AQWorlds
Artix Krieger
| Friday, June 17, 2022
Being back in the lab makes it easier for the entire team to share things. Like... covid? Today's double post comes after the surprise lab plague of 2022!
Humor is important. When you are down and out... staring into an endless pit of dispair and hopelessness-- cracking a joke is a pro strategy. Well, it works for Deadpool, Spiderman, and I. How about you? Because between us... let me tell you, these past three weeks have been MAXIMUM comedy. Sure, I can tell you how challenging it has been with nearly EVERYONE at the lab taking turns being sick (in the worst possible timing). But instead, going to give you a good chuckle at my expense. After the family and I recovering from the first wave, I got sick (AGAIN) with an ear & sinus thing that KO'd me like King Kong punching a Dricken. Then, while still sick, our roof sprang a leak. The water heater blew out. We had a severe gas leak. The last one was pretty bad and super serious. As a friend in the D&DK chat said, "We were one fart away from complete annihilation." Although, hindsight being 20/22, I think he meant "match away". None of that compared the to truly scary thing I did while this was happening. >_> I read Twitter every day. (Bruuuuutal) The 9/10 anxiety was compounded by the withdraw symptoms from cold turkey cutting out Pepsi and Coffee. (But I went crawling back to coffee like a zombie to brains in at a science convention). On Thursday when I finally came out of my exhausted funk, my backlog of work, queued messed, and "urgent things" was horrifying. Missing one day at our pace is pretty bad. This.... this sorta requires a mulligan week XD. But I do not want to tempt the fates to turn this into a trilogy! X_X
But the AQWorlds:Unity Mobile team.... they did pretty good!
As usual, the full log of everyone's work is below... but I really wanted to share with you the results of our Quest User Interface meeting!
Diogon, Spider, J6, Tunik, and myself finally got together to review the Mobile/PC version of the quest interface. With everything else actually working, we are long overdue to finalize and implement it (my fault!).
The first thing we did was wireframes....
New Quest Accept
We are using a 3 panel design. Although, if there is only one quest, you will not see the right most panel. That is just for listing multiple quests.
Spider suggested that we add the preview feature for quest rewards. This is a MUST have!
We should be extremely consistent in how we display things. So the item preview panel should be the same as the normal item view where you equip/destroy it.
Now... if you are already on a quest, you should have the ability to abandon or track it. Tracking a quest makes it your "current quest" and displays it on the main interface.
I ***REALLY*** want to put a speech bubble behind the spoken text if you are standing with the NPC. Tunik says this is possible.
One issue is that the name is missing from the Quest Giver if they are present. But we can probably add that as part of the speech bubble.
But what is there is no NPC? What if you open this from your quest log out in the middle of nowhere?
Current Quest... No NPC
You can teleport back to the Quest Giver!
Best. Feature. Ever.
Most quests will allow you to teleport back to the quest giver. It will also help if you have no idea where you got a quest from. (It has happened to all of us.)
Diogon's UI/UX skill has been going through the roof! He put together the box version below.
Currently, he is working on taking J6's art pieces and blending it together in a final design.
Remember, the almost all of this functionality already works in game. So this is the part where we are "making it pretty."
The best part of this for me was finally getting to work with those guys as a group! Everyone is so skilled, friendly, and easy to create with. <3 that group so much.
Meanwhile... we missed a week. So this is a DOUBLE POST. Here are the meeting notes from the past two weeks. And when I say meeting notes, I literally mean... these are the meeting notes. Just copy/pasta'd them in here for you. This is about as transparent as you can get without just sending you the code XD.
Inventory & Shop are now using the exact same sizing.
Dialogger
Backgrounds fixed
backgrounds can now fad to black and from black to transparent.
Nameplates can now have subtitles (just like APOPs)
If APOP takes a long time to load (.5 seconds), it now brings up a loading spinner
Mobile chat
Scrolling partis now a bit shorter
You do not need to see the text you are entering... since you do not enter it there on a phone. So that space had been freed up. You click on the chat to type a message.
Combat
Death Fade Function (When you kill monsters they now dissapear) - Still needs a delay.
Targeting monster now shows level
Monsters use a separate table. Level and HP are being assigned by default based on a curve from the balance testers.
Enhancements being added (in progress)
Quests
Quest detail can be pulled up from the quest notification in the upper right
Tracking/untrack quest button fully working
Dev Commands
/objective dev cheat working
Request: Can we make this work on the current tracked/active quest without needing to supply a Quest ID#?
/reset (for resetting quests)
Needs to work without requiring re-log
Should not open quest panel
Found a bug where the quest was not being removed from upper right after being turned in.
