FutureMUD Engine 2.15.1

Requirements: .NET 10 and MySQL 8.0. Framework-dependent packages target Windows x64, Linux x64 and Linux ARM64.

Expanded magic effects and persistent creations

Magic gains a broader range of effects that builders can combine into their own spells, creatures and enchanted objects. Summoning and creation build on the existing ownership and persistence systems, with more supported creations and stronger handling of their control, possessions, expiry and return.

Summons, companions and animated remains

Summoned creatures can use different approved creature templates at different casting grades. Companion control supports following, stopping, guarding and attacking, with checks that the caster still has authority over that creature. Configured missions can follow a target's tracks, carry a particular parcel to a recipient, or haunt a target. These use ordinary movement, visibility, custody and resistance rules.

Lifecycle handling covers permanent creations, temporary creations that dissipate, and creatures that die when their time expires. Saved lifetimes and control state survive ordinary saves and restarts. Cleanup distinguishes a creature's created belongings from other people's possessions, preserving unrelated goods rather than deleting them with the summon.

Corpse animation and temporary corpse possession retain the original body's identity and restore the same borrowed remains when control ends. Cleanup records which creations belong to the spell and which actions have already completed. Uncertain cases are retained for staff review instead of recreating a creature or repeating a paid effect.

Shelters, pockets, portals and projections

Spells can create temporary occupied shelters with entrances, capacity limits and expiry. Their closure evacuates residents and loose belongings, including saved occupants, before removing the created space. Magical storage pockets likewise track their contents and creator access through closure and restart.

New travel effects support gates and temporary thresholds, exchanging two characters' positions, travel to a recognised target, and delayed return to a recorded location. Travel respects destination permissions, planes and wards. A portal stops accepting travellers if its endpoints expire or are replaced.

Bounded projections let a character observe and travel through a temporary secondary presence while their original body remains behind and vulnerable. Range, lifetime and permitted movement are configurable. These projections do not copy inventory or grant unrestricted physical interaction; loss of the anchor, expiry or destruction ends control and starts cleanup.

Damage, conditions and environmental hazards

The expanded effects include wind-driven displacement and impacts, ground tremors, recurring electrical hazards, temporary breathing interruption, movement-speed changes, feigned death and emotional influences. Builders can configure their strength, duration, resistance and eligible targets. Breathing interruption uses the affected body's normal breath-holding and hypoxia rules.

Additional effects support stamina and bodily-need changes, vitality transfer, poison delivery, and bounded damage or repair to items. Item repair respects existing wounds and the configured repair budget rather than replacing an item's material or quality. Persistent hazards keep their deadlines across restart and skip missed pulses instead of applying a backlog of offline injury.

Created supplies and enchanted equipment

Supported created food, liquids, lights and weapons use the engine's normal placement, carrying, wearing and consumption systems. Casting grade can select the output, quantity and lifetime. Liquid creation can fill compatible open containers up to their remaining capacity without silently replacing their contents.

Temporary weapon and armour effects can use configured materials and grade-dependent properties. Equipment bonuses follow the relevant held or worn item. Bound consumables retain the potency of their paid creation and a finite use or healing budget, with checks against repeated application, splitting or reloading granting another use.

Perception, marks and magical protection

Perception effects gain more precise control over what a character can sense, how long that perception lasts and which supernatural states it reveals. Other additions include attunement readings, ownership marks and threshold alarms.

Magical marks can inform ward decisions, while dispelling can select eligible effects without stripping unrelated state. Single-use protections record their consumption, and temporary barriers apply their configured harm when someone makes an eligible crossing attempt. Protection, travel and information effects retain their configured permissions and resistance rules.

Resources, patron magic and psychic powers

Magical gathering can draw from finite ecological life shared across an Area or Zone, with an explicitly configured local fallback. Regional depletion and recovery persist; restarting or enlarging a region does not refill its existing stock. Ecological life remains separate from a character's magical reserve.

