DoomKnight Lvl 80 Tier Among Other Things!

Hey guys, just a quick check in to let you know if you're one of the people racing to level 80, you'll have the level 80 tier DoomKnight items awaiting you now.  If you have already hit 80 (wow!), then they'll be in your inventory the next time you log in!

Now I figured I'd also take some time to share some VERY INTERESTING numbers.

I love those kinds of numbers, and thought you guys would like to know them, too!

Right now, we are working on some tools to make Chapter 2 more interesting while continuing the clean up of Chapter 1, so it helps to keep track of things like how many players are at each of the different levels. Level 40 seems to be about the average for completing Chapter 1's main storyline. 

Forum question: What level are YOU, and how long did it take you to get there? How many hours a week do you play, and do you just play through the release, or farm for the epic rewards? Let us know on the Forum!

Cya on Twitter, too!

Tags: Rolith

The PA Plague and other Unhappyness

Two weeks ago I snuck out of the underground lab a week early to get a head start on my holiday wanderings.  My brother graduated college and I was determined to be there if at all possible.  A week later Alina joined me and since than we've been bouncing between families, extended families, and one flight halfway across the country.  During these wanderings I caught what I'm calling the PA Plague, a wicked sinus infection that has left me still reeling almost a week later.  

That said, I've been hard at work on four things for you guys.  

• A fun micro-challenge for the final quest of this week
• An insane boss fight using a feature we haven't used since a holiday many years ago (let's see if the current engine can handle it!)
• One is the ChronoCorruptor class you guys have been taking a look at for the last couple of days
• And the last is this year's Frostval present, the Togslayer Armor. (Those of you who have been around for a while might know exactly how amusing that sentence was for me to type.)

Here comes the point in the design notes where the two different topics come slamming together.

While I'm having a lot of fun getting the monsters and quest ready for you guys (it still could be a late one, we'll be doing things rarely done in the game)  I don't think we'll be getting the classes out when we originally planned.  My plague has left me cloudy-headed and without much of a mind for the complicated process of designing and implementing the epic skills necessary to make these classes EXPLODE on your screens.  

Once this vile debuff wears off, rest assured we'll be releasing the class as I finish each skill so you guys can be included in it's design. That way, you will be able to provide ample feedback and input for the entire process.

It's really unfortunate that this plague had to infect me NOW, but both of these classes have amazing animations and I want to give them the time, attention and finesse they deserve, even if one of them is really, really* silly.

* Really, really, really... Really, really, really - *deep breath* REALLY, REALLY, REALLY silly.

Tags: Rolith

Twas the Wednesday Before Frostval

And all through the lab, coders, writers, and artists were making such a noise that it completely ruins the meter of this story, so I'm not even going to bother.

So, preparations have continued and by the look of things we're going to have the MOST secure Frostval ever!  No sign of Xan or Zadd, either. And if I so much as HEAR the term eggnog-nomicon...  the moglin-stocks are ready and waiting.  

But that's no reason to be festive.  I'm doing everything to keep the Moglins upbeat and happy.  I even alloted a half hour every day for mandatory "Silly Hat Time!"  The moglins seem hesitant to participate.

I AM Festive, dangit!

In all seriousness, keep in mind we're trying to get this release out 2 days early, so it's likely to be a late one.  Stay tuned!

Tags: Rolith

Merry Togsmas!

Hey guys!  Seems like every time I manage to find time to do design notes, I'm pointing out how long it's been since my last ones.  Not this time! ... Wait...

So what have I been up to lately?  Alexander, mostly.  Getting his character slot ready took a lot of work and unlocking it and opening the game engine up for our plans with him was a taxing job. Most of the time I have to work on DragonFable was filled with it.  

This story is so awesome! I've been excited for it for as long as we've known he was going to have it told. Hope you guys enjoy this story as much as I'm going to enjoy helping it come to life!

I've also been plotting... since before last year's Frostval had even started.  Merry Togsmas everyone! 

Geo's got a great script for this year's holiday and I'm looking forward to your reaction to this week's quest.  It's going to be a wild ride.

