Artix Entertaiment Design Notes Feed

The Sword Gem

5/21/2013

"Would a SwordGem of any other name not slice as sweet?" For the past week we have been talking about our first Omni-Game. It is a fun and addictive fantasy puzzle game which will play on your phone, tablet, web browser, toaster, and more. It does not have a name yet... but it does have shiny gems including the Sword Gem pictured above. What would surprise you, is the insane history of how that gem came to be. It started as a hastefully drawn circle I made when showing the team the game board. But it needed an icon to be more easily itentifiable as a sword attack gem. So Samba drew the sword icon. Then she penciled some various shapes around it. Meanwhile, Jemini created a bunch of shiny orbs. She was out of the lab, so based on a screenshot of her orbs, Cysero re-created them. Yergen then took the shiny orbs and started modifying them to match the colors of the game board. He thought making each playing piece in a different shape would really help players with color blindness. So he crafted a dozen different shape concepts until we all finally agreed on this hexagon crystal shape for the sword gem. He gave the other gems their own shapes. This was important, because until this moment they were all orbs... now the game pieces are gems. Possibly changing the name of the game. (If we had one. Which we do not.) Finally, Draven took Yergen's gems (which were created in Flash) and recreated them in Photoshop as you can see in the image above. So when you finally get to play this game... run your finger along the Sword Gems to launch your devastating attack, you will be one of the few who knows all the love and effort that went into creating it. We love you little Sword Gem. Now... ATTACK!

Monsterous Monday

5/20/2013

Creatures, Crypts & Chaos The picture above is the Necromancer armor for our new mobile game Project: Omni.I am looking forward to posting more about the game and its monsters, but first... we need to update you on all the things happening here at the lab! DEPLOY THE BULLET POINTS! To find out about Grimskull, The Summer of Evil, AdventureQuest3D: Legend of Lore, and Nuglath's upcoming AQWorlds shop... hit the shiny READ MORE button!

What Monster are You!?

5/20/2013

Is your's cooler than "Dark Clown?" Within all of us lurks a Monster. Some of them have cooler names than others... (Way to Go "Death Ninja!" and... sorry "Invisible Eater") Take the first letter of your first name, and the first letter of your last name and figure out your Monster Name. Then, comment your monster name on this post, or on the Facebook Post. You also have my permission to download this and post it anywhere you would like. I really love making things like this... a really fun way to start off a Monday.

Friday is AE RELEASE DAY!

5/17/2013

It’s Friday! And you know what that means: Artix Entertainment has just released new monsters, items, weapons, and adventures in your favorite browser games! Whoohoo! Check out all the fun in store and make our fantasy your reality! AdventureQuest WorldsReturn to the Mirror Realm… to save yourself! Because you have no reflection in the Mirror Realm, the Universe has been thrown out of balance, and it’s up to you to restore it! But hurry—Xing and Xang are free to play their Chaotic games and are ready to erase you from existence! Gear up in Mido’s Featured Artist Showcase items, the Game Booster Bundle AC package add-on, Dragon to the Darkness Shop items, and more rares in Quibble’s shop before facing your fears in the Mirror Realm! OverSoulThe new Shadow Card Series has just surfaced! Here is your chance to possess and harness the: Master Drow Assassin: second Rank up choice of the Shadow Apprentice Master Flesh Void: second Rank up choice from the male Void Incarnate Legendary DreadFiend: purchasable directly in Malakai's Shop Get your Shadow On in OverSoul! EpicDuelDavarril has been defeated and the Arborgeddon Event is ending. Claim your spoils at Cinderella or a defeated Davarril who has saved the best gear for last: The Botanical Nightmare set. We've also introduced a new player-to-player mail system to make staying in touch with your friends and fellow Faction members easier than ever. HeroSmashAre you a Hero of Good or a Villain of Evil? Two pet capes have just been released—an angel and a demon—that come with the purchase of HeroMart’s brand-new Xing and Xang Chaos Print.Over the weekend, enjoy more Cino de Mayo items as we prepare Memorial Day items and Birthday Rares. AdventureQuest Classic The 8 Elemental Fists have been updated with new tiers, new designs, and new animations! Special versions in the Martial Artist class shop receive a bonus when used with your class armor. Get your hands on the Phlazer, the little gun that packs a huge punch—but hurry, it’s only available in the Limited-Time Shop for 1 week! DragonFableGet ready to stage a daring rescue with Kara SuLema! You'll search the depths of a Rose prison to try and find Ogorek's wife, You;ll face more than Manahunters and guards... this time Z is ready for you! MechQuestThe airship carrying a crucial drop has been shot down, and supplies are dangerouly low! Queenadent Odessa needs YOU to battle your way to the supply crate to bring backammo before Soluna City is overrun with Shadowscthe forces! Battle ON!

