Salutations, mortals. Sorry, I am late. A kitten snagged on my computer and I had to replace it. So I was not able to write until now. So anyway, we have Jagex’s new addition of the game engine, calling it, RuneTek 5. I’ll be honest, before the Developers’ Diary, I have not heard of RuneTek at all. But anyway, we have quite a few great and eye boggling new additions to RuneScape ’09 – Standard Definition. There is also some stuff for the HD people.

Standard Detail

Resizable Screen – I am sure those of you that can’t use High Definition were anticipating this most out of this update. And when I actually looked at the update, I thought it was pretty good. Ever since HD came out, I shunned the standard definition because it looked boxy. However, with the resizable/full-screen mode, it looks close to what it used to be, except it is superior.

Rings of Visibility – Do you remember how at times we thought that the stuff we were fishing in was solid looking mass? Well at least I did. And when I compared the water to the rest of the graphics, I felt like it was a poor job! Until now, I realized it was just because Jagex was unable to do anything about it with the previous game engine. However, we finally have that addition of underwater visibility.

A Foggy, Choppy Day – Remember back in the old times when… Oh wait, yeah. It wasn’t so long ago! Remember taking a decent looking picture took a very high altitude angle to do so. Well, that’s because of the sky. We now have distance fogging to “clear” that up. The sky may not be that pretty either way, but having a choppy feeling for a sky is absurd. Just as well with the ground blending. Some places, you could tell exactly what the square tile consisted of.

High Definition

Cartographers Nightmare – Yes! That map finally looks slightly decent! Yes? No? Well to my opinion, it is looks fabulous. Some times it hurts my eyes, but anywhere I go hurts them. The water could use some less shading, and the dots could have been revamped, but either way it was a fantastic addition to the engine. However, there are some set backs as there was a very big loss to the Content Crew. I would say more about this, however the “government “ has kept me from saying anything that hasn’t already been said. 🙂

Other Things

Grand Exchange Mayhem – I am sure all of those that have used the Grand Exchange have encountered an annoying system flaw in where you zoom away from the teller even when clicking on the main window. The Jagex team was so kind to fix this up for us. 😀
Cursority – Did you just download a cursor specifically used for RuneScape? Well, I’m sorry to say that it is useless. Jagex has introduced RuneCursor 1.0 and has updated it to version 1.0.1 in the update of Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf. For the most part, I liked this addition. It brings more of an indulging feel to the game. However, the problem is that my default cursor returns anytime I click on something. This might be fixed later on.

Worlding – Well, I honestly was confounded with the changes to the World Select interface. And to be honest, I never really figured out what was changed. Yeah, I notice that the RS flag that was added means there is a theme to that world. However, the ping column confuses me. I have tried several things, but every single world, including my favorites, said N/A. So if you ever understand this, please comment below once you finish reading this!

So to sum up, I really loved this update. I can’t think of anything that was too awful. I really appreciate all the…50,000 lines that were changed or added. Wow, this article is only written to have 94 lines in the application, XypeWriter ’09. Even with several people on the team, that must of required months to achieve. Not to mention that it is in code. Congratulations, Jagex. You have received a 4.14159263/5 on this update.