I've also been working on my own version of the "12 Days of Frostval" for Alina.  She's getting small presents every day throughout the holidays, each accompanied with the lines: "On the X day of Frostval for my true love, I give to you..."  :-P  We're up to day three.  I didn't write them ahead of time, so the challenge for ME is finding a way to work the number into the gift's name. So... any ideas of things I could get her?

Tags: Rolith

Code Monkey Got Up, Got Coffee

It's been a while, Wait, Really? JULY?  Wow, I'm sorry guys.

So where have I been?  Here!  Working!  Over the past few months, I've coded a new class, a bunch of new monsters, and a handful of new quest features, most of which involve making it easier to do things that we've had to avoid doing because they're so time intensive.  I've also been working on my own game.

Some of you've heard about PonyVsPony but I figgured I'd share a link for those of you who haven't.  It's a fun, addictive little puzzle game which was released at DragonCon this year and have been improving ever since.  I'm still working on making it as awesome as possible inbetween my various other projects here at Artix Entertainment. Be sure to check it out!  It features the awesome art stylings of Jemini and Yergen from the MechQuest and HeroSmash team.  Pony On!

But you guys are here for DragonFable news!  I've started working on playing through the entirty of DragonFable, all the while I've been making notes and marking down bugs to add to my todo list.  This project's a LONG term one, as DragonFable is a LONG game (3 hours in and I'm not done everything there is to do in Oaklore)  but it's already bearing fruit.  This week, i'm going to work on some of the Oaklore bugs I've found as well as changing Falconreach to make one of your favorite stories easier to find. 

I'm also returning to the Player Created Content System that has been left to sit idle for too long.  Once I get back up to speed on that project I'll post a nice long design notes about how it's going to change moving forward, because I've got some big ideas!

Tags: Rolith

It is done.

It has been an honur and a pleasure to punish you guys over the last almost two months.  You've done it, 20 Million Waves.  Enjoy your well earned rest, it won't last long.  Chapter One's finale continues next Friday.

Tags: Rolith

Limited Quantity Shop Live!

As I post this, the limited quantity shop is hosting a new item!  Less then 1600 of these guys are left:

So if you want to get your hands on this awesome Sycthe, head to Falconreach now, because once they're gone? They're gone forever!

Tags: Rolith

Killin Bugs and Takin' Names

Today's the one day this week I had to work on DragonFable.  I managed to actually find a hole in the schedule where I could take a couple of days off early this week and get some R&R and once I got back there were a couple of boring behind the scenes projects that I had to attend to. 

But instead of just working my metal-plated pants off to get the release done, I have ALSO put on my plate the current DF Bugs List.  I've got seven bugfixes planned, and here they are:

• Speed up PVP and stop returning bad results
• Stop Fire War from being Linked to current war count
• Stop Ravenloss war from being tied to the war count
• Stop the Nature Orb meter from being tied to the current war
  • Also make it so all waves can be triggered
• Hiding Cape or Helm hides weapon
  • Not sure why, but can't duplicate this--it might be fixed in the engine that rolls live.  who knows.  I'll keep an eye out for new reports after tomorrow.
• Properly set items as non-shown when armor is switched
• Fix the 0-0 damage weapon when you unequip basic weapon

No promise of all these getting fixed, but I'll do my best.  All FIXED bugs will roll out tonight.

Update: 

So, looks like 6/7 of the bugs are fixed.  I'm wating on Verlyrus to get online to help test these fixes and get me more bugs :) 

More Bugs Fixed:

• Baffet has returned to Sunbreeze grove.  Akriloth must have scared him off.
• Verteroche Crossing fixed on the travel map.
• Going to Surewood via travel map goes to modern map, not outdated one

Tags: Rolith

Five Candles on the Cake

Some of you may or may not know that five years ago tomorrow, DragonFable went live.  Emerging from a Beta that lasted almost a year.  That's 52 releases a year for five years.  This Friday will see our 260th weekly release.  It’s been a crazy journey. 

