Korin

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

For the week!

Hello. I completely forgot to make a post last Friday. Busy busy weekend. Pet more Kangaroos at Busch Gardens, watched lots of Doctor Who (Jemini has been dying for me to watch it), played some Reach with my nephew, among other very busy things. I've still been playing with Unity lately. I'm making custom actions like jump boost that has a percentage rather than just a normal jump up and fall down. Now you boost up and as long as you don't hit 0%, you can keep boosting. It regens as you fall but if you hit 0%, it burns out and it has to get back up to 50% before you can boost again. I might still edit the function though. I'm working with a default jump that I'm sure I could probably get it to function better if I wrote it from scratch. Unity programming is a LOT like Actionscript but it just has different functions and the script editor is super basic. So hopefully we'll have more to see from that in the future.

Anywho, this week I'm working as hard as I can on the Gameshow planet. I'm going to finish up the script today and send it to Artix to get George Lowe to read it. Worst case scenario, he can't do it soon enough in which case I would just start GEARS Games and hold the Gameshow planet until it's been recorded. I doubt it'll be a problem though. This should also be the last of the big minigame-heavy stuff so the following releases should be a lot smoother since we'll be back to the simple quests and small cutscenes format. Also we'll probably bring back the "must get 50 roll to be promoted" type thing but as someone (the name escapes me) suggested, it will now be smart. And if you lose a certain promotion level, the roll's target number will decrease either by 2 or 5, depending on how hard I want it to be. But this way you're not constantly stuck at needing a roll of 95 to continue. The gameshow planet minigame actually has something similar to that where if you lose 7 (or 8... I forget) times, the game will let you pass to the next stage at the cost of gaining 0 EXP and 0 credits at the end of the level but I figure that's not a huge deal. The quest after that will be a long and tricky one though. I'm happy with the gameshow planet.

I'm sure we'll have stuff for St. Patrick's Day coming up. I know Charfade is always excited about it so she'll probably come up with something on her own for it or maybe she'll make stuff for Epic Duel and we'll just port them to MQ. We'll see. Might redo the St. Patrick's Day war. Maybe with updated mod rewards or something.

As for this week, I plan on having an SC preview of the Gameshow planet minigame stage. It'll be small but it'll give you an idea. It won't have George talking though but he will be saying small things while you're in the game as a commentator would. We'll also give the Traveler a couple weapons.

ALSO some of you may be pleased that I have Thyton drawing the next SC mech. So that's something to look forward to. I'll try and post the sketch of it when I get it.

Now questions.

kevin282819 asks: do you guys actually sort through all the suggestions?

Not all of them unfortunately. I do plan on pulling from the pile more often though.

megakyle777 asks: Korin, or any staff member: I recently made a thread about the hints we got from other games and MQ about a Master controling The Shadowscythe. Naturaly, what with Warlic stepping down from command (Also another question here, how IS Warlic? I have not heard much from him recently  ) it has become obvious by your own confession that some things have become lost or unplanned. Can you or one of the AE Team adress this? Also, 1. Is there still some kind of controling person or force between the games, maybe controling the Shadowscythe or whatever, or was that idea lost in something? Will all this hinting pay off in some event, or will it all be for nothing? Or is the concept of the Master only in DF now? 2. Will we ever see this in game? 3. What happened out of game and why is there no payoff after several years? 4. Am I just missing something huge, like it's The Stranger of AQ or something? Because I have not seen anything that ties him into this. If there is and I'm overracting, please show me.

Well the things that got lost would be stuff like the House Artifacts which may not actually be lost at all. We're just going to have to add them to certain parts of the planet storylines. The other stuff would be transforming starships which will still be done but probably not in a way everyone was expecting, and I don't think it was ever going to be in the way that everyone was expecting. As for the stronger guy above Valoth, I'm not even sure. Warlic certainly never mentioned him to me. It all depends on what happens after Valoth. 1) I doubt controlling but maybe we will see what happens in the future. There's a lot we need to get through first. 2) Still hard to tell for sure at the moment. 3) It was just staff being moved to different projects and for a brief time I was swamped. At one time, I was the only quest guy, animator, and weapons coder. Animations included cutscenes, weapons, mechs, and monsters. All of those need to be animated from scratch each time. It's a little crazy but it's also a ton for one guy to do in a week. So we fell behind but I've finally been able to get other people on the team  to be capable of some of those duties. Vivi codes weapons, Maegwyn is learning quests and Vivi will learn them soon too. So then we might have 3 quest builders and I will have more time to animate other things along with Arklen and Minar doing mechs and weapons and we have Desil vectorizing the mechs quickly. 4) Not entirely sure who the Stranger in AQ is. I was never briefed.

DARKcal asks: 1) will you still be working on mq when your 60 or 70? 2) are there any other games you would like to work on in the future? 3) do you think Alina and rolith will ever have kids? 4) I'm going on holiday.

1) I doubt it. No game lasts forever. Especially not that long. Unless of course it's MQXI. 2) I miss 3D. A lot. I would actually love to make a simple 3D MQ MMO. Doubt that'll happen though. 3) Probably. 4) Right on.

Delex asks: Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii korin, hey how did you meet your wife, srry I forgot her name , bad me , so how goes everithing, and why didn't you maked an in-game event

Things go well. I met her in college. Actually first in a chat room before that but I didn't realize it until I saw her e-mail in my instructor's mass e-mail list. That was pretty much the conversation starter. Her name's Charfade. I didn't make an in-game event because my character and her character wouldn't fit.

Digital X asks: 1) What was the first animation you ever did for MechQuest? 2) What was your first week on the MQ Team like? 3) What is your favourite quest or event released so far?

1) I think technically the Hammerhead mech. If not, the pizza delivery mech enemy. Definitely one of those two. 2) A little odd. I was in Thyton's office. Still technically am though he moved into another office and now I have Jemini, Desil, and Yergen in my office sharing a table. But my first week was I guess MQ's official launch. 3) I enjoyed this last Frostval event.

Plasma Charge asks: 1) What's you're favorite glitch/gremlin you ever made? 2) Was it hard to fix? 3) Which is you're favorite planet? 4) Tickleish or santa zorbo??? 5) Who has the best playable character out of all the staff?

1) I guess the favorite would probably be Thyton's 3-armed mech. I'm not sure if I caused it but it was funny to see a mech just constantly beat you down even after your mech blew up. 2) We just had to remove the extra arm. 3) Maybe Lagoes for some reason. 4) Santa. 5) I'm not sure. I don't really pay attention to it. It's hard to play your own game when you spend all week making it.

Xero asks: 1) when you were in school were you akward? 2) me, green, and a fellow forumite made a game for the gametastic challenge (only had enough time to make 3 levels). 3) if you could meet any famous person from history, who would you meet? 4) have you ever had to sell candy as a fundraiser in school? 5) have you ever shot a rifle? 6) how long have you lived in florida, if you live in florida? 7) are you planning on getting the new dissidia final fantasy thats coming out? 8) are you a fan of the monster hunters type games? 9) if the answer is yes then you should check out god eater burst.

1) Absolutely. And quiet too. Although if I was with my friends, I was unstoppable. Not as shy anymore. 2) Not bad! Could use a faster framerate though. Still impressive. 3) Bruce Lee. I agree with a lot of what he says. It would be awesome to meet him. 4) I never HAD to. They tried to get me to but I was never a fan of running around and asking people for money. 5) Negative. Not a big fan of guns. 6) All my live. 25 and a half years. 7) Nah. I don't play Final Fantasy much anymore. Or RPGs in general much. Also, I don't have a PSP which is what I THINK That game is on. 8) I've never actually played them.

Tags: #Korin