Maegwyn

Friday, April 25, 2014

Ubertron Mech Model

Star Date: 25 April, 3014

Incoming Transmission: Ash

Greetings! As some of you know I've been messing around with new effects. Welp, I came up with one that is really powerful. It's not just powerful, it pretty much laughs at your opponent. Because of that I built it into a new mech and we're going to let you all have it for a limited time. Now it does have a low chance to activate instead of the normal effect, but when it happens it does some really cool stuff. Since I was given an assignment to create a powerful mech I decided to use the idea and convert the rest of the mech around it. Being all fancy and such I came up with an in-game reason for it. 

The Nubertron mech is a basic mech many of you are familiar with. It's an alright mech to start off with but it was the perfect test bed for a new power core. This core is a prototype of my own design and is way more powerful then anything I would normally let pilot's take out and use. (Even if you have saved the universe a few times.) I usually wait till I've fixed the power spikes and damage jumps before releasing it, but in this case I just couldn't resist letting you all play around with my prototype.

My creation is called the "Ultra Broad-ranging Energy Recovery core" or "U.B.E.R. Core" for short. This core usually only gives you a fairly large boost to mech HP recovery, granting a random amount of health back to you. This prototype can instead, very rarely, interface with your opponent and actually steal its HP and EP while giving YOUR HP and EP to the opponent. It's very random and the effect could make things really bad if it triggers when the opponent 
has less health then you, but it could also be amazing if you're down to almost nothing and the enemy is near full. 

Like I said, it's a prototype and a lot stronger then any other future versions I make will be, but it's a powerful piece of tech I know that you can use. The core has one other side effect. It's increased the damage and effects off all the other built in weapons. It won't boost the damage of non-built in weapons but it does grant a hefty bonus to the current ones.

That sounded like an NPC explaining something in game but it makes it sound cooler to hear it like that sometimes.

In other news, last week you'll remember that I tweaked some of the Lagos mechs and equipment. Some of you mentioned that those mechs didn't really seem to have a theme after that. They made convincing arguments and showed the pro's and con's of what each mech could have done so I went ahead and redid them along with a few other mechs. All these re-tweaks, along with the tweaks to the Navigator series, the Shadowed Arthurian Lion series, AND the basic Bunzilla's will come tonight after I've had some time to take care of a few more things. I'll be posting a list of all the changes and effects in the DN thread in the MQ General Discussion area of the forums as soon as I get done with it and they are live.

I know I also said I'd revamp some weapons. The problem is some of the weapons were supposed to go rare a while ago. That's why once you get to a certain part in the war you no longer have access to some shops. Right now I'm waiting to hear back about if they are alright to revamp and make a shop button for them in the Lagos War finale screen so you all can always access them, or if they are meant to be war rares that got lost in the shuffle. Once I know, I'll be able to proceed.

Enjoy the mechs and let me know what you think of the effect!

Thanks, Ash! And thanks to Blues for advising on power level for this innovative update! Then I'll just add a quick few bits of detail and news for you...

So the Ubertron model will be in the shop in Soluna City Main for a limited time: it will close on Wednesday, April 30th.  And then don't forget... Maypril will be here! 

Maypril f001: This model will be in the shop for a limited time - only until Monday, May the 5th. This one will be available for Nova Gems and will also have credits versions.

Enjoy your weekend - I hope it's nice weather where you are! 

Maegwyn

Friday, June 14, 2013

A Behind the Scenes on Testing in MechQuest

Star Date: 14 June, 3013

Incoming transmission from Practel!

Hiya Questers!
Today I figured I would walk you down the road of testing a weapon in MechQuest. Something awesome about MechQuest weapons is that each weapon is unique in its own way. Every weapon has a different special, different art, and different effect! Since each weapon is so unique, every weapon must be tested individually to make sure that everything is working. You can't just equip the weapon, say "This weapon looks good" and then release it because there are a LOT of bugs that come up! 