The amount that DragonFable and it’s community has grown and evolved over those years is something to behold as well. 

Now,  I know what you are thinking:  Every DragonFable birthday has been accompanied with a present for DragonLords, Dating all the way back to the first, with the hatching of our Dragons.  This year is no exception, or, well okay it is.  This year our big gift is for everyone.

Boy howdy those Dragons are pushing four years old!  

Still babies, as far as Dragons Go, but they sure are getting stronger and fitter then ever.  To show their age, we’re increasing the number of statpoints that you’re able to feed them to from 500 to 600!  That may not seem like a big deal, but anyone that crunches the numbers will see that this will either let you have a considerably stronger balance across all branches possible, or max out three separate trees of DragonTraining, making your constant companion even more useful.  So, save up your DragonChow!  

As for DragonLords, we’ve been showing you a lot of love this month already with the numerous titan fights, challenge battles, and epic extra confrontations but that doesn’t mean we’re done!  Ever felt annoyed that you had to sacrifice the look you’ve been going for just because your helmet is meant for someone ten levels lower then you?  Coming SOON (hopefully this week)  DragonLords will get the ability to set certain equipment to “show”, regardless of what weapons and helms and capes you have equipped.  This is a pretty big structural change to how items are handled in game, but I’m making good progress on it.

So, with five years worth of memories to be debated, which one is your favorite?  Which of the 260+ releases was the most anticipated?  Let’s get all nostalgic on the forums! 

Tags: Rolith

Things are Heating up!

Many of the warmongers on the forums have been asking about our allies.  Where have they been, with Falconreach so entrenched?  Before the war there were hints of chaos brewing in major cities all across Lore that have kept the other cities’ forces close to their homes, and this week we will see it continue.  The Glacier in Dragesvard is melting, and the news is so troubling that you will need to leave the defense of Falconreach for a short while and investigate.   Good luck hero!

You are not leaving the Falconsreach completely undefended though.  There are rumors among the soldiers.  Talk from the far-ranging DragonLords say that Dragonsgrasp is on the move.  Will the DragonLords arrive in time to aid in the defense?

Now today’s release is actually a release in two parts.  The first part is the quest you guys are getting to see, but the second is coming next week.  You’ll discover more in Dragesvard, but let’s just say that we want to give the fight you’re about to experience the intensity it deserves and trying to fit it inside this already insanely drawn animated quest wasn’t making it as amazing as it could be.  So, stay tuned next week for an extra release of a titan fight, for DragonLords only!

Tags: Rolith

And the War Trudges On

There was hope, for a moment.  Not of victory, we were certain of that as we determinedly dragged ourselves through the mounting hoards of undead and their waves deminished with each clashing swordblow.  

As the war counter reached towards 100% and the fields of battle, roiling with the fog of war and the smell of the sea rolling in from Falconreach Harbor, fell emptier and emptier, we were certain of victory and hopeful of something else.  Of justice.  

Justice for the shattered Guardian Tower, and the broken lives it left in it's wake.  Sepulchure had lost his fortress, and he had lost his countless minions as the battlefeild was overrun with our heros.  

And then there was quiet: a long held breath over the fields outside of Falconreach. Quiet enough for you to seek your justice? Revenge? Was there a difference? Did it matter?  

And Sepulchure answered.  He answered decisively.  Blow after blow, he toyed with you, with all of us, with the LORE he had unified against him and now threatens to dash against the shores like the Guardian Tower, and the very Order that was held inside it, only to claim the land for himself.  We know where we stand in his estimation now.  

Not rivals, not enemies, no. We are pawns.  We are embodiements of all that is good on LORE and he thinks less than nothing of us.  And after all this loss, and this crushing defeat, you are dealt a deeper, more cutting blow.  Celestia.  Akriloth's child.  

Could you have stopped it?  Should you have seen the signs?  How could she be gone?  No answers.  Nothing from him.  He turned, and walked away.

