What's new in Mafia 4.0?

Mafia 4.0 is here and with many improvements over 3.0 . Here's a list.

Mafia Points system upgrades

• Changed the way in which points are awarded: You can now receive (or lose) a different amount of points for losing or winning either Mafia or RPS. Operators can tweak these values in real time. You can check the current values using !rules misc. Generally speaking, you can win more points from Mafia than from RPS. This feature is also a preparation for something that is planned for 4.1 (don't ask).

• In RPS, you can now buy Landmines (if you are a registered user). Whenever the points in a round of RPS are tied, if a player plants a landmine from his stock on another player, the landmine will blow up on him instead of on a random player. If multiple players plant landmines, the player with the most landmines planted on him loses the round.

• Increased the costs of rocks, papers and scissors; However, since you now earn points faster, you will still be able to buy them faster than before, provided you play Mafia games.

New Mafia gameplay features

Detective redesign and the Deputy cumulative role

The Detective is now a loner; There can only be one per game, making it a higher risk to go public, and when he dies his role is no longer revealed. The Detective retains all his previous powers, and gained a new one: The power to appoint Deputies (!appoint). This replaces his nightly investigation. Anyone can be appointed as a Deputy (and there can be any amount of Deputies).

The Deputy gains access to the Police channel, where he will be able to communicate privately with the Detective and see the results of investigations and Werewolf/Vampire (see below) attack reports. The Deputy cannot, however, start an investigation or arrest, or appoint another Deputy. The Detective can use a Deputy as his public face to protect himself from being targeted. The Deputy can lead a bomb squad to defuse a bomb planted by a Terrorist.

Deputies retain their status even after the Detective dies. However, if the Detective finds that he appointed a criminal as Deputy, he can investigate or arrest him in order to get rid of him. Arrest will always remove a Deputy who is not innocent. Investigation will only remove a Deputy who is an actual Mafioso, Camorrista or Werewolf/Vampire; It will reveal other criminal roles (except for Village Idiot, as always) but it won't remove the Deputy role from them.

The Vampire role

The Vampire is a new ally to the Werewolf; The Werewolves faction was renamed to Monsters faction and can now contain Vampires, Werewolves or both.

Like the Werewolf, the Vampire attacks people during the night. It attempts to suck their blood (!suck), and this may result in their death, or conversion into a new Vampire. Also like the Werewolf, the Vampire can be destroyed by a Priest's exorcism (and the Priest is immune to being converted) or killed normally. However, the Vampire does not growl by accident (or on purpose), it never attacks the wrong victim, and, possessing much better self-control, it does not need to feed every day if it does not wish to do so. Likewise, when two Vampires meet each other, they do not attack each other.

The Vampire also has its weaknesses, though. By default, its bites are supposed to be less effective and deadly than the Werewolf's. Unlike the Werewolf, the Vampire can be in the Giant Clam and is not immune to AIDS - In fact, it is extremely vulnerable to it: A Vampire's bites will always transmit AIDS to the new Vampire. The Vampire can also be disabled by a Prostitute; The Prostitute will take the place of the Vampire's chosen victim and be either converted or killed. If the Prostitute had AIDS, the Vampire also catches AIDS at this point. If a player with another main role and AIDS is converted to a Vampire, he becomes a Vampire with AIDS.

Vampires and Wolves may nominally be on the same side, but they hate each other's guts. Whenever a Vampire and Werewolf attack each other, at least one of them (the weakest) will die. The strongest is the one who fed more recently; However, if only one of them attacked the other, he'll have a handicap (the effect of surprise). If the Werewolf and Vampire are equally matched, they kill each other.

The Paparazzo cumulative role

The Paparazzo works for The Tabloid, a newspaper that specializes in getting inconvenient truths out to the wrong sorts of people. Any player can be the Paparazzo. Armed with his 3G cellphone, this freelancer has the ability to trespass into private chat channels (!trespass) and obtain lines of conversation from the players in them (though not the names of those who are talking). While the Paparazzo is trespassing, there is a risk that he will be noticed. If this happens, the channel master will notify its users that they were being spied, and the Paparazzo runs away.

During the day, the Paparazzo can also publish articles in The Tabloid (!publish). This results in the information being broadcast anonymously for all players to see.

Whenever one of the other players thinks he has figured out the identity of the Paparazzo, he can attempt to mug him (!guess). If he was right, he'll become the new Paparazzo (the change of Paparazzo is announced to everyone). However, by default, each player has only one attempt to do this; If someone guessed wrong, or was already the Paparazzo in the past, he can't guess again.

