See what the J-Mods got up to in our latest Game Jam!
Our seventh Game Jam wrapped up a few weeks ago and we're ready to share!
Straight out of the gate, you'll likely notice there are fewer pitches than we've shared in the past. This time around, our J-Mods found themselves drawn to back-end systems work and projects that would need a big old "spoiler" sticker slapped across them. We saw so many fantastic, innovative pitches that will make our devs' lives easier when it comes to designing, testing and implementing, plus some really exciting iterations on potential future content. So, we'll keep some of our secrets for now, but that doesn't make the pitches we are able to share any less exciting!
We hope you enjoy these J-Mod passion projects. As a reminder, nothing you see here is guaranteed to make it into the game. We run Game Jams to give J-Mods the chance to try out new things, follow their own interests and just produce something a bit fun. However, we know at least one project from this round of Game Jam is making its way in! In our Winter Summit, we shared all about a new beastie barreling its way into Lumbridge very soon - the Bovine Bully, along with a new F2P early-game quest. Read up on The Ides of Milk and The Bovine Bully, here.
Meanwhile, we’ve got beautiful boats, Wildy additions, interface improvements, and a view on multi level visibility to get your teeth sunk into. As always, we'd love to know what you think, so make sure to check out the opinion poll live in-game!
Yes, you read that correctly!
One very exciting project we worked on during this Game Jam was Boat FashionScape, inspired by player suggestions and focused on giving you more options for boat customisation!
Boats are beautiful, but we're sure you'll agree, many of them currently look visually similar. There are a limited amount of trims available, and once you've reached Rosewood tier, well that's about it. The team wanted to spend some time working on a new system with even more cosmetic options available!
We've made some changes to the 'Boat Customisation' menu on the 'Boat Schematics' Board to account for a brand-new cosmetic type, sail patterns!
Since this is a Game Jam pitch, we want to manage your expectations around this project, since we're aware that many of you have seen (and fallen in love with!) some of the fantastic player suggestions for boat cosmetics that are out there. A huge shoutout goes to a community member, Mez_z, for their contributions on Reddit regarding their suggested ideas for new sails. We loved some of these ideas, and the popularity of them has even inspired this very Game Jam project.
However, we want to be upfront and explain that, today we're showing off the system and framework we've created, rather than all of the new and shiny cosmetics we could add sometime in the future. It wouldn't feel appropriate to show you something like a Champions' or Infernal Sail, without any solid plans on when they might be added to the game. Additionally, we'd still need to figure out how to translate capes with animated textures into sails, as it's not possible to have moving textures on sails.
With that said, we do think this is a really exciting reward space for the future. So for now, take a look at Boat FashionScape!
On the 'Modify Schematics' board, there is now a new menu which covers 'Sail Patterns'. This is completely separate from Sails themselves, which will work in exactly the same way and can be upgraded the same as currently.
You can choose between a range of Sail Patterns, all of which will change the design of them on your boat:
We've gone ahead and created new sail patterns for all boat types, including a range of basic colours for your FashionScape needs.
- Black Sails
- Blue Sails
- Brown Sails
- Green Sails
- Pink Sails
- Purple Sails
- Red Sails
- Yellow Sails
We haven't set out exactly how these will be earned yet, however, we imagine that since they are basic, you'd be able to create them using regular dyes in-game.
Even if you're sporting a fully coloured sail, the mast will still indicate the tier of sail. We know it's important to still get a read on the exact gear you and other players are sporting, and the same goes for boats!
For something a little more aspirational, check out these Dragon Sails. How cool do these look?!
We don't have set plans on how we think they're created or obtained just yet. Our current thoughts are leaning towards crafting them with existing Dragon items, such as parts of Dragon Platebodies.
- Dragon Sails
Pretty eye-catching, right?
For the Skiff and Sloop, we've also added new metal trims, designed to match existing tiers of metal in-game.
