Design Notes

June 11, 2015

VelocityAE - NEW MOBILE GAME!

Retro Arcade Game Made in a Day

If you thought Flappy Bird was hard, you gotta try this app. It is hard, retro, hard, simple and super hard. Lasting 10 seconds pretty much means you are a gaming god.

Surprise Mobile Game Release

Available now on iOS and Android devices! Introducing VelocityAE… brought forth from 1980s with a time travel device.

“Buuuuuut wait, this doesn’t look like ANY game Artix has ever made before!”

Right you are. And that’s because it wasn’t really made at Artix Entertainment.

“HUH?!?”

Hehe, let me explain:

If you’re a long-time player of Artix games, then you probably recognize this fellow.

That’s Rolith, our resident code monkey. He’s been Artix’s longest coder, cracking away at DragonFable in 2006, and has dabbled in just about every Artix game ever since.

But, man, Rolith LOVES his job. When he’s not typing code at breakneck speeds here at the Secret Underground Lab, he’s at home writing even more ridiculous code “for funsies” (Rolith’s words exactly). I bet his dreams are in C#.

So it should come to no surprise that Rolith decided to make a game in his spare time... because, funsies. So one night, Rolith started building something he was really passionate about (retro arcade runners), and 24 hours later… VelocityAE was born.

It’s a rare sight to see Rolith beam as brightly as me, but when Rolith came into the Secret Lab the next morning flashing a HUGE smile, everyone knew that he was up either up to no good ~or~ was extremely proud of something.

But before anyone could ask him why, Rolith quickly pulled aside Cysero and Korin, asking for their help to build some assets for his overnight game. Cysero whipped up the 8-bit artwork for the spaceships and Korin was on 3D mesh duty.

“Have you told Artix about your game, Rolith?” Cysero asked.

“Um, No...” whispered Rolith, “Don’t tell Artix about Velocity yet. I think it would be so funny if this 24-hour game got more installs and plays than AQ Dragons-- which, took Artix 6 months to make.”

Korin smirked. “So it’s a secret, ay?”

So yes, Rolith kept Velocity a secret from Artix (AND ME TOO, GRRR!!) until the game was completely polished and ready for app store submission. This is not the first time Rolith made a secret game project-- does anyone remember Pony vs Pony?

Finally Rolith approached Artix and said, “I know you got a ton of games coming out this Summer, but what would you say if I had one ready to go…. right now?” A skeptically-curious Artix was given Rolith’s iPhone and he started playing. He died 3 seconds later. “Hard. Retro. ...and SUPER HARD!” exclaimed Artix as he spent the next 17 minutes replaying the game over and over again, trying to beat his high score. He didn’t last longer than 10 seconds. “I love this! How long until we can release it for the players”

Rolith smirked.

Artix went o_O, leaned in and asked, “Did you, uh… already submit it?”

Rolith was taken aback. “Should I have waited?”

“No, no…. this is great!” Artix reaffirmed. “At least you did not use your spare time to making another game about Ponies! Let it go live secretly, we can make fixes and then tell the whole world about this!"

“Wow, what an awesome story!

I wanna play that game too!!”

I bet you do. And you’re in luck, because VelocityAE is up on the iTunes App Store and Google Play right now. Please show Rolith and his hard work some love by giving VelocityAE 5-stars and help us spread the word.

Download VelocityAE for iOS

Download VelocityAE for Android

Tags: Beleen, Rolith, VelocityAE, SURPRISE Artix,

Soggy Sock

October 30, 2012

Take Care Up North

Hurricane Sandy Has Landed

Quite a few of you felt the wrath of mother nature as Hurricane Sandy hammered the northeastern coast of the United States. This storm broke a lot of records and has already left thousands without power or homes. My own sister had to evacuate her apartment building in New York City last night as Manhattan lost power and the gas main for her building burst. She spent half the night wandering around with no safe place to go. She's fine now, if a little soggy, and so are all the rest of my friends up there in The City but it's a pretty bad scene.

I hope that all of you, your friends and your family are all safe up there in the frozen north.

If you want to help people who have lost their homes and find themselves without food or shelter you can donate to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund by clicking here.

Game Improvement Week

It's not a great name because we improve the game every week. Or try to, anyway.

This week we are spending time adding in the new revamped Book of Lore, and adding in the new Tutorial.

Before we set new accounts to go through the tutorial, we're going to release it for you guys and ask for your honest feedback on the AQW Forums. Once we've tweaked it out and made it as clean, fast and easy to understand as possible then we will add it to the beginning of the game. Yorumi is also fixing a lot of older bugs and TRYING to discover a new way to handle the inventory that might allow you to get more inventory space.

As you know we can't just add more as we are at the current possible limit that the game can handle.

You will help escort Twilly and Serval through the new tutorial!

We will also be adding a new wave of Mogloween Seasonal Rares and Committed Event Rares to those two shops this week. Don't forget that we still have the Birthday Event, the Alina and Rolith Wedding, the Committed Mogloween Special and the normal seasonal Mogloween releases in-game for a limited time. If you haven't played through all of those, now would be a good time to get caught up!

