AQ2D
Artix Krieger
| Friday, September 13, 2024
Ahoy me matey! Batton the hatches, for this Friday be the greatest double-cross-over in history.... it be Friday the 13th + Talk Like a Pirate day! Events be start'n in multiple of yer favorite Artix Entertainment games this week.
The only thing Pirates hate more than Ninja... is bad luck. And if you are the superstitious type, then you already know Friday the 13th is the unluckiest day of all. It is said that it is bad luck to start any venture on a Friday the 13th. Which is exactly why we have special double event coming for you in AdventureQuest Worlds (featuring special guest Aurelio Voltaire) and in AdventureQuest 3D (featuring an all new Doom Weapon and war).
Sneak peek of an upcoming armor for AdventureQuest Worlds...
...and a sneak peek of AdventureQuest 3D's concept art for the armor that it was based on.
It is going to be a fun two weeks of releases
Both games are doing very interesting story releases that will span two weeks, tying Friday the 13th and Talk Like a Pirate Day together in a gloriously twisted way.
I am jealous!
I REALLY want to get AQWorlds Infinity to a place where we can join in on this. It is worth noting once against that that the team building AQWorlds Infinity does not work on the weekly releases for the other games. So our programmers and content team will be continuing to carve through the remaining Infinity task list. Just to be super clear, nothing that the other games or HeroMart does disrupts our dedicated team's work on Infinity (short of some sort of mega technical emergency like that Facebook API update thing that we had to fix the other week).
Which brings us to the latest AQWorlds Infinity team update!
Oh man... was this thing eating onions?
Nulgath did some killer animation work on this Dragon and the Groglurk this weekend.
What is really interesting is he is not using particle systems at all.... this is all traditional sprite based animation. A random comment in today's team meeting was "This looks great! Do we even need particles if we can do this!?" To which of course, the answer is yes. #WhyNotBoth
Ghost's combat animations are ready to be added. Spider already built the combat system to support things like the mage shield (which you can see a .GIF of in last week's post.) It worked surprisingly well and feels good. Spider also changed the order of some combat mechanics to feel more natural. This includes skills which regenerate mana. Immortal Joe is pretty eager to get monster skills in. The first thing we want to build is a "turret type monster" prototype. This is a monster that does not move. It just casts long range attacks if you are in range. Examples are a Skeletal Mage or a Turret. You may have seen some monsters like in the original version of AdventureQuest Worlds-- but it was built using a pretty weird hack. Infinity monsters are going to have the ability to be much smarter and do far more impressive things without needing such hacks.
Honestly, we have no idea what is going on with that version of Galanoth or why it was placed in the starting area. Absolute game dev nightmare fuel.
In other game dev news....
We did really good for nearly 5 weeks straight of daily posts!
This week we are going to have irregular staggered updates... haphazardly appended to the bottom of this post. Then, at the end of this week after the Friday, please let me know which way you like better.
Next updating posting at the bottom of this page soon.....
...but you will not know when until you look.
#Schrodinger'sPost
#Booooooom.........
Tuesday was a very intense day X_X
We did the focused testing sprints as previously mentioned. It was very good for the project. But my brain hurts. In the future, we probably should not do ALL OF THEM on the same day.
A couple of the big things we are working on as a result is....
Cht cht cht cht.... Hck hck hck hck.....
Unlucky special events are happening across Artix Entertainment Games this weekend.
Aurelio Voltaire will be appearing in AQWorld's new release.
There is a Doom Weapon fueled Friday the 13th Pirate vs Ninja war happening in AdventureQuest 3D now.
We ended the week with a bang... of BIG projectiles!
If you have been following these design notes you know that our big 3 areas of focus have been on combat, cutscenes, and quests. We made major movement on all three.
