Design Notes - Anything Goes Edition

Artix Krieger | Wednesday, February 20, 2019

You love the Design Notes.

Or as people call them "game news", "developer diary", or "OMG, is he allowed to even write that?" Here's uh... today's! Sans rhyme or reason.

Embarrassing PvP Stories

So he summons a Skeleton... the dev using Necromancer class. And their skeleton starts attacking. Which, you know, you expect. Except you cannot attack the skeleton back. Because the Skeleton is friendly to you. Even though it is murdering you to death with its weird skeleton table flip animation. Summoned monsters operate with a weird set of rules. But that's OK. Except that you are using the Warrior class and the other Mage devs are grieinf you. But then you use your goto friend from the friends menu to teleport to them. And they start screaming "what the heck! Are you hacking!?" .... that's right. Devs accusing each other of hacking. Followed by evil giggling.

Purposefully, I have not even remotely hinted at a release date for PvP. But the first phase is closer than you expect. But not as close as the person who is about to post "OMG PvP is coming out n...." because you know that curse-jinxes us. O_O NO. Bad. NO.

To solve some of the weird issues we have been having, the simple solution is to add TEAMS to the first phase of PvP. By being part of a team you can sorta balance out the other problems. I reluctantly agreed to doing this first... because I think a free-for-all anything goes battle arena would be a blast. We could even do the ever popular Battle Royale thing. Did you ever watch the Japanese BR movie? (1. Always surprised at how many battle royale game fans do not know where the term comes from. 2. Rated R).

Kingdom of Battleon... HOLY @#@!#$ IT'S BIG!

Llusion has been designing and constructing a new home town. I walked around a raw, unrefined version of  it for the first time yesterday. I am in love. It has that WOW factor when you first see it. The previous versions were nostalgic. This new version... is an entirely new thing. We also are adding the Aeries Battlespire (Battle Arena and special event coliseum) in the sky above it.

The town is cleverly split into several major areas. For example, the magic shop, museum, library, petshop, and class trainers are all in one area revolving around questing. We could use your help with the social area though... currently we have an out door stage and seating, a house which will be "your house", and a guild hall for your guild, and some "weird shopping stores". Possibly a theater house. What sort of things should we put in a social area? What sort of fun things would you like to do? (Oh, and there are spots to fish all over town.)

Updating our App Store Game Screenshots

After I finish writing this (procrastination mode engage!) I am going to be creating new screenshots and a new video trailer for AdventureQuest 3D's Apple, Android, and Steam listings. This is really something I need to do monthly. This is really something I have needed to do for 3 weeks now... but the priority keeps getting bumped. Our marketing (I could say "guy" here... but I feel like we should have some creative term them, like the "summoner of eyeballs"-- feel free to post suggestions in the comment area) <human> told me if I do not update the app store art that HE would do it... and dress every character in the shots pink. (Message to new players: I am deathly allergic to the color pink and it will literally burst my eyeballs into flames if I look at it for more than 3 seconds. Also... soy and dairy.)

Making fun graphics is my favorite thing to do in the entire world. So why have I been having so much trouble doing this? Do you ever have this type of problem? You finally get to work on something you love, but it is almost like your mind blocks you from actually doing it? O_O Wait... is this a type of writer's block?

Each app store has very different requirements. (BORING!) ... TLDR <deleted this section>

Most games pick 5 screenshots and use epic game-like trope labels including:

  • "Battle stuff!"
  • "Explore and walk around or something"
  • Epic game-jargon-goes-here
  • Anything to distract you from the fact that they're using a recycled game engine and their art was outsourced for $0.05 / hour in another country
  • "Free to Pay!"

But watch in amazement as I back pedal trying to figure out what to actually write on ours... because even though our friendly team of devs creates the game engine, server, art, and animation here at the lab in the beautiful swamps of Lutz, Florida (near Tampa) our loving Marketing Maestro still thinks we should use something like...

  • Battle on!
  • Explore a growing world!
  • Epic Villains
  • New stuff added regularly
  • Collect items and customize your Hero

Where of course I am more inclined to go with....

  • A Massively Multiplayer Game for crazy players... by crazy devs!
  • Living, Organic, & Growing World*   (please don't eat. Not food stuffs)
  • You be you. However you want to be. (May the fates have mercy on us all)
  • The MMORPG that won't dive into your wallet! (Unless yer rich... cause, daaaang those cosmetics & pets.)
  • "Insert something witty here!"

Maybe I will try both... we can always run two sets and see which work better. Our numbers in general have been steadily increasing. We are only about 3% away from the target we need to start buying the ads. Which means I get to make ads again! I love making ads! (I made most of the AQ, DF, MQ, AQW ones you saw... except for the bad ones. Someone else made those. I did, however, make that one in 2011 about Drakath being the reason for the end of the world, not the end of the Mayan calendar, which apparently made a lot of children cry. My bad.)

Secret NES Game

It is WedNESday afterall...
I have three jobs. I work all day on games for you. Then, for job two, I go home and train all my childrens to play games. It can be argued that I only spawned them into this world to become gold farming machines. O_O Why else have kids? (Do not report me... to our player support for account sharing OR to social services.) My third job starts after the little ones go Zzzz. That is my 1.5 hours where I get to work on ANYTHING I want before going to Zzzz. Typically I am learning how to program in C#, working on my art skills, researching, or... for the last month or so, developing a retro old school NES game. I even constructed an original NES cartridge and got it running on my original 1986 Nintendo. It is high comedy to see a PS4, Switch, VR headset, a NES, and a VCR all sitting on my desk. I sort love the idea of being simultaneously cutting edge and retro-- because I love ALL OF IT. I LOVE GAMES. Wish I just had some time to actually play some :(

Credits

Screenshot credit goes to HazirothGhost. Again. STOP SUBMITTING SO MANY FREAKING GOOD SCREENSHOTS HazirothGhost! I didn't even realize this was yours until I went to grab the name.

Play AdventureQuest 3D

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