- Bronze
- Iron
- Steel
- Mithril
- Adamant
- Rune
- Dragon
Similarly, we think these trims could be created through existing items in-game. This will also have the benefit that they aren't tied to Sailing-specific activities, and should be easier to obtain. There's lots of trims we can create, and the future of cosmetics looks bright. Think Leagues, or any kind of aspirational content. What kinds of cool things do you want? We're so excited to explore this as a future reward space.
As we mentioned before, we've been incredibly inspired by your suggestions, but we're being careful to avoid showing off anything that might not make it into the game. But, now we have the structure in place, we can build upon it, and that's all thanks to you. So tell us, do you like it? And especially, is it something you'd want included in a future Sailing update?
The Combat Achievement overview has had a bit of a makeover!
Progress bars on the overview page now clearly show which tier you’re currently working towards, complete with the corresponding coloured hilt designs for each section. At a glance, it’s much easier to see where you stand and what you’re pushing for next.
The Bosses section has been reworked to favour icons over long, unwieldy names. Hovering an icon will still show the boss's name in the top-left, and search works exactly as before, just without the visual clutter. There’s also an option to switch to smaller icons, which is handy for players on fixed screen sizes or anyone who wants to see more bosses at once.
Bosses have also been separated into tiers, including:
- Introductory
- Early-game
- Mid-game
- Late-game
- End-game
There’s always going to be some subjectivity here. These groupings aren’t intended to perfectly mirror community labels or definitions, but rather focus on creating a clear PvM ladder based on mechanical difficulty, requirements and execution. The aim is to help players set goals and get a rough sense of challenge at a glance, rather than provide a definitive ranking.
Difficulty can vary wildly depending on gear, experience and playstyle, and as metas evolve, player perception may shift even if the interface doesn’t immediately follow. With that in mind, we’re treating these categories as a guiding framework first and foremost, and we’re open to adjusting them based on your feedback.
Clicking a boss now takes you straight to the tasks associated with it, keeping everything relevant in one place. You can also hide completed tasks, so you’re not scrolling past things you’ve already mastered.
We’ve updated the boss imagery and icons, too. The visuals still give you an idea of what you’re up against, but are intentionally less literal to avoid spoiling the experience for players encountering a boss for the first time.
Alongside this, you’ll now see new icons showing:
- How many times you defeated the boss.
- The boss's combat level.
- Your personal best kill time.
A new button opens the full difficulty overview and info panel. All the details are still there when you want them, but they’re neatly tucked away instead of dominating the screen.
The task list itself has been simplified as well, focusing only on tier and completion status to make it easier to scan and understand at a glance.
The rewards screen has also seen some love. It no longer resizes as you move between sections, making it easier on the eyes and cutting down on the constant UI shifting that made it harder to read.
During the Game Jam, we delved under the hood to rework the code for Skill Guides and Level-Up Messages. Sounds mundane? Well, yes, it was; code maintenance is not traditionally glamourous, but it can be worthwhile anyway...
Ever since Old School RuneScape came out, players have been suggesting that we change how level-up messages are displayed. You know how they currently work. First you get the pop-up saying "Congratulations, you just advanced a Fishing level. Your Fishing level is now 73." You're invited to 'Click to continue' to see the list of features you've unlocked at that level - but maybe you mis-click, or maybe you get attacked, and the dialogue box closes, and the list's gone forever. Okay, you can open the skill guide and scroll through all the sections to look for the info manually, or search the Wiki, but these can be a faff, and it's certainly not helpful for newer players who might actually benefit most from the info!
Wouldn't it be nicer if you could summon that list of unlocks when it's convenient for you, instead? And maybe see it laid out a bit more clearly too - some skills invite you to click through multiple pages of the stuff. So, with this project, that's what we've addressed.
But to do it, we first had to rewrite the humble skill guides...
Historically, our skill guide code was extremely simplistic. Each tab in the guide had all the levels, icons and text written out, line by line, in display order. Extra requirements like "with level 35 Strength" were written directly into the text too, and so was the "Members:" prefix whenever it was used.
