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Updating EmpireMUD from 2.0b4 to 2.0b5:
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MAJOR FEATURES:

- New adventures: Guild of Adventurers, Permafrost, Monsoon Rift, Colossal Red
  Dragon (full update), Hidden Chamber of Neferkare, Volcano, That Damned River,
  Unstable Portal, and Lost Temple.
- Overhauled parts of the skill system including the option of adding minor
  skill trees, trees that can't be dropped, and a change to the low end of the
  Vampire skill to make it work more like other skills.
- Many new abilities including class abilities and skill abilities. Players now
  get an additional ability point.
- Skill swap allows two full sets of ability choices on each character.
- Zero-level abilities replace systems that formerly gave direct skill gain
  without using an ability, simplifying the skill system.
- New optional approval system for players.
- Multiple archetype categories to support features like Race or Culture.
- The fight code was updated with combat meters, togglable messages, and
  improvements to timing.
- Major improvements to the scripting system.
- Reduced game lag with overhauls to territory management and map evolution.
- New data system stores important generic data between uptimes.
- OLC editor for socials.
- Major improvements to the quest engine.
- Better logging for immortal commands.
- More complex resources and building maintenance.
- Newbie islands can now be "naturalized" automatically each year (this
  defaults to off).
- Eliminated virtually all of the known bugs, including major crash bugs.
- Added repeatable daily quests (including ones that appear around a player's
  city).
- Improved how the scripting system assigns unique IDs to things, to increase
  the time until the mud runs out of ID-space each uptime.


ACCESS LEVELS:

The code no longer uses access levels 1 = Unapproved and 2 = Approved, so all
access levels went down by 1. This is handled automatically by the auto-updater
when you start up your EmpireMUD.

If you are using the god system (level 3 before, 2 now) your gods will be
automatically demoted to mortal level and you will have to re-promote them.
This is due to changes in how non-mortal levels are tracked.


ADVENTURES:

Many adventures received updates and fixes in this patch. When you first boot
up beta5, you should use the "instance deleteall" command to delete your
instances of each adventure, and let the adventures respawn.


APPROVAL:

When the game boots up with beta5, it will automatically approve all players
if auto_approve is on. If you intend to require approval for your existing
players, you MUST change the auto_approve (and approve_per_character, if you
want each character to require approval rather than each account) BEFORE you
start up your game. Edit them directly in lib/misc/game_configs. The rest of
the approval configs can be changed in-game with "config approval -v".


CARRACKS:

Carracks that were already built before the beta5 patch will not automatically
be changed. You can use ".map roomtype 5522" in the main interior room of
carracks to convert them to the version that can be used as a player home.


CONFIGS:

My game_configs file conflicted when I ran this update, since there are new
lines is right next to lines I had changed. Beware of conflicts when running
this update on a live EmpireMUD; contact me if you don't know how to resolve a
conflict.


SOCIALS:

This patch moves socials to in-game editors. If you had any custom socials,
you may need to add them in the new social editor. Or, you can look at the file
format for the new socials in lib/world/soc/ and add them there manually.


STEP BY STEP INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Shut down your EmpireMUD using "shutdown die".

2. Create a backup of your MUD.

3. Update your code to 2.0b5 using git, or by creating a patch on the GitHub
site. (Usually you should "git stash", "git pull", then "git stash pop").

4. You will need to re-create your Makefile by running the ./configure script
again.

   NOTE: If you made changes to the Makefile yourself, running configure again
   will lose your changes. Instead of running configure again, you can copy
   the information for new files from Makefile.in. You'll also need to do this
   for the src/util/ directory, which has its own Makefile.

5. Compile your MUD using "make all".

6. Start up your MUD.


For help with this update, contact us:

  Email: paul@empiremud.net
  Forums: http://empiremud.net/forums/
