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Shotbow
Oct
02
Annihilation Update - Weary Xenon (3.2.0)
Hi Everyone!
We are thrilled to announce our latest update Weary Xenon!
This update contains mostly bug fixes and a few content changes.
We would appreciate constructive, well-founded criticism (positive and negative!) once you have experienced this update in-game. Nothing is ever set in stone and we look forward to seeing your opinions.
Many thanks to everyone who offered suggestions and reported problems, and everyone who helped test and iron out any bugs in the Sandbox.
Changelog:
Important Changes:
Maps & Spawn Locations
Since the very beginning of Annihilation, you have always spawned facing south. No matter if you were respawning or using Defender's warp, you were facing south. But no more! All maps*¹ have been updated so players spawn in logical directions. This means you won't be facing a wall, or the void, upon spawning any more.
As part of this change, we've made some major changes to our internal map setup toolkit, which will help us create more rich maps in the future. One subtle example that we've been able to add as a result is the ability to configure where the team's beacon is in the world. This used to be required to sit three blocks above the Nexus, but no more. So when your team is eliminated, the beacon will be destroyed no matter where it is in the map.
We have removed all clocks from maps and updated them to ensure they always follow the same format. For example, teams will always be Red, Blue, Green and Yellow in that order. Some maps have had minor adjustments, such as spawn locations moved.
Golden Apples and Enchanted Golden Apples (Gapples)
These two consumables have had a complete code refactor to eliminate one particular bug which has plagued rushers for some time: infinite eating. This bug fix prevents golden apples from appearing to be consumed forever when they are eaten in quick succession*².
Priority Queue
There have been a number of bugs relating to the priority queue since its introduction that were tricky to find, replicate and fix. This update fixes the following priority queue bugs:
- Players getting stuck in the priority queue despite the teams being balanced enough for said player to join.
- Subsequently this fixes the issue of losing gear while stuck in the priority queue.
- Rejoining players who are put into the priority queue, and then are put back into their team will lose:
- Potion Effects.
- Experience levels (in-game XP bar levels).
Class Ability Targeting Mechanics
A major refactor was completed that unifies the targeting logic for almost all class abilities. This fixes the following bugs:
- Immobilizer, Mercenary and Swapper can use their abilities through solid blocks.
- Spy can be unvanished by hits/clicks that are not over the player's bounding box (hit box), or even through blocks.
Class Changes:
Miner
Miner's furnace has now been replaced with a Blast Furnace which will smelt ores twice as fast as the old regular furnace. This makes it the most efficient way to gear up quickly.
RiftWalker
You can now rift to players who are in the boss world. Need support to deal with the Reaper? You got it.
Wizard
Wizard's spells now have x3 the cooldown length when switching between spells (was 5s, now 15). The area of effect for all spells was heavily reduced:
- Inferno was 16 blocks and is now 2.
- Void Bolt was 16 blocks and is now 2.
- Arcane Bolt was 16 blocks and is now 2.
- Glacial Nova was 12 blocks and is now 4.
- Whirlwind was 12 blocks and is now 6.
A small change to polish Tinkerer: all pads now use Polished Blackstone Pressure Plates instead of Stone so they can be easily distinguished from launch pads.
Transporter
This is a mechanical change to fix a bug. It used to be possible to create a situation that when a TP is broken, it would leave a hole under the player, thus allow you to create drop/suffocation traps. Now, when a transporter's TP is broken, it will perform a check to ensure it's safe and if it's not, it will make it safe.
Other changes:
Annihilation Lobby
We've added a book and alert messages to the Annihilation lobby that will tell you when an update has been released, and a summary of what's in it, as well as a link to the forum release thread. This message will stay for one week after the update is out, but you can still see the last update's book via /news or /latest.
Pre-game lobby
You will now spawn with the Shotbow Swag item in your hot bar during the pre-game lobby.
New cosmetics
Rockstar
A new visual kill effect called Rockstar was added into the swag menu. This musical helix will surely help pump those kill stats!
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed 7 administration related bug (secret stuff).