Builders can configure patron casting and spell-selection shrines, conditional binding items, resource restorers and item issuers. Eligibility, authority, territory, spell choices and charges are editable. New psychic capabilities include remote sensing, mental attacks, control, linked communication and domes that block crossing mental traffic.

Casting and item use retain their costs and eligibility checks. Supported effects and delivery methods must be configured for the world; these additions do not make every effect available through every wand, consumable or other carrier.

Combat and physical actions

Builders can configure weapon and natural Backstab attacks for unseen openings or rear-facing opponents, including separate Sap behaviour. These use ordinary combat defences, costs and recovery. Coordinated Dual Wield attacks can strike with both weapons against one target, with fresh defences for each strike and one recovery sequence. Dual Wield requires an explicit skill binding and activation in existing worlds.

Configurable Blind Fighting applies to supported melee attacks and active defences when a known opponent cannot be seen adequately. Its checks, sight thresholds and merits are editable. Existing worlds retain the disabled default until staff opt in. It does not reveal hidden opponents or replace normal targeting rules.

Bash and Kick can use configured physical impacts. A reusable pressure-point effect supports anatomy-aware temporary penalties, paralysis, silence, nausea and individual limb impairment. Affected hands release their items, and ordinary posture and movement rules decide the consequences of disabled legs. These abilities require configured attacks and permissions.

Trade, inspection and movement

Optional shop haggling gives customers persistent negotiated terms for purchases and buybacks. Shops can set limits, exclude merchandise and configure difficulty. Prices, payment, tax and transaction records use the same negotiated totals; catalogue prices remain unchanged.

analyse <carried item> and its analyze alias show eligible crafting recipes and requirements when the character has the configured capability and sufficient recipe access. Inspection neither consumes the item nor teaches recipes.

peek <character> [container] provides covert inventory inspection with independent detection and item revelation. Results resolve immediately, followed by a five-second Peek cooldown. Visibility, reach, container access and skill requirements still apply; inspection does not move items or automatically report a crime.

Worlds can opt into hostile guard challenges using !! on supported movement, get and open commands. Optional Direction Sense can affect manual compass movement in darkness or severe obscuring weather, including mounted travel and driving. Neither feature is enabled automatically in an existing world.

Terrain and characters

Very shallow water and silt terrain models add size- and posture-based immersion, wading, loose-item visibility and compatible vehicle support. Liquid contact feeds ordinary wetting and breathing systems; silt supplies no liquid physiology. Depth is represented by size categories rather than measured geometry.

Builders gain intrinsic racial merits, configurable physiological traits and age descriptions, and reusable role-based skill progression. Role progression composes primary and secondary roles without automatically enrolling existing characters for historical bonuses.

Reliability and permissions

• Empty or invalid item stacks are rejected at retrieval and transfer boundaries. A player-command failure is contained to the affected connection instead of terminating the server.
• Sensitive static configuration is restricted to implementors, with protected values visibly redacted for lower administrator tiers.
• Item protection follows dragging and hauling; folded-pocket deletion rechecks creator authority; recognised-character casting respects protected staff visibility.
• Casting and magical items more consistently respect available energy. Substance effects scale their damage to the dose, and powers passed through devices retain their configured duration.
• Vehicle trains, exposed occupants and external pullers contact applicable exit barriers before relocation. Existing vehicle prototypes retain sheltered occupant defaults.

Upgrade and known limitations

Room handling has been unified while retaining existing playable location IDs and the cell building-command alias.

Before upgrading, stop the engine and other tools that write to the world database. Preserve a verified complete backup together with the matching application, configuration and external files. Rehearse the database upgrade and a cold restart before reopening the world. Recovery from a failed structural upgrade requires the matching pre-upgrade backup; copying older engine files alone does not roll back the database.

Some ammunition loading, unloading and recovery cases remain under investigation: #780, #781, #782 and #783. An exceptional database-failure case during borrowed-corpse cleanup also remains unresolved; ordinary expiry and restart have separate passing evidence. Advanced psychic abilities have bounded live-gameplay coverage, and further balance work remains. This release does not claim exhaustive failure recovery.