Maegwyn

Sunday, May 25, 2014

Art And Remembrance

Star Date: 24 May, 3014

Art: Thank you, everyone who submitted art on the forums! The new exhibit is now live in the Art Museum in Soluna City West, featuring artwork by 

  • gurami
  • 5man
  • blackshock
  • ctforce3
  • QuantumIQ
  • Glade Slayman
  • FrightLords
  • forumlogin

If you are a Star Captain, you can pick up your favorites in Circe's shop in the Art Museum lobby to hang in your starship!

http://cms.mechquest.com/mq/images/ArtMuseumMay3014-300.jpg

Read More

Maegwyn

Friday, July 20, 2012

Soluna City Art Museum and Star Captain Club Updates

Plasma Charge wrote this up to post on the forums at release time, so I thought it would be nice to share it with everyone here on the Design Notes! 

Prepare yourselves! For an unforgettable week of poultry PAIN! 
Because right now, the awe-striking Falcon mecha has returned 
to smack his enemies into submission! FALCON SMAAACK! 
The falcon has been buffed up a bit to match current standards 
for mecha. These buffs will affect all new and old models! 

All Star Captains will be able to get the Falcon-P from the SC club, 
and, while there, any brave souls among you may want to test your 
strength, skill and determination against the horrifying Super Mutant Ninja Turkey - 
he's mean, green and is going to crush the weak! 
Good luck to anyone who tries, and may the RNG be forever in your favour! 

Meanwhile, this week you can also head to the Art Museum in Soluna City West to see an awesome new display, by you and your fellow players. This exhibit features 
the amazing art of: 

  • Formorri 
  • UltimateWolfKing 
  • darklordpilien 
  • Toad12345 
  • forumlogin 
  • Plasma Charge (Hey that's me! =P) 
  • Lord Zombie 
  • Steamwave 
  • Eliminator50 
  • Mwktstorm 

    Congratz to everyone who got their art in, and don't forget if you think you've 
    got what it takes to become the first Picasso of Soluna you can submit your submission 
    to the board of directors for approval! 

    Finally, the amazing Shadow of Doubt from this Friday 13th got a buff this week! Maegwyn wanted me to add that Friday 
    the 13th will be available over the weekend so that you have the chance to pick one up if you haven't already.
     
    Hope you all enjoy the release, I hope the Turkey doesn't cause you too much pain 
    from face-desking, and don't forget to turn the speakers up for FALCON SMAACK! =D
  • Thanks, Plasma Charge - what an exciting writeup!

    I'd like to thank everyone for the creative artwork submissions! It's never an easy decision.  If yours wasn't chosen this time, don't give up! We love to display your creations!

    The buffs to the Falcon mecha models:

    1. Head gets a damage BoT, +10% per turn for 5 turns 
    2. Body gets additional dazzling effect (damage reduce -30 for 5 rounds) 
    3. General damage buff

    Note that the originals of these were created before the level cap raised to 45. The highest-level version scales to Level 42. That is intentional!

    Speaking of Star Captain Monthly Mechas, since we are no longer pushing one out every month, what should we call them? Also, what art style would you like to see for the next one? Please let us know on the forums in this thread http://forums2.battleon.com/f/tm.asp?m=20511016

    Buffs to the Shadow of Doubt: now deals more damage, and its last hit has a boosted chance for a critical hit.

    The Bragging Rights bossfight battle in the Star Captain Club currently just features the new boss. On the forums, some of you expressed interest in keeping Super Teravolt around as an option, and then gradually building a group of bossfights from which you will be able to choose. That's what we will prepare for you for the future! Thanks for the feedback on that - we really like to hear about what you'd like to see in game, and if it's doable, we do our best to work it in. Vivi is going to have a look at how to return you to the proper place when you lose a bossfight - the quest has a mind of its own and insists on kicking you farther back out of it instead of bringing you right back to the challenge. So if that's fixable, expect that to come along with the choose-your-bossfight update.

    Everyone has been asking about G.E.A.R.S. Games. We have not forgotten them! We ran into some complications with the new mechas where the animations needed some tweaking, and some details of the mechanics of the actual Games that seemed like they would be pretty straightforward to implement threw us a bit of a curveball. I'm going to meet with the team early next week about ways to work around and move forward with all of this for you.