MONSTERS

5/16/2013

"Taste the Painbow" What is the reason heroes wield gigantic oversized weapons? Answer: To battle giant oversized man/woman-eating, vicious monsters of doom, death and destruction!!!! Unless of course, you can talk them into being your BFF... "Best Fiend Forever." The hulking red fellow in the back is know as "Red Bull." His item drop is Wings. Naturallly... *coughs* Red Bull gives you wings. We are going to spend a few posts talking about everyone's favorite monsterous monstery topic: MONSTERS. When looking at fantasy games today, I feel like the app store is a sea of uninspired, shallow, and overly serious games designed to make you click a buy button. To differentiate ourselves, our team is building a heavily inspired, deep, and over-the-top funny game... *coughs* but, um, please do still click any potential buy buttons. (We still need to eat.) Since the goal of this new game is to be played in very short bursts, so the games humor needs to be baked into the monsters. We only have two monsters colored so far. They look more evil than funny. Which is perfect. I asked Thyton to make the monsters as evil and menacing as possible. Yesterday, he drew a horrifying fuzzball wizard named "Harry Otter" and a beastious Hog-wart covered boar with a lightning shaped bacon tail called "Porkachu." I choose you Porkachu! Porkachu's bacon attack is supper effective! Comment Question: Monster Puns! The gloves are off. Do you have an idea for an over the top parody monster? For example, we were thinking of a time traveling Minotaur area boss named Doctor Moo. He travels in blue outhouse... we would tell you its name but it is udderly innapropriate. What ideas do you have? Combine something you love, with something absurdly strange that makes you laugh. Give it a try :-)

Future Dage

5/16/2013

In this inspired painting by www.AQ.com artist, Dage, we see a glimpse of the distant future.... where an army of soul powered mechanized Samurai battle a mysterious and unstoppable force upon a post-apocalyptic world.

Making... YOU!

5/15/2013

Character Customization in Project: Omni If Artix Entertainment was a Halmark-style Greetings Card company... we would definately be putting these adorable new characters on all of our cards. Their highly customizable face, eyes, hair, mouth and expression are perfect for "Happy Birthday", "Get Well Soon", "Happy Anniversary", and "Sorry you fell through a time Vortex and were eaten by a T-Rex." Maybe we should make that part of the game... "Dear player, we are not one of those lame games that tries to get you to post something to your Facebook wall every 10 seconds, but.... we were browsing your friends profiles and saw that your dear Aunt Sally is sick! Would you like to wear this silly hat and pose with a Necromancer's undead army to make her a get well soon or else picture? We recommend posting it to her wall every 10 seconds." "Hue" do you want to be? When you are not playing the game, the our male hero character does a lots of situps. Just look at that 4-pack! Yesterday, we worked on making the skin tone color customizable. Back in Flash, we actually broke every color into it's own layer, then put some code on it to change the color. (It is a lot of work to make a color customizable armor in AQWorlds.) It got even trickier in Project Omni. We want players to be able to pick any skin color they want from tan to Homestuck Blue to Hulk green. After playing with some options we found we could change the Hue, Saturation and Brightness levels to do this pretty effectively. But a closer examination of the picture below and you will see that changing the brightness is causing the hair and shorts to change color too! (Ack! The evil wash fairy washed my shorts too many times and now they are all faded!!!!!) So Minimal did something really cool. He created a custom Hue/Sat/Bright filter than only changes areas that are in color (no whites, grays or black are changed.) So now we can set your skin color, hair color, eye color, etc to any color we want without messing up the outlines or underpants. Your armor will be drawn on top of the character and then the weapon will be placed in your hand. Whether you are a future game maker, an established game maker, or just love seeing what we are doign behind the scenes I hope you have been finding these posts interesting. Join us tomorrow for.... MONSTERS