And with that we could lay broken on the ground where our fellow heroes fought, bled, and died, as well.  Defeated victims of a greater foe.  We could watch as the skys filled with more of those horrible beasts, carried countless more undead to overrun the world and ensure his victory.  Greater men have been defeated by far less destructive blows than the ones we were dealt.  

But no.

We're not laying down.  The heroes of LORE have stood up, retaken their positons on the Falconreach walls and battlefields and taken up arms.  We may be pawns to him, less than, but we are not his to control.  We will fight.  

Falconreach is scarred, things will never be the same.  Our allies are dwindling, but not gone. And we heroes are hurt, but we're still breathing.  Still capable of standing against him.  And we will.

For The Guardian Tower and the Guardians inside. For Celestia and what she stood for in these dark times. And for Falconreach, which we will fight to keep from falling.

Together, we will stand. Side by side, we will hold. As one, we will triumph!

Tags: Rolith Alina Rise Up Stand Tall Triumph

WHAT?!?!

WHAT?!?!?!

No, seriously guys.  What?  Geo posts the challenge in the design notes, and a little while later my IM windows go berserk.  "The war waves have stopped counting!"  from 5-10 different people, all over twitter and on the forums. 

So, paniced, I went looking.  I didn't accidently break anything earlier.  There was NOTHING wrong.

There was something very right, however. You guys were killing Sepulhure's forces TOO fast.  So fast that the database was getting backed up and losing victories.

You guys are fighting so hard you broke the war.  That's kind of awesome.  I take my hat off to you.  I've fixed it and things look back to normal.  I'll keep one eye on it and make sure it's all good.

Now back to work! 

Tags: Rolith

Dun Dun DUNNNNNNN!

The sun is high in the sky over the new Falconreach skyline as today’s halfway point comes and goes.  Just stopping in during the massive day of coding to review what’s come out and what’s coming this weekend of the Friday the 13th.

We started out yesterday releasing the brand new Falconreach center of town.  This is the first step in the renovations that will continue moving forward, assuming of course Sepulchure’s forces don’t level all the hard work.

This morning, I released a couple of small fixes to the town.  Most notably, the Mysterious Stranger has decided that keeping only nighttime hours might cause more confusion then interest.  I also want to clarify something.  Player to player Item trading is not going to happen at the auction house.  We have plans for many fun things to happen in the auctionhouse, but we’re not going to implement a trading system in DragonFable.  

Tomorrow Morning at 7am we’re going to put out the The Miasmal Set live in our first Limited Quantity shop.  The supply will be EXTREAMLY limited, only 1666 of these items total will be produced, costing 333DCs each and once they’re gone, they’re GONE. If you want one of these amazing weapons drawn and animated by Lim be sure to be there.

A lot of you liked the potions our Royal Alchemist Alina mentioned yesterday, and it pleases me to announce that she and I are going to work over this weekend to produce trinket versions of these tinctures which will be DA only and redeemable for Defenders Medals as the war progresses. 

That leaves us with later today: Friday the 13th, and like clockwork of some insidious machine a new horde of undead is again ready to ride towards us.  But no, this feels different.  We have faced hordes beyond counting and beaten back every force the dark powers of LORE have thrown at us but there is something wrong here.  A spark of nervous energy permeates the air.  You can almost taste big things are afoot that will shape the future of our lands for generations.  This Friday is one that no one in LORE will ever forget.

If they live long enough to remember it.  

Tags: Rolith

Well Hi Thar!

Last week was fun.  And by fun I mean exhausting. I don’t really remember much of it.  I don’t know how I worked until 11 on Friday.  No, I mean I don’t remember working that late.  It’s all a little hazy. 

That said, this weekend was full of sleeping and relaxing.  And working, I have been making up for lost time.  This is going to be a big week for DragonFable.  Now every Friday the 13th is more than a little special with their pension for causing massive undead uprisings, but there have been rumbles.  All over LORE there is a looming feeling of dread.

