Racing to the Finish Line

...and while we are running, be sure to check out the beautiful (and fixed) parallax effect in the background. We were able to stitch together the Kickstarter data from multiple downloads last night. Captain Rhubarb (database & server) is merging the data, and as promised we are hand-fixing the pledges by backers who paid without choosing a pledge tier. The code team fixed the vast majority of the remaining memory leak issues. Between that, the quest system changes, and other bug fixes they clocked in 30 commits altering over 100 files today. Most grueling task of the day goes to Ghost (animator) who is stripping all of the bload from the old FX system out of the player character (will make the game run and load faster for you.) The content team and I are the furthest behind. The intro is functional, but some bug sneak attacks ate up most of the day. We still need to fix the dialog and add music & soundFX. Jongaar (music) will be joining us to help on that tomorrow. I started writing a Kickstarter update post but will need to finish it tomorrow. It is already 12:30am, so going to answer the KS messages before the Grim Sleeper realizes that it is not me in bed... I just stuck some pillows under my bed sheets and put a tape recorder on with snoring noises :D

Wooohoooo! Intro is

...alright, staying up until 4am to fix the intro flow was not my best life decision. But thanks to Spider and an abundant quantity of coffee, the whole thing is finally functional (and duct tape & shoe string hack free). Furthermore, the new scripts (Project Omni "ActionScripts") that we made to solve the problems will be invaluable...used to make every complex quest & saga we build moving forward. Tomorrow (In a few hours?) will begin a polish pass to add SoundFX, clean up the dialog, add XP/Gold values, and add some extras.  It is really important to me to have the intro working for the start of Alpha. It is not perfect, but it will bring back some good memories, while showing a glimpse of what we are working on rebuilding together. Would you believe that Kickstarter download is STILL at 90%!? Wait. Did you hear that? ...oh no! The Grim Sleeper is behind me.... he is raising his pillow-scythe to strike.... it is coming right at.... Zzzzz... zzzz....

Monday Morning Me... *erm* Beatings!

Happy Monday! (for about 3 more minutes.). Today was AMAAAZING! On Mondays the full team meets and reviews what we accomplished and what is next. I have never checked off so many major features and things in a single meeting before.Then we all dove into work. I was focused on the early game quests, and was shocked to look a moment ago and see there were 50-ish code commits to the main game project.  Going to switch over to answering KS messages and then go back to trying to get the final quest of the intro to flow right before I give into the Grim Sleeper (Zzzz). 

FIXED Edit Survey/Pledge Manager

Kickstarter sent me an email saying they fixed the issue and backers can now edit their AQWorlds: Infinity Kickstarter survey responses. This is pretty great news, and just in time. 

Meanwhile, we stumbled onto a different issue. We have been struggling to pull the survey results & backer info. Out of 10 attempts we have managed to pull the data... 0 times. It runs for hours, then just sorta stalls at a random %. It is possible that ~30K backers just takes too long and it times out. Wrote Kickstarter's support for help. Meanwhile, we are attempting to download it in chunks... but know that this would be a very bad/frustration solution for synchronizing it to the rewards website that Captain Rhubarb and I are currently building for you. This is because we will need to pull the data regularly and merge it with our database to keep your changes, freshly filled out surveys, and new backers' stuff up to date. Three hours before making this post I tried pulling just the Founder tier.  I really thought this last time was the charm... but for the last hour it has been sitting there, stuck at 90%, taunting me. I am not complaining. In fact, I am grateful. If I am going to solve a problem, I am happy to be solving one caused by having "too many" supportive backers.

A few things to get off my CHEST(s)...

The Epic Founder chests (Chaos, Doom, & Destiny) just came in. I want to open them. Hope they are not secretly mimics. 

Summon

Well, that is a nice feature that I discovered during testing tonight. Normally I /goto players. But here,  you can send a summon request to bring them to you. Like the original game these can be toggled on/off. 

We found a few urgent bugs today... if you have a class equipped, but not an armor, it can mess up the game. That is a priority patch. The screenshot below is when I discovered if you looted a monster right before a cutscene started,  your inventory stays on top of the cutscene, but you cannot interact with anything. /facepalm. LOL, I love how Twilly's dialog just happened to perfectly match with the bug as it happened. 

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Stir-Fry-Day

Every Friday has been an explosion of Alpha progress and new features. Probably because everyone gets their assignments on Monday and merges them into the game project by Friday. Parties were added, Warlic pushed an even better armor conversion toolset (it did take 5+ hours to republish the existing armors today), quest bugs that have been blocking Alpha have been fixed, the movement bugs are fixed, character panel got an upgrade, the statue generator is now on the live server, several memory leaks patched, and as a cherry on top URP & a bloom slider was added. We also have a design for the site we are creating to track and deliver backer codes, keys, and rewards.

It has been one heck of a good week. Our internal tests are still discovering a few urgent issues that need to be patched in order to start Alpha. Like, for some reason you can log into both AQWorlds and Infinity at the same time right now. (Very dangerous.) Also, half of our monster & NPC heads broke in the portraits. Meanwhile, AQWorlds adding their versions of the Kickstarter Reward shops and preparing a new page in the account management site for Benevolent Founders & above to do their thing. Players who play on the existing AQWorlds are probably going to be pretty happy.