- The Reaper boss was buggy after the 1.16 base update. It has been mostly fixed*³.
- Crafted iron hoes now receive the item engraving text.
- Succubus and Healer's health related chat messages are now rounded to the second decimal place.
- Fixed a bug that caused enchanting options to be missing from enchanting tables*⁴.
- Rank up celebration fireworks will no longer damage players.
- Fixed /multiplier (/mult) from sending a message that the command is unknown; despite working.
- Fixed a bug that allowed Defender to change class but keep its infinite regeneration effect.
- Fixed a Bloodmage bug that removed items from the ground if a player died while the area was being terraformed.
- Fixed the following methods of permanently removing regenerating blocks from the game (e.g. melons, ores):
- Spider using its webs.
- IceMan using its freeze ability.
- Wizard's Inferno (friendly fire).
- Fixed a bug that prevented players from picking up leather armour.
- Fixed a bug that allowed players to damage teammates in the Final Boss Fight by relogging.
- Fixed Cake and Infested stone variants from being unbreakable.
- Fixed items being able to put into the off-hand via the player's personal crafting grid.
- Fixed items being able to put into the off-hand via the kit gear inventory.
- Fixed a bug that caused Immobilizers' recently immobilized particles to display above vanished Spies.
- Fixed a bug that allowed Spy to vanish while marked for death by Mercenary.
- Fixed a bug that revealed vanished Spies shortly after their mark of death (applied by Mercenary) was ended.
- Fixed a bug that caused absorption to not apply to players who were swapped and immobilized in quick succession.
- Fixed a rare case where combat logged NPCs could duplicate the player's items.
- Fixed a Transporter bug that allowed their TP to remain up despite dying if their team was eliminated.
- Fixed a Transporter bug that allowed TPs to be placed on melon, gravel, redstone ore and lapis lazuli ore.
- Fixed a bug that caused the quick log conversion QoL utility from converting logs if your inventory was full, despite the logs' conversion leaving an empty slot behind.
- Fixed a Healer bug that allowed them to 'heal' teammates who are already full health; thus wasting a heal ability.
- Fixed a bug that caused arrows to become invisible for the shooter if it passed through a teammate.
- Fixed an Immobilizer bug that caused its left-click ability to activate if the player held right-click and switch from looking at a block to air.
- Fixed an Assassin bug that allowed it to remove particles from any length of the invisible potion effect. This could've been used in conjunction with Ninja's Silent Steps ability to become completely invisible.
- Fixed a bug that allowed Berserker's Unbreakable Will item to be used to activate beacon effects.
- Fixed a bug that prevented fireworks from being loaded into crossbows.
- Fixed a Tank bug that allowed its Shield Charge to hit the same player multiple times in rapid succession.
- Fixed a Spider bug that prevented its webs from spawning on grass and some other non-solid blocks.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the effective use of the /prefs hot bar editor by closing it after each action.
- Fixed a rare bug that could cause the Wither boss to spawn twice in the same arena.
- Fixed a bug that allowed players to splash friendly NPCs (of logged out players) with harmful potions.
- Fixed /fingergun and /shrug.
While we have fixed lots of bugs in this update, some you may have experienced and others you probably didn't know were there, we are aware that we still have bugs to fix and we appreciate all the help you can give us with getting those fixed. If you find a bug in Annihilation and want to have a chance of owning a special Bug Finder cosmetic, you can report it on our official Discord by using this command: !support bug <IGN>.
Credits:
Many of the changes we have made in this update have come from you the community, and from our wonderful staff team who continue to strive to make Anni the best it can be. All credit goes to them for their tireless efforts that more often than not go unnoticed, thank you team for being so awesome.
*¹ We have many maps and it will take our brilliant map admins some time to convert them all, but we're working through them.
*² Unfortunately, 1.12 players will still suffer from this bug due to problems with the client. This is unrelated to the consume bug fix and it is not possible to fix. We recommend upgrading to the latest Minecraft version we support.
