Happy New Year adventurers! Patch 1.6.0 is now live and includes a major update to the game’s audio system, along with a wide range of fixes and quality-of-life improvements. The original Miles Sound System has been replaced with OpenAL Soft, bringing improved audio support and better long-term maintainability. Alongside this, the patch delivers gameplay fixes, item and world updates, client improvements, and a large set of behind-the-scenes changes.
As always, thank you for continuing to play Meridian and for being part of the community. If you run into any issues, please report them using the in-game bug report feature.
Gameplay Changes
Fixed issues in the logoff penalty calculation that allowed for significant losses to occur in some scenarios.
Added educational messages to prompt players to change rooms when hitting per-room improvement caps.
Added sound effects to distill, illusionary form, and morph when successfully cast.
Fixed an issue with Eavesdrop that would cause the spell to fail in some scenarios.
Item Changes
Added new artwork for the Basic Lute and True Lute, helping differentiate these from their counterparts.
Robes can now be worn with pants!
Fixed formatting of the herald shield description.
Updated item description formatting to help players quickly differentiate an item’s base description, its unique attributes, and its durability.
World Changes
The Ice Creature received significant revisions and now includes a spear-throwing variation. The Ice Creature remains event-only for the time being.
Added previously unused dialog lines to Pacal that now help explain why he may not accept certain items.
Fixed an issue keeping some guild war newsglobe items from loading.
Fixed an issue with object persistence after entering a room, which should address players logging back in to find themselves within walls.
Cows now go mooooo.
Client Changes
The original Miles Sound System audio engine has been replaced with OpenAL Soft. The game now supports 3D audio, HRTF support, a number of effects to explore, and can be distributed with the codebase, meaning our developers can develop using the same audio engine as the live servers. For HRTF, see the section below.
Building on the recent addition of item rarities, an option to display a small visual indicator on inventory items with rarity grades has been added, making rare items in your inventory visible at a glance.
Fixed an issue where the Who list did not reflect real-time changes to a player’s murderer or outlaw status.
The game window’s decorative corner caps now display as intended in all modes.
Fixed an issue with object flickering in software rendering, resulting in improved lighting in many areas of the game.
Fixed some bugs related to map annotations.
The middle and right mouse buttons will no longer trigger resizing of the text area.
Added clarifying instructional text to the account creation dialog.
For our few players using Wine on Linux, a fix was made that is believed to address rendering issues with the stats and spells lists.
Administration & Development
Following the move from Miles Sound System to OpenAL Soft noted above, open source contributors can now build and develop the client using the same audio engine as production. This was not previously possible due to licensing restrictions and removes a long-standing barrier for external contributors. Additionally, the game’s MP3 and WAV assets have been converted to OGG Vorbis, resulting in a smaller client and removing reliance on the proprietary MP3 format.
This update includes a large set of behind-the-scenes fixes and cleanup. We addressed multiple server errors and crash conditions, improved memory safety, and removed a number of obsolete or unused code paths. Build and tooling updates were made to modernize the codebase and improve cross-platform support, making the client and server more stable and easier to maintain going forward.
Added initial webhook integration for server events. Currently supports death message notifications. This feature is under development and not intended for production use.
HRTF Support
HRTF (Head-Related Transfer Function) enables true 3D positional audio for players using headphones. It is currently disabled by default and must be enabled manually. To do so, create a file named `alsoft.ini` in your game directory, add the line `hrtf = true`, then restart the game.
Credit for this patch goes to contributors: Toko, Si, CyberBill, neiltaco, Gar, davidjonathansheffield, and DavidKlaw.
Have feedback? Come join the community Discord and let us know: https://discord.gg/meridian59