The Necromancer's Zombie spell

Another one for the Necromancer's collection of sneak attacks, this skill (!zombie) can be used to bring a dead player temporarily back to life as a Zombie. If the spell is successful, the player is revived in the next morning. However, the player will not be able to use any of his skills, vote or even talk normally. The player can attempt to talk, but even if he succeeds, he can't control what he says, due to his corpse being in bad condition.

While the Zombie is alive, the Necromancer can control it by attempting to speak through it (with an effect similar to that of the player himself trying to speak), cast a second vote through the zombie (besides his own) or simply order the Zombie to die. If the Zombie survives until the voting stage, he automatically dies at that point.

Before the Zombie dies, he can be normally married, blessed (see below), shot, sent mail by the Mailman, killed by the Saiyan, etc. He cannot be killed by an exorcism; If he dies by normal means before the voting stage, the Necromancer will not be able to use him to double-vote, which is the main idea. If he is married as a Zombie, his death can trigger the grief chain-reaction of family deaths as normal.

The Priest's Blessing

Priests gained a new skill - The blessing (!bless). A blessing cast on a player protects him from evil effects - Conversion into Werewolf or Vampire, Possession and Confusion. Casting it on a Vampire, Werewolf or Zombie has no effect.

The blessing's duration is limited - it can either protect the Player against two attacks on the day it was cast (for example, possession and conversion to werewolf, or conversion by two different werewolves), or against a single attack in the following day. If the player is attacked at least once in the day it was invoked, the blessing will be gone before the next day. Two days later, the blessing is always gone, even if the player was not attacked (if the Priest is still alive at this point, he can bless the same player again).

For balance reasons, the Priest was also modified to begin the game all charged up on meditation and prayer, so he can now use his skills on day 1 (but he still has to meditate and pray after using them, as before).

The Oracle's punishment gradient

We have listened to your complaints and the Oracle was modified so the anger of the gods no longer represents a chance of dying whenever the divination skill is used. Instead, the Oracle will only die whenever the anger of the gods reaches 100%. However, as the gods' anger gets close to 100%, they will start to place curses on the Oracle. The possible curses are confusion (1 day), deafness (1 day), tie (1 day) or muteness (permanent) and the amount of anger necessary to trigger them can be checked using !rules MODE oracle as normal. Note that if the anger of the gods subsides and then goes above these thresholds again, the curses will be cast again. Also, whenever the anger of the gods jumps above several thresholds in one go, ALL the relevant curses will be cast by Patina.

The good thing is that if you keep the anger of the gods low, you will never die (or be cursed). Just keep in mind the small random factor of increment of the gods' anger, and that the Rite of AshkEnte immediately puts the anger at 100%.

The Nuclear Holocaust

Games now have a maximum duration in days, which depends on the mode being played and the amount of players who started the game (0.35 * players + modifier). This prevents games from taking way too long. In the day before the end, players will be warned that the government has decided to wipe out the crime in the city by destroying it. One day later, the city is blown to smithereens by large amounts of nuclear missiles. All the remaining players die at the same time, and the game ends in a draw.

Other new commands

• The /my command (ctcp POSSESSIVE) is a chat command that's similar to /me but appends 's to your nickname. For example,

/me likes ice cream - * Protected likes ice cream

/my stomach is growling - * Protected's stomach is growling

This command requires client-side support, available by default in the Flash Client (ask us how to add it to mIRC if you want, it's easy). Alternatively, you can use the server-side equivalent !me and !my .

• The !motd command brings up the Message Of The Day after logging in - You no longer need to reconnect in order to see changes.

• The !quitrequest command can be used in the morning during a Mafia game to request a graceful quit from other players in case you really need to leave. It's a good idea to explain why you have to leave prior to using the command. If the other players agree (by saying !ok during the following 30 seconds), you will be disconnected without suffering any bans or blocks whatsoever (but you will still have lost the game). Unregistered users and registered users who use this command too often will require a very large majority in order to successfully quit; Registered users who have not used this command for some time will require a smaller majority - 5% less players for each day they haven't used the command up to one week.

Staff support improvements

• Staff commands were reorganized and improved in a way that makes them easier to type, to log (to prevent moderator abuse) and to distribute permissions throughout access levels.

• A whois/whowas system was added that allows moderators and above to check the IP addresses of players who are connected or who were recently in Mafia, as well as their connection and disconnection times and dates. If you do not like the idea that our moderators can obtain your IP address, you will simply have to stop playing Mafia - But know that the operators of every online service you use (including IRC) and every website you visit have access to your IP address.

