"Tag, you're IT!"

Today was crazy productive! Thank you to the team and testers who helped with every part of today. From testing the new armors, character screen, player inspect screen, loot inventory, and power gems.... to checking & recording boss fights, fixing cutscenes, and writing... to working on the code for combat, hacking, and movement. Not to mention the late night Project Omni Coding :D It has been 15 hours. I am... Zzzz..... Zzzz....... battle... off.... zzzz.....

Now that... is a BUG!

Tunik, Warlic, and I were working on the Character screen just now and Tunik yells, "AH! A Bug!" I said... in the UI? He said, "No! On my desk!" Live-action game bugs? Game dev is fought with peril. 

Art Sneak Peek

Sneak peak of Kickstarter Epic Hero (Chaos Alignment) art. Aranx did the concept and J# flashed it. 

Armors are now customizable and animatable!

I <3 Warlic & Zhoom. Today they rolled out one of the biggest & best structural changes to AQWorlds Infinity. The entire publishing process of armors was changed.... so that we can add custom animation, layers, and FX to any part of the player's armor. 

Apply Weapon Power

Woohooo! Tunik showed the improvements to the weapon upgrades (Gems). I love it. It feels very natural to get a drops and power up your items. Diogon & J6 are working on some art tweaks to pretty it up. Going to need your help testing this. #HopefullyNextWeek

Redeem Code

Baring any unexpected tech issues or weird app store rules, you will be able to redeem your codes straight inside of AQWorlds Infinity. Love Diogon's UI for it. Warlic & Captain Rhubarb are working on rigging it up so it works.  

Character Screen

Diogon made the character screen very close to the one you can turn on in AQWorlds. J6 finished "Flashing" the Chaos variant of the Infinity Hero armor today too. 

Kickstarter art

The Kickstarter is less than 3 weeks away. Spent a good bit of today working on graphics for the page. What do you think of showing the game art like this for the section headers? Keep in mind it will be on a white background. I love the AQW art style so much. 

Ms. Girl makes a surprise entrance!

Here is a cutscene of my character (Artix) & Galanoth. HEY! That is not my player character. Nothing is scarier than hopping on to discover that every cutscene in the game is broken. The character on the left is Ms. Girl (Infinity's version of Mr. Guy). She is the stand-in art for the player when we build cutscenes. If we are seeing her, that means the player is not loading correctly into the cutscenes. What happened? Recently, we moved all the player animations out of the game client and into the Maps & Characters project. Guess we forgot to tell the cutscenes to grab the character stuff from the new place. By the time you read this it has already be fixed. Whew. Way better than re-animating every cutscene O_O.

New Login "Character" Screen

How nice would it be to login to a screen dedicated to your character? (Like DragonFable) Currently, logging in to AQWorlds, takes you go straight to the server selection screen. It would be really helpful be able to see and manage your character before entering a server. So the team just added a character screen. (We would call it a character selection screen... but you currently only have one character. It COULD be used as a character selection screen in the future.) On this screen you can preview your character, enter codes, choose a server, and get any important messages about the game (like if the servers are offline while we release something new. We have a pretty bad UI for it currently. Diogon & Tunik are eyeball-deep working on the Item Power Ups and Character Creation screens. So this screen will get some love next. One of the nicest parts about this, is any player (including ones not able to access the next tech demo) will be able to login and see their character in Infinity. 

Just submitted the Kickstarter for approval...

Before you can launch a Kickstarter, it must be reviewed and approved. I gulped with a look of concern before pressing the "Submit for review" button today. As you may have read, we are doing something... unusual... crazy... and very, very "Artix Entertainment-y". I hope the absurdity of this brings back those feelings of doing crazy stuff together in good old days. Because Kickstarter instantly approved it.  

Long Live Adobe Animate!

Relieved to share with you that Adobe reversed course and did the right thing-- Adobe Animate is not going away. You can read the statement from Mike Chambers on Reddit where he discusses the details. As our favorite tool of choice is no longer on the extintion list, every Artix Entertainment artist and animator is currently taking a deep sigh of relief. 

Power Ups... UI changes

Getting closer. A large part of the Monday Team meeting was on the UI for item power ups. Click read more to see some scribbles of the changes we are making. Tunik thinks he can have this ready for us to look at again as a team on Wednesday. 

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Story time "Calling Adobe Support"

So, I simultaneously called and started a live chat with Adobe.... told them that we received their email announcing the end of Adobe Animate. They had no idea what I was talking about. They proceeded to try and sell me licenses for Adobe Animate. /facepalm I said, "No, no, no. You sent me an email saying this product was being removed from their line up. They suspiciously asked me for screenshots of the email as proof-- which I sent. They low key tried to convince me it was fake until I sent them a link of their own help page verifying the announcement. Four other team members were quietly listening from our team's voice chat trying really hard not to burst into laughter. It was funny but bewildering sad at the same time. Adobe support had never been notified that this change was coming. Politely asked to be escalated to someone on their backend or enterprise team. I am currently waiting for them to contact me back. 

Thank goodness we are building Infinity

Boy, do I have some good and bad news. In the past 24 hours, I learned that the original AQWorlds might be able to run in the browser again... and then got an email from adobe that they are killing the drawing & animation tool we have been using for the last 24 years. #GameDevWhiplash I am really grateful we are building and launching Infinity... it is immune to that problem. Read more for details. 

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Dage went to physical therapy in his new black armor

6 months ago, (Real-Life) Dage had knee surgery. Yes, he got the injury in an armored sword fight. This week, he had a test at physical therapy to see if he was ready to fight again. Of course he wore his new black armor... click read more to see more GIFs. 

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Power Gem Progress

I like posting pictures of broken things like this... because when you play it and see everything working, you will know how far it came. Spider & Tunik have been working on the power gems & inventory... hit the read more below for full details. 

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Use On Item?

When a monster drops a Gem, you can use it to power up an item. What do you think about this (or something like it) as the button to use it. 

Kickstarter Armors

JX (artist) just finished flashing three of the four alignment variant (hero, good, evil, chaos) Kickstarter Armors. Lae (artist) did the original concept art. The matching weapons are breathtaking. Meanwhile, the team is working on the Power Gem system and character creation/customization. Ghost is working on the next cutscenes. 

Power Up your Gear

We spent 5 hours reviewing and improving the design of the games upgrade system. The underlying tech is solid, the experience of getting item upgrades (Power Gems) and socketing them into your weapons needed to be more fun. We also needed to make it super easy for players coming from the existing AQWorlds to power up their items so they can use them immediately. Also... we solved that aspect ratio issue :D