AQWorlds
Artix Krieger
| Friday, February 14, 2025
We are on the final attack to get to the next AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity tech demo. May the fates favor us all...
This screenshot above was taken in Ruffle, running the original game in full screen mode.
"RUFFLE" some feathers!
This week starts off with a big win. Remember how I talked about the Ruffle player at the end of last week's progress post? It is a new Flash emulator that will allow us to put the original AQWorlds on the web, or put it (and our other Flash games) up on Steam. Well, Warlic already got it working. He created a new version of the launcher that has an option to use the Ruffle version of the game. We will have it up for you and the other players to test as soon as possible. There will definitely be bugs. During my short test today, I think I uncovered one pretty nasty memory leak. But overall, it ran great.
The team crushed it last week. We made a lot of progress on the Monster AI, Cutscene System, Combat Stats, and the Bludrut rebuild. This week's goal is to finish those tasks and get our next (and most important) Tech Demo up for you to play. The music and sound FX functionality for cutscenes will be cutting it close. But we want to have a version that at least uses game-engine-level sounds working for this test.
After today's team meetings, I joined Clarion in a stream for Massively Overpowered's 10 year anniversary. It was hosted by MJ. Than you if you showed up. They have been there since AdventureQuest 3D's inception and introduced the game to hundreds of thousands of players. So we did 10 giveaways with them. It was fun, but also complete chaos XD. Twitch was not playing nice with PMs and the methods we had for choosing winners had unexpected issues. But everyone was a good sport about it. Next time I think we will pre-generate codes that we can just give out.
See you tomorrow for the next update post.
I got sick. (Seems everyone is this month.) Except the team. They are fine and were working. Here is a recap of Tuesday & Wednesday. Initiate... DOUBLE POST MODE!
Ruffle test results!? We tested the Ruffle version of the game that Warlic assembled. I figured he would just send a stand alone EXE, but he actually added an option to an experimental version of the Artix Games Launcher. But... we ran into a memory leak problem.
"Show-stoppping uh-oh."
Ruffle could be HUGE for the existing version of AQWorlds. But it has a Niagara Falls sized memory leak in Ruffle. In our heart-breaking tests, we were able to fill up 3 to 6 Gigabytes of RAM and crash the game by walking back and forth between two maps. Figuring out exactly what was wrong was waaay over my head. So I did exactly what you would have. I went talked to the devs who create Ruffle! I gotta say-- WOW, what a great community of extremely smart and passionatedevs with a love for Flash games.
It turns out that AQWorlds (and likely ALL Artix Entertainment video games) use a few weird techniques to cache & kill content. (Alliteration intentional.) Because of this, Ruffle loads things into memory, but is never told to get rid of them them. So you get a never ending build up of orphaned game objects in memory. Example: If you walk into Yulgar's multiple times, you would have multiple copies of Yulgar's stuck in your memory. Worst yet, those game objects continue running. Which means... every other player you encounter is still in memory, blinking and doing their animation math. Not to mention all the monsters, maps, and other items stuck in memory doing the same thing. That is just what is happening inside your computer. From Ruffle's point of view, it is only the challenge of adding/changing this unexpected way of unloading game content. If it is solvable, this would be a massive win for all of Artix Entertainment's Flash Games. I think Ruffle is amazing and may be the best thing (other than the launch of Infinity) to happen to us in 2025.
Meanwhile... back on AQWorlds Infinity
Reens has been making her way through the remastered floors, adding Cylises' new text and also merging redundant quests into one to make a smoother experience. Ghost is working on the cutscenes. Spider is working on the Monster AI system which Immortal Joe will use for the boss fights.
With a big snowstorm incoming, it is only fitting that work on the frozen floor of Bludrut Keep is getting attention. Right down to J6's redesign of the skull to get a Jack Nicholson vibe from the end of "The Shining".
Since it is Throwback Thursday.... thought you might enjoy this.
This was the original AdventureQuest website from 2002. My memory is foggy (Maybe I have a memory leak too.), but based on that news blurb this was the first version of the game to go on Battleon.com. Before that it was in a sub directory of my old personal website. Those were fun and weird times. Players would meet on IRC ("Internet Relay Chat"... which was that era's much simpler Discord) on Tuesday nights for "Launch Night!". This was the night that I added the new monsters, weapons, and maps to the game. 100+ people was considered a huge turn out. We would test each monster and item one-by-one. A big release back then might be a new monster and 2 swords. My art was not... exactly... great :D To put this in perspective, there have been some recent AQWorlds releases with 100+ new high quality items in a single week, plus new maps, cutscenes, and story. We have come so far.
Today is just getting started... and now that I am well enough to focus on my computer going to double-speed and make up for the time lost yesterday. Will do little update at the end of the day.
Thursday Night: I am excited to show this to you-- but be warned, this is a very "dev looking" GIF. The monster skill has not been animated yet. But, in that animated GIF above, you can see the Rock Spirit telegraphing the area that it is about to hit with its next attack. This is fantastic. Tomorrow I am meeting with Nulgath and J6 to figure out how to get Spider, Immortal Joe, and the crew animations for these boss monster special attacks.
"Ruffle has ridges!"
I love the Ruffle Community. Proud to announce that Artix Entertainment has officially become a supporter of Ruffle. The Ruffle devs I spoke to said that the memory leak issue was a "...still gonna be a nontrivial fix, it'll require rethinking some core data structures we use". But it is on the radar now, and if they are able to fix it, it will be a game changer for the future of all our previous Flash games.
Back to Infinity.
Today started with a "how to" design meeting on the Boss's special attacks. Nulgath is animating the attacks while Ghost gets some of the UI stuff. Our goal is to get the Earth Spirit boss done by the end of Monday. Everyone else on the team is finishing up the tasks we covered at the start of this week.
Happy Valentines Day!
Across the Artix Entertainment games network, it is Hero's Heart Day. Be sure to check out all of the new game releases as they go live.
AQWorlds 
DragonFable 
EpicDuel 
AQ2D 
