of a memory check that could not find an object that was in use. Stable since.
• Corpses with loot no longer load the network: they were replicating to every connection on each update and the world's CPU climbed over the day.
• Fixed: vendor gold survived deployments badly.

GM tools

• Admin deliveries roll weapons too and accept a refine grade.