AQWorlds
Artix Krieger
| Saturday, September 28, 2024
Join us for this week's daily AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity daily updates. I will be adding to this post daily (assuming I have power).
Hurricane Helene is forming in the Gulf of Mexico. Our lab is located is Tampa, Florida which is in the cone of possible places it is projected to make landfall this Thursday. Florida's gov declared a state of emergency and the schools are closed the next two days. As usual, we told the team to prioritize preparations for the storm and offered to help in any way we could. I did not know about the storm when I was making yesterday's "AQWorlds: Infinity WHEN!?" post. So, needless to say, the next Tech Demo will not be this Thursday. A lot of the AQWorlds team are not located in Florida, so in the likely event that we lose power, we will still make progress on the game.
Exploshionpoofbooom!
Ghost, Spider, and I were working on the class FX today. Above, you can see the rattlebones taking a face full of oversized magic missles. (We have a FX sizing issue that we are still fixing.)
Meanwhile, Zhoom, Warlic, Tunik, and Yorumi were working on quests, code stability, and the character customization feature. Reens continued working on Bludrut keep.
Magik Miskles
Mage now has a ranged auto-attack. (Not the final version!) I was thrilled that the code was working. Based on the previous posts you make have read, here is what is working:
Slow-Mo to show issues
Slow balls & curve balls
I slowed down the missles in this GIF so we can talk about all the issues we started solving today.
Boom-shakalaka smoke!
When you hurl a fireball at something... the hit will be like this. This feels like a final boom. #stampofapproval
Can you tell them a-part-icle?
Yeah, these particles are definitely not scaling with the maps. We investigated and found the reason. It should be a pretty easy fix. But the big hits are fun. Once we get things working properly, we should create some situation where you can do some crazy big FX against monsters.
Camera whoopsie... or... feature?
We were testing a new type of camera in Project Omni (Which is a Unity C# package of tools and scripts we are making to do everything from mini-games in AQWorlds Infinity to converting our other games #LookingAtYouDragonFable to Unity) and I broke it. It rotated on an unexpected axis when switching rooms. But, then again. This sorta looks cools. Guess this is what happens when you made 2D stuff in a 3D game engine.
Whispy Magik Miskles
We think longer tails on the magic missiles would look better in Infinity. The GIF above was just a white ball with simple motion trail to show how I imagined it behaving. You can see that I am dragging it around and the tail follows and shrinks over time. If Ghost did a real version of this using the particle system, the Mage auto attack would look awesome at both short and long range. This is because the tails would streak if the target was far away. We also tried setting the Mage's auto-attack to fire 30 missiles instead of one.
We have been taking these very seriously. Hope you enjoy seeing this gnitty gritty behind the scenes stuff. I would love to see comments in the future like "Wow, I have been watching them do this, and it is insane how good everything looks and plays in final game."
See you for tomorrow's update - Artix.
Boom! Sheen! Kerzap! Boomsplosion!
Mage Class Update
Those motion trails on the magic missles look awesome! (The angles need to be a bit narrower, but the trails look good.) he fireball hit is really satisfying too. Good job Ghost. In the GIF above you can see progress on the things from yesterday. We are still waiting on all the remaining code changes to fix some of the weird things going on. But even with the bugs, it is legit fun to play. Back when we were building AQWorlds, this is how we wished Mage looked and played.
