Taking a screenshot may seem like pretty simple stuff once you learn how to do it but we all hard to learn sometime.
Earlier this week Artix and I decided to spend a little time in AQW talking to you guys and it seemed to both of us that a lot of you had no idea how to take a screenshot and capture the moment you met your all-time very, very, VERY favorite AE Dev...
...Or Artix.
We decided to make a quick video explaining some fairly fast and easy methods, namely LightShot and the Snipping Tool. You can watch the video here.
We were amazed by how many people started using our methods and thaking us for teaching them how to do this, so we're putting it here for anyone else who might want to learn how to take screenies of their favorite gaming moments.
There are other methods, like just hitting the PRT SC (Print Screen) key on your keyboard which captures your whole display and Pasting into a new file in a basic art program like Paint, but using the Snipping tool is faster and using Lightshot is even faster still and also great for storing and sharing your files with your friends. And it's all FREE!
One of the most common questions/suggestions that we get is about adding Trade to AQW.
I know that I'm on the OMNI team now but the answer is the same now as it was back when I was working on AQW. We wish we had expected AQW to get as big as it did, because then we would have added it in when we were laying the groundwork. It's already something that we are heavily discusing for AQW 3D but for AQW... Trade will never be a part of AQW.
There are several reasons.
First, there is nothing in the AQW engine that would allow for trading of any kind so it would take not just writing the new function into the engine but a complete retooling of the entire AQW engine. The ability to give an item to another player is pretty core functionality. It's not something that you can just tack onto an existing game in most cases.
Second, Flash actually has an actionscript line limit before it can no longer compile. The changes to allow for Trade and to make it secure, as it would need to be, would be a massive addition to the engine and the engine is already large enough that Adobe Flash has issues compiling it. Think of the engine like a slice of pizza. The AQW pizza already has so many toppings that the crust can barely support it all right now. Adding trade would essentially be adding another pizza on top of the first one at which point the pizza would then collapse under its own weight. Then you'd have to eat pizza with a fork and who want's to eat pizza with a fork? Mutants and losers, that's who.
Third, having a reasonable trade system means having a balanced economy in-game. Gold rewards and item sale prices would have to be normalized across the game to make gold a reasonable currency with which to trade. This would mean going back over the game and retooling EVERY SINGLE quest, item price, monster kill award and shop by hand, one at a time, to balance the economy. All that could only take place after the math was done to figure out what changes would need to be made to make the ongoing economy viable.
Fourth, all of this would take the code team a REALLY LONG time and without the coders, there isn't much that the rest of the Devs can do to make a release. While the programmers took the time to do all this and do it right, AQW would probably have limited to NO weekly releases which would make people come back less often which would reduce player count which would reduce sales which would pretty quickly kill the game off. We don't want that. That's bad.
Fifth, it would pretty much ruin the concept of rarity which still plays a very big role in AQW. Some people would say that it's already ruined but those exact same people have some pretty amazing rare items that they wouldn't part with for all the tea in Teattle (which is like Seattle but has tea instead of coffee), so they can stuff it. People have suggested only making non-rares tradeable but most people wouldn't care about trade unless they could purchase hard-to-find items like rares so that's a pretty bad suggestion.
Finally and most importantly, the ability to actually trade items would give hackers and scammers a real, actual reason to hack people's accounts. Right now, there's no real reason to do that other than to feel important in a pathetic sort of way and we STILL get THOUSANDS of e-mails a day from players who got "hacked" (read as: gave away their account to someone who promised them something, or tried to trade accounts even though it's against the rules for this very reason). Once the hackers and scammers actually had a reason, one of AQW's biggest problems would get substantially worse overnight.
It's not impossible. Anything can be done but as you can see there are some pretty HUGE obstacles that make it very improbable. We're not scared of a little hard work and if something changes that someday makes it possible then we'll let you know but for now, it's pretty safe to say that Trade will NEVER be a part of AQW. Tell your friends.
Everyone Is Enjoying The Tech Demo... Even The Glitch Exploiters
You guys are SMART!
Earlier this morning, some AE Devs (such as myself) and mods (such as Dream Warden) started appearing on the AQW 3D Tech Demo and acting really fishy. They were asking for passowrds, asking people to add them on Facebook and promising to make them mods and offering free ACs.
Most of the Legends the AQW 3D Tech Demo know that AE staff will never ask you for your passwords and that I don't write like a bollard, so they started contacting us over our REAL Facebook Fan pages and our Twiter accounts asking what was up. It appears that at least one person found a bug that allowed them to log in (to the Tech Demo ONLY!, not any of our games) as ANY player.
It was a small glitch and it has now been fixed.
Since you guys are so smart, NOT ONE PERSON gave away their password to one of these fakes and NO accounts were compromised. Again, I cannot stress this enough, this was ONLY present in the Tech Demo and can not work on any of our other games. There is no need to worry that someone can break into your account as long as your password is decently complex and known only to you.
This DOES highlight how important it is that YOU NEVER TELL ANYONE YOUR PASSWORD! Even if you think they are AE staff.
AE STAFF WILL NEVER ASK YOU FOR YOUR PASSWORDS.
If you're worried that your password isn't good enough, THIS POST will tell you how to make a better one.
If you're new to the Tech Demo, please read THIS POST for the answer to most of your Tech Demo questions.
The AQW 3D Tech Demo is still up and running. If you have an active AQW membership you can log in and try it out for yourself: AQW 3D TECH DEMO
If you were playing and any AE staff member or volunteer said something that offended you, then we apologize but please know that it wasn't really us (Personally, I prefer to offend you here on the Design Notes or over Twitter). We would like to thank the player or players who were exploiting this bug because it helped us find a pretty obvious weakness in our login system and, thanks to them, we found it early and fixed it. We would also like to thank all the amazing Legends who brought these guys to our attention. Smiley emoji.
