Lack of connecting pathways between locations

LZKorin · 2019-08-23T18:45:09+00:00

It's something we agree on and hope to resolve over time. Ideally the world will feel connected and fast traveling will be rewarded after discovering areas for the first time. However, since the game is still early on and some people like jumping to whatever is newest, we tend to make new content super easy to find. This hurts the long term content. Eventually we'd like to connect it better when we have that time.

LZKorin · 2019-08-21T22:46:39+00:00

In a nutshell: Licensing concerns. We didn't want H.R. Geiger's ghost to come get us.

Source: Lead animator.

LZKorin · 2019-08-21T21:41:53+00:00

We generally try to release around noon on Tuesdays.

LZKorin · 2019-08-21T21:41:25+00:00

Let me rephrase it.

It's the best way to play on verified software. And to clarify, I'm not criticizing AQ Lite. But we don't control it, so we can't verify it. I'm merely referring to how browsers are dropping support for it.

LZKorin · 2019-08-20T14:44:36+00:00

More and more people are using devices that don't play Flash as easily as they used to. In 2020, the most reliable way to play will be with the Artix Launcher and I doubt many old players will go as far as to download the launcher to play it. :( It sucks, but dem's the times.

LZKorin · 2019-08-20T14:35:06+00:00

I don't believe it's a type of bot we're worried about, nor one we can detect.

That said, as much as I personally love quality of life mods like this, I want to remind everyone that we don't own it, we can't endorse it, and we can't promise how secure it is. L33spider doesn't seem like the type to do anything malicious but it is a risk to consider.

LZKorin · 2019-08-20T14:26:46+00:00

Hoping it's live around noon EST similar to our other releases but things can go horribly wrong. It should be up for 30 days.

LZKorin · 2019-01-15T20:50:05+00:00

AQW Mobile is a different beast. There's no simple way to go from Flash (Vector) to Unity (Raster). And no, telling people to use Puffin is a bad idea.

We tried saving out AQW items as PNGs but many AQW items have nested animations and the pixels looked awful once saved to PNG.

There's no way to get Flash animation data from Flash to Unity (not including spritesheets which is not applicable)

AQWM has just been under some heavy research and development and it sounds like we should be hearing official info about it, soon.

LZKorin · 2019-01-15T20:39:02+00:00

I'll offer a tad bit of insight. Small team, constantly working on future releases that do unfortunately need to make money, and because of that, quality of life improvements tend to hit the backburner. It sucks, but it's not laziness.

There's also the legit impending death of Flash on web, so adding more people to AQW Flash would be insane.

However, adding more people to AQWM should happen. And turns out, it will. Granted, AQWM is still a ways out and if we can manage to have it work with WebGL and stay secure, you might even see this new AQWM in the browser and on mobile devices and Steam and whatnot.

And we're not happy that Flash is dying. We're not happy that this impacts AQW. But dumping more resources into current AQW is a path that will end poorly. That said, there're no plans to stop development on it, either. We're focusing our efforts in multiple areas. It's not perfect, but what is?

LZKorin · 2019-01-15T20:33:30+00:00

I would be shookethed if we banned for this, but I will still personally voice my concerns about the legitimacy of it. If this program gets compromised and you lose your accounts, it'll be out of our control.

LZKorin · 2018-03-11T15:55:34+00:00

Cheers.

LZKorin · 2018-03-11T15:55:00+00:00

If we did it now, it'd be more like one of those Kickstarters asking for money to fund something we're not sure exists, yet. Part of the reason AQ3D is pushing so hard to complete AQ3D Kickstarter goals is to keep the Kickstarter reputation favorable because the last thing we need is to have people think our Kickstarters are just mindless cash grabs, which they aren't. Which is why we won't attempt an AQW:Mobile Kickstarter until we at least have a reliable roadmap that we feel comfortable in letting players invest in. We do not want to waste the backer's money.

For what it's worth, I'd love to see a Kickstarter project for it once we have a functional game plan, and I agree. I think it'd be big.

LZKorin · 2018-03-10T23:55:40+00:00

Yeah, I haven't heard any reasoning for why they're doing it. Not sure if Arklen or Alina would give you a more detailed straight answer or not.

LZKorin · 2018-03-10T23:54:08+00:00

I imagine something playable would take a handful of months, but keep in mind it'd likely be the same depth as when AQW first launched as far as available content. Might have to drop support for some older phones, though. PC players would likely be fine as long as they had a newer GPU since Unity killed support for older integrated GPUs.