    Korin & I have already started to work on the next events that occur on Planet Liath - Minar is putting together a few elements also, so things are in motion on that. 

    I guess I'd better wrap this up, so I'll just say thanks so much for playing MechQuest, please tell your friends, and have a great weekend!  See you on the forums!

    Maegwyn

    Friday, November 11, 2011

    Art Museum and Mogloween Portal 3011

    Art Museum Exhibit Six! The Art Museum's sixth exhibit is now on display! Go West in Soluna City to see the amazing NEW artwork by:

    • blackshock (2) 
    • Bomber of Justice
    • dragonie_em
    • kaibinlore
    • lordkaho (2)
    • Plasma Charge
    • Rikyri  
    • Ronoroa Asero

    Congratulations to all of our new exhibitors, and thanks to all of you for your submissions!  It wasn't easy to choose from all the wonderful entries ...  don't forget that you can buy one of the limited-edition prints for your own starship! Just visit Circe's shop in the Art Museum.  Are YOU inspired to submit your own artwork for consideration? We're looking forward to seeing your cool entries in the submissions forum! 

    3011 Mogloween Portal for your Starship! Check out the Starship Items shop on Planet Mortis - the Phantom Portal will send you back to the 3011 Mortis Mogloween events if you pick one up before the planet orbits away for another year! 

    Korin taught me how to update the Art Museum from start to finish without needing him to step in and handle any of the steps involved! So keep those submissions pouring in and we can roll out frequent updates to that exhibit area - let's Art ON!!  I really enjoyed learning this - Korin is a fantastic teacher so it feels like it's super-easy, actually.  After giving me the basic rundown, he often lets me figure out stuff on my own and just ask questions if I'm stumped, which is really the best hands-on way for me to understand things.  That's actually how the portal item happened - I just wanted to see if I could do it, and tested it, and it worked, so I emailed Korin to let him know it was done & ready for testing. Other than any lingering bugs with the Live town and quest, there are no NEW Gremlins showing up in the portal item.  (But if you find any, please don't hesitate to report them!)

    Happy 11-11-11 !!! (MechQuest is reserving 12-12-12 for our coolio special in-game something-to-commemorate-the-crazy-date thing thing. (I actually took a stab at making a cool energy blade but it lacked the cool factor I was aiming for, so it went to the scrap heap... haha) Check out Adventure Quest Worlds for a cool 11/11/11 release!)

    We're working on the setup for the new Black and White planet that is coming soon (Star Captains may get a sneak peek quest as soon as this upcoming Friday if all goes well) and here are a few bits of info:

    1. The main quests on this planet will be accessible to everyone who has completed Val's current Museum missions AND has flight clearance to travel off-planet
    2. We are working out the details of what you might call an 'extra' mission that will have an extra requirement or two - requiring you to complete something on a different planet before you can access that part of the Black and White planet's content.
    3. Korin just finished vectorizing one of the art assets from Thyton and is sending it over to Arklen for animating!

    I guess that's all of the bits of info for now! Come visit the forums to get more little nuggets of information and participate in the discussion! Thanks for playing MQ - please tell your friends, submit some cool artwork and weapons suggestions on the forums - and generally have fun this weekend!

    Maegwyn

    Thursday, July 29, 2010

    Multi-tasking

    Artix has pictures and stories from Metrocon here http://www.aqworlds.com/gamedesignnotes/metrocon-pictures-and-stories-185

    I was so excited to hear about the many die-hard MechQuest fans there!  I know from the forums how intense, loyal, and dedicated you are - thanks for turning out for the convention!  I wish I could have been there myself - but I am planning to go to DragonCon this year, and couldn't do both. Are you going to DragonCon?

    The MechQuest team is super-excited about a ton of things - Korin & I were just talking about the new Museum exhibit while getting some testing done on the new weapons for Planet Yokai.  And doing a bunch of other stuff.  We're big on multi-tasking - I'm eating cherries while doing stuff in the database and reading the Gremlins and General Discussion sections of the MechQuest forums, while waving a magnet over my ear, thinking about typo-fixes and pondering what Gianna Glow might have meant when she said, "Otter Bomb"...  and if I told you what Circe & I were considering, I might... have to... nah, couldn't do THAT!