It was really simple to read the code - no blaming spaghetti here - but the data wasn't flexible. A developer couldn't search it like a database, e.g. to show all features unlocked at a particular Smithing level regardless of what tab they were in. Also, since additional requirements were written directly into the text, developers couldn't do things like highlighting them based on whether you satisfied the requirement, since the game couldn't parse its own text automatically to spot which bit describes a requirement.
Furthermore, where a feature used two or more skills, it had to be written into the guides for both skills separately. For example, the Crystal Bow was written into the Ranged guide at level 70 "with 50 Agility" and written into the Agility guide at level 50 "with 70 Ranged". By duplicating the data across multiple guides, the legacy code left us vulnerable to any number of errors where the info would be out of sync. Developers couldn't even use constants effectively, since the code had to be written in display order.
So we've replaced all those thousands of lines of skill guide code with a database built into the game. Now, all the level requirements for each feature are written together, on a single data entry. The game generates a skill guide by searching the database for features requiring the desired skill, then rendering them automatically in level order.
This also means that the game can interpret all the level requirements, since they're defined in the data rather than being written as plain text, so the game can check your stats and other completions, and highlight the entry according to whether you satisfy the requirements. So the skill guides are getting a splash of colour:
This has taken some time, since there are over 3,400 features in the skill guides, many with multiple requirements! But, even if it doesn't change the player experience very much now, it should be a game-changer for developers updating them forever after, avoiding all that messy duplication of data. Also, this infrastructure could be used for more options in future, such as automatically hiding "Members:" if the player already is a member, or hiding features that aren't yet unlocked, or even letting you perform custom searches within the menu.
Now, let's see what it enables for the level-up messages...
With the skill guides' data now in a searchable format, we can tell the guide to do things like listing all the features requiring a particular Agility level, regardless of which section they're in. That's just what you might need to see after leveling-up, e.g. to 62:
When you advance a level in a skill, the game will invite you to open the skill guide to see what you've unlocked. You can do that at your convenience, rather than losing the list as soon as you click away or get attacked.
The Stats side-panel will glow, too, indicating that you've got some level-up unlocks to view:
We know that, particularly when you're on a new account, you often rack up the level-ups in quick succession and so all those chat messages might become a bit too much. So the clickable messages will have a 'Clear all' option that clears them all. This wipes your pending level-up notifications in all the skills - no more glowing icons or side-panel stone - and when skill guide is next opened, it will just show its regular contents as usual.
The new version of level-up messages works in the legacy skin of the skill guide menu too, for those who've kept the old parchment style.
What do you think of these subtle but sweet skilling and level-up additions? Let us know!
Ever been chatting to a clannie but suddenly they go upstairs and you end up talking to yourself?
Well, right now the game only shows NPCs and players on the same level. So, while you'll spy scenery like cannons or crates, you won't see your buddy bobbing around or catch their chat messages. This can make the world feel a little empty when on upper levels, and can make keeping conversation flowing difficult when changing levels.
In this Game Jam this visibility restriction was turned off, and suddenly the world felt much more vibrant. To give you a taster, the video below shows the POV of a player on the upper level in Lumby castle able to see a player on the lower level moving around and opening a door.
If you can't see the video above, click here.
We'd be putting in some rules with multi-level visibility:
- By default, no interactions across levels, meaning you won't be able to hover over another player or NPC and take any actions like attacking.
- Our current thought is to have multi-level visibility turned off in PvP areas and PvP worlds.
- We may find other areas that require, or be more comfortable with this visibility level turned off, so during testing we'd be keeping this in mind. Plus, if there are any areas where right off the bat you think a certain area would be better without, let us know!
We thought we'd show you a few highlights of other possibilities with this change!
If you can't see the video above, click here.
NPCs and players could jump from level to level.
If you can't see the video above, click here.
Seeing a cannon from above.
If you can't see the video above, click here.
Agility courses become much more alive, and you'd be able to see chat from players doing the course when you are not.
If you can't see the video above, click here.
This opens the possibility of flying vehicles.
That's all for now on this new view on Gielinor, and we'd love to know what you think. Where else could you see multi-level sight being beneficial?