Character Design

5/14/2013

A new character creation method for Project: Omni Do you love to draw? Drawing characters concepts is probably the most fun part of any video game project. All you need to know is, "How big are they allowed to be?" Then you can go wild... drawing and experimenting with all sorts of different art styles. For the new project we are building, we are building a hyper animated and highly addictive fantasy combat puzzle game. (I took this photo off an artist's screen with my phone. You can see my hands!) Our characters will be battling monsters in a pretty small area at the top of the screen. So we made them small, boxy, and the heads are a little bigger so you can see their expression. We are planning on changing the expression of the characters when they attack and are hit. Something we have always wanted to do! Surpsingly, these little character have more moving parts than our AdventureQuest Worlds characters. However, and this may shock you... this game prototype will have NO GRAPHICS LAG. If you are an AQWorlds player you are probably thinking, "IMPOSSIBRUUUUU!!!!!!" -- or something like that. To understand why our new games will probably not have any noticable graphics lag, it is important to understand how the characters are developed. Slime Monster Animation (Video) A Tale of Two Characters In the past, we drew the entire video game character directly inside Flash. Each part of the body was drawn on a seperate layer. Then, we animated the parts to make the character move. If we needed to change the weapon, we simply changed the art in the weapon layer. Flash is pretty neat, because it let us put animations inside animations inside animations inside (repeat forever.) That is why there are swords with lightning that streak down them and pets with ears that wiggle. It comes as a high cost though. All flash art is made out of lines. (This is known as "Vector Art.") Your computer has to redraw those lines every time the object moves. It is like the worlds most sophisticated game of connect the dots. The more complicated a weapon or armor, the harder your computer has to work to draw and fill in all of the lines to create it. Most phones are not powerful enough to handle drawing the insane number of lines for just 5 fulled armored, crazy weapon carrying AQWorlds characters. Just think of all the animation happening on the screen! To solve this, we are ditching lines and are now using .PNG images. (This is known as "Raster Art.") The nice thing is that you can make these images work on literally every device. Which is a good move since not many mobile devices support Flash files. It is semi-easy to take our existing flash character pieces and convert/rebuild them to bitmap graphics. Although, our games have way over 150,000+ pieces of art between them at this point (Keep in mind, a single monster is made of 12 pieces.) But you are probably wondering how this applies to our original question, "Why will there not be any graphics lag?" The answer is pretty crazy. Our new games will be sending all of their graphics directly to your device's hardware accellerated GPU (Graphics Processing Unit.) Can you imagine AQWorlds running at 60 frames per second no matter how many characters are on the screen? (Well, within reason... even the almighty GPU has its limits.) Join me tomorrow and we can talk about character animation & customization.

Mobile Game Development

5/13/2013

Creating Omni-Games This is the year that game studios across the world are taking their games "Cross Platform." If you have not seen this happening, you certainly will soon. It is a critical move for game studios who are continuing to grow during these crazy times. Thanks to you, we have been building and growing our games over the past 10 years. Many of our competitors, despite having larger teams and being better funded than us, did not survive. The ones that are left are all making the same wise move we now must make. We must make all of our games playable on iPhones, iPads, Androids, iPods, Tablets, Windows Phones and other mobile devices. Because it is not possible to do this using our tool of choice, Flash, we are now learning new technology and tools. The name we have assigned to this overwhelming task is "Project: Omni." It is not one game, it is actually the future of all of our games. From the original AdventureQuest to the new AdventureQuest3D, all games must be re-created from the ground up to play on all devices. Now, you must be thinking, "OMG!!!! Do you have any idea how much work that is?" The answer is, yes. So before we commit to trying to do the impossible, we have the entire team building a fresh new game project to see how far we can push the devices with our graphics and animation. It is off to an amazing start! If you are interested in learning how we are making this new game run on every device, then join me here each day for a behind the scenes post of our progress. Future posts will be a lot more funny than this post... probably not on purpose :-P

New Game Releases for May 10th!

