MechQuest - Design Notes

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Happy Sixth Birthday MQ

Star Date: 1 October, 3013

Happy 6th Birthday, MechQuest! Has another whole year gone by already since this time last year? It seems so long ago, while at the same time it feels like it went by in just a blink. Log in now to go downstairs to the party & grab the limited-edition Mecha Models of Yore - and log in this weekend to pick up your commemorative Starship items and see what kind of Birthday Mecha we've cooked up for you!

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Answers from Practel and Poetry From Gibby

Star Date 2 October 3012:

Practel Answers More Questions!

Hiya guys! First off - it's like 10:30PM, and I'm pretty burnt out from lack of sleep, but the Design Notes must go on! So here's some questions!

CardClasher_99 asks: Why is human blood red?

Why isn't it blue?

Sqwall asks: Does your nick name suggests that you are a practical person? (you know Practel/Practical kinda have the same ring to it) If the above statement is correct are you practically part of MQ or is MQ practically part of you? If you really are a practical person did you practice to be practical or were you born that way? If you guys could dance the Fusion Dance and fuse yourselves in a more powerful being(for the greater good of MQ of course) would you rather call yourself Plasma Practel or Practel Charge?

Yep. I'm a pretty practical person. I hope I'm practically part of MQ... I wouldn't want MQ to literally be apart of my insides :P. Born that way. Also, totally Practel Charge. Flows with Plasma Charge imo.

AustinPanzer asks: Are there any mecha designs in MQ that you feel could be better or tweaked now that the game is nearing 5 years in age?

I honestly can't answer that. While I do test - I don't know every mecha in the game, but at the same time I think that the style and the way the mecha's are created is quite unique, and awesome as is.

Welp. I think that's going to be it for me tonight. Gibby has a poem which he wanted me to include - so here's his poem!

Thanks, Practel! And now... I actually intended to post this yesterday:

Gibby Waxes Poetic!

It’s time again to check,

Inside your favourite mech,

Is planet Loreon today still at peace?

It’s time you might have guessed,

To visit your game Mechquest,

We’ll find out soon in this week’s release.

Buy a new mech before you start,

With colors that are slate of the art,

here you can take nothing for granite.

Make sure nothing goes wrong,

With your brand new nubertron,

If you want to have a space party, you have to planet.

If you are familiar with the writing style above, then you'll know that it's Gibby doing this week's DN's. If you aren't famliar with this, it's still Gibby doing the notes. As I live in the "land down under" I have to use fliptext to write this so you can read the words the right way around. OK, so I made that up. I'll be sewious now. This week's Mechquest release brings you a Jemini redesigned Nubertron as well as some new starship items. Happy Fifth Birthday Mechquest. High Five!

Monday, October 1, 2012

Happy 5th Birthday MechQuest

Star Date 1 October, 3012:

Can it really be 5 years ago today that we first entered the Dropship in our journey to Soluna City on Planet Loreon? Seems impossible that it could have been that long ago! And we've been traveling all over the universe since then, exploring new planets and gaining more allies against the Shadowscythe hordes that are threatening worlds everywhere! Thanks to all of you for your support, contributions, feedback, suggestions, and friendship! It's been wonderful getting to know so many of you on the forums, on facebook, on Twitter, and even in person at Dragon*Con over the years!

Anniversary Mecha: This year, Jemini gave us a redesigned "Wrapped" Nubertron - it does have the Nuberizing special on the head along with tons of new specials for 3012! I heard on Twitter that one player would have liked us to show details of it being wrapped - you'll just have to imagine the bigger-than-mecha-sized Wrapping Station - and them being wrapped, as @JeffTechnoWizAQ said, "by.. uh giant hands? Robot hands?!" If you use Nova Gems, you can get one that levels with you (1-10, 11-20, 21-30, 31-40, 41-50). Star Captains can merge the Newbatron with Golden Tokens for the SC models, and everyone can use Silver Tokens for the merge to the non-Star Captain credits versions. (I accidentally made the non-Star Captain merge using Golden Tokens at first but I fixed it.)

For Star Captains: Minar made some new Starship Items and I updated a few myself as well with this year's date, & put a new title next to the yearbook - plus I made you a Wrapped Nubertron Action Figure.

Gremlins: We got a report that everyone in the party - including the girls - has had the male hairstyle every time there's been a slumber party - which I somehow never noticed! I figured out to fix that, and I'm just working on some updates to the dialogue to reflect some of the highlights of the 3011 - 3012 season. I'll roll that out in a few minutes but I wanted to come back & finish writing you these notes first while it's still October 1st. Thanks, as always, for letting us know what needs fixing!

Special Thanks to YOU! Most of all, thank you for playing MechQuest! You're the reason we work so hard to bring out updates each week! I - along with the MechQuest team - am looking forward to another great year of making new releases for you!

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Birthday Celebration Preparations

Birthday Mecha Model: Golden Katana! This year, the Katana is getting a huge makeover to celebrate MechQuest's four-year anniversary. Korin is creating new animations for its new head and body attacks, and has updated the look and action of the arms and shoulder animations. This model will have default weapons in all slots. Blues has designed exciting specials with Star Captain and Nova Gem exclusives. I'm putting together the merge "recipes" for the NSC and SC versions and setting up the Nova Gem pricing and levels - there will be lots and lots of levels so there's something for everyone. This year's NG models will be priced at 800 Nova Gems (previous years' models prices will remain unchanged) - so if you grab one of the 2000 NG packages you have a lot left over to use for commemorative Starship items, or Salvage quest weapons, etc. Don't forget you can also use your Artix Points- you can still earn points via the Ballyhoo ads in Cinemech in Soluna City (or in the Dropship) and of course earn via the Portal where you can also purchase Points.

Another Anniversary: Vivi! I haven't kept detailed records about the MechQuest team member dates, but a phoenix happened to scrawl a fiery message across my screen that tomorrow, the 6th of October, marks the one-year anniversary of Vivi's MQ coding debut! He's been an enormous asset to the team and in fact thanks to him, the Dodge function is getting an update this week! Keep an eye on the Design Notes this week and don't miss the Birthday Celebrations for more about Dodge! He's been coding all the weapons and mechas and also has been coding some of the quests - and now this update to the MQ Engine really marks another milestone. Hooray for Vivi!

Fireworks, Birthday Boost, and More: Friday will bring fireworks to Soluna - AND with the engine change for the Dodge update we're also going to roll an XP boost! Star Captains will get NEW starship items, and you'll all be able to get mechas from the previous birthdays like last year.

Also I wanted to mention that I have gotten a lot of questions about the ETA for the next SCMM - Arklen has been busy with the 3 new House Mechas of course, and that comes with the Level Cap raise to 50 - so we're estimating that the next SCMM will be sometime in November.

We're finalizing plans for all the Fall and Winter holidays that come along so quickly - not just the MQ Birthday but also Mogloween, Turkey Day, and Frostval - along with all the permanent content updates listed in the Coming Soon section of the newsletter - so Korin and I have been working together on juggling it all to set down into dates for the team. We have a lot of things in the works for upcoming releases. Lyris is prepping for more of her awesome animated cutscenes, I'll be writing some quests, we'll be collaborating on some - blues has been working on updates to some of the older mecha models and the SC Xtreme Challenge - Vivi coded up a tough Boss version of one of our recent quest encounters so I will be setting that up as an SC Challenge... we're looking at your suggestions for Tek's Mechs and more - much, much more. The year ahead is shaping up to be exciting already! We're excited to bring it all to you - log in Friday to kick off MQ's New Year with a brand-new mecha!