• The permanent ban system was improved so it records the nickname of the moderator who placed the ban (to prevent moderator abuse), as well as an optional reason field that will allow us to keep track of why someone was banned. Normal moderators can now ban by IP address/hostmask, as well as see the list of bans and remove bans from the list, features previously reserved to operators or higher. This, together with the previously listed feature, will allow moderators to ban players who broke a rule and then ran away, as well as remove the bans of players who only commited minor infractions after some time.

• Staff members can now look at the contents of the temporary bans, delayed bans and blocks lists to see who is blocked, for how long, etc. This will allow them to provide better support for players having trouble. They cannot manipulate the contents of these lists by either adding or removing entries.

Improved and more fair punishment systems

• The flood protection was redesigned, using a server side queue to process incoming messages. Only 1 message per half second is allowed - If you are sending faster than that, your messages will be queued instead of immediately triggering the flood protection, and be processed at the rate of 1 message per half second. The flood protection will only trigger if the queue is getting too full, meaning you are flooding consistently (currently 6 messages in the queue). So for example you can paste 5 lines in Mafia at the same time without being warned. The amount of warnings was also increased to 3. If you abuse this new, more relaxed system to spam or flood, the moderators will be obliged to warn and subsequently ban you.

• The block system was redesigned - No more 45 minutes blocks if you suicide or are disconnected by the anti-AFK system. Instead, the new block system blocks you for a number of games. Currently, it is set to block you for only one single game if you are disconnected by the anti-AFK or if you suicide. This is regardless of the length of the game. The caveat is that you must serve your punishment online, or in other words, your block will only be removed once you are connected for the duration of an entire game (regardless of that game's length).

• Timestamps were added to the contents of the delayed bans and block systems; If the punishments have not been served after two weeks, they are automatically purged.

New features and improvements for mafia mode design

• Modes now have priority numbers that will help break ties in the joining round votes.

• Modes now have redirect lines that can be used by the mode's designer to redirect the players to a different mode when there are too many or too few players to play the mode that won the joining round vote. This can also be used to design more flexible, multi-file modes.

• A minimum threshold for Mafioso was added, allowing mode designers to create Monsters vs Innocents modes. The game will only start if the innocents and at least one other faction are present, though.

• A Mafia victory conditions line was added, which allows the mode's designer to select one of four different types of victory conditions for the Mafia and Camorra - Classic (only mafioso majority), Anihilation (must kill everyone else), Standard (wins with the conditions of Classic or Anihilation; this is what you're used to) and Union (majority of the entire mafia faction).

• Maximum thresholds for all the roles were added (optional); The mode designer can now have a role disappear if there are more than a certain amount of players. This is necessary because we have too many roles these days, but we still want to put them all in our modes!

• Improved settings file format with better human readability (support for comments, blank lines), support for incomplete files (missing settings are obtained from standard) and persistent line sorting (not fucked up by the automatic save function).

• Improved loading function for message files allows for incomplete message files (missing lines are obtained from standard), reintroduces support for modes with different message sets.

Bug fixes and tweaks

• When a game fails to start because the amount of players is incorrect, you will now be told exactly which mode requires that amount of players, or in other words, which mode won the vote.

• The Lawyer wouldn't get Mafia Points when he won. This is now fixed.

• The Joining Round duration no longer depends on the previously played mode.

• The Joining Round votes are now counted in two stages - First by game type, and then by mode but only within the selected game type. In other words, if 3 people vote default, 4 vote rps and 3 vote fewcits, rps will no longer win; mafia wins against rps with 6-4 and then default is tied with fewcits, so the priority numbers (described in the above section) are used to break the tie; default wins the vote.

• A bug was fixed in the freemason general action vote counts that would sometimes assigned the target of an invitation to a seance (or the other way around) in case of a tied vote; This is problematic because one of those skills applies to dead players and the other to alive players.

• A memory leak was fixed in the eggdrop emulator's timer table. If you don't know what this means, don't worry about it. The important thing is that it's fixed ;)

Other stuff

• Mafia Client login moved to a different port, enabling client protocol messages during the login stage (this allows for better automated handling by mafia clients of the login stage).

• Updated !help with all the new stuff... Yes, it still is up to date, incredible as it may seem.

• The default mode was rewritten to make better use of the new features and have recently added roles at more balanced thresholds.