AQWorlds Infinity Game Dev Story - Week 9

A culture of video games, art, and coffee...

Our history is being written now. Be a part of this new game's story by reading along this week's daily updates.

If you have not read the last post... please do! It is a good one.

MONDAY

How was your weekend? Hope it was adventure filled. I have some stories for you from mine.... not entirely sure I should post them. I made a huge mistake at the martial arts camp & black belt testing. O_O. Really bad. In fact, they removed an entire drill from the curriculum as a result. But first, how about we catch up on AdventureQuest Worlds: Infinity?

Today's full team sync was intense. We are aiming to conduct the next Tech Demo ASAP. Embracing 100% transparency, we wanted it to be an ultra smooth perfect experience. But that is not going to happen. With a few systems still behind schedule, we are going to focus the test on just two things -- the Mage Class and Bludrut Keep's first floor quests. 

I will post time & day info for the Tech Demo here, so be sure to check back daily.

A lot of bugs were fixed since the last post. Spider has been making incredible progress through the combat list. Which includes the FX sizing issue as seen in the screenshot above. Every screen in AQWorlds can have a unique size and scale. That is how you can walk from a zoomed out shot to the cozy and tight interior of a cave in the same map. The characters, npcs, monsters, FX, and even walk speed need to be adjusted on each screen to match it. Compared to the server sync parts of combat, the sizing stuff is trivial to someone of Spider's skill. But our game is very art focused so this sort of detail work is extremely important.

Ghost just has one more change to make to the Mage Class's Ice Skill. Warlic also carved through the massive list of quest issues. As a result, we now have a few new issues... including this "triple up" of notification messages. (As seen in the GIF below)

Are you REALLY sure I opened that door?

It is like the quest version of pop up ads XD

In the Gif above, the quest objective, a machine notification, and the quest complete indicator are all firing at the same time. (Whoops!) What is good about this, is that they are all working. LOL. Quests that have a single objective should just show the quest complete in the middle of the screen and automatically give you your new quest. This is on giant "fix it list" (With a horde of other strange issues)\

Nulgath completed all of the Bludrut monsters and has been working waaaaay ahead of us. Same as J6 is ahead with the new maps.

A shadow of his former self

There are two ways we are animating monsters in AQWorlds Infinity. One way is similar to how we animated in the original AQWorlds. Every piece is seperate... which is more powerful, but not as good for performance because of how many draw calls is creates. The other is using Unity's skinned mesh renderer which is incredibly good for performance. The second one also lets us export "skins" for monster animations. Useful for things like Frogzard's which share the same animations.

Here is the anatomy of a Frogzard.... (Particle FX sold seperately)

When animated they look great!

Mage Mana Mania

Serious question: Is there even a reason to get stronger if you start off all-powerful? Long time players of AQWorlds are really, really, really strong. Thanks to crazy gear, a horribly broken LUK stat, and classes that are so OP that the game servers buckle under the sheer magnitude of your DPS... you guys show up as Super Saiyan 9 if looked at through a power meter. AQWorlds Infinity will have a separate level. So your character will have one level in the existing AQWorlds and one in Infinity. We are pretty scared that it will feel bad going from Hero to lvl Zero for the next tech demo. Also, when is the last time you needed to worry about things like... running out of mana?

I have played a few different versions of Mage these past two weeks and here are my comments.

1. Having infinite mana takes away the need for any strategy. It is just button mashing.
2. Running out of mana quickly with little regen is even more boring... because I have no buttons to press.
3. Mage has two single target skills that do damage, and I often find myself waiting on them to cooldown.
4. That cooldown time causes you to use your auto attack which refills mana... but I would like that to be more intentional. Sort of like choosing when you take your foot off the gas petal.
5. There are no equipable potions yet... so if I hit explosion and pull a bunch of mobs that actually do damage, I am ... D. E. A. D.
6. When I exit combat, there is a little delay before I actually exit combat and then 2 seconds before I get my first tick of mana back. I think the first tick should come instantly when we exit combat.
7. We left in the ability to sit. It restores health and mana SUPER fast. But we keep increasing normal health and mana regen because it feels too slow.
8. The monsters do not currently do enough damage for mana shield to matter. (Easy to fix that O_O) Eventually you will get strong enough that it does not matter anyway. It would be nice if mana shield increased your mana pool every time you took a hit. Then, casting explosion and attracting multiple targets would make sense. Low on mana? Pop your shield and aggro a bunch of guys to hit you. You take a little more damage but fill your mana like crazy giving you the power to blast them.
9. ... we are not going to have time to make all the changes we want before this next tech demo. But the skill forge makes it a lot easier to change and tweak classes.