When traveling to a new area with a story, you will now see the "NEW STORY" and be able to click on it to start the story in the new area.
Yellow text in the center of the screen shows when you get drops that count towards completing the quest (just like in the existing game.)
Any Quest that has a map and ID defined for it will allow you to teleport to the quest giver! (Super awesome feature)
Need to add an indicator to let players know when they are already on a quest in an NPC's quest window ("you are already on this quest")
When returning to an story area, it will tell you if you have quests left to finish the story and allow you to pick up where you left off.
Bug: Tracking a story quest when returning to the zone did not make it the current, tracked quest.
Adding Dialog hooks so we can have dialog only quests.
Bug Fixes
Rogue no longer slides when using the footwork skill
NOTES
Need a UI design meeting with Artix, J6, Diogon & Tunik ( & then present to Warlic)
Need the ability to abandon quest
Urgently need to put art in the Steam Store
BUGS
Title Screen - clicking on the text fields, the text is small and off center until you start typing.
Sell tab Issue
When the server is reset, and player clicks on join server...you get stuck on a spinner with no way to get out of it. (Add a X or back button, and attempt reconnect)
Fix /Goto feature
Chat box
Chat box bounces when you click on the edge of it
When pressing up, it should show the previous text and place the cursor at the end of the text.
Frogzard has some weird floater things above its head
Bug in Test Cutscene - fixed.
Map screen null reference error - fixed
Dialogger (Cutscene Dialog Builder)
Data parser name plates were breaking due to inconsistency. This has been fixed.
Subtitles only appear if they are supposed to appear now.
We have been loading off of a local .json file for testing purposes, but now it is time to switch to the ones stored in the database.
Storytyime: Warlic gave Tunik a horrific scare by refactoring the dialog system last week :D Substring searching was coming up with a negative length and it was failing to parse the substring, so Warlic rewrote it not to rely on substring parsing. All of the dialog commands that spawn actors now get turned into a dialoger command class that already has all the command parameters built in. Very efficient. But an absolute horror to open and see if you are working on it but did not know it was coming.
Shop & Inventory
Shop script refactored so that it cannot be broken by switching tabs and scrolling erratically.
Now, when you press a new tab it looks at all entities on the list and determines what it can (or cannot) show.
There is one bug left... sometimes, on random occasions the menu will break when scrolling (likely because somewhere in the tab code it is not refreshing the indexes as intended)
Quest UI
Did not happen due to health issues last week. Rescheduled to take place this week
Game Commands
/level now works for devs to set their testing level (does not save)
/goto is working (lands on pad, not on player though)
/kill
Accepts a parameter of which target. Currently allows you to kill other players too O_O
Typing it without a parameter will target self XD
/player death
Enhancement System
Need to finalize data send to the client
Needs UI - Diagon/J6/Tunik
Quests can Trigger Custscenes! - Warlic
Cutscene on Quest Complete
Triggers when all objectives have been completed. (Not on turn in)
Good example: Intro to a new area
To test this a quest was added to the Lair, and when you enter for the first time... it plays a cutscene. (We used to have to code this manually into every map in the web version of the game)
Also useful for right after you kill a boss monster.
Cutscene on Quest Turn
Once you go back to the NPC and talk to them, it will show the cutscene. After you will get the quest complete screen if there is one. (Like AQ3D).
Bugs / Issues
Arrow keys allow you to walk around when you are dead.... Which really means you just slide around. Hysterical. - Warlic
HP is not regening out of combat - Yorumi
HP news filled to max when using /level - Yorumi
Need to restart game after using slash command to reset quests... need to make it automatically reset things.
Add "Tracked Quest" to the player database (currently in Player Prefs). This will allow you to continue on your tracked quest when switching devices.
After Cutscene on Quest Complete, the next quest in a story is not being auto-started.
Need to implement Quest Abandon on the Client
Will use this for the /questreset to reset a story for testing
Refactor Quest List Pull
It caches it on initial pull
Next time in map, if not cached it does the pull
If server quests are reset, everyone is sent a message to pull on next quest load.
Need final logo for the game. With Gravelyn at the center of the plot, it makes sense that we use some derivative of the ShadowScythe Logo. AQWorlds has never had an "officially logo". This new version should have a distinct logo that is also obviously "AQWorlds" unique.
Need to start testing this full flow and get it ready for players...
The biggest goals now are user interface polish, cutscenes, and bug hunting. Also, we really... really... really... need to get that Steam page live so everyone can start wish-listing AdventureQuest Worlds: Unity.
Until the next update, be safe, have fun, and laugh straight in the face of dread & doom.