5/10/2013

FRIDAY IS RELEASE DAY! New releases have just launched in your favorite online adventure games that will keep you entertained all weekend long. Whether it’s fantasy games you’re questing for, PVP battles you’re craving, or wanting to score epic loot, you’re free to play to your heart’s…or HP bar’s…content! AdventureQuest WorldsBegin your battles in Brightfall! Gaze upon the secrets of the Mirror Realm and witness the return of Xing and Xang, the twin minions of the Champion of Chaos! But this time they're eager to play a MUCH more Chaotic game. If these terrible twins succeed… YOU will be erased from reality! Stock up on Quibble’s Rare items, check out the Featured Artist Showcase Shop, find your Missing Left Sock, and show your Mom you’re a true hero with Mother’s Day items arriving Sunday! OverSoulRank up with this Mini Release: Legendary Frost Queen! EpicDuelThe air has been fully purified in the Biological Preserve and Davarril is vulnerable to attack! Although Arborgeddon is nearly over, Davarril's devious experiments have created one last mutation: the Botanical Borg! However, this is no ordinary bot -- by summoning the Botanical Borg, you will actually mutate into it! In this terrifying form you can unleash a devastating Spore Blast or an AOE Spore Bombardment! HeroSmashFiesta on with the Cinco de Mayo Shop and Randor the Red’s Birthday in Overlook! Gear up in clickable Cactus gear… but watch out for the thorns! Faith has received her makeover and the other NPCs in Overlook will soon offer tutorials for new players. AdventureQuest ClassicAbsol-ution Part IV! As Hollow and the crew continue to repair the D.E.N.N.I.E. Phantom, you will have to battle through Etherseid's forces. Confront Etherseid and send that puny pony packing! After saving Lore, stop by Warlic’s and get your own Iron Knight player face and get the Mother's Day Charm and Earrings in the Limited Time Shop. DragonFableEmbark on an all new Sulen'Eska quest! Visit the Tower of the Rose in the opening cutscene and then head into a Clawkin village that is under attack. Check out the DC drop shop, as well as more possible DC items! MechQuestWhile we put the finishing touches on your next mission in The march of the Shadowscythe, the Cinco de Mayo fiesta continues. Visit the shop in Soluna City Main and check out this spicy weapon - the Go.Oogly!