Bludrut Progress

Reens and I ran through the first floor today with the new quest changes. There is a lot more to do. All of the cutscenes need re-done with the new system. I feel bad, this is the 4th or 5th time she had to redo one of the cutscenes. We are going to get started early tomorrow. Even if the cutscenes are not perfect, it can still be a solid tech demo as long as the quests flow. There is also a Bludrut Key weapon we made that we can use as reward that testers can take back to the existing AQWorlds (I hope). Wish us luck!

OK... I did not expect to write a post this long today. #ThankYouForComingToMyTedTalk. Come back tomorrow for that martial arts story.

 

TUESDAY

The Pressure Cooker

In Discord, I said today was a "Pressure cooker day on Infinity." One of my buddies thought we were literally making a pressure cooker item for the game. In his defense he was very hungry.  We started early. When I am completely overwhelmed (which I certainly was today) my strategy is often to just... start at the end.

This is the literal end of Bludrut's 1st floor

The Bludrut Blade... was a lie!

It turns out, there has never actually been a Bludrut Blade. The sword found in Bludrut Keep was actually the Groglurk's Sword. #WhatATwist This gives us a unique opportunity. When we finally reach the final level of this dungeon... we can reward you with the real, true, honest to goodness "Bludrut Blade." At least, we can after someone designs it O_O. But no pressure there... we hit so many bugs in the quests & cutscene issues for the first  floor that I am sweating just writing you this update post.

Getting the Cold Shoulder on Mage

I have been getting warnings from the team that I am violating my 80/20 rule with all of the Mage class changes I have been sneaking in. That rule is 80% the same and 20% better. The problem with making too many changes is that it sets a slippery slope & unrealistic standard for converting 100+ classes when we are also going to be introducing those fancy new infinity classes. The last message I got sorta felt like getting a note telling me that I have to go to the Principal's office XD. They are right of course. It will be hard to balance if we detour too far from the way things are in AQWorlds.

Getting through these first 4 base classes is a vital moment in this game's design. It will be the foundation by which other things are balanced by. It is weird that mage went first. Giving it a ranged auto attack is a really nice upgrade. The mana shield restoring your mana works really well too.

How about that Ice spell?

Ghost has been eagerly waiting on the new ice attack. The current one is too long and thin. It looks like the magic missles. J6 is out sick. So Aranx stepped up to make the shard. It is common to Google-fu images for inspiration.... then draw a stick figure of what I would like.

Check out the actual process of this art being created below...

An hour or so later Aranx sent these.... O_O

Then Aranx improved it even more!!! O_O

I was absolutely blown away. It looks gorgeous.

So I sent this request for the "Freeze in place" FX

#NoPressure

See why I am getting in trouble for last minute Mage changes?

But OMG this is going to be so awesome! If you cast your Ice spell, and your target is at 100% health, it will attempt to freeze it in place for a few seconds. It is a good opening attack because you can use your long range magic to get a few hits before the monster charges you.

"Smell what the Rock Elemental is cooking"

It probably smells like Rock Lobster or Rock Candy

Each floor of Bludrut keep has a different cursed elemental boss fight. Reens moved the dramatic cutscene from the original story to just after this fight. The cutscene reveals why the Spirit Hunter is actually in this dungeon. Of course... our ever changing codebase corrupted that cutscene... repeatedly. She has rebuilt it over 4 times now. We are also still making changes to the quest system. There is a magic to having a deadline.... it puts you in the pressure cooker. Things that work... flow like magic. Things that have issues... crumble like like that Rock Elemental when hit with a fireball. But the deadline forces you to deal with those issues-- quickly. There is no way this is going to look the way it needs to in the next 24 hours. So I have a good idea.

Stability Test (Tech Demo)

We have been making so many changes to combat, quests, and everything else... how about we run a Mage class & game client stability test first? This would be a tech demo just to make sure all the things we changed are working prior to releasing Bludrut. Not only is it a great way to stall for more development time while still letting testers hop on the game.... it is probably a pretty smart idea. This way we can find & fix combat and multiplayer bugs before introducing all of the new bugs in Bludrut XD. Let me know if you are down for a test this week. Probably Thursday. I will confirm it if it happening in tomorrow's post.

P.S. Oh gosh, I owe you that martial arts story....

 

 

WEDNESDAY

Coming soon... "I have a bad feeling about this"

 

THURSDAY

Coming soon.... "Maybe. Just maybe."

 

FRIDAY

Coming soon... "Best day of the week! Time travel for early access."

• #aq2d
• #aqw
• #Infinity

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