AQWorlds
Artix Krieger
| Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Greetings Heroes,
In this AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity update you will be getting all of the latest insider information about the game's development... and info about the next Tech Demo.... in between cleverly placed animated GIFs of re-animated monsters!
Which raises the question. How do you pronounce GIF?
Jiff or Ghiff? The creator of the GIF format pronounced it with a J. But GIF stands for "Graphics Interchange Format" and it is "Graphics" not "Jraphics". This is a sensitive topic... and on the dev voice chat where I am writing this, Alina & Beleen are delving into Proto-Indo-European word roots and debating in a way that I need some sort of fancy English degree to appreciate. So feel free to slug out the pronunciation of Gif on the cozy, warm, safe-space of social media.
Spider and Immortal Joe are putting the finishing touches on the new Infinity version of DragonSlayer Class. You are in for a bit of a shock... they are experimenting with things like dodge skills that move you, and getting rid of the auto attack. This is the only chance we will get to try out these sort of changes-- like we did with the Umbra Class. So we are going all in. The tester's feedback will be EXTREMELY important.
In the last post we were extremely proud to announce that 16K+ armors were converted to Infinity. (Note: They do not have animation, color customization, or animations... these things require redoing them by hand for the most part.) It feels REALLY good logging into the game and at least seeing all of your stuff. With that accomplished, Warlic has moved on to rewriting the Cloud Builder.
Contrary to rumors... it does not build clouds. *
AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity is a cross-platform game. This means it will run on PC, Mac, and also on Android/Apple phones & tablets. (Maybe it will run on other things too...) But each platform has different and very strict requirements for graphic files. Which means every platform needs a different version of every monster, weapon, armor, pet, map, and item in the game. It would be INSANE to convert the 50,000+ items in AQWorlds by hand. Thus, Warlic created the cloud builder. It is a set of computers... and each computer is responsible for publishing to a different platforms. The machines wait quietly in the shadows like a ninja, waiting for a new file to show up... and when one does, it snatches it and converts it to work on each platform. Warlic created the Cloud Builder that AdventureQuest 3D uses. He also made a version for Infinity at the start of the project, but it is wildly out of date. So he is now focusing on creating a new one. When it is complete.... we will see all of these new armors running on Android devices! (Gimme gimme gimme the .APK!)
* Unless the GPU overheats and it starts smoking.
User Interface (UI) has been an ongoing nightmare. Every time we add a new feature (or breathe the wrong way) something in the UI breaks. We have been playing wack a mole with the UI as we add features like crafting.
Stunning....
People are losing their heads over these new changes.
Not sure if we talked about this before, but JX and Yergen re-did a bunch of the frames, adding new animations and particle systems to the Dragon's Lair. Reens re-did the quest line which we are doing a polish pass on now. the Red Dragon has a number of new Infinity drops on him. Items that can only be obtained in Infinity WILL show up on your account in the normal AQworlds. However, for obvious reasons they will not have any special Infinity special FX-- like particle systems or infinity animations/clickies.
Picture above-- Reens is converting Galanoth to a fully animated NPC that can do anything and everything that a player can. At the moment she has no idea why his head is missing. We are going to check lost and found.
Back to Infinity...
JX is pretty far ahead of us in converting maps. That was the one thing that we DID NOT think would go fast. Recently he finished Willow Creek, a surprise party map for the launch of AQWorlds Infinity's Alpha Test, and Northpointe. He had previously created a huge number of the existing maps and it is going to take us half a year to catch up to populating them. While waiting for us to catch up, Charfade & JX have been working on a little side secret project. (I have always wanted one of these....)
Meanwhile, Reens is rebuilding the NPCs to get the the Willow Creek map ready. Other than the time it is taking us to make cutscenes, the actual map and monster building is on track.
We are aiming to do internal testing of the Infinity DragonSlayer Class and Dragon's Lair this week. If it goes well...
...we will do another Tech Demo next week. As promised, those who qualified for the last test will be able to access all of the Tech Demo tests. We are considering options on how to expand who qualifies for testing in a way that would be fair to our long time supporters. (Looking at you Founders/Upholders) The next Tech Demo for players will feature Infinity DragonSlayer, new drop & loot system, the updated Lair & quests, and of course those 16K+ armors.
Battle on!
Artix
P.S. Wishlist AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity on Steam
P.P.S. We have been working on a new website.... (this one was tossed together pretty quick.)