Have you ever been in-game and thought, this tune's a banger, turn it up, only to find when you try to the slider... doesn't slide?
Turns out, this so-called slider is actually a row of 21 buttons faking it! Well, as we head into our 25th anniversary year, we thought it was about time we dug into this particular bugbear.
Mod Ed said, let's be bold, let's try something new, let's make it slide!
Three days of focused development work, and a couple of interesting bug fixes later, we were able to answer the question "Will it slide?" with a "yes, if we add this to the game."
We didn't stop there, though...
Did you know that all those atmospheric, and nostalgia-filled music tracks that accompany your journey across Gielinor were once always assigned to perfectly square areas as opposed to general locations? So, you might find yourself vibing to the tones of White Wolf Mountain, when suddenly you stray accidentally into the borders of Catherby's map square and your whole flow is interrupted. A bit jarring, right?
A few years ago, we added modern music area mode. This mode made the boundaries follow scenery such as walls and cliffs rather than being in perfect squares. However, it was only rolled out for some areas of the world. After a lot of work, we've now expanded this mode to cover the entire game. This makes for a more natural transition from one melody to the next, making each location change more atmospheric.
If you can't see the video above, click here.
Did you think we were finished?
A little time left of Game Jam VII, gave space to create something we've seen asked for... a lot. Custom music playlists! This would give you the ability to create yourself up to three custom playlists.
With this, you'll be able to select any of the music tracks you've unlocked in-game to be added to your custom playlist, and then the playlist will randomly play through those selected songs.
Plus, there's a host of settings and tweaks to help refine what your audio can do:
- A true shuffle for your random music mode
- Selecting what colour certain type of tracks appear as
- Hiding locked or unlocked tracks
- Playing the default track when entering an area
- Updating your music when changing playlist
Sounds good? Well luckily, you won't have long to wait as we're rolling out these changes in tomorrow's game update!
Teleports - a wonderful way to travel around Gielinor, wouldn’t you agree?
Of course teleports are somewhat diffuse, spread around between spellbooks, fairy rings, player-owned houses, and all manner of items. As useful as they are, we're sure we're not alone in thinking how cool it would be to see teleports on a map of the world, making it even easier to choose the one most relevant to your next adventure.
Well, it might look something a little like this:
Inspired by wonderful interfaces such as quetzal transport and charter ships, the teleport map provides a convenient way to show available teleports in a geographically obvious layout. Not sure where the castle wars teleport on the ring of dueling actually goes? Can’t quite remember the name of the teleport that takes you to that weird bit of the map full of belligerent trolls? Wonder no more!
The prototype above only includes certain areas but of course this could, and would, be expanded to the entire world!
Potential uses include:
- Fairy rings
- Spellbook teleports/teletabs.
- Teleport jewellery.
- POH teleports such as the Portal Nexus and Jewellery Box.
- A myriad of other teleport items such as Diary rewards, Skull Sceptres, Teleport Scrolls and Skill Capes.
- Leagues teleport items like Banker’s Briefcase.
The map would only allow you to use teleports that are immediately available to you, for example if you had the correct Magic level, spellbook, and runes to cast Varrock teleport, you would be able to cast it from the map interface. Similarly, fairy rings would only be usable if you met the usual item/diary requirements and were present at a ring, and the Portal Nexus tele requires you to be at the nexus as usual.
We could also include a side panel or key which would allow you to toggle the display of the various teleport categories and highlight specific teleports. Don’t want to see where the ancient spellbooks can take you? Switch that bad boy off and forget about the possibility of travelling deep into the wilderness to make new friends. Desperate to know where the Ectophial will take you? Now you know!
Other quality-of-life features could include filtering unavailable teleports entirely, list search, moving the map to show hovered selections in the side panel, collapsible categories, and features like re-opening the map at the same location.
If you have any opinions on this proposal, please map them out and teleport them to us!
Mod Manked with a Wilderness-focused Game Jam? We can scarcely believe it ourselves! You can't fault his consistency, so let's take a look at what he got to working on this time around.
