AQWorld Mobile: Weekly Wednesday Update #3 on Adventure Quest 2D

"Let the Update-pocolypse begin!"

Greetings and salutations friend! Today's AdventureQuest Worlds: Mobile meeting just ended. Writing to bring you the latest news. Also, let us delve into the world of sleep-deprived midnight projects, music, and... our 20th Year Anniversary Event!

The Magic of Sleep Deprivation

Is it just me...or does not getting quite enough sleep bring out your best creativity too? Since Saturday I returned to that "up till 3am" work schedule that I did while working on Dungeons & DoomKnights. I sorta love it. At this point my week is split between projects. I work 50% on AdventureQuest 3D, 50% on AdventureQuest Worlds: Mobile, and 50% on all of the other things we have going on. Clearly did not put any stat points into math.

So we are a Record Label Now?

Talking about Dungeons & DoomKnights... we are releasing two full albums. They will be available on Apple Music, Amazon, Spotify, and wherever music streams. (Kickstarter backers will be receiving both fulls album via BackerKit.)

Have Spotify? You can pre-save Dungeons & DoomKnights (Metal video Game Soundtrack) here.

Thinking about our 20th Anniversary

This is a pretty big year for our community. Artix Entertainment is going to ding in level 20! A major achievement. The past week I have been on the phone with former special guests and brain storming about the sort of thing we would like to do in our birthday month of October. (Mogloween has always sorta been our birthday month.) It may seem far away, but anything that big needs to be planned and started far in advance.

AdventureQuest 2D Worlds Progress Update

"You can learn a lot from video games. For example, when you are going the right way.... the monsters get bigger and tougher."

Here is your weekly mega list....

Walking Improvements
Warlic re-coded how players and monsters transmit their position. This will keep characters in better sync on the screen. It is also going to help with the upcoming keyboard, joystick, and screen-pad support.
Blockers
When you walk around and explore, you cannot walk through walls, giant stones, or solid things. Because our backgrounds are normally a flat image, the game does not really know what part of the screen is solid and which parts are not. Introducing... Blockers! Blockers stop you from walking places that you should not go. Warlic finished his fixes on our new blockers which are waaaaaaay more percise than their were in the original version of the game.
Head Size in Portriat
"Hey, you got a big head!" the portrait scaling has been fixed so your head will always be the same size. Why? Most people might not even notice that your character changes size on different screens. In some screens you are suuuuper tiny. On some you are ultra big. The scaling was effecting the portrait.
Targeting Other Players
You can now target other players. Progress! You cannot un-target them though. X_X Hey, maybe next week!
The Wonder-Twins Map Join Bug
There is a known bug where if two people join the map at the exact same time their positions get wonky.
New Animation Event Setup
We had been relying on devs to manually add keyframes like we did in Flash. But we are going to change some things to happen automatically which will "whoopsie-proof" monsters and player animations.
Self-Cast
Casting heals and buffs on yourself no longer starts combat. (On a scale of 1 to 10.... how weird is it reading about fixes for bugs that you have never actually seen... but can probably imaging in your head.)
Dead Target Switch Fix (Not really a bug, but it was annoying)
When you are fighting a monster and it is slain.... the moment you press an attack skill, it would automatically choose the next closest monster and start attacking that. This SOUNDS like how it is supposed to work. But it is not. Because the MOMENT your target dies... before you even realize it is dead... your next button press unexpectedly flings you to another target. So Yorumi added a half-second pause before you stopped targeting the dead monster which fixes it. Feels so much better.
BASE CLASS SKILLS WORKING: Warrior, Healer, Mage, Rogue
All skills should be "functionally" working now. I mean, some of them one-shot kill. But they work! We are starting testing on these now.
Nope... Prepared Strike is borked
I spoke to soon.
Dialog Cutscenes & APOPS
The new data structure is in! Buttons can now have lots and lots of detailed requirements. "You must be a Paladin, be level 15+, have completed Quest #456, and like Chocolate ice cream to press this button.
New Dialog Editor Improvements
Over the next week we will be adding our 1st ever dialog cutscenes in AQWorlds:Mobile! This will be using the new dialog editor. In the past we had to build each one manually in flash. But the new editor will make is incredibly fast. Also, this editor is like 9999 X better than how we do it in AdventureQuest 3D. (good Job Tunik!)
Database Admin Tools
Captain Rhubarb made huge progress on the games new admin pages. It is not pretty, but it is the slickest and most advanced way of editing things we have ever had. These sorta of things are an on-going and never ending process. But we will be using the tools this week to create the dialogs and NPC popups for the Dragon's Lair.
Mobile Interface Re-design
We had reaaaaallly tried to keep a single interface between the Mobile and PC versions. But it is clear that we need two distinctly different user interfaces. Mostly, we need to move the chat over on mobile to make room for the joystick.
Character Walk Around Issues
We discovered two annoying, but easy to fix bugs during today's meeting. Some bonus things we were adding to the maps were blocking clicks. this got in the way of you walking. Second, we kept getting stuck while walking around the narrow paths of the Dragon's Lair. We had THOUGHT the character was using his shadow to collide with those blockers we talked about earlier. But this was not true. 100% sure because when we started changing the shadow size nothing was happening. At some point we had switched to a ray cast (fancy term for an invisible line that looks ahead to see if a blocker is there). So we adjusted the ray caster and WOW it feels so much better walking around the game now. At this point I can boldly proclaim that the walk around experience in AQW:Mobile is officially better than the original game. Hoping to be able to say this about other aspects of the game soon too.

Big Goals for Next Week

While we have a crazy huge task list... the BIG 3 items for next week include:

Our 1st Dialog Cutscenes
100% database created NPC popups (APOPs)
Combat improvements

Oh, question!

This October will be the 20th year anniversary of our Artix Entertainment video game community. We want to have some fun! Any special guests you think we should reach out to for the event?