This weekend update post is specially written for @RedBlueSky21 who nudged me on Twitter a few moments ago so I would not forget before I ran out of time today... give him a cheer and read on about Character Pages, Full screen, Zhoom, and the next update!
AdventureQuest 3D testers... please try out the Fullscreen game test page! Miko put this together for you today. It currently scales based on height, so if you shrink your browser to narrow things will start to overlap.
We were really hoping to have the character page live for you by now, but there is a bug that keeps causing our browsers to crash horribly... which... is why we are not linking you to what we have working (or, not working) so far O_O. One feature... when it does work, it makes you blonde!
Zhoom is the lead programmer on AdventureQuest 3D. He has worked on every game with me since the original AdventureQuest. He was scheduled to be out of the lab this week for a medical reason. I am very grateful and pleased to share with you that he is doing great and will be back in the lab next week!
We have been working on so many things, I am honestly not sure which of them will be going live in our next patch next week. The new inn and an attached mini-zone will go live for certain. We have new animations and our first full class, Warrior, which should be ready to rumble. Cysero posted a video of the warrior class skills on his Facebook page and a few people commented that they looked exactly like skills from a league of legends character. Which is funny... since none of us on the team play it. We looked it up and sure enough, two of the skills were very close! There is an interesting phenomenon going on in gaming now. There are a finite number of moves that the human body can make, and a finite number of ways to make them look cool... and a finite amount of colors to make motion trails with. Take for example, the Warriors jump two-handed slash. Our warrior jumps up in the air, arcing his back, and unleashes a deadly two handed strike. Sure enough, when we researched the league of legends character he did the exact same thing. Of course... if you go back several years before league of legends was made, and look at our game DragonFable... the DragonFable warrior does the EXACT same jump attack. But really, what you want the most likely source of this attack.... you would go back 2 more years from that to 2002 and look up the movie "Reign of Fire." There was a scene where a notable character jumps off a cliff with the exact same attack towards an incredibly huge dragon. He was then eaten. (Spoiler. And besides the point.) If you go back before that, there were a number of incredible early Japanese anime movies which also used that same movie. There is a long trail of inspiration sources for a lot of the animations that we use... we want to be as unique as possible, so as usual, we will likely change things as a result of the feedback. So when you do get to start playing with the new animations-- we hope you like them, and we also hope you give us lots of feedback so we can continue improving and changing them to be better!
Also coming in the next patch... combat SoundFX! We have some up on dev testing now, but they need a lot of work for timing. There is so much detail work that goes into combat. When you swing your weapon you want a good swing sound, different attacks cause different sounds when you actually hit the monster. Furthermore, if 30 people are in a raid attacking a single giant boss monster... you do not want to hear ALL their attacks... or your ears would explode. Also, if someone is fighting, you want to hear their attacks at the right volume to indicate distance, and with stereo positioning so you can tell where the sound came from if you are no looking directly at them.
Zhoom also coded a server selection screen-- although it will not display since there is only one development server.
Yergen & Llusion are working on the interior of buildings in town. We are also scheduled to move town around a little bit more accessible.
Xero is now working on his first Dragon for AdventureQuest 3D. He just finished modeling a few new monster variants including the new Trolluk DeathKnight which will be the boss right outside that giant evil tower in DoomWood.
Dage finished painting Alpha Knight armor which will be awarded to all testers at the end of the Alpha Phase along with a special badge. He is now working on the Guardian class. Which I still need to finish drafting skills for.
Cysero has been writing concept stories for the upcoming areas... in addition to conceptually designing the new 3D Guardian tower. he has been working with Rolith on the administrative tools to build quests. We have a pretty lengthy feature list of things we need to make in order to make really amazing quests. Right now, we have only the most basic quest models... but it is a good start.
Finally, a little update on our platforms! Right now, AdventureQuest 3D is available using the Unity 3D plugin (on Firefox and IE). Every time we do an update, we also update it for our (developer only) Apple and Android phones & tablets. When we finish the current phase and start Open Beta, we will release the mobile versions of the game to the app stores. (Exciting!) There will be a brief window of time were we focus on improving performance across the devices.... no testing prepares you for when 100K people download your app on gosh only knows how many different brands and models of devices! Then we will do a pretty major update to the game to prepare it to become a Windows 10 App (and maaaaaybe the Windows 10 phone). Along with this we should be able to have a downloadable version of the game for your PC & Mac. Those versions will get Oculus Rift support which is pretty easy from our end. By this time we should be talking about whether we all want to take a shot at getting AQ3D onto Steam. Being able to log into the exact same game and play with you friends from multiple devices is really exciting-- it is one of the things that is going to make this game a really unique 3D MMO.
If you are interested in getting involved in the production of this project... there will come a time when we need more digital artists to texture armors, 3D modelers, icon illustrators, writers, area/object constructors, and tons and tons of testers. If these are things you have skills in, please do feel free to post samples or your work and things you are passionate about doing.
Hope you enjoyed the update-- Oh! Also, this weekend we have a special quest in AdventureQuest Worlds for Upholders! Crazy that we have never done this before. Meanwhile, I will be working on on the new Artix.com most of tomorrow, so be sure to say hi on Twitter in between your questing.
QUESTION: Which of the following should be a higher priority? New Areas, Quest/Story, or Combat?
Official Twitter of AQ3D
Pun-slinging Paladin
Undead Legion Ruler
Scribble Scribe
Dawnforger