We'll open with a quick history lesson on the infamous Revenant Caves...
The Revenant Caves (or Forinthry Dungeon for those of you who know your lore) released in Old School all the way back in 2017. This area was a multi-combat dungeon, packed with Revenants boasting high-value loot, attracting players looking for a quick payday or getting some friends together for the PvP heist of the century. Some time into its lifespan, organised groups of players began offering so-called 'protection services' across a number of worlds (slightly under a third), where players would pay these groups some GP up-front for the promise of protection in case other players or groups tried to attack them. While we're always fans of emergent gameplay that feels properly like a player-led MMO system, these services drove large amounts of Real World Trade and created a PvP ecosystem that was dominated by 1-item ragging to overwhelm attackers with raw numbers rather than outplaying them, meaning many of the groups offering these protection services didn't incur any real risk at the same time.
After a number of years, in 2020, we overhauled these caves completely as an unpolled integrity change - we made them Singles-plus rather than multi, reduced the impact of being skulled on your loot, and added a 100,000 GP entry fee to try and reduce the effectiveness of ragging.
Fast forward to now and we have a cave featuring 11 spread-out hotspots, often occupied by gold farmers or nigh-unkillable bots. Newer PKers who'd typically learn the ropes on those fighting the Revenants struggle to learn anything here, especially when forced onto the Standard spellbook to be impactful. Similarly, the number of hotspots makes it hard for PKers to find each other, since they're all hopping past each other at a huge number of hotspots rather than a smaller number of consistent places to find each other. Perhaps it's time for a change?
The proposal? Split the cave to allow for a multi area, a Singles-plus area and a low-level Singles-plus area (18-21 Wilderness). Let's take a look at the layout!
The 'main' cave features a Singles-plus section on the western side, and a Multi section on the eastern side, separated by a series of three narrow corridors to clearly delineate the difference between the areas. Revenant hotspots are highlighted in blue, so you can see three Singles-plus spots situated somewhat 'out of the way' of foot traffic entering the caves, and one large Multi hotspot situated in an area that's built to re-capture some of the Multi-combat chaos of days gone by.
If you'd rather something a little less scary, we've also got a small cave featuring two Singles-plus hotspots in level 18-21 Wilderness. This spot has fewer Revenants available and can only support a couple of players, but makes for a compelling lower-risk option for players less confident in the Wilderness, and might make for a nice spot for newer PKers to more readily find each other.
In essence, that's the pitch! Naturally we expect some questions, so we'll try tackling the ones we expect might crop up the most!
No, they won't have better loot. That does mean that inherently there's a less significant motivator to risk it in multi-combat since you'll have Singles-plus variants in two locations to opt for instead if you're a solo player. We do think there's some appeal here though!
Having friends around to help kill the revenants means you can risk less since you'll all be able to contribute damage. Revenants dying quicker means less time for them to make use of their powerful regen, so your GP/hr is likely to remain solid even if you're in a group of friends - you can squad up without massive risk, secure some consistent GP and mess around with your pals to try and escape, anti-PK or seek out violence on your own terms.
We appreciate that Multi-combat PvP does have a bit of an image problem, but it's not all about massive clans of players spamming walls of text - there are loads of lifelong PKers or Wilderness enjoyers out there who got started with a friend or two zooming into the caves and sending Armadyl Godsword special attacks into a player before making a mad dash to escape with their spoils, and we genuinely believe that the low-stakes, good-vibes nature of not taking things too seriously with some friends is arguably the best way to improve your confidence in the Wilderness and PvP in general.
It's possible, but we're not convinced there's any reason for them to exist here! There are still a great number of spots for players to kill Revenants outside of multi-combat, meaning they can chase their unique rewards or consistent GP without incurring the risk that comes with multi-combat, so we don't expect players to ask other groups to protect them for the same reasons as we saw in the past.
Adding on to that, the 100,000 GP minimum entrance fee makes it far too costly for massive groups to throw themselves into the meat grinder while wielding only a Crystal Bow, so we'd expect to see more meaningful and interesting fights than swarms of naked Elven rangers!