Now for what I’m working on.   Lim has been working on some amazing new gear.  The set is amazingly drawn and darkly animated to near perfection.  So awesome we wanted to do something special with them.  Starting Saturday, at 7am(Server Time) we will be putting a new kind of shop live.  It will have a stock of 1666 items.  Once we’ve sold that many of the axes, daggers, and staffs they will be gone.  Forever.  We’ve gone our research and think that these 1666 items should last a little while, but we also have a lot of rare collectors in DragonFable and if you want to make sure you get one of these epically rare items, I’d set yourself an alarm. 

The Miasmal Set!

The items will cost 333 DCs each, Evil Element, and will all be level 25. What only level 25?!? Oh, right, you’ll be able to merge your items up to level 45 and 67.  For free. So that’s like three tiers of weapons for the cost of one! 

Also coming this week? Mwhahahahaha.  Stay tuned. 

Tags: Rolith

Welcome Back Alina!

Hey guys its Monday.  

Yay Monday.

Alina’s back in the UGL and she poked me to make a design notes post as she gets caught up on all that went on while she was away.  Geo’s out of the office today, but we’ve got a lot of stuff planned for this week.  Let’s just hope it goes a bit smoother than last week.

Some of you that follow me on twitter might have saw over the weekend, before Alina made it back state side, I was working on a project for her.  As a welcome home present I made her some custom-designed library software, that will help her keep track of her, and I’m not exaggerating here, thousands of books.

It’s still pretty basic, and waiting for both of us to have some time to fine tune the design before it gets finished and usable.  However, it’s working, more or less.

That said, the idea wasn’t just to make something nice for my fiancé, which is always good, it was an interesting test of a few technologies I needed to get more comfortable with.  The biggest of these is taking JSON (a type of sterilization – organizing and moving data between two point) and turning it into actual useful information on a server level. 

JSON is a considerably more size efficient format then anything we’ve used before, and so I knew I would need to use it for the Player Created Content system, but I had, more or less, no experience with it more than a month ago. Again, a lot of what we’re doing here in DF’s player created content system is UNKNOWN ground for me, so each step is taking a little longer then we’d like or expect it to.

The library software taught me a lot about working with the data objects and how to deal with them using the technology we use at AE, and it should help make the rest of the player created content system moving forward.  I think I’m going to see what I can do about getting cut scenes done as soon as possible, but I’m not even going to give dates at this point.

Cya on the forums, and make sure to welcome Alina back!

Tags: Rolith

Today...BAH!

So, let's go through the list of things that happened causing this week's release to be in the state it is currently.

I was not suppsoed to work basically at all this week. I was planning on taking vacation but I'm more then DragonFable's code monkey (I was brought on to the AE team orignally as a webcoder, after all and only got put on the DF team after I blundered into the Mogloween release before MQ came out) and some behind the scenes work came up and I ended up working the second half of the week.

This left little time for me to get ahead on the DF release, but that wasn't a big deal. We've done every part of this week's release before in other quests. Never together, mind you, but each part has been done before, so while there was a boatload of work for Geo and Ghost to do, assembling the final parts of it shouldn't have been that big of a deal. Right? Right.

It was a big deal. I do belive every single component broke in this release. The cutscnes? Wern't advancing right. The Fae class/guest code? Broke and missing some skills that we wanted to go in (I'll see what I can do about getting them in over the weekend, small consolation as that might be.) Moving monsters? Well, you see the occasional sticking one? Well all of them were doing that. The amazing thing is? They're all running the same exact code. So as to why some are sticking and others aren't NO idea.  What's even more stateling is that this code hasn't changed, at all, in over 3 years since Lymcrest was fixed and revisited.  Geo's used it several times to no ill effect, but apparently Flash decided it didn't like it anymore and broke it.  Scaling on monsters didn't work, and while that's not exaclty unheard of, the reason for is (too long to go into details here...) compleatly backwards and shouldn't be wrong.  *sigh*

So, while this release ended up pretty awesome, and the animations on Fae

Tags: Rolith

More Weapons

6am: Another level of True Mortal's weapons... I think I can get away with this...Have you ever seen a plant angry?  Like, really angry?  Well, give that plant a tog.  The sight's not pretty.

