Hello! Welcome to my "new" place for posting updates. I'm going to do a broad update on the "Project Kumos" site, and some upcoming posts you can keep an eye out for.

Project Kumos & Ambitions

The goal always to rewrite the site 1:1, and use that opportunity to create new backend systems that make it easy to add new features. I got distracted from that goal by trying to build the Homesteads, and an entirely new set of features on top of our existing ones. I made it pretty far down this road, further than I'd like to admit, before realizing I'd made a mistake in approach, and it made it impossible to provide frequent (or any, really) updates to y'all.

❗ Homesteads are getting scaled back. This is a good thing - they were getting to be a HUGE feature, that would have moved how everyone uses the site to require them to use a homestead. I'm going to instead tackle this as a series of changes to the site, starting with allowing users to create a homestead of a zone from the map (starting with just a few) and create a garden there. Simple(ish)!

Homesteads + Gardens

That means the LARGE homestead project is 🧊 on ice 🧊. From the screenshot below you can see I was getting way too down far a road of customization and 3d graphics generating a home, where you'd be able to see your things growing. Obviously, that wasn't what was needed for Subeta right now or what I should be focused on.

The rest of the Homestead programming was a task and crafting system, both of which have already been built and will be used for bringing over features on the site that will need to use them. Spell creation for example, will be very easy to add to the site with the crafting system!

(Look at this -- it was getting into fully letting you generate a little map with your plants growing. It was fun to build, but ... not a good use of my time probably)

I'm going to start resetting the Homestead page, and will remove it from the header until it's ready for y'all to create one. We're going to allow you to create one in three starter zones, with special seeds (not many) that can only grow in that zone. I can see us adding to homesteads by using them for things like Trick or Treating.

As a little preview (And so you can start planning) the three zones will be:

• 🌳 Veta
• 👻 Shadowglen
• 🏝️ Omen Islands

We aimed for starting zones that have different climates and give us some fun plants to play around with.

Gardens

So instead, they're going to look much simpler and something like:

Kumos Forums

I spent a few weeks investigating using an "off the shelf" forum software solution for us, called waterhole. It's a really great piece of software that would have given us a lot of benefits like showing roadmaps, searching, etc. I'm still considering this a possible option, but right now they're on version 0.4 and getting some of the Subeta specific integration proved to be too difficult. Things like having user avatars show up, or event specific features (biting 🧛‍♂️) would have taken a lot of work and not felt exactly right. I've put in a few feature requests to the creator / programmer of those forums, and will keep an eye on updates down the road.

On top of that, I started rewriting our forums on kumos.subeta.net/forums. That created a set of redundant forums that make it hard to know the right place to look for information.

Until we know the fate of Waterhole and our ability to customize it as much as we need to, I'm going to take the forums down from kumos.subeta.net and have them redirect here. I'm going to change the (kumos) sidebar to show updates from this forum ("Technical Blog").

The UAs have been waiting years for a "new forum system" to do a "forum squish" - remove a lot of unused forums and reduce ourselves down to a few major ones. We're going to move ahead with that plan on these forums, with more information coming soon. Topics will be moved around and forum categories will be hidden. This should happen relatively soon and make things like search much easier.

After a forum squish, I'm going to make kumos.subeta.net/forums show posts from these forums, with added functionality for mods and users - like the sticker reaction feature built in there. Continuing to build on top of what we have, instead of starting from scratch. You'll be hearing me say that a lot!

Upcoming Technical Blogs

I've got a few of these pre-written so that I can keep up a pace ;) They'll get posted with changes made to the Kumos site, or looking for feedback.

• Forum Squish: What forums will be sticking around, and how posts will be merged into the new forums
• Layout: I've got some major changes on a branch, that will bring back themes (they're currently broken) on Kumos
• Sidebar: Customization and widgets come to the Kumos site! I know I've said in the past that I'd never do this again, but they get great use by most users (even if they don't modify the default ones), and being able to move them around and use them to give information is really valuable. So, you'll be able to drag them around, and choose some of them to add.
• Registration: Most of you will never need to see this page again, but there are some major improvements that we can make to our registration flow, including pet creation and choosing a basic avatar.
• Collections: Easier management, and choosing favorites that are displayed at the top your collection.
• ❗ Large scale item updates: This is the one that will be looking for feedback and further thoughts. We're going ahead with the "rarity squish" I discussed a few years ago (r1-99 items only) and some changes to the main shops and how they work.
• Notification/Event system updates
• 👀 Reputation System: more coming soon 🤫

Perhaps wait for the forum post detailing what it is, since I think you're probably thinking of a forum reputation system, and this is instead a system that builds with you as you do quests for NPCs and interact with them during events.

Sorry - the forums on kumos.subeta.net have been taken down, and redirect here. Right now. "Here" refers to the forums you're currently on.

The future updates will be posted into this forum (Technical Blog) on this (subeta.net) site - and the sidebar on kumos.subeta.net for Changelog has been updated to pull from this forum, instead of the (now removed) kumos forums.

Sorry for the confusing, and thanks for asking for clarification!

Yup, it has nothing to do with user to user reputation :) It's entirely a system based on doing quests for NPCs (like The Wizard, for example) and earning reputation. We'll be able to make it so that prize items are based on that reputation, and do cool things like have reputation go up during events that center around that NPC.

Will just be a new way to distribute items without them all going out at once, and immediately being snatched up ;)