AQWorlds
Artix Krieger
| Sunday, March 6, 2022
Greetings and salutations!
We are making a new cross-platform (mobile & steam) version of AdventureQuest Worlds. This is... the 1st official design notes post for it.
Of course, if you have been following me on Twitter of Facebook then you know we have already been working on this. Until now, only a handful of screenshots and this youtube video have been posted about it. But that is about to change.... *checks sundial*.... now!
Starting today the team and I will be making regular update posts about this new version of AdventureQuest Worlds. We will answer questions, show sneak peaks, tell all of the behind-the-scenes horror stories, and be super ultra transparent with our progress.
We are building a new website for this project. All of these posts will automatically appear there too.
So... let us get started.
Why not just release the launcher or the existing game on phones?
Wish we could! Oh man, I really wish it was possible. Would have saved us so much work. The original AdventureQuest Worlds and its 10,000+ items we built using Flash & ActionScript 3. The game dynamically loads weapons, armor, pets, maps, cutscenes, and items-- most of which contain vector art, hand-animated pieces, and custom code that executes at runtime. We had spent a long (VERY LONG) time trying every tech and technique we could find to way to publish or port the existing game-- but it is just not compatible. Everything needs to be rebuilt.
What about those guys who had a partially working version working on Android?
Yes, they tried published the game as an Adobe Air app. But it only worked on select old Android devices. They discovered the same problems we did... the mobile app stores are strict and forbid loading our external items with code built in them.
Why rebuild the game client in Unity?
We built BattleGems, AdventureQuest 3D, and our other mobile games in Unity, coded in C#. Our team has a lot of experience with it now. So it felt like the right choice for this project.
When creating a new game.... any new game... my first objective is always to create ONE "complete area" that contains one of everything. that is....
We choose the "Dragon's Lair" to be our first complete area. This phase reminds me of when we were building the first area for DragonFable. It is slow, packed with bugs, and can be pretty frustrating... but once it is done, it becomes really easy to make the rest of the game. The next areas go super fast.
If you have been following me on social media and have already heard all of this, thank you for barring with me while we bring everyone else up to speed.
Back in early DragonFable & AQWorlds development, I used to post a near-daily design notes post to let you know what the team and I are currently working on. Would love to do that again. The posts will be short and focused on what everyone is working on that day (or week).
We call them "APOPs" -- which is short for "A pop up". In the original game we placed and coded them in the maps manually. But in this new version of the game they are being loaded from the database. Captain Rhubarb, who sails the seven deadly C#s of our database & network has been building a new web based interface for us to enter what the characters say. This will be used with Tunik (UI) & Warlic's (Coder) new NPC screens. J6 (artist) helped design a new look for it yesterday. The rest of the team is working on Dragon's Lair combat and map fixes before our next major group meeting on Wednesday.
See you for the next update soon.
Battle on!
Artix