Project: Omni

5/10/2013

Amazing week of Video Game Development This is one of those stories that very much defines Artix Entertainment as a video game studio. Just last week, Unity3D announced that is was dropping it's exporter for Flash. This is a terrible blow to the AdventureQuest 3D team... and, for that matter, to the Adobe Flash Platform itself. As you know our ultimate goal was to create a 3D MMO that was playable in Flash. We have been working on the 3D game project using our best coders and artists non-stop for over a year. We have overcome so many 'show stopping obstacles' that it is unbelievable that, on the eve of the game's main content production starting, we were kicked in the unmentionables with this news. Furthermore, we see that more and more of you are moving from the web to to playing games on your phones and tablets. We could have just thrown up our arms, given up, and given into the endless abyss of hopelessness.... *smirks* NEVER! We took a drastic new course of action. As of this week, nearly our entire team of programmers and artists are learning how to make "Omni-Games." That is, games that run on ALL devices. The web, Facebook, iPhones, Androids, tablets, dumptrucks, toasters, bricks, burritos and more. Our first project was carefully selected to be feature-complete in 3 months to teach our programmers and artists this new technology. It will give us the foundation to move our older games to all devices, which has already begun. It has not just begun, it is moving faster than anything we have seen in a LOOONG TIME! Lean in close and hear the unfolding story of Project: Omni (working title). Bringing a Chainsaw to a Spork Fight What would happen if Artix Entertainment put 6 of its top programmers and 7 of its top artists on a single, bite-sized, video game project? That is exactly what happened this week. It is the first time in the history of our indie game studio that we have ever had this many people working on the same project. The results are beyond amazing. To design the art for the game we put Thyton, Dage, Samba, Diozz, Yergen, Jemini, and Cysero in a room filled with pencils and paper. For our previous games like DragonFable and MechQuest it took literally 2 months to finalize the character and art concepts. For this game, we did it in 48 hours! The programmers had simliar success tackling gameplay, customization, database design, and more. The combined forces of Minimal, Zhoom, Rolith, Warlic, Kraken, and Swolicus on a project of this scope is like bringing a laser chainsaw to a spork fight. The game is an addictive puzzle game with RPG mechanics. We are planning 256 stages and hordes of crazy, over-the-top monsters and weapons. What is an "Omni-Game" Omni pretty much means "all." So an Omni-Game must be a game that runs on ALL devices. The real name for this game has not been chosen yet (if you have good ideas please post them as a comment here or on Twitter)! So for now, we are calling this Project: Omni. We are building this game for web, FaceBook, iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, Tablets and other devices. You will be able to play on one device, and effortlessly switch to another. For example: play on your phone on the bus, then switch to your laptop when you get home. Or maybe even play on your XBox or Wii. Samba & Jemini's version of Twilly and Zorbak pets for this project. The Facts We plan on building a major mobile game within the next 3 months. It is our first "Omni-Game." This is the first time we have ever had 6 programmers and 7 artists on the creation of a single game project. AdventureQuest 3D is still in production and the Alpha Tests will continue. However it will be short on programmers for the next month. (Xero, Llussion, and Tamarran are currently building out the new zones.) All side-projects including DoomCauldron have been halted. The specific technology on which we are learning to create this project can probably be used to re-create AdventureQuest Worlds as an Omni-Game which will run on all devices (The same goes for EpicDuel, DragonFable, MechQuest, the original AdventureQuest and any of our other games.) Project: Omni started on Wednesday... it is the best move for the future of our games. Since the project started and everyone started learning the new tech, morale has been soaring! Comment Qustion: This is a pretty risky and dangerous move for AE, but anyone can see how vital this move it is to get onto mobile. What do you think? Are Omni-Games the future?

Fiesta On with Brand New Releases!

5/3/2013

Cinco de Mayo is this Sunday! But here at Artix Entertainment, we have celebrations and fiestas all weekend long in your favorite games! Let the festivities ensue as you battle on to victory! Fiesta on! OverSoul OverSoul’s first major game-play update has launched! Card Customization Ice Series Cards Release for Card Customization Tutorial Overlay for Card Customization Made Unique Art Paintings for Ice Series Cards Ghypsophila - Apprentice Princess Ghypsophila - Veteran Queen Ghypsophila - Master Cosoma Master Evolution - (Cosoma Titan) Possess the Frost Queen today and get ready for her Legendary evolution next week! AdventureQuest Worlds Who strikes fear and inspiration into millions of AQWorlds players? None other than Dage the Evil, the Dark Lord of the Undead Legion! And this week you will uncover the Undead Legion’s very dark history—from the beginning! Embark on brand-new quests with exciting rewards as you unearth the deepest darkest secrets of Dage’s Undead Legion. Unleash the power of the all-new Blood Titan Class and get ready for fun and fear! EpicDuel Davarril thought taking over Delta V would be a walk in the park, but the diligent duelists have kept his infestation confined. Players are working day and night collecting purified spores to heal the Biological Preserve and take the fight to Davarril himself. Once the War Bar reaches 100%, there will be nothing keeping you from delivering justice to the rogue Archivist. Meanwhile, Cinderella's war shop will be supplied with a shipment of new armors and an awesome Botanical Bike! HeroSmash Randor the Red is leveling up in real life! Celebrate Randor’s super birthday and Cinco de Mayo this weekend! AdventureQuest Classic Absol-ution Part III begins! The crew of the D.E.N.N.I.E. Phantom watches helplessly as EtherSeid does the unthinkable—in an instant, Lore is gone! The penultimate part of the Absol-ution saga and the final quest sets the stage for a massive war like no other! After saving Lore, celebrate Cinco de Mayo with Puebla Maces, Zaragosa Polearms, and the Piñata Zard full of rare goodies. DragonFable After braving the desolate Sandsea desert to uncover The Rose's thorny plot, you've discovered the Sek-Duat's hiding place... and the final battle begins this weekend! Take down the Emperor of the Sandsea on foot or harness the power of your dragon to defeat Titan Sek-Duat! Unlock all-new Enchanted DragonLord weapons and house items this Friday, then return Sunday for new Cinco de Mayo seasonal rare gear! MechQuest The MechQuest team is working on a fantastic finale for you! Stay tuned... Battle ON!