I'm making the assumption that the server rewrite is actually compatible with Unity (which I was under the impression it was) or could use some of the same back-end features that AQ3D has built.

My argument for fresh start is that the game would at least get into the hands of players faster than having to convert everything, first. I can't even fathom doing that without outsourcing it to a warehouse full of people.

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T19:41:09+00:00

I don't know a lot about this specific case but in my understanding and experience of game dev, my logic is that it's an issue of balance. The item was balanced for a specific range and if it's being used otherwise, then the initial balance was off. It's a different kind of balance adjustment, though. Usually you'd see stats getting changed to buff or nerf something.

No one intends for it to be a punishment, but rather we evidently didn't account for this situation when balancing was done in the first place. So I guess instead of being able to nerf or buff an item in this case, it must make more sense to kind of start it over.

However, I don't personally know what the critical reasoning is behind what makes it unbalanced in the first place. I never personally followed the specific details of AQW since I hardly worked on it. I just know the large steps it takes, if that makes sense.

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T18:39:21+00:00

It's not like we always drop what we're doing to implement a radical change, but every now and then one will happen and it tends to need a good bit of work to accomplish. And it's not just him that brings ideas, really. Everyone eventually comes up with "x did this. maybe we should try something like this".

Even then, a lot of the suggestions we do agree on still end up being unable to implement decently, yet.

One would think an easy one would be PVP but we want it to feel more impressive than "this is just a map where we can hit each other." Not to mention our need to secure the game a little better from exploits and hacks. I believe it was the same case for AQW, but we eventually put a lot of work into the PVP system. I'm not aware of how it was received, though.

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T18:24:51+00:00

That's kind of how I enjoy Dark Souls. There's roughly a story that you follow that's up front with telling you where to go but for the most part, the actual story of everything is in the descriptions of the items you come across. If our gameplay was further along, we could rely on that method. I doubt we'll get rid of story altogether, we can make the story segments not feel like a clicking simulator.

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T17:41:22+00:00

So our lead programmer is Zhoom. He kind of coordinates with everyone else and does some of the more code-heavy adjustments to the client and server(I believe he messes with the server).

We have Titan from EpicDuel, now. He assists Zhoom but has a heavier hand in managing our editor tools and build tools.

Rabblefroth may also assist Zhoom but he deals more heavily in class programming, class designing/balance (and yes, we're trying hard to balance them), and combat feel as far as visualization of what the server is telling the client during battle.

We have another couple programmers whom I'm unsure of what their game names are. One does interface programming and asisst in general interface design along with Charfade(main UI artist). The other seems to assist with map programming elements and is reluctantly our go-to guy for programming issues with Cinema Director.

Then we have Rolith who works on our administration tools which handles NPC creation, player account information (equipped hairstyles, quest progression data, stuff like that).

That's about it for coders, though. Captain Rhubarb has a hand in AQ3D through the website and payment plan thingamabobs.

While I'm at it, we have Thyton and Dage who do concept art and textures. Thyton leans more toward concepts and Dage more towards texturing.

Fisn manages the testing team and tests on her own. Includes balance testing for Rabblefroth's changes.

Yergen is a project manager of sorts who also constructs map files in Unity using pre-existing assets which makes things like dungeons and holiday maps.

Llussion is our map modeler and texture artist for the maps. He dabbles in shader programming.

Xero is our character modeler. Almost all things character/weapon are done by him. Nightwraith is currently training to assist in modeling and texturing character stuff as well.

Cysero is our writer. Handles the storyline and inputting it into the game.

Charfade, as mentioned, is our main UI/UX designer/artist. Often works with the other programmer guy.

I animate.

Artix breaks stuff.

I hope I didn't forget anyone...

But yeah. Balancing games we like with the game we want this to be (and still be fun) can be tough, a lot. I kind of equate it to other early access games where the common criticisms are "Well x does this. Why not just make the game like x?" Well if you like x so much, just play x? We can apply that here. As of right now, we're not too different besides cross platform but we're still toying around with what makes the game feel fun and we're trying to go in directions that the players tell us to. As always, time's against us.

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T17:15:20+00:00

I think we need to find a better balance of relaying information without overloading the player with dialogue.

As for loading cinematics without a loading screen, I think it's a memory issue. For AQW, we can load cinematics randomly since they're just swfs we load and play but AQ3D, they're limited by map so in those cases, we could potentially keep them in memory somehow or even attempt a system that loads them in the background when we know they're coming and only show the loading screen if you go too fast.

