Patch Notes 25.38 - Movement/Travel, Character Generation, Tropes
Hey Friends,
In this update, we’re bringing some big quality-of-life improvements to Franz’s tools. We’ve had long-standing reports about duplicate/common character names, clunky movement, and of course, the dreaded wooden birds. This Franz 2.0.3 update focuses on addressing those issues.
Movement and Travel
We know movement and travel have been weak spots for some time, so we’ve given them a full rewrite. Here’s what you can expect:
More accurate movement/travel in all dimensions: within POIs, between POIs, and around areas.
Previously, Franz only triggered a movement/travel update based on what you said (e.g., “I move to X”). Now, he also uses these tools proactively based on his own narration. This means NPCs feel more alive—for example, if an NPC said they would meet you at the shipyard, they’ll actually show up.
More natural scene descriptions when traveling to new locations.
Movement and Travel Tips
Traveling
Always use @mentions when possible, they will increase the accuracy of your travel.
To start traveling towards another POI, say something like “I make my way over to Harold’s Shop”. Franz will move you towards the POI but not all the way there
To instant travel, phrase it like “I spend hours traveling and finally arrive at Harold’s shop”
Traveling through areas: this works best with direction + distance phrases, “I travel 2 hours east”. If you mention specific areas by name, Franz will target to the center of the area or the closest point on the area’s perimeter.
Moving within a POI
Right now Franz can only see the map size + character positions. Use phrases like “I walk over to Tennel” or “I walk 10 feet to the right” for accurate movement. In the future, we’ll provide POI map annotations to make POI movement more accurate.
Character Generation
This one is way overdue. Thanks for your patience! Many of you have run into NPCs with repeated names (multiple Elaras, Grimgolds, etc.). We’ve completely rewritten the character generation pipeline with a new name-selection system. Characters that Franz generates should now always have unique names that are fitting for your world.
Franz will now also generate spells selected from their class. If the class is a spell caster, spells for that class will be randomly learned and prepared for the character on generation.
Franz can now also select a faction for generated characters if it makes sense for them to be part of a world faction.
Tropes
We’ve added wooden birds and the scent of ozone to our trope reduction system. If there are other tropes you’d like us to tone down, please post feedback with “trope reduction” in the title. If we see lots of reports for the same trope, we’ll prioritize reducing it.
Other
Fixed an issue where the back button was not present within the campaign quest book editor.
What’s Next:
We’ve been hearing reports about memory feeling worse, and also some feedback that the plan is causing problems. With Franz 2.0 and reading lore, we had to get creative with context management and we may have overcorrected a bit. We’re going to be doing a few things to help here in the next update:
Increasing the amount of chat history Franz can see
Adding in a NPC specific memory / planning step
Tuning the research agent and reducing duplicate blocks being created