Grimskull is coming!

4/29/2013

Upon the winds you will find a whisper of doom, "Grimskull is coming." We thought he was just something the Paladins thought up to scare the young Knights in training. The possibility he could be real sends a shiver down my spine. The rumors say Grimskull is coming... but if the stories are true, it will not be this week. It will not be when you expect it. It could happen at any time, any place... all that you know is it WILL HAPPEN. When it does, it will happen in AdventureQuest Worlds.

April 26 New Releases

4/26/2013

So much new is waiting for you! Your favorite Artix games have been hard at work creating new content to keep you entertained all week long. With new Characters in OverSoul, Rare Items in AQWorlds, Arborgeddon in EpicDuel, Earth Day deals in HeroSmash, and Absol-ution Part II in the original AdventureQuest, you and your friends will battle on and on and on! Buff your real-life Knowledge stats by Reading More!

AQ3D Alpha Test #5

4/23/2013

This test has ended. Next one coming soon! Ready for the next test of the new 3D, browser based video game we are building? Programmer Zhoom has been hard at work on "interactive objects." So we are bringing the test server online from Thursday (until AQWorld's new release starts Friday night) to try it out! To participate in the Alpha Test you must be a Member of AdventureQuest Worlds or have supported one of our games in the past. We love you guys for making all of this possible! Alpha Test (Version 0.05) has ended. Next test coming soon.

April 19 New Releases

4/19/2013

The new releases are live! LIVE! LIVE!!!!!!!! Play the new releases this week in all of our exciting web based video games. Click on any of the images below to go to game's web site and play. AdventureQuest Worlds Journey to the Center of Lore! All heroes, monsters, and the world of Lore herself have a bright, burning core of magic at their center. But the forces of magic have become unbalanced, and you'll need to journey to the center of Lore to uncover... and fix... whatever is causing magical mishaps! Check out the first ever Artist Showcase Shop that features exclusive items created by Vokun—only available until Tuesday when a new featured Artist item set will arrive! OverSoul Getting pumped for the OverSoul Revolution? The Leaderboard has just been launched—so show the world how awesome you really are! Join the FIRST EVER TOURNAMENT in OverSoul, happening this weekend! The OverSoul team has been hard at work tweaking the UI, creating new art, and collecting souls for new characters. Are you ready for Card Customization? We hope to launch that next Friday! EpicDuel Davarril is ready to emerge from the Biological Preserve and enact his plan of botanical conquest. Prepare for the attack by equipping yourself with the new Botanical Battle Suit and the Botanical Hazard! The armor comes equipped with an active core, Rooted, that increases your defense by sacrificing mobility, allowing you to withstand serious punishment. The Botanical Hazard uses sticky, poisonous spores that can ruin anyone's day. HeroSmash The Super City Mall is overrun with Zombies! New zombie related drops have been added to all the monsters in the mall. Pardon our dust: the Super City Mall is still being worked on as we deal with new changes for HeroSmash. A new contest for 2 volunteer artists and a writer is underway! Please note you need to be at least 18 years old. Read the HeroSmash Design Notes if interested in applying! AdventureQuest Classic Karuna's Kids have been kidnapped! Karuna is worried sick and she'll need a hero to help find her missing children. With a mix of humor, heroism, rewards, and puns, this is one week you don't want to miss! And don’t miss out on the Rare Item Hunt; a super rare special weapon variant is hidden somewhere in one of the backgrounds—but it’s only available for 1 more week! Hurry!