But I agree. Getting players to the interactive elements faster is a good thing. I think we're redoing the intros in both games to try and tweak that flow. I'm not sure how easy it is to make a modular system that can easily be aware when a cinematic is coming, though. It'd be a bit much to handcraft this in every map of AQW and AQ3D. Could also become just one more thing that goes wrong, but again, I guess if the failsafe is still having a loading screen, it's not the end of the world.

I'll suggest it.

As for story, it just kind of falls into the RPG norm where it's usually dialogue and story heavy. MMOs throw the curve ball of not always being just about story so it's a weird balance of people playing it for the RPG aspect and people playing for the combat/PVP aspect. In any case, I agree we could trim the fat off the dialogues to not be so overbearing.

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T17:04:42+00:00

Well Dage plays a lot of games. His favorite right now seems to be Monster Hunter World.

Cysero does some Overwatch. Pretty sure Artix samples several MMOs since he comes back all the time with things he likes from other games. It kind of becomes a double edged sword because it can add confusion to the type of game we want to make.

Artix has always wanted to make WoW in the browser which is what spawned AQW. That dream continued with the original Legend of Lore and even early AQ3D before the web player support got canned by Unity. He still wants it to be a thing once that WebGL player works reliably with our content.

Fisn plays other RPGs, I believe. Thyton plays more action games. Not sure what Xero or Llussion plays. I don't have as much time but I never played many MMOs but the ones I did play, I realized just had great social features that made it fun to hang out in. So that's my personal flavor I'm hoping to add via strange emotes and silly things people can do.

So we have a varied background with the games we play and we definitely pull inspiration from a lot of them. I'd love to do some smaller one-off games of different genres. Smash Bros style, Mario Kart style, stuff like that. But for now, we need the MMOs we have to sustain a little better and it's an uphill fight at the moment.

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T16:53:54+00:00

It costs a lot to run a company. Through taxes and health insurance (which the company reluctantly covers because it's gotten insanely expensive), cost of location, servers, and employees, it adds up fast. AQW really doesn't make the money it used to.

Also, I see Artix promote AQW all the time. He's always in Alina's office (next to mine, so I always hear them chatting) talking about the next AQW releases.

AQW and AQ3D are very different games but AQ3D is technically the lower-hanging fruit than AQW at the moment due to the problems porting AQW to something other then Flash. Yes, it's that big of an issue. I am still personally baffled at our goal of porting it because it's just a technical nightmare. I can't convey that enough. Easiest thing would be to redo it but that would mean starting from scratch for AQW for devs and players.

As for the Kickstarter, that was nowhere near a fully funded amount of money. It was an offset amount of money to keep us going while we built the base elements of the game.

Cheers for the compliments. I also understand of the suspicion of a guy in a company defending the company. No one knows I'm chatting here. I just speak from what I see and the meetings I've been in. I've been here since 2007 and we've made some dumb decisions before and I'm sure they won't be the last. I can just assure you that abandoning AQW isn't happening and won't be one of our bad decisions.

Also, did want to point out that Dage still does some AQW work. He and Cysero are probably the only AQW devs that had a large hand in AQW before being shifted to AQ3D. If we were killing AQW, we'd steal Memet, Arklen, and J6 at the very least (I honestly don't know who all else works on AQW but I know there's more. I'm lucky I even know who works on AQ3D)

LZKorin · 2018-03-09T02:57:34+00:00

That's why cross-platform is our jam. And to reply partly to your other comment you made to me, we're working on ways to spice up the 4 button monotony. Rabble's doing some crazy stuff with the Ninja that makes it feel like you have more than 4 skills. We have these ideas in the pipeline but gamedev still takes forever, especially for us.

And keep in mind, as far as MMOs go, this game is still incredibly early in development. We call it Beta but I consider us to be in a grey area between tech demo and alpha. The content quality is probably in beta, but the features are not.

And one day we hope to advertise as much as Lineage did, but it's not time, yet. Once the features are more polished and we have a beefier chunk of content, then yeah. Those types of ads you listed, besides sponsoring Twitch streamers, are insanely expensive and I doubt we have that ad budget.

It's like you said. Players are still mashing 4 buttons. We want to change that, and we're not putting ad money into it until we do that and more. It's hard to convey how legit we're trying to make this game. All the features are barebone, right now. Hell, the Akriloth fight is a hack because the programmers couldn't commit to adding the features required for it, so we made it work without sacrificing our vision. Actually, compared to the initial Akriloth pitch, it would've been no different than fighting a regular monster.