COMBAT
Spider added the ability for Ghost & Immortal Joe to add skill FX in a modular way. The old way were were doing it was not going to work. This improved system gives them control over where & how the spell FX appear. This includes things like the mage's bubble, fireball, and explosions. Ghost made some new FX for mage, but as you can see in the GIF above.... they are HUUUUUUGE. So we spent a little time working on the tool (just a unity scene with custom scripts) that Ghost uses to create the FX. Cross your fingers with us for a ready to test Mage on Monday morning. Not sure if we talked about this before but Spider & Joe worked out a solution for the auto attack timing oddities. Short version.... it was cutting off the animations of major skills. Now, there is just a little padding in the skills so it feels more like the existing AQWorlds does. Some conversation has gone into the importance of auto attack DPS and mana regeneration this week. We do not want these re-made classes to feel weaker or slower than the originals. The haste stat throws a little monkey wrench at us though. If we want haste to be meaningful, the class has to start off at a speed that is slow enough that it can be improved. This also impact mana regen because most classes regen mana with the auto attack. Of course, the entire point of having skills use mana (Note: each class can have a uniquely named resource in Infinity.) is because they are so much more powerful than a standard attack that using mana forces you to make a strategy decision of which skill will serve you best in a given movement. Do you hit one skill and unload the DPS or save that mana for when you will use the shield skill because you know the monster is going to charge up for a massive attack soon? End game players of the existing AQWorlds have become accustomed to crazy high crit rates, insane haste speed, and... well, basically combat gods. I do wonder if you will enjoy going back to simpler times... starting to play through the story fresh... where Frogzards still pose somewhat of a threat and your power increases significantly with each level and weapon upgrade. You will have two levels. One level in the current AQWorlds and one level in Infinity. I would like for you and other players to be able to see your level and achievements in both. I feel it is important that everyone can visually recognize your achievements across both the games. The team also knows that while it is fun to start fresh, you certainly do not want to do the amount of work to get back to your current level of power. Especially if you are an end game player. So we have been talking about having Infinity's level 20 be roughly the same power as you are used to in the existing game. This would mean completing the remastered main story would get you right back to where you would be comfortable. Again, nothing is set in stone. I am just sharing these thoughts so you can talk about them too and be a part of the conversation. The only way this game can be a success, is if you love it. So we will be shaping our decisions around your feedback... both online and in the upcoming tech demo & alpha.
The Groglurk - Animated by Nulgath
CUTSCENES
Tunik delivered a version of the cutscene tool today that allows us to resize and move the cinematic. Reens is testing it now. Also, a huge number of data issues were fixed. (See, when someone writes about "huge" fixes... no one except the person working on them really knows how bad it actually was.) I really need to give Tunik credit. As you may already know this tool has had toooo many changes & scope creep additions. It is literally the old joke of...
*starts singing*
100....
100 bugs in the code on the wall...
100 bugs in the code....
Take one down, fix it around...
103 bugs in the code on the wall....
*ends singing*
I am eager to share with you how the testing went on Monday.
QUESTS
On Wednesday morning I met with Warlic at the local diner. For about an hour an a half we went through every possible combination of ways to show cutscenes in our quest flow. We had all of them but one.... the one that every single Story/Saga needs O_O. This may sound like a really easy problem to solve-- we need a cutscene that can be triggered when you click on the (!) apop button to first talk to an NPC. But the specific situation is this NPC has a brand new saga (or multiple) on them, and you have not actually accepted or seen the quest yet. See, the tricky issue is that you would get the cutscene's ID from the quest. But you have not seen or accepted the quest yet. Sure, we can do it manually.... that is, we can build a machine that waits for you to click the button and if you have not accepted or completed that quest, then show the cutscene. But we want to avoid manually adding these kind of machines to the maps. First, because literally every single saga will start like this O_O. Second, because if the release rolls out and there is a bug.... if we have to edit the map, we need to edit the map file, publish it to the cloud build server, rebuild it for all platforms, and then kick all the players to roll out the new version. Alternately, if it is just in the database like the rest of our quest data, we change the number and type a command... walla, done.
Ultimately, Warlic and I came up with an acceptable solution... not perfect. It mirrors something I dreaded from AQ3D's design phase. We are adding a "Pre-Quest Cutscenes" to quests. So, if a quest has a Pre-Quest Cutscene and you click on an NPC... it will immediately play the cutscene. This is the perfect way to start a saga from talking to an NPC. You will see this in Bludrut. You will see this in every release. But what is so dangerous about this.... is that only time you can use this field, is at the start of a new saga. If any quest in the middle of a saga uses this.... it will do incredibly wonky things. (You would see the starting cutscene of the next quest before you even turned in your current quest... terrible O_O.) Furthermore, if an NPC is the starting point for multiple saga's... this will also cause terrible things to happen. So the rules are.... this can only be used at the start of a saga, and that saga has to be the only one on the NPC.
We made it back from the diner in time to start the day with the team. And Did one extra hour of re-analyzing & debating the issue with the rest of the crew XD. Then we "gaveled down." Warlic made the database & client changes. We are waiting on some edge case issues (I think), then we will be testing.
The story above is a perfect example of the sort of things that every dev goes through but no one would publicly talk about. I mean, we have built how many MMOs now? Quests would seem like the most basic thing. But they are not. When you are improving something, and really care about the experience, you always get these unexpected challenges that come up. It is true for any project. But when an Infinity players walks up to a new Saga starting NPC and clicks the button.... the smooth and fun experience they have will be worth it. Being able to fix the issue by simply changing a number in the database will be worth it. I hope there is something of value for you in these stories.
Have an awesome Friday the 13th weekend!
*walks under a latter straight into a mirror... <crash>*
Battle on!
Artix
See all the events we have going on at www.Artix.com