The spooky part is, the stuff I wrote above does not even begin to show just how much is happening all at once right now. It is insane. It is also sorta refreshing to be this deep in the heat of battle again. After I wrap up my map work, will answer KS messages and then get some rest. It is going to be weekend full of AQWorlds preparation. :D

Work in Progress Pic.... Dark Epic Hero of Destiny (Variant)

Legendary Founders from the AQWorlds: Infinity Kickstarter get all three versions of the Epic Hero Armors. I love the way the armors came out. Take the Destiny themed armor below... amazing! 

 We had received requests from Legendary Founders for something on the armor that would show their tier. So we decided to add variants. Originally, the variants had a very subtle difference-- a badge-like attachment with a logo on it. But when Alina and the AQWorlds team saw it, they were adamant that backers would want us to go overboard for the variants. We always aim to please :D. So we came up with a plan for each of the epic armors. J# started on the art. For the Destiny armor's variant we decided to go with "DARK DESTINY". Here is a work-in-progress screenshot. 

I hit this Frogzard so hard that it exploded....

Nope. We just did a re-publish of ALL 362 of the converted monsters & NPCs for Alpha.  Some things broke. This is was a weird and spooky bug. Somehow the GPU Skinning was switched to CPU, and a bunch of other settings glitched. As of this post, it all appears to be fixed. #whew.It is 11pm, going to try to handle the Kickstarter messages. We turned on a thing that allowed people to edit their pledges, but for some reason it broke the pledge manager and everyone was getting 403 errors. We sent in tickets and are waiting to hear back. 

Badge Update

Alina posted these AQWorlds Infinity Kickstarter badges on social media... sharing them here for you too. 

Our games are lit!

Unfortunately, so is the data center. Woke up to discover that one of the data centers hosting our game servers is literally on fire. How hard have you guys been playing AQWorlds!? We were told this has no relation to the fire-themed Scion of Flames Class that just released in AQWorlds.

New Kickstarter Update Post

Read Alpha & Rewards Update plus "How Monsters are Made" on Kickstarter. 

My favorite month is OCTOBEAR

Beautifully wicked!  The Octobear is the first monster Nulgath animated since learning how particles FX and the URP stuff. 

Big Bug Fix Night

Spider & Immortal Joe just fixed the dreaded and hard to find "invisible other players in the same instance" bug! It has been a huge day for bug fixes, they have been on fire. They also added Unity's URP to the game client and map project! But as per my fear, we have to convert every shader in the game. It might do it automatically if we just republish the asset bundles, so trying that tomorrow. Tutulio is at the final boss fight part of the Character Creation process. Zhoom has been fixing lag and memory issues. Ghost finished up Moglin pets and is doing some final polish before we start sending it to other devs to begin converting the other moglins. Founder Dragons are next. I created re-usable prefabs for all of our common map machines and applied them to the Intro. Simplified a really complex quest flow down to one step... pretty excited. It is just past 10pm. So going to switch from game development to answering the urgent KS messages (less than a hundred... I should be able to finish my midnight.). Planning to write another big update post tomorrow. 

Golden Mogsterpiece! Eternal Thanks - Phase I

How to build Eternal Thanks? Step #1... concentrate gratitude into pure gold concentrate and forge it into the form of a Moglin. It radiates hearts of golden gratitude like a fusion reactor radiates radiation. Our lead scientists have determined that these are not toxic, but may still have a long lasting effect. Step #2 coming soon. 

Epic Founder Pet Dragons

1st peek at the 3 Epic Founder Dragons. Inspired by the original Platinum Founder Dragon, and themed to Chaos, Doom, and Destiny. Our jaws dropped when Aranx just posted them to the dev server moments ago. 

Moglocide

On Friday, Ghost finished animating the moglin pet and tried adding one to the game as an NPC. But when he added it, nothing happened. So he kept trying to add them. Nothing happened. During the Monday morning full team meeting, we all logged on and were brutally mauled by an angry mob of hostile yellow moglins. Turns out it DID work... the server just needed a restart. :D 

Shiny!

Nulgath showed everyone this at the full team meeting this morning. If we implement Unity's URP (Universal Rendering Pipeline) we can start using fancy shaders like these. I want this so bad. Not sure how much will be impacted by this. Might have to implement URP after Alpha goes live. 

Moglins & Particles

When creating a new account, there is a particle burst that plays when you switch classes. Nulgath hand animated the first one in flash. Now he is using Unity's particle system to recreate it and... it looks awesome! 

Ghost began creating the base animations for pet Moglins. Both the normal animations... and the Battle Pet animations :D Hit read more below to see more GIFs. 

Read more

Midnight Stroll Bug

We were up late working on a game breaking movement bug. Testers found a number of ways to fling or scuttle their characters through solid objects and end up in the sky. We quickly found the issue... but then, to our horror, we uncovered the bugs went deeper... way deeper.  A few Tech Demos ago, players reported scrolling maps suddenly got a little slow and janky. Hitting a wall would make you jitter. Now we know why. The code which creates that cool parallax effect on distant objects was also moving the front later, which was moving the camera, which was causing the other layers to be re-ordered, which was moving the camera... in a vicious and comical "who goes first" loop. It was a hard thing to discover. We are lucky that other bug happened that caused us to deep dive into it. At the stroke of midnight last night, we committed a code fix for it. The game "runs" sooooo smooth now! 

We do have to go and fix the speed and parallax values on every map. 😒