AQWorlds
Artix Krieger
| Tuesday, November 28, 2023
"Everything you wanted to know about AdventureQuest Worlds Infinity but were NOT afraid to ask"
Greetings and salutations,
We have been seeing your questions about the new version of AdventureQuest Worlds we are building and wanted to get you some answers. Not just any answers, but the most accurate, transparent, stone solid answers in the universe. Except for questions which do not have those sorts of answers... in which case we will inject an unhealthy dosage of comedy, or maybe deer-in-headlight stares O_O …or possibly distracting Tik Tok dance memes. Here we go...
Battle on!
Artix
Glad you asked, here is a video….
Two words: Flash die-ded-kerspload-not-worky-gonzo*....
* This word gives a killer Scabble score.
Yes, we still update the existing version of AdventureQuest Worlds weekly! ...along with many of our other games which you can download and play using the tiny, lightweight, and safe Artix Games Launcher. But the launcher not work on phones. So we are rebuilding the game using modern technology…. Specifically, Unity.
No.….. we tried. O_O
But for fun, I invite you to ask Chat GPT “How can I convert AdventureQuest Worlds from Flash to Unity?” The answer is surprisingly accurate.
The current version of AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity runs on Steam (PC/Mac), Phones, and Tablets. It is only accessible by developers and testers, but allows you to log in with your existing character. The current build of the game features exploration, chat, early-combat, quests, loot, and basic friends/guild functionality. We have been spending the majority of our time improving and finalizing how we convert content from the existing game.
Is this just the current AQWorlds but on mobile devices, or a new / better game?
Why not both? The guiding philosophy of this project is “Keep it the same, but wherever we can, make it better.”
AdventureQuest Worlds Infinity will be a cross-platform allowing you to login from anywhere. It has superior game play controls including keyboard WASD movement and joysticks/gamepad support. This version of the game is GPU accelerated which runs at 60+ frames per second on any machine that is not an obsolete toaster. It also features scrolling maps, particle effects, new types of class skills, better map colliders, a consistent interface, a new dialog cutscene system, remastered quests, a unified music & soundFX system, and a much faster server.
AQWorlds Infinity has a dedicated team of programmers (and Zhoom) who are helped by the content team that currently builds AQWorld’s weekly releases.
Programmers
Content team
What? Resigning because she was pregnant? No. That post floating around social media was fake. Be careful not believe random things people post on the internet. Always check the actual design notes to see if it is true. XD
I hear you. It has taken faaaaaar longer than anticipated. But it is happening. In previous posts we talked about how much easier it would have been to just build a new AQW from scratch. But we felt it was extremely important to let you and other players login with all of your items. Finding a way to convert 50,000+ items, and thousands of maps, monsters, and cutscenes has proven to be an extremely difficult challenge. But the herculean amount of effort going into developing the tools and methods we are using to convert the assets is worth it. Because once we accomplish this, we will be able to use these exact same techniques to convert our other beloved games.
False. We have not taken any dedicated AdventureQuest 3D devs to work on this. It is important to note that Zhoom’s role is to oversee all of the games code and worth with each of the code teams. At the time of this post, AQ3D is currently completing Guild Phase 2 and Player Housing.
No. The games will be updated in parallel. AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity content creation expects content to be created in Flash / Adobe Animate and then converted. So the existing pipeline of weekly releases is important to the future of both games. We have no plans to ever cancel or take down the existing version of the game.
(Alina + Captain Rhubarb note: We have no "shut-down" date planned. We intend to keep AdventureQuets Worlds: Flash online for years to come... as long as we are able to maintain the servers and game in a safe, sustainable, stable way, you'll be able to log in and battle on.)
Yes. While most items will transfer between the games… Some items will have features that will only work in the new version of the game.
Not exactly. No. The weapons created in Flash use vector art. Which is a fancy way of saying it is “line art”. Line art can be scaled to any size and always looks good. Flash was built for animating vector art. It made it possible to place complex animations… inside of complex animations… inside of…. You get the idea. The new version of the game uses your GPU which requires bitmap art. That is, art made out of pixels. So we are converting all of the vector art to bitmap art. The biggest benefit is the new game will be blazingly fast. The downside is that the art is intended to look good at a very specific size. Sorta like zooming in and out of a photo, it will get blurry if it is too big. Furthermore, converting the complex animations must be done manually by hand. Some special effects of the weapons will likely be upgraded to use particle effects. Due to the sheer volume of weapons,armors and items with custom animation. We will need to be creative on how we prioritize the most common and the most special items to be converted.
Most likely. We have thrown 3 successful Kickstarters in the past. Each over-delivered to the backers who supported it by adding on surprise bonuses. One of the most impressive and well-received achievements for the AdventureQuest 3D Kickstarter backers was how quickly they were able to join in the Alpha Testing on Steam. This is something we adamantly wish to repeat. And that means the core game must be 100% functional and battle ready before we launch the Kickstarter. This is not just being responsible… It is a sign that the team is truly committed to this game project’s long term future.
In the spirit of extreme transparency, the original plan was to launch the Kickstarter on Sept 1st and then do the first Tech Demo for backers in October. We were in a furious frenzy of development to hit that date, but early last month, we made the call to push that back. We still have important things which must be finished first.
That being said, we are still in "do or die" mode to launch the AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity Tech-Demo / Alpha-Test by the end of the year.
Sure!
Yes, Just yes!
Both no, and yes! Infinity will allow you to see your level from the web version of the game. It may be used to give you access to things like your existing items. However AQWorlds: Infinity has a separate level system, and all players will start the new game at level one. This will allow you to experience the remastered storyline and to unlock the achievements. Which is good as some achievements will only be possible to unlock this way.