Oversoul Tournament

4/19/2013

Battle in this weekend’s PvP card game Tournament! Enter our 1st ever Tournament! Winner gets a statue of their character in town. Top 100 players get immortalized on the wall of champions. The slaughterfest begins today Friday, April 19th @ 4pm EST and the carnage ends on Sunday, April 21st at 8pm EST. Think you have what it takes to be in the top 100? Or do you just want to hunt the players on the top 100 list to slow them down and ruin their winning streak? This tournament is open to ALL players. To compete, simply battle random players using the “BATTLE: Player” button. You know, the big red shiny one at the bottom of the screen. Every win will bring you closer to the ultimate 1st place price…. And if you do achieve 1st place on the leader board at the end of the tournament a statue of you constructed in the main town! Rules Happening in-game at OverSoul.Artix.com BEGINS Friday, April 19st at 4pm EST ENDS Sunday, April 21st at 8pm EST Win battles vs random players using the Battle: Player button to rise in rank #1 Player will have a statue of them placed in town (Statue will remain prominently in town until it is gloriously moved to the upcoming Hall of Champions, immortalizing the winner for all time.) Top 100 players will also be immortalized on a web page called the Wall of Champions for everyone to see. We reserve the right to award players who participate at any level if we feel they have battled with honor Cheats/Hackers/Exploiters will be disqualified “Disconnects” are being tracked. High numbers of disconnects from battles will cause players to be disqualified. The game is in Beta and we are doing this for no other reason than it is something cool for all of you battle hungry Oversoul Players… so when problems inevitably happen, or things do not go as well as we would like, remember the age old battle cry: “THIS IS… A BETA TEST!”

Going out with a BIG BANG!

4/17/2013

MechQuest's "End of the Galaxy" This morning I met with members of the team for Mechfast (the most important meal of the day!) In addition to eggs, bacon, grits, coffee, pie, and ketchup... I had a copy of the MechQuest's "End of the Galaxy" script. Korin & Maegwyn (The co-leads of MechQuest) and I have revised and improved the script a lot over the past two weeks. We were showing it for the first time to Warlic (who was the former MechQuest Lead before he programmed OverSoul) and Alina (AQWorld's co-lead). Warlic read this final script for the first time. He put down his coffee cup, looked us square in the eyes and said, "This is wonderful. Absolutely wonderful." We all smiled and nodded in agreement. So my friends... as of this post, history is starting to unfold. We are just 5 releases away from the "End of the Galaxy." Writing the perfect script to tie all of the seemingly unrelated stories in MechQuest into one, final, epic confrontation against Lord Valoth's Command Fleet was hard. But building these 5 releases will be a lot harder. MechQuest's small team does not have enough people to do the art and animation required for the HUGE 5th and final release. Needless to say every artist and animator that worked on MechQuest is coming back to help... and many more members of the team are volenteering to take on the extra workload. The final cutscene and battle will be the combined efforts of J6, Ghost, Arklen, Oishii, Jemini, Korin, and more. It really feels like we are doing this right. "If you are going to go out... go out big!" Play MechQuest and get ready for the big event!

AQ3D's Interactive Objects

4/16/2013

"OMG... Do not pull that lever!" Building good quests for a massively multiplayer game requires a lot more than just "Slay X of this type of monster." You want to go on quests where you need to pull a legendary sword from a stone. But the stone is actually the hand of a giant sized rock character who gets up and, while holding you in his other hand, talks to you about proper sword care and cleaning. You want to dive into trap filled dungeons with trap doors, riddle asking doors, secret walls... and fans of Castlevania 2 will naturally want to find a white orb thingy and randomly kneel down by the side of a cliff for a lengthy period of time until a whirlwhild magiclaly appears causing something AMAZING to happen. (OK, that last reference was pretty obscure.) To do this, we need to fill our world with interactive objects. Well named because they are objects that you can... um... interact with. In today's AdventureQuest 3D design notes we are going to talk about what Zhoom is coding. If you crave the secrets of game design, raise your finger and strike the "read more" button with great power.

April 12th New Releases

4/12/2013

How do you spend your weekends? Doing homework? Slaving away at house chores? Umm noooo…! How about some brand new FUN in your favorite Artix games instead? Check out the newest content releases in your favorite games and bring nonstop action and excitement to your weekend! Read more and then battle on!