Hiya guys! Everything you wanted to know about the big Unity Upgrade, 20th Anniversary Event End, Scaling Fix, Level Cap Increases, and upcoming Sagas but were afraid to ask. (Note: That was an old book title reference... everyone knows you are not afraid of anything.)
We are upgrading AdventureQuest 3D to a shiny new version of Unity.
A few weeks ago we tried pushing a new version of the game to the app stores. The stores told us we had to upgrade our Unity version before the game client is allowed to be updated. X_X
Eh... we just had to update every script and every map, monster, weapon, and item in the game. This time was easier than the two times we did it previously. Most of it was automatic this time.
Almost. While I am typing this, the team is going through and working on fixes for a bunch of the maps. The biggest issue is that the way Unity handles lighting changed. So a bunch of the maps have weird lighting. It is a relatively easy fix.
If we do a super good job... you will not even notice it happened. Except for the scaling fix and the title screen art will finally be updated to Frostval.
Yeah :-( We have not been able to update the game client since we added the Mogloween art. We did make other login screen that we were not able to use for the record.
You get the base game from the app stores. But the maps and items are downloaded directly from our servers. We can change the maps and items at any time. We can even build and release some things without restarting the server. Pretty crazy.
When we contacted the ad provider, they told us that we needed to get on a more recent long term support version of Unity for them to assist us. Once the Unity upgrade is live, if the issue is not fixed, we will re-contact them and get it fixed.
Yeah. A while back we build fix for the #1 big annoyance with scaling-- which is, the monsters get stronger when you level up. They did not get just stronger, they got an entire level stronger... instantly. Not cool. When you level up, you are supposed to get stronger, not them. So we fixed it. This fix was supposed to go live with the anniversary event which included a level cap increase. But, we were blocked from releasing it because of the Unity Upgrade issue. The fix will go live with the Unity upgrade.
Next week.
The Atlantis finale will increase the level cap to 42. (Which is also the answer to life, the universe, and everything. But do you know WHY 42 is the answer to everything? Fun fact. The ASCII character 42 is *... the asterisk. When you query databases, typing * means return everything. In addition to being a hilarious and brilliant author, Douglas Adams was a computer guy. )
The level cap will increase during new sagas. We are ambitiously plotting out the new sagas for 2023 alongside fixes to the main story-line and some of our older areas. This includes some of the ones in concept art from a long time ago. Next up will be the Nulgath Part III: The Oversoul. We are currently building maps for it.
Both yes and no.
The contracts with the event's special guests expire on January 2nd. In the original message on the event page, I wrote that the event would go "poof" at the end of the year. Which is true. It has to. All of the bits with the special guests need to be removed. We will need to take the event down for a while to make the changes. So by January 2nd, the event and maps will indeed appear to go poof. At this time some items will go perma-rare AKA Legacy...
Here is a list of the items that are 100% going legacy
The event as a whole was a limited time experience. So, no. It will not be coming back as you played it. But some of the maps will return as stand alone adventures.
Yes. We will modify or rebuild some of the maps and re release them in the game. This will allow players to finish their quests. It is important to recognize our players who accomplished extraordinary things during the short time-span of this event. So we will look at each map and determine which badges and items are worthy of being replaced or tagged as "20th" to indicate that they were obtained during the event.
Of course! There are only 2 weeks left this year (2022). Which means two more major releases. This week's will be a new map... from a much older incarnation of the AdventureQuest 3D, when we were called Legends of Lore. Then, get ready for the Atlantis Boss Fight... our final boss fight of 2022! If you would like me to do live events again for New Years, please let me know on Twitter. Yesterday, we had a big meeting mapping out the new features we are going to be building (and fixing) through the 1st quarter of 2023. Normally these meetings happen the 1st week of the New Year. Guess we are getting a heads start this time. This includes fixes, features, new classes, quality of life improvements, new sagas, and a new start of the game which takes us to the main story while fixing/re-balancing the existing game areas. The new tools that Spider and the crew built have completely changed how we create game areas. We still have a 10-mile long feature list of things we would like the dev tools to do. The good news is after the Unity Upgrade is live, some of those tools will be available for us to start using. Those tools will make our future content higher quality and smoother to develop. Meanwhile, Memet and I resumed writing Nulgath Part III "The Oversoul" today. We will probably be going back to the bookstore where we wrote the 20th Anniversary Event to finish it tomorrow. If there is anything you would REALLY like to see make its way into Nulgath: Part III... please let me know on Twitter.
Hope this post was helpful. See you in game!
Battle on!
Artix
P.S. I wrote a longer post about my trip up north if you want to read it here.
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