Tags: April Fools! Project C8 Rolith

Coffee

5am: The dripping of the coffee... like the water dripping off of ficus's leaves... Not sure how much longer I can hold on....

Tags: April Fools! Project C8 Rolith

So tired....

4am: True Mortal... made some weapons... releasing a level now... so tired....

Tags: April Fools! Project C8 Rolith

Lamp!

3am: Lamp!

Need more coffee.....Coffee GOOD. 

Tags: April Fools! Project C8 Rolith

Stuff That I See...

2am: Mr. Ficus... Don't make Mr. Ficus mad... Um.... I made you guys some belts! Yeah... belts!

Tags: Project C8 April Fools! Rolith

April Fools!

Midnight: Happy April Fools, guys! As some of you might ahve guessed, 24 releases in 24 hours is a little crazy... it would take a lot of coffee! A new CMC is up for you guys right now though and we will have a few more surprises for you later on today.  I'll be hanging out on the forums for about an hour, and will check in there before I crash for the night.

Time to relax for now though. The weather has been crazy today and it's looking very sinister outside! In fact the wind's blowing so hard a there's a scraping on the window.

Oh he think's he's done for the night? We'll see about that.

Tags: Project C8 April Fools! Rolith

Project C8H10N4O2

Hey guys! I’m here to spill a surprise for you guys!

Lucky week was an undoubted huge success! You guys had 5 days of constant releases and we were working harder than I could possibly imagine us working. That said, as I was lying in bed that Friday Night, I wondered... What could I do to top that?

Well let’s just say I have had a bit of a breakthrough.

How? Why? Well we are going to keep the specifics of this new toolset a secret, but C8H10N4O2 is its project name. C8 for short.

I revealed the inner workings of the project for the team and alarmingly they liked it. They liked it a LOT. This Friday is going to be a lot of work for everyone involved. True Mortal, Ghost, Tomix, Alina, and Geopetal are all gearing up for a long week of prep work before we give the system a test run.

Why do I get the dreadful feeling of doom filling the air? Or is that just the coffee talking?

Tags: Rolith

How my week’s been going!

How’s it going guys?

It’s astonishing to think that last week at this time I’d already managed to almost put out 4 releases and this week I’m just now starting to get to work on Dragon Fable with any kind of time to invest in it. I have spent the majority of the week working on necessary but completely boring behind the scenes work that has taken up most of my waking thoughts. I’ve been squirreling away hours to make sure I had all of Thursday and Friday for you guys and here I am!

We started an awesome adventure last week with the release of the Player Created Content System, PCCS for short.  As buggy as it is, a lot of you enjoyed this first glimpse. That said, I’ve been thinking about exactly how we’re going to manage to get it to the point where I can call it a final preview. What is missing before we can call this the epic success it promises to be?

I just happened to have a list:

Basic Dialogue Cut scenes – Use of existing front-facing NPCs and the ability to give both them and the player dialogue.

Save/Load quests – The ability to save your quests and continue to work on them / test them later.

Better Fail-Safe features – Some of you might have noticed that the quests would just call quest complete sometimes. This is called “failing safe” meaning that if things fail, they do so in a way that doesn’t cause the game to break. You might have also noticed that doesn’t always happen :-P Need to improve that.

Sharing Quests – You need to be able to share your quests and let others play them. This is FUNDEMENTAL to this whole thing and without it there is no way we can call this even a preview.

And finally, the big one, we need a community of players helping each other and helping the staff, on the forums. Quest Building isn’t a simple process nor is it going to go well every time. What I’d love to see is you guys working together to build amazing quests, and that requires good critiquing and above all constructive criticism. I'm expecting great things from you guys when the full toolset is delivered and am looking forward to playing all of them.

---

As for what else is going on, if you want to fetch any more of the Lucky Day items or farm up the rest of your wave counts, I’d make sure I get to the Lucky Day book before Friday when it leaves for the year.

The quest this week is also going to be a big one, as I'm working on some new pads and code that will let us do some stuff we've not done before, and with an added element of combat stratagy added in.

Tags: Rolith