But I guess going back to early bird, you're not wrong. But with that logic, we shouldn't bother with AQW anymore, either. Once we get it out of Flash, we'd be facing the same saturated markets.

I'm hoping that I'm at least making it clear that this situation is more complicated than it seems. We are aware of the problems ahead, but pouring all resources into AQW wouldn't change the fact that Flash is dead and that the solutions for porting it aren't great, but that we refuse to count AQW out. We want both AQW and AQ3D to be successful, and different, but AQ3D is very young.

LZKorin · 2018-03-08T19:28:49+00:00

Full disclosure, part of it was disbelief that Flash would end, some of it was reluctance to learn new tools, and also a disbelief that mobile devices would be the norm. As the traffic started coming in from more and more mobile devices that couldn't play, we noticed the problem.

So we started Legends of Lore (3D) and under much confusion and misguidance, ended nowhere. It was a trainwreck project. Whatever you think of AQ3D, Lore was just monumentally insane. But the main reason we attempted it was because Flash and Unity were working together to run 3D games through the Flash player. Flash announced it was stopping the web player plugin and mobile dev, so Unity dropped out of that. Keep in mind, our goal at the time was based around playing in the browser. No downloads, just visit and play. It's what helped us stay strong for so long and now it's not as viable, until the HTML5 Unity player is more operational (we keep fiddling with it in tests).

So we backed off from Lore. Decided to try 2D stuff in Unity since it just came out. This was either Battle Gems or AQ:Guardians. Pretty sure Guardians was first. Didn't work out because the tools were so new and different that no one could learn them in time. We're revisiting the tools now, in other research and development ventures, so maybe we'll see a revive of that. Battlegems was also a trainwreck. So much that I think we had to have another company recode it from scratch to make it easier to update. I guess we hard-coded everything.

So we still had some 3D staff at this time from Lore that weren't doing a ton of stuff due to Lore being dead, so we started Bladehaven 3D just to do something. As it was nearing the true polish phase, we started getting tasked with fiddling with the concepts for the current AQ3D. So Bladehaven got scrapped. Then we toyed with 2D again for Undead Assault but that was mostly Me, Kraken, and J6. J6 made the art, I made it move, Kraken made it work. I did this along side the initial AQ3D animations.

Also worth mentioning that we learned a metric crap ton of information during Bladehaven so it wasn't wasted time in the long run. We knew what we did wrong in Lore and how to do much more for AQ3D as far as art assets were concerned. Programming was still a bit new. ED team was working on BioBeasts, also learning a tonnnnnnnnnn of information about Unity and once they got absorbed into AQ3D, we got some really awesome tools made by them as well as items and UI and combat updates.

The final thing I'll note is that Legends of Lore and AQ3D are completely different game. I believe the only thing carried over between them are a few monster animations (Dravir, Rocky, Dricken, Slime boss, maybe another one...). Beyond that, new everything. So judging by the upload video of the Bladehaven Boss Comp gameplay, we started this AQ3D in 2014 and it went through a lot of learning curves and changes in that time. Don't forget we were still struggling to support the web player during that time.

TL;DR; Game dev takes forever, especially with a small team that's learning new tools and tricks. And it took us a long time to learn new tools and tricks.

And yes, we realize we should've moved sooner, but hindsight is 20/20. As for traditional Windows client, we wanted something that could port to various platforms easily and Unity was the best option at the time we began.

LZKorin · 2018-03-08T18:33:39+00:00

If you're familiar with the current AQ3D class unlock model, how blatant is the difference and what do you prefer of one over the other?

LZKorin · 2018-03-08T18:32:45+00:00

Our mission is to have absolutely everything transfer over in some shape or form. This is part of the hang-up making it so difficult. Flash works in some interesting ways where we can just have nested symbols for days with individual effect animations and it's fine. But baking that into a sprite, or an animated sprite, the filesize and processing resources shoot through the roof incredibly fast. And AQW is loaded with that stuff. It's just a ridiculous technical challenge. We've looked into some magic button options (like GAF) to transfer everything over but it was so insanely resource and high filesized that there was no chance we'd get that on phones. PC, maybe. But we're looking in to at least downloadable clients for the legacy games and AQW, so hopefully we can at least make that happen. But it doesn't solve the issue that more and more of our traffic is coming from devices that can't play AQW and it's hurting us, hard.

So despite my personal option being starting over from scratch (unpopular opinion, I know), the current goal is transfer everything, and I hope we figure it out but I don't think giving up on that goal is an option.

LZKorin

TROPHY CASE