*³ Some client versions may see the Reaper's mount to be walking sideways or backwards, this is a visual client-related bug and has no impact on the boss fight.
*⁴ Low tier enchanting tables (i.e. ones with little to no bookshelves) can still have less than three enchanting options which is vanilla functionality and not related to the bug fixed here.
Oct
02
Hey Shotbow!
It's that time again – Dentril's New Moon for October. I'm Axyy, and I'm here to give you the scoop on what's been happening at Shotbow this past month.
Network Updates
Team Applications
Ever wanted to join the Shotbow Staff Team? The following teams are accepting applications:
- Development Team
- Annihilation Administrative Team
- SMASH Jr. Specialist Team
- Warband and Wasted: Control Staff Team
- Event Helper Applications
Annihilation Updates
Last month, a few playtests for the upcoming Annihilation update have been playtested on the HDKingdom map.
MineZ Updates
The MineZ team rolled out patches 5.3.4 and 5.3.5, bringing in some bugfixes and balance & dungeons changes to the game.
Statistics
SMASH Rankings
Here are the current season standings:
- 1st - Mcmaster01 [1021]
- 2nd - maccha3270 [1000]
- 3rd - osonez [1000]
Staff updates:
- GunOverdose was promoted to Full Admin & Warband Administrative Lead
- BasicAly was promoted to Full Admin
- 1021 in-game reports were handled in the last month
- There were 173 players banned in the last month
- 59 ban appeals were handled in the last month
- There were 32 support tickets resolved in the last month
- This month we achieved a peak playercount of 251 on September 3rd
- 35,844,780 XP was earned by players this month
Here's a little secret – with Halloween coming, word has it that Spookfest might make a comeback. Keep your eyes peeled, and maybe dust off your ghost-hunting gear. Spookfest could be just around the corner...
I'm Axyy, and that's a wrap for Dentril's New Moon in October 2023!
Sep
02
Hey Shotbow!
Welcome to the September edition of Shotbow's Dentril's New Moon. Summer is almost over, so please let me know all the fun things you did the last couple of weeks! I'm your host Axyy, and I'll be taking you through everything that happened during the last month here at Shotbow.
Network Updates
Team Applications
Ever wanted to join the Shotbow Staff Team? The following teams are accepting applications:
- Development Team
- Annihilation Administrative Team
- SMASH Jr. Specialist Team
- Warband and Wasted: Control Staff Team
- Event Helper Applications
Annihilation Updates
Now that the Annihilation Clan Tournament is over, the Event Team is finally able to go back to regular events, such as the Annihilation Defensive Incentive Event and some regular OP games on custom maps. However, I'm happy to announce that the Annihilation Clan Tournament will make its return at the start of next year, see you in 2024!
Additionally, Siege was added to the Annihilation map rotation.
MineZ Updates
Last month, the MineZ team released the Capital Gains Update and also released patch 5.3.0, patch 5.3.1, patch 5.3.3 and lastly patch 5.3.4. Read the full changelog here.
Statistics
SMASH Rankings
Here are the current season standings:
- 1st - mattu34 [1106]
- 2nd - sunbreathing [1103]
- 3rd - _BrightDarkness_ [1086]
Staff updates:
- Axyy has joined the network leadership team as Network Co-Lead
- sunbreathing returned to the SMASH Team as Full Admin
- Brxnton has joined the Anni Team as Mini Admin
- jouhani has joined the Anni Team as Mini Admin
- lPirlo has joined the Anni Team as Mini Admin
- ImAbbyy has joined the Anni Team as Mini Admin & was promoted to Event Staff
- LangScott has joined the MineZ Team as Mini Admin & was promoted to Event Staff
- 1,882 in-game reports were handled in the last month
- There were 241 players banned in the last month
- 59 ban appeals were handled in the last month
- There were 32 support tickets resolved in the last month
- This month we achieved a peak playercount of 221 on August 10th
- 63,049,227 XP was earned by players this month
I'm your host Axyy, and this was Dentril's New Moon for September of 2023!
XP-CODE: BYESUMMER
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