I have an idea for a strategic skill change, and this is just brain storming because we need Immortal Joe & the rest of the team's approval to do it. What if the ice spell had a chance to stun? And if it stunned, it would put ice effect at the stunned monster's feet for the duration that it is stunned. Like a "freeze you in place". In this situation, ice would do less damage. The benefit would be that your opening move could be to "freeze/stun" the monster in place... followed by you pelting it with magik miskles in an attempt to slay it before it breaks free and charges you. However, need more damage, then open with your fireball. The fireball applies the scorched debuff. If you cast ice at a monster that it scorched, it will do crazy damage. But in that case it would not have a chance of stunning the monster. This would give the mage, which is one of our base classes, a few different opening strategies to use on monsters. This is more important when you are lower levels, then when you become crazy OP later on. The explosion skill, which causes an arcane explosion on three random targets was originally intended to be an area of attack skill-- but the early version of AQWorlds could not do that at the time. We decided not to change that for this class, trying to keep the classes as close to the originals as possible. So I am wondering how far we should... or how much we should limit the classes we are converting over. Keep in mind that there will be newer Infinity classes in the future. These new Infinity classes will use special skills/effects/features/targeting that will only work in Infinity. These sorts of things were seen in the Umbra class and Infinity DragonSlayer class from the previous tech demos. But obviously we want the converted classes to be awesome too.
Those NPCs look a touch too big on the background.
Bludrut Keep update
Today marks the day that several members of our team learned about Doki Doki Literature club. The actual quote was "WHAT THE HECK IS THIS FROM?" -- which was aimed at me. I said it was a popular visual novel and see how the sizing of the NPCs and text is? I was showing them a screenshot as a reference on how we should position our characters in dialogs. The visual novel follows the rule of thirds.
Visual novel style.... better for "talkies"
Now the lower half of the NPCs' bodies are off the screen. This is important because it makes them feel like they are in the forground, and in your mind, you assume the background is just... back there somewhere. If you could see their feet, then they would look like they were standing on the background... and look GIANT. (Look two screenshots up to see what I mean.)
Reens is using the parts of our cutscene tools that are working to remake the cutscene into something we can release. We were also supposed to do a walkthough today... but we got stuck on some nasty cutscene bugs.
The coders were in a seperate voice channel working on that and the other known issues. This would have hung us up for a tech demo release tomorrow if that hurricane was not already a problem.
Hurricane Helene update
The hurricane is moving north and will likely make landfall as a category 4. That is a big one. We hope everyone in its path stays dry and safe.
These things are as unpredictable as a D20 roll. Like everyone on this side of Florida, we are glued to the weather channel. We expect to get bad weather here starting early tomorrow morning. Losing power is common with big storms. (Note: Our game servers are in Texas. So the games will not be impacted by this storm.)
Be safe. Talk to you again soon! - Artix
The Hurricane's path shifted pretty far north of us. The coastline is taking a beating and a lot of the nearby bridges are shut down. Our area is still under alerts and the schools will be closed through the weekend, but today has been a normal work day so far. The roads were completely empty (which was zombie-apocalypse weird). Zhoom and I went to the gym and were surprised at how many other people were there. Got to resume work on Bludrut and the Mage class.
Bludrut still has a number of NPC & quest bugs. While testing, I saw Warlic in there working on code stuff.
Warlic and I caught up in Infinity using chat. Which is funny if you think about it. Warlic lives just 10 minutes from me. Since the pandemic pretty much everyone has been working from home. We do not see each other in person very often. Which sucks. I used to see him every day at the lab. Sure, we go out for coffee or get the kids together every now and then. In fact, we have been conspiring to have all of our kids watch Army of Darkness together this Halloween. Not sure if mine are all old enough yet >_>. The movie is not thaaaaaat bad. But there are still a few scenes that are questionable though. I digress. These days Warlic, the team, and I are all in Discord every day. We join voice chats with the people we are directly working with. So you will see Zhoom, Warlic, Yorumi, and Tunik in one chat... and then in the other you will see Reens, J6, Ghost, and myself. So it is extra funny that despite being right next to each other in voice chats, that we talked about the hurricane and caught up using in-game chat. We live in such a weird technological timeline.
Mage-ic Missle
Spider, Immortal Joe, and I got together to work on Mage class and test the new combat code. The biggest change was making the auto attack respect the global cool-down. Previously, it fired whenever the heck it wanted to. This means that you would fire a fireball and it would instantly fire the magic missile right after. Now, the timing feels smooth. This change fixed a few other problems too. We made a pretty beefy list of code changes still needed to get combat ready for the next test. That is.... once I am no longer able to break it, it will be your turn. Spider said he needed a few days. So the next update on combat will be Monday.