ONE DAY LEFT for 4th UPHOLDER!

Don't forget that tomorrow is Oct 31st, which is the LAST DAY to Upgrade and become a 4th Upholder. You will have a chance to become a 5th upholder next year but you will miss out on the rare Star Swords, the Character Page Badge and the sheer awesomeness of being a 4th Upholder!

51 days until Just Another Day

Tags: Hurricane Sandy, Game Improvements, Book of Lore, Tutorial, Mogloween, Committed, Alina, Rolith, Wedding, Gameocide, EbilCorp, 4th Upholder, Cysero,

Sock-Eyed Doll

October 22, 2012

Insane In The Mainframe

This Mogloween Will Be Crazy!

This Friday we will be releasing our very extra creepy Mogloween 2012 event with special guests, One-Eyed Doll! Teaming up again with One-Eyed Doll is always great but for Mogloween, it's the PERFECT fit!

Kimberly is a long-time friend of AE and one-time Chaos Lord, but this year she will be rocking our faces off in the old abandoned Pandinus Insane Asylum.

This event will include a number of Mogloween rares and an Achievement Badge for your character page, but it's too awesome to only come back once a year so we're keeping the Asylum map as a permanent part of AQW.

You will also be able to watch the world premiere of OED's video for their new song Committed!

You'll also get the first crack of their new CD "Something About A Dragon?" from HeroMart.com! The CD will be the first CD to feature their song "Battle On!" and a number of other new tracks like "Mirror, Mirror" from the event and the Pony Vs. Pony Theme Song!

Keep reading the Design Notes for more updates about this event starting Friday, October 26th at whenever we launch it. I'm thinking around the usual time.

Chunin Changes

We got a lot of feedback from you guys over the weekend about the new Chunin Class and as always we try to give you what you want. We've slightly reduced the mana cost for a couple of it's skills, increased the damage on Chi Blast and the biggest change is that we changed the mana regen model from Warrior to match DragonLord.

That means that you will still get mana with every hit you deliver BUT it now has an inver relationship to your HP so you should get more mana the weaker you get and with no heals in the class, you DO get weaker.

I DID see a lot of feedback that a lot of you really like the class the way that it is so these changes should make you like it even more without overpowering it.

Keep in mind that you will only be able to EARN the class until the birthday event leaves on Friday, November 9th! CORRECTION: Friday November, 16th!

Alina and Rolith Are Married!

This weekend was the actual wedding of Rolith and Alina. It was on a boat so I won't ever forget it, as the song says. They said their vows on the ship's aft deck, being wed by the ship's captain as the sun sank slowly and we sailed away from the setting sun into a warm night of celebration on the Gulf of Mexico. There were gifts, dances (their first dance as a married couple was to JoCo's Code Monkey), songs (Warlic and Alina's sister played them to the alter and Alina sang one herself to Rolith) and stories. Artix and I both got to dedicate toasts to the happy couple and tell stories about how much they mean to us and to each other. It was a beautiful night.

In-game, their wedding event is going strong and will continue for 2 weeks before vanishing. The Book of Lore badge for completing the event will appear this Friday along with the OED Character Page badge.

59 days until Just Another Day

Tags: One Eyed Doll, Mogloween, Chunin Class, Alina, Rolith, Married, Cysero,

SockLG

October 19, 2012

The Wedding of Alina and Rolith

Time After Time

Today has been an AMAZING day! First you guys finish a war fought in SIX AE GAMES and save Artix Entertainment from the clutches of EbilCorp and now, riding high on the spirit of victory, Alina and Rolith are holding their wedding and all of you amazing players are invited to share in the fun!

Right now, Alina and Rolith are off taking care of the millions and millions of last minute details that make weddings so sweet and stressful at the same time. Alina was inspired by her total lack of time when writing her wedding event. When one of your friends is getting married, it's THEIR day and you want to do everything you can to help them out. Now it's YOUR chance to help out the happy couple!

In the event you will find the usual assortments of great wedding rares like the Silver and Gold Eternal Flame and Rolith's Berry Mug but Alina and Rolith's friends have also brought some really strange items for everyone!

For a very long time Rolith thought that pigs would fly before he found the love of his life. In honor of his winning Alina's hear, J6 has crafted a few flying pig pets and matching capes. Beleen (with some help from Jemini) has crafted Derpy Pet versions of all of the couple's friends.

Dage crafted the Playa' set and for those of you with INSANELY EXPENSIVE TASTE there is also the Playa' Bling set (honestly... and I'm being totally serious... this set was so stupid that we priced it stupid expensive).

We are SO happy for Alina and Rolith and we hope you have fun helping them get everything done before they say their vows. Thanks for being there for them!

NOTE: There WILL be a Book of Lore achievement for this event which we will add NEXT WEEK.

EBILCORP Has Been Defeated!

It was close but you guys pin some super human effort and somehow, even with Chairman Platinum adding 800,000 more monsters to the war at the last minute, you were able to drive them out of ALL SIX MAJOR AE GAMES AT THE SAME TIME!