We've been getting a lot of excited feedback from the community about the Tech Demo of AQW 3D. These responses have indicated these two things to me.
We're on the right track and making something that you're all really excited to play and
Most of you really have no idea what to reasonably expect out of this.
We're still in VERY early development and this is only a Tech Demo which means it's too early to have answers to most questions but I do have a few answers that I didn't address in my YouTube video.
Hopefully this will clear things up for a lot of you.
How Do I Play The AQW 3D Tech Demo?
As mentioned in the vid, the test is currently restricted to active AQW Legends (Members).
If you ARE an active AQW Legend, just head to AQ.COM/TechDemo and login using your AQW username and password. Easy peasy.
Why Is The Tech Demo For Members Only?
There are two main reasons.
We have limited server space and we're not stress testing yet so we need to keep the number of users small.
We want the AQW members to get the most perks possible out of their membership since they expire unlike our other memberships in our other games.
Will The Game Always Be Restricted To Legends?
Nope. It's far too early to know what kind of pricing plan AQW3D will use but we have a pretty strong tradition of making games that are free to play, while offering you things to buy to help suport the games and get the most out of it.
I Thought That You Said AQ3D Was Dead!
I did, in this post and it is. let me be as clear as possible about this...
This is AQW 3D, not AQ3D, Legend of Lore.
Again, as mentioned in the video, while we will probably be able to reuse a small fraction of the resources that we developed for Legend of Lore but this is new game built on new technology from the ground up. It's still built in Unity (not Flash like our other games so there will be virtually no screen lag) but considering that this will also be a Mobile App as well as a Web Game, using Unity3D THIS TIME without trying to push it through Flash Player made the most sense, although to make it fit on phone and tablets we will need to significantly reduce the poly count from AQ3D and make a number of other pretty big tweaks that makes using Legend of Lore resources slower than if we just remade them fresh.
In time, we will probably change the name of THIS game to AQ3D beacuse AQW3D is really just a mouth full. All that you really need to know is that this is NOT AQ3D: Legend of Lore.
Wait. Did You Say Mobile App?
I did. The really neat thing about what we're doing here is we're making an MMO that you will be able to play from your computer OR your smart phone OR Tablet... and it's all on the same server so it's all the same game.
For example: We're fighting a boss monster, you and I.
You're a high DPS build warrior and I'm your pocket healer, keeping you alive while you bust face and keep the aggro off me. You are playing from your computer, rght in the web but I'm healing you from my phone. We're both playing the same game, in the same location on completely different devices. This was REALLY the dream behind PROJECT OMNI and it's SO RAD to see it finally taking shape with the lessons that we have learned making our Unity games like Battle Gems and AQ Dragons.
I posted, on my Facebook page, a small example of this technology working. Check it out.
How Can I Download The Mobile Version?!?!?!
Sorry, you can't right now. Only a few of the developers in the Secret Underground Lab have access to the mobile version right now. It's one thing to show you guys a Tech Demo on the web, but it's another thing entirely to submit this to Google Play or Apple as an app so you guys can download it and play with it.
The mobile version of AQW3D is being developed alongside the web version so you can expect the mobile version much later in the development cycle... like, at the end of it. When it's done.
Will I Be Able To Import All My Items And Stuff From AQW?
AQW has SIX PLUS years of development behind it.
Six years of weekly releases. Six years of items and classes and NPCs and maps. We've gotten pretty fast at building that stuff in Flash but considering our very small number of staff (and before you ask, we can't afford to hire more) it would probably take SIX to EIGHT MORE YEARS to re-create AQW faithfully in 3D which is obviously too long. So the answer is NO, you won't be able to import ALL of your classes and items.
HOWEVER, some of you have noticed that, since we are usig the AQW login, the Tech Demo imports your name and gender directly from your AQW files. I'm sure that we will use that ability to import SOMETHING from your AQW characters to make the transition more favorable to long-time players.
It's just too early to know any of the specifics.
Will I Get An AQW Badge For Testing?
No. At least, no badge has been announced at this point but I'm sure something could be arranged.
Will AQ3D Take AQW's Place?
No. AQW and AQW 3D will be different games entirely. AQW will continue with weekly updates until you guys lose all interest. Which we hope will be never.
Can I Jump In The Tech Demo Yet?
Nope. I will update this when we are able to implement jumpery.
UPDATE: Yes, you can now jump!
When Will AQW3D Be Done?
This is a big question.
First, you need to understand a few things about app and game development.
Beta Testing happens near the release of a product, when you are integrating a lot of user feedback and making improvements on the stable foundation that you built during the previous phases.
Alpha Testing happens before Beta testing. This is when the product is in a very raw but still mostly usable stage. There are LOT of bugs and probably still quite a lot of designs that need to be done.
A Tech Demo happens before Beta OR Alpha testing. It is a proof of concept just to show that the technology works. It is the rawest possible version of the product.
BAKING METAPHOR: Baiscally, what I'm saying is this: If a finished, polished and ready-to-play game is an apple pie, the Beta testing version would be the pie before it's baked, the Alpha testing version would be the raw ingredients not yet mixed together and the Tech Demo is a young apple tree. Maybe just an apple SEED.
We still have a VERY long way to go and these are just the first few steps on a journey of a thousand miles, but we're excited to see where it takes us and we're willing to walk the full length. We have NEVER directly involved you guys in the development of one of our games this early which gives you the chance to shape the world as we build it more than ever before!
We will still keep developing new games (we have a large list) and of course we will continue to develop the existing games that you guys support with your attention and love.
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