    So yeah - the MQ team is also working on the SCMM - the Cosmic Talon!  Korin & Arklen are working together on animation/attack-related things so that either Korin or I can get the number of hits/animation description for each attack over to blues so he can design the specials.  I've got the basics set up in the database, though the default weapons names and descriptions have to wait until I see how they look and what they'll do - then we'll work with Vivi (and whoever else on staff is around to help) to get it all tested & balanced.  The plan is to have it all set for Monday.

    I'm insanely excited about the AE CD, "Critical Hits" - by the NPCs!  We've got some cool promo weapons planned for the CDs.  I can hardly wait for the premiere of the new HeroMart Store (which I've been told will open shortly) - and the new ChickenCow Shirts!  

    Well, blues wrote up specials which were supposed to be posted early last weekend except that Korin was at Metrocon & I was swimming ... and ok, also I goofed off a little playing AQWorlds ... we jumped into this week with both feet and suddenly it is Thursday somehow!  So read the post below this for the info blues prepared & wanted you to have on Saturday!  If you haven't read it already.  Because I spent like 2 extra hours agonizing over whether these DNs were funny enough/informative enough/tooooo boring to post ... what do you want to read?  Please tell us on the forums!

    Korin

    Friday, July 9, 2010

    C-Mail, Art Museum and Arcade Game!

    Hello all! We're a tad late but that's nothing new :P We have some good functionality updates this week.

    Anywho, we now have a fancy new Story button in the C-Mail which will let you view the status of various storylines. Now, Westion Chapter 2 is not a code-written requirement yet but I must warn that people will need to redo, BUT BUT BUT BUT BUT you only need to start from the Mobile Shadowscythe Base hunting missions. Complete it 15 times and then the War Boss and the 3rd mission, you win.

    The Art Museum is officially released. There will be purchaseable versions of the art work this upcoming week. I just ran out of time to get it out today. If you follow the blue arrows in the museum, you will find the 10 chosen pieces of art for this week. I won't lie, it was hard to choose 10. Please continue submitting artwork!! I look forward to seeing more of it. Also let me know how well it works in the large version of MQ because I haven't checked that yet... >__>....

    Also, the fancy-pants minigame from 4th of July is now purchaseable for your starships the same way as the Braddock Steel game was. So grab that up quick and get the highest score! Something I'd love to implement would be a leaderboard for scores so we'll see if that can happen.

    Also, the Liberty mech is up until Monday so grab it while you can! This will be your last chance to get it before it's gone forever!

    Hope everyone has a great weekend.

    Maegwyn

    Wednesday, June 16, 2010

    Unbugglifying... Wednesday!

    We had a "Buggy Monday" that was tested further on Tuesday, with typofixes added, and then finalized and rolled Live on Wednesday this week. When you log in, here is the list of what we've fixed:
    Fixes:
    House Mascot weapons now work properly when you are in the correct House, and disable properly when you are not
    Exiting the Dojo on Planet Yokai now properly loads your character into the scene, so you're not invisible.
    Circe's Museum Map dialogue no longer cuts off when playing in the smallest resolution.

    Typofixes:
    Zargon Comic Issue #5 - now displays player name on 'page 2'
    Police Zone - Many typos fixed, in the police station and within the quests!

    Along with all this fixing, we've been working steadily on this week's upcoming release and continuing to prepare some of the things we've been hinting at in Design Notes and Newsletters..

    The Story Project continues (in-game instructions for meeting the requirements for The Dragonoid Saga) - this involves such things as recording the technical details of precisely what opens up when, taking account of people having done quests in a non-linear progression. O I got SO MAD at Mayor Roy Silver! 4 steps ago, the new Story Buttons told me: "Qjik-Han needs some help with a project. He's just west of Arin-Ha and Jhaek-Ha in the Khaeldron Research Labs. " Then I completed Catch a Thief - and he told me to... go help Qjik-Han at the research labs...I was all yelling at him, "I JUST DID THAT, IDJIT!"