We actually believe that the layout of the caves above means their new entrance/exit locations might revitalise activity in some spots that have been left to the history books. Just south of the Mage Arena has acquired a new entrance to the caves. The entrance for the southern part of the 'main' cave also still exists, although is slightly further south than what's shown in the below image. Leaving through multi means having to dash through the multi-zone to escape at Lava Dragon isle.
Naturally there's a chance that players might just wait outside the exits to pick you off, but they make themselves prime targets for other PKers, meaning we'd expect to see more PKers fighting each other and less of them trying to snipe somebody heading back from a Slayer task. These particular locations are steeped in history, so we think it might be a nice and nostalgic change of pace and locale for the Wilderness enjoyers among you!
These changes should also add up to making life far more difficult for gold farmers or botters which is always a plus, even if you don't frequent the Wilderness yourself or care more about it - they're going to get banned anyway so why not practise those switches and make some money before they meet the hammer?!
While that's the bulk of the pitch, we've also got a handful of other changes we think we could make alongside all of the above to improve your experience here!
- Allow Irons to get loot from Revenants, including the Maledictus, so long as they did the most damage to it, similar to other Wilderness bosses (and now the Zombie Pirates), the Royal Titans or Yama!
- If a Revenant Maledictus spawns in a Singles-plus zone, guarantee a spawn in the Multi-combat zone.
- Provide some means for loot in the higher-level caves to automatically move to your inventory/looting bag, letting you focus on your surroundings and any would-be PKers, while also increasing your GP/hr a little further.
- Adjust entry fees to combat bad actors and promote risk vs. reward. Most legitimate players do their Hard Wilderness Diary before any Revenants so that they're exempt from the teleport delay, so shouldn't notice a change here. Meanwhile, players looking to secure ludicrous levels of GP early on into their account progression have to incur a higher risk, or just come back later - this is something that we'd like to be proactive on, especially with the potential changes to loot attribution that we outlined above.
- No Wilderness Diary - 500,000 GP
- Easy Wilderness Diary - 300,000 GP
- Medium Wilderness Diary - 150,000 GP
- Hard & Elite Wilderness Diary - 100,000 GP
That's the pitch! We know this one's likely to generate some conversation so we're eager to hear what you think, but we think this could be a great way to tidy up the caves content-side, disincentivise bad actors, give you some fun and low-stakes options to try some PvP/Wilderness content with your friends, and even provide a lower Wilderness-level alternative for you to gain initial confidence in the Wilderness or perhaps in full-on PvP!
To close this section out, here are some words from Mod Manked:
And that's a wrap for all the game jam pitches we're able to share this time round! Remember to check out the in-game opinion poll and let us know your thoughts!
You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.
Mods Abe, Abyss, Acorn, Ape, Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Asherz, Ayiza, BigRig, Blighted, Blossom, Boko, Brooksie, Bruno, Chilly, Criminal, Curse, Daizong, Ed, Elena, Enigma, Entropi, Freddie, Frogs, Fuzz, Gecko, Gizmo, Goblin, Grace, Grub, Halo, Harold, Hend, Hornet, Husky, Ivory, Jalo, Jamesy, Jerv, Keyser, Kieren, Kirby, Kurotou, Leebleh, Lenny, Light, Liron, Lykos, Lotus, Mack, Manked, Markos, Maylea, Mobius, Moogle, Morty, Moz, Necro, Nin, Nixon, Nox, Nylu, Ori, Other, Otter, Philomel, Pork, Pumpkin, Puppi, Rach, Redfield, Rice, Romy, Roq, Roy, Ry, Saiyan, Sarnie, Schmidt, Shogun, Shroom, Sigma, Skylark, Smithy, Sova, Spyro, Squid, Starry, Stilrush, Suharun, Surma, Sween, Tide, Titania, Titus, TJ, Tomb, Tsourorf, Tyran, Veda, Vegard, West, Wolfy, Yozora & Yume
The Old School Team.