FutureMUD Engine 2.14.0

Upgrade: Back up your database, application files and configuration before upgrading from Engine 2.13.0. Use Database Seeder 3.7.0 for new installations. These framework-dependent releases require .NET 10 and MySQL 8.0; packages target Windows x64, Linux x64 and Linux ARM64.

Configurable casting and charged devices

Builders can create skill-based casting traditions with explicit spell access, prerequisite progression, proficiency caps and controlled casting grades. Casting capacity and energy use can follow authored character attributes and spell policies. Players can choose an available casting route, practise a spell through a timed paid action, and use configured spoken formulas, quiet casting or bounded area casting. These modes retain the spell's target permissions, resistance and wards; they require builder configuration rather than granting new magic automatically.

Wands and staves can store legitimately produced charges, act as personal casting focuses, or support both through explicitly selected modes. Builders choose supported spells, charge capacity, production time, supplies and who may activate each item. Charging requires an entitled producer and pays the configured costs. Stored charges preserve their production potency while the target's current defences still apply. Charged use does not teach the spell or improve its proficiency or mastery, and stored-charge activation refuses when the charge bank is empty. Initial support covers single-target damage, healing and supported status effects; it does not make every spell compatible with a device.

Timed practice and charge production can be interrupted by loss of their required conditions. Paid interruption does not refund costs, and uncertain work requires staff review rather than automatic replay. The experimental Armageddon stock magic package remains disabled in Release builds. These are configurable engine capabilities, not a complete installed Armageddon spell catalogue.

Persistent magical creations and land repair

Created items, temporary NPCs and animated corpses gain persistent ownership and expiry handling across saves and restarts. Supported retirement paths distinguish spell-owned creations from unrelated possessions and retain historical writing and drawing authorship when an owned NPC is archived. Builders can use the supported creation effects without treating every corpse or ordinary NPC as disposable magic content.

Builders can also author bounded land-rejuvenation treatments that repair eligible ecological damage over time. The treatment's budget, rate and progress persist across restarts, with limits independent of natural recovery. This does not provide unrestricted resource refills or install a stock rejuvenation spell.

Environmental exposure and weather

World builders can model sustained liquid and gas contact, inhalation and ambient heat using material transmission, protective equipment and finite chemical supplies. Reactions can injure characters and consume the material responsible, while protection and exposure conditions affect the result. Existing worlds without an explicit exposure mode retain Legacy compatibility; continuous liquid/gas reactions and ambient-heat injury require the Enabled mode. Restart does not apply a backlog of missed exposure injury.

Characters with the required meteorological knowledge can use weather forecast or weather forecast table to read a regional outlook. New readings require observable outdoor conditions and are limited to one attempt per local game day and weather region; saved readings can be recalled indoors. Forecasts can be wrong, particularly further ahead. Builders can configure the forecast horizon and weather hazards for their world.

Weather events can carry configured lightning strikes and temporary hazardous atmospheres, with authored probabilities, damage and messages. Shelter and ordinary health and breathing rules still matter. Existing events without hazard settings do not gain these lightning or atmosphere hazards.

Creatures with configurable motives

Predator behaviour can assess prey, pursue it within configured limits, use ambush or trap openings, extract captured prey and withdraw after delivering venom. Builders opt individual Animal AI definitions into hunting and choose their prey and tactics; existing definitions without hunting settings retain their previous behaviour.

The new individual Monster AI supports territory, provocation, schedules, conditions and optional hunger motives. It gives builders a reusable controller for creatures whose behaviour should not depend on ordinary ecological needs. Controllers must be configured and assigned explicitly; new definitions have no proactive motives, and they do not grant equipment, attacks or species-specific supernatural powers automatically.

Reliability and smaller fixes

Controlled NPC orders recheck command authority before execution. Physical actions have more consistent hand, body and item-access checks.
Improved checks protect inventory stacks and ammunition when items change hands or a transfer encounters an error.
Automatic spell acquisition can reconsider a prerequisite after another spell in the same unlock chain becomes available.
Oversized clan budget inputs are refused before funds are drawn, while generated bank descriptions stay within storage limits and retain clan audit reasons.
Empty patrol routes, recursive network-switch queries and oversized recurrence or project preference inputs are handled safely.
Recorder erase commands are restricted to media files, and title casing handles internal apostrophes more consistently.

Upgrade and known limitations

The supported upgrade path applies normal schema migrations at startup. Stop the old engine before changing files or running the seeder, preserve the pre-upgrade backup separately from automatic backup retention, and rehearse restoration on an isolated database server. Check migration completion, ordinary character login, inventory, travel, saving and a cold restart before reopening the world. For rollback, restore the pre-upgrade database together with the matching old application and configuration; replacing binaries alone is not a schema rollback.

The historical upgrade and explicit backup-restore rehearsal covered an Engine 2.13.0 / Seeder 3.6.1 database on Windows x64 with MySQL 8.0.45. Linux x64 and ARM64 are package targets; this rehearsal does not certify Linux gameplay, every older or customised database, legacy live casting, or recovery from crashes or multiple failures.

An ordered ammunition-unload action refused unexpectedly during validation without observed loss or duplication. Repeat checks passed, but the original cause remains unknown. The accepted residual risk is tracked in issue #783, which remains open and is separate from the recovery failures tracked in issue #781.

Use /downloads for archives and checksums, /getting-started for installation requirements and /docs/commands for the engine reference.