We have never had an event on this scale and you guys have really proven that you CANNOT be stopped! You an see Chairman's Video post and Our Thank You Video on ARTIX.COM! We have opened the AE Underground Lab to everyone who helped save the company!

You have also unlocked a 4th Birthday Shop, a 4th Birthday Merge Shop, raised the level cap to 50 and unlocked the new Chunin Rare Birthday Class. You can read my Skills breakdown for the class Here.

Lastly, as a special thank you every player of AQW has received 200 free AdventureCoins as well as roughly the same amount of in-game currency in EACH of the other five main AE games! Check your AQ Classic, DragonFable, MechQuest, EpicDuel and HeroSmash accounts!

Thank you all for helping us throw our biggest birthday party ever, and for helping us build AE from the ground up and keep is going strong for the last ten amazing years. We literally couldn't have done this without your support, feedback and love.

62 days until Just Another Day

Tags: Alina, Rolith, Wedding, Chunin Class, EbilCorp, Cysero,

800,000 Socks

October 18, 2012

800,000 Monsters!

Chairman Platinum Plays Dirty!

I think the Chairman is getting desperate.

He's losing this war and he knows it. He knows that he can't possibly win against an army of gamers united under the common goal of fighting for the survival of the game company which you all helped to build.

Today, only EpicDuel and AQ Classic were left fighting their wars, but things were getting a little too hot for our suited foe so he his his big red button and released 800,000 reserve monsters into AQW!

We only have until Friday to defeat all the EbilCorp Monsters and save the Artix Entertainment Game Network and I think we can do it!

Chunin Class Preview

VoT is gone so that means that it's time for a new AQW Birthday Class, the rare Chunin Class arrives when all the war meters reach 100%!

That's right, I said Rare. You will only be able to buy this class with AdventureCoins until next October and it is removed from the game forever.

BUT here's the good part. As a special bonus for those of you who are here to help us battle and save the network, we are offering you the chance to EARN this NON-MEMBER class (all of the other set pieces, 2 helms, 2 cloaks) for free!

The chance to earn the class will only last until the birthday event closes and takes all the rares with it (about a month from when we win). You will have to farm to earn the class BUT you won't have to come back every day and earn it like you did with VoT.

All you have to do is earn 300 Chunin tokens and the class is yours. Non-members can earn one at a time but Members can earn two extra for a grand total of 3 at a time, and you can farm the quests for the tokens non-stop as fast as you want!

This class is a strength based warrior type class which is designed to take on multiple enemies at once. It has no heal but every power debuffs the enemies ability to hit or damage you so it has a very high survivability!

Come back tomorrow for the full Chunin Skills Breakdown!

Alina and Rolith Get Married!

Tomorrow you can also expect the Alina and Rolith wedding event. Since the real Alina and Rolith are getting married this weekend you will actually get to see them get married BEFORE they really get married!

As the real couple scrambles to get all the last minute prep-work done for their real wedding you will be helping their characters take care of all of THEIR last minute disasters! This will probably be a little closer to a real life wedding than any of us would like to admit.

I hope you can make it and help the AE family wish Alina and Rolith many years of happiness together!

4th Upholder!

The month of October is already half gone and Mogloween fast approaches. Remember that you only have two weeks left to grab your piece of history and become a 4th upholder!

To learn more, read m,y earlier 4th Upholder Design Notes. That will tell you everything that you need to know about how to get your character page badge and your TWO rare Star Swords!

63 days until Just Another Day

Tags: EbilCorp, War, Chunin Class, 4th Upholder, Alina, Rolith, Wedding, Cysero,

Poison Maker

March 30, 2012

When Good Becomes Evil

The time has come for BATTLE!

Blood in the air and lions on the prowl! When both Rolith the Knight-Captain and many of the Pactoganol Knights go missing, Alina decides that the time to sit back and watch others fight has passed; it's time to decide whether being Evil in the service of saving lives is worth it. Enter the Battle PoisonMistress!

He'll want to take the Knight off after that.

Battle through a /poisonforest full of loyal knights put to the flame and traitorous deserters to reach the Lionfort! Let the battlerage consume you as Alina poisons her way through a forest of enemies to reach the captives!

Things are heating up now!

As Alina comes to terms with what she is willing to do in the name of Good, YOU will need to make your own choice to determine the fate of this week's villain. Be careful, because once you learn his identity, you'll understand the far-reaching consequences of this decision!

Thanks to Hizu for his work on the Traitorous Lieutenant monster and to Samba for pushing through a crashing Flash (9 crashes in one day) to rock out the cutscenes! Check out Alina's Armory shop, it's got some great new gear from Jemini for members and free player gold!

Limited Quantity Shop: Saturday at 10AM EST

Don't forget, tomorrow morning at 10AM server time - the first Limited Quantity Shop of 2012 releases! With epic equips like Zard Rider, Dragon Rider, and the Toxica set, you'll want to make sure to get in line before they're gone! To find out what time 10AM is in YOUR region of earth, check out this timezone converter!

Who knew Zard Riders could /samba in sync?