For instance, I just finished a weapon this morning that is releasing later today. I would say I have 9-15 different versions of this weapon, each with little buggies. For this weapon, there are 17 different things that the team and I had to test. The beautiful thing about testing is that you can locate and pinpoint the bug, and then attempt to fix it. In the list of things the team and I had to test, we went down the list one by one, checking off the things that worked and noting the things that didn't. What happened a lot during this process was finding one bug, fixing it, doing a miniature celebration, then find another bug. Rinse and repeat. 

Last night when I was working on the weapon a rather annoying bug occured. I have since dubbed it the name "Bug of Staying up Late!". Last night, with only one thing to test, a bug that literally defied the logic of math worked its way into the weapon. The bug was: 5 * -7 = 40. Which is false. 5 * -7 SHOULD equal -35. Why was this happening? I reviewed the code with Maegwyn and Vivi about 5-10 times over, and we still couldn't figure out why it was occuring. We decided to call it a night and tackle it in the morning.

Boom, 10:30AM and the bug was never a bug. The enemy had an inherent -5 boost, and the -35 was just being added to that. So in all, the code was right, and it's just I never realized the enemy had -5 to begin with. It's safe to say the game trolled me.

Well, that's it from me this week. I hope you enjoy the weapon coming tonight! It's called the "Valoth's Epic Shredder" series.

http://cms.mechquest.com/mq/images/MQ-FA-ScreenShot.png

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Maegwyn

Friday, May 18, 2012

Avenger Weapons and Challenge Mode for Romero

Avenger-Themed Weapons! These are available until June 1st. Find them in the Event panel of the Shop interface.

Extra-Special Limited-Time Rare o.Ops versions! Available only until Sunday at 10AM Server Time (Eastern US time) - L45 head (Non-Star Captain - so, available for all players) and L45 Front Arm (Star Captain ONLY) - their price is set EXTREMELY high, and they have a boosted Damage Per Turn (DPT). This version will become FOREVER RARE after Sunday.

Specials - HI VIVI!

Head: 
First hit: Chance to heal the damage done by this hit 
Second hit: Chance to increase defense and bonus by 7 per turn for 5 turns 

Shield: 
First hit: Chance for an HP DOT for 3 turns 
Second hit: Reduces enemy boost by 30 for 3 turns. If the first hit connected, boost is lowered by 30 for 4 turns instead, and you get +80 defense for the enemy's next attack. 

Hammer: 
Damages enemy EP at the beginning of the attack. Tries 12 times total, each time there's a chance to do 2% of their max EP in EP damage 
On hit: Inflicts an EP Heal Block (enemy cannot regen EP or heal it in any way) and has a chance to attempt to stun for 1 round (enemy takes -50 immobility resistance for this attempt) 

If all three are equipped, all three of them gain this special: 
Last hit: If not already affected by this, the enemy gets -40 bonus for 3 rounds 

If you use an arm and the head on the geekatrons, they'll combo like other zargon weapons (they also fit with the existing combos as well). 
Lightning Mallet -> Iron Head -> Geekatron Body = Damage Boost 
Captain Soluna Shield -> Iron Head -> Geekatron Body = Defense Boost

THANKS VIVI! (Vivi came up with these specials - with a couple of suggestions from Korin - & coded them. Plasma Charge suggested the Geekatron combo surprise bonuses. And zccheng97 of the forums suggested the o.Ops super-rare high credits versions. HUGE thanks to all of you!)

Planet Romero Challenge Mode: When you go to the Comm Building and use the Missions button, you will now see an option labeled "Challenge Mode." Available to ALL - NSCs can get a taste of what the Star Captain Exclusive challenge modes hold in store (though keep in mind that all are different in some way).

Also fixes an issue with the original timed quest where the perimeter health dropped to 0, and a blackscreen upon exiting an area with Helia.

 

Have a wonderful weekend - thanks for playing MQ! See you on the forums!