Which bring me....
"Oh, hi Reddit."
We sure have!
Technically longer.
Try 12 years.
At least, that was when I posted that #1st test of animating two Flash characters on an iPhone 3. This is where we first got the idea in our heads of what the future could look like.
We are always experimenting with things in the background. I am right now with Project: Omni. In the photo above, you see the day that Warlic built that first stress test. He put a dozen animated AdventureQuest Worlds characters on the screen. We were crazy excited. This was a time when my hype was not quelled by the philosophy of brutal honest that I now follow. So I have no problem telling you that we hit wall after wall of how to actually convert AQWorld's assets and make them work on mobile. The phones were pretty good at this point, but they did not have enough memory to hold all the giant atlases we needed, and were not fast enough to deal with all of the overdraw from from dozens of our crazy-lazered npcs, monsters, and player characters. Some ambitious players stepped up and tried creating their own solutions. Some very publicly. A "not so secret" truth-- if anyone had a viable solution, we were ready to hire them on the spot. But upon talking to each person, we never found a truly good viable solution. As 2020 (The death of flash) approached, Warlic switched his focus to creating the launcher. It saved the studio. He still maintains the launcher (which means, player support tells him every time players send in issues and then he fixes them.) With the launcher live, he returned his focus onto ways to make AQWorlds mobile.
Then... in the middle of the pandemic...
We had a breakthrough.
A few things all happened at the same time. Phones got better, Unity's tools got better, and our team's experience with cross-platform game development (Thank you AdventureQuest 3D) improved. For a long time it was just Warlic and Yorumi doing programming stuff. Warlic worked on the front end code and Yorumi worked on the server & database. But at the end of 2022, we had assembled a full team and were building this 2D MMORPG together.
Then, in 2023... we took the first playable version of AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity to PAX!
Masks were mandatory at this convention. Dage made us some skull ones.
AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity at PAX
This was a major milestone. A huge win for the game, and a much needed morale boost for the team. This early version of the game was running on every type of device. You could log in with your account and play together in the same world no matter which device you were on. This public convention was the moment it became clear-- AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity was happening with 100% certainty. The game was by no means ready for showtime yet-- but the bones were there. The only question is when.
There is something I REALLY want you to know.
I laugh along with the memes about how long this project has taken.
I know that those of you posting them are legit looking forward to playing.
I know you are scared that it might not be good. (That is exactly what we are taking this extra time to fix. ...also, bugs.)
It does not matter to me if we have been working on this for 3.5 years, or 7, or 12...
It does not matter how big the technical walls we had hit are...
What matters is we are going to keep going until AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity is released for you to login and play.
I am not the type of person who gives up....
If you would like to help the team and I, there is one thing that would make a huge difference. When you see my update posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram... comment something encouraging like "KEEP GOING!"
The power went out just a minute or two after I posted yesterday's update.
Crazy timing! O_O
Our hearts go out to everyone in the path of last night's hurricane. Kudos to the brave rescue workers who have been helping people in the flooded areas. They are an inspiration.
In our area, power was restored and the roads were clear by daylight. Dage said he was up late working and never lost power (lucky), but a buddy of his who lives in a flooded area had his car flooded. Warlic had some minor damage to a fence. Mostly it was downed tree limbs. The kids and I rode our bikes around the neighborhood this morning and helped neighbors clear debris. Locally, things have returned to normal and we are back to work.
This weekend is a 3 day long martial arts camp culminating in a black belt test. I am not testing, but the owner of the school is. A Grandmaster is flying in to oversee it. My kids are going to train there for part of it. It will be our first second (My kids were quick to remind me that we did indeed do one camp together before.) time doing this as a family. I will let you know on Monday how many teeth we have left. XD
Until then, have a safe and fun weekend. You can see the new weekly game updates our teams released at https://www.artix.com
Battle on!
Artix
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