    However, after further testing of possible quest completion sequences, Vivi assures me that my "Wait, WHAT did you just say?" reaction was a fluke...So yeah, we're working to get this properly accurate progression-wise, rather than pushing something out telling you to do x when you know nothing of y as of yet. Because it's not just about what you need to do - it's a matter of when, and why! (Huge shout-outs to Vivi & Lyris & Korin for the team effort here!)

    Another thing we've kept hinting at is a Star-Captain-Only quest. It's been "Coming Soon" in the newsletter for weeks now. The pre-planning on this has resulted in its turning into an awesome quest (if I do say so myself) - and it fits better into a timeframe that is still a few releases away. So yes, it is coming soon - when the time is right!

    Khelios (formerly known as Personater) is the Head Moderator of the Mech Quest Art Museum Submissions Forum - he told the entire AE staff about the REALLY awesome submissions coming in already! So please check out the art your fellow-players are submitting, and don't hesitate to post your own! We're all insanely psyched about the Art Museum displaying your selected submissions!

    Now, speaking of the Art Museum... many of you have been hunting madly for the 'hidden feature' - those boxes that say, "Do not kick," and that one next to it that says there's a noise coming from it? If you're there... you're in the right place. Reading the anticipation on the forums, I'm rather certain that some of you have found the existing 'feature' already and were perhaps expecting something spectacular when in fact it is currently set up as "amusing...." It was something I had to position just right for it to work at all,.. but in fact, it's not like it turns into a Jack-in-the-Box or anything. It's just a combination of 'possible action' plus 'mouseover' that's funny...

    Have fun - be safe - and don't forget to add a little ketchup!

    Maegwyn

    Monday, June 7, 2010

    Gremlin-Stomping!

    Warlic performed his magic on the NaN insta-kill that was occurring against the Crane (if you stunned him) - and that was also happening if you got stunned while wearing the AC-490

    Other fixes to AC-490:
    -non-default shoulders now equip frontwards
    -name & description of default shoulders is also no longer backwards (I fixed that last week actually, & forgot to mention it)
    -Ticklish Zorbo now negates the default Front Arm's Defense BoT (it was allowing you to buff up too quickly when used together) - when the Zorbo effect wears off, you now must use the FA again to start over from +8, increasing.

    Korin also fixed these things today:
    # King Techdorah shoulder - back shoulder HP DoT now works
    # Corrupted Arthurian Lion bug where the boost effect on ShS only worked once before needing a re-equip is now fixed
    # Masque of the Bat life tap is now damaging the opponent, and the 30% damage boost is applying
    to the attack

    It doesn't look like anyone on the forums has figured out the hidden "feature" in the Museum at the pair of boxes yet. It is still too early to spoil it, I think, so I will tell you that it is in the sculpture area, it is not the pair of boxes with the extra arrow, and it is not in the room with the Employees Only door. Those are the only hints I'll give you for now... *stops whispering*

    And now, as promised, the note from Blues!

    Maegwyn

    Friday, June 4, 2010

    A Door is Open!

    Yes, in Soluna City - go West until you see the banner! It's no secret any more, actually - check out the new wing of the Museum! Watch your step (and watch for hidden "mouseovers" as you go - did you find them all yet? There's also a little hidden 'feature' if you stand in the right place next to a pair of boxes - I kind of doubt whether anyone will discover it without more hints, but you might surprise me...) It's all under construction, because the Museum's Board of Directors is waiting for your submissions! Talk to Circe to find out more! And be sure to click the link she gives you! Or you can just click here also, to get to the Mech Quest Art Museum submissions forum! (It's the same link she gives you in-game.) Please do read the rules before beginning your amazing creations, to be certain that they fit the guidelines, and be sure to follow the forum rules when you post :) We're all totally excited about seeing what you submit for consideration! This is an on-going feature, so you'll have plenty of chances to post - and perhaps your artwork will be selected for a month-long display in the Museum! Good Luck!

    Also new: Travel to Yokai using the New Release button in Soluna City, and speak to Miko at the Dojo about the Crane Master! Don't forget to check her shops, as we have new weapons, again more awesome by Minar with specials designed by blues!! (Oh and blues will have Design Notes about those specials plus the Crane Master reward later this weekend.)

    Thanks for playing MechQuest! Have a fantastic weekend!