No. The level caps will be different in each game. AQWorlds: Infinity’s level cap will rise as new areas are released.
You betcha! (Any specific ones you want to see?)
Also yes!
No, You can only log in to one place at a time. (And you thought Netflix lockdown was harsh.) Can I switch between devices?
We hope so. The goal is that you can be playing on your computer, then for a bathroom break you can switch to your phone. This is how it works with AdventureQuest 3D.
Yes. You will be able to use AdventureCoins in Infinity.
Pricing? No. The items are shared between the two games, if pricing was different you could buy and sell items to become the richest goldenaire in the world.
Power? Yes. Power will be different in each version of the game for balancing and progression.
Tricky one to answer! AQWorlds has accumulated so much music over the past decade and a half that it would be a shame not to use it. While we can remaster some of the tracks the source of the files have been lost. Sure, Flash heavily compressed those songs, so just re-releasing them at their normal bitrate will be an improvement. But anything short of re-recording the songs is not going to be the explosion of audible joy your question is asking for. Fortunately, we always have a lot of new music in development. The most accurate answer is…. It will be a mix of awesome new music and slightly better sound versions of the old music.
Great Question! When we rebuild these sagas we want to make them better, faster, and more fun. We will start with the base art and add little touches wherever we can. Just like the leaves that now fall in the town of Battleon. We will keep the essence of the area and its story… but remove a lot of the filler and grind. See when we originally built these sagas we did them as part of our weekly release schedule. Now that we can look back and see the full picture, we are remastering it to be as it was meant to be experienced. When we rebuilt the Dragon’s Lair for the PAX: East convention, it was strikingly obvious to us that we needed to make the quests simpler, faster, and more streamlined. Also, we saw where adding additional cutscenes would make the story better. Remastering the sagas is vital for making the game more interesting and fun for those of you who have already beaten the main storyline, and for brand new players experiencing it for the first time. .
That is the ultimate goal! We have a lot of wood to chop before we get there.
Ohh… This is an interesting idea, we have not talked about this yet. Please feel free to suggest your ideas to Alina and the team about this.
ALL of the content? Hahaha…. Hahaha…. Haha… hah…. no.
(While I wrote that response for comedic effect, there really is an overwhelming amount of hand-made custom content to convert. It would take years just to convert everything– and that is forgetting amount that fact that we are adding new areas, quests, monsters, and items every week. Also, it is impossible for some content to be converted exactly as is…. Which includes things like mini games and other oddities that Flash let us get away with in the web game. So, we will prioritize the most important content until we “catch up” and then we will try to match releases while slowly adding the other content. Not every zone and storyline will be ported over. That means some items will be obtained via a different method in AQ Infinity.”)
A little as possible. Ideally, no lore will be dramatically edited. We want to fix continuity issues and tie up any loose ends to make sure everything makes sense. Then we want to keep expanding the game world to unlock new adventures.
Of course there will be. But we are still working on finishing base combat and classes right now.
Sure. What could possibly go wrong? O_O
A modern Android or Apple phone or tablet… and any PC that is not a toaster. We added the ability to turn off particles and things that might slow down older devices. I am sure I will be eating my words here after the content team realizes all of the stuff they can suddenly do with particle systems. One team member replaced my sunshine “god rays” with a particle system that generated 50 screen-size overlapping transparent PNGs. It looked really nice and did not slow our machines down… but a toaster phone would probably go nova with that.
Most accurate answer: We are always getting new team members. We will need a large amount of temporary contract artists to help with the mass converting items. Once the games are roughly doing the same releases, we will adjust the team accordingly.
This is probably the most requested feature. While it is easy to actually implement, it comes with a whole bunch of complex problems. So, the bottom line is… we are interested in doing it, but it will take some serious thought and a revamp of our account security before we do it. Before then, we need to focus on the core game mechanics.
Yes– but many are not implemented yet. Spider is on the Infinity coding team and is actively working on the new combat system.
Combat should be more fun. Classes and skills should be comfortably the same, but improved wherever possible. The new combat system Spider is working on will allow the combat encounter designers to build new types of challenges which were not possible in the original version of the game. This is a pretty broad answer– we should do an interview with Spider on the combat system in a future post.
You got me. I am not sure. As we start remastering the sagas, we may redo the maps slightly to make more sense. We would like for it to be easier for players to navigate the world and find adventures for their level.
Early access and special items.
Undecided. If we added trading, this or something like it would definitely be required in order to do so.
No. If Infinity is reset during the tech demo or alpha, you will keep your AQWorlds progress.
We are about to find out on the 1st Lord of Chaos. Check back soon to find out.
Yes. Like you even has to ask :D
Hard. One of the hardest things we have ever done. Not a single part of it has been straight forward or easy. But it is happening. I am really proud of the team. Since we went to the PAX: East convention and showed off the game working across computers, tablets, and phones we have been making constant progress. It is like that old coding joke…. “100 bugs in the code on the wall…. 100 bugs in the code… take one down, pass it around… 136 bugs in the code.” But then we have these breakthroughs. And when something works, like what happened with the maps project the other week– suddenly lots of things start working. In my heart I know what we are really doing here. We are not just solving the problems that will convert AQWorlds… but solving the problems that will let us convert all of our previous games. Sure, you have heard me say this before. But that is the difference between someone who dabbles in something and then walks away to the next shiny thing and someone who is obsessively committed to achieving it. When this goes live, very few people will know how much actually went into it. Except maybe you… the type of person who reads something like this all the way to the end. Thank you for being here, I really appreciate that you are a part of this.
Battle on!
Artix
P.S. This Q&A was huuuuuuge. So I took a few fresh screenshots and then also used some older ones to spruce up this post.
