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SMGS -> =ED= Livestream - October 14, 2012 (10/12/2012 18:54:39)
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Here's a quick rundown on the questions asked during the stream:
Stream Video: Vectorizing RabbleFroth's NPC by Charfade, HawkBlackWell NPC Sketch-Not-Really-A-Sketch by Titan!
Watch completed livestreams here!
Q: How did you come up with that name, Charfade?
A: I like fire... and I'm know to step on charcoals when I was a kid... and it hurt. It was just a random name of letters and I like being able to type it all on one side of the keyboard, so if I ever lose an arm, I could still type my name. I don't have a fancy story.
Q: What are the [EbilCorp War] points for?
A: They're just to track how many you've gotten so far, so you can compare them with other people. The event is still in the midst of happening - we're keeping track of total and individual points and you'll never know what we'll end up offering for those who performed well. You'll learn the final result as we continue to put the smackdown on the Chairman and his minions.
Q: Is the unlimited NPC challenge a bug?
A: We're going to fix this up on Monday. We do want the Ebil NPCs to be fought unlimited times.
Q: Nightwraith, how did you think of your name/character?
A: It's not really that interesting of a story. It was one of our early Alpha Tests and I was trying to think of a name. I just came up with Nightwraith, I just typed that in and you just become known by your alias and it sticks.
Q: What is the Rare Exclusive Prize?
A: Secret!
Q: Will there be more missions during the [EbilCorp] War?
A: Let's go with... yes! We can build all the missions we want because Cindy's not here. It'll be a nice surprise when she comes back.
Q: On Enhancement Costs
A: It's probably a common concern, especially with credit costs. We might be doing some interesting stuff with enhancements, soon.
Q: Why does Rabble's character look like a crazy steampunk crazy old man scientist?
A: Now he has to dress up like this when he goes to DragonCon!
Q: Since Dage came to EpicDuel, will Nulgath come eventually?
A: That's up to Nulgath. He's super busy with OverSoul. We're happy to have NPCs from other games. It's all on his schedule.
Q: Is there any plan for Battle Tokens in the future?
A: We have a plan set from now until the end of the year. We're going to focus a little bit less on 'gimmicky releases' - like the yeti super mega ray with blahblahblahblahblah. We're going to try to build actual highly demanded features the players have asked for, and overhaul the systems at the backend that are limiting us (you may ask 'why can't you build <inset feature>') The backend has a lot of technical limitiation. If we can overcome those limitations, we can introduce some really really great features, such as restrictions on items and tournaments. Something excited to look forward to at the end of the year, a huge launch... and possibly a new phase!
Q: Will the hairstyle winners selected in the Halloween contest receive the Epic Artist achievement.
A: Yes. They will also receive a contest specific achievement. The contest ends on Friday, the 26th.
Q: Who made the music for the Chairman fight?
A: Warlic.
Q: Are there going to be new classes?
A: We don't think it's the best idea with the current balance issues. Adding new skills would be easier with the backend fixes mentioned earlier.
Q: What is the Rating Points for the new cheevo?
A: We haven't decided yet, but we'll probably make it in line with the development phase achievements?
Q: Any news on the suggestion shop?
A: We're still working on it, keep suggesting! Disturbed had some school stuff but he's back on track. Pro Tip: If you're suggesting in the suggestion shop, you'd want to think 2 holidays ahead.
Q: What is required to be like you guys (designers, etc.)
A: Sure school helps, but they didn't make EpicDuel. If you put a basic game concept/diagram of a game on paper, and add detail to it constantly. You'll learn where you suck pretty quickly. You'll slowly uncover where your weaknesses are. As far as getting better, going to school will help, but use it as the launch pad for where you can make a project, where it could become a game like EpicDuel (which started as a class project, we took it out of school). I [Nightwraith] would not have met Titan if I didn't go to school. There are a lot of degrees that you wouldn't think are relevant to game design, but are, such as psychology and architecture. It can be good as long as you can apply it, because the industry is so huge.
Q: Why Flash and AS3, why not something else?
A: Funny story here, we didn't start with ActionScript 3, we started with ActionScript 2. We made a lot of progress with AS2, but then I [Titan] told Nightwraith that we needed to redo the entire game because of the limitations of AS2. We were on the edge, but we made the call and it was probably the best decision we made. Graphical lag is what we dislike the most, we will try to improve the animation speed of the game as we move to the holidays.
Q: Wouldn't you say that once you say you learn a programming language, it helps in the rest?
A: Yes, but usually you should try to learn 2-3 languages to get a feel and understand the differences between them. This is to see the strengths and weaknesses between languages.
Q: When animating weapons, do you need to use any programming languages.
A: It helps to know AS3 for crazy effects, but in general, you don't need it.
Q: What do you enjoy most about the game/favorite feature?
A: I like the ability to make whatever fun features we want, that's what we do at work!
Q: Will there be a reward for Beta players like there was in Alpha?
A: There's nothing specific planned for new rewards, not to say there won't be any in the future.
Q: Which feature of the human body is most difficult to draw?
A: The hand. It takes a lot of concentration.
Q: Will the Hazard Husk return?
A: It's tagged as rare, so it's not coming back this year. Something else will be coming up that is equally enjoyable during the Halloween time.
Q: Did you guys lose motivation at any point when you were developing the game?
A: There were times we thought: this is it, the game's done for. Like when we corrupted the database early on, we just lost every single account. Before you have your backups, a tiny mistake just ruins your progress. It can be demotivating. You want to see positive steps, and you focus on a specific feature and you find out it's a bad feature or it doesn't work. I [Titan] remember total panic during the database issue, pretty stressful at the time. Fortunately, we found a way to recover the data.
Q: Would you consider animated backgrounds during battle, if not for lag ingame?
A: Animated backgrounds could sometimes take away from the actual battle, so it would have to be really minimal. We used to have backgrounds that had minimal animations, such as clouds moving. Flash redraws every frame if one pixel moves, so it would be more laggy than it already is.
Q: How did EpicDuel join AE?
A: We started out working on the game for about 2 years. There was a moment where we thought Artix inspired us. This was the time when AQWorlds was still being built. We were hoping that someone like Artix would team up with us. Nightwraith gave me a call and told me to look at Artix's design notes. In AQWorlds, they slowly crept up to the amount of features we had and started getting ahead of us. At one point, we reached to other companies, and Artix was the only one that made sense. We finally got an email response and a phone call, and we realized it was a game that went well with Artix Entertainment. We never really knew what to expect after we contacted them.
Q: Some people lack motivation to draw, where do you get your inspiration from?
A: I get mine from other artists. It really helps to work with other artists, there's a whole room full of artists, like Mido and Dage, in the lab.
Q: Did you guys dance Gangnam Style while celebrating the anniversary?
A: Nope. *song plays*
Q: Is there anyway I could help with testing, etc?
A: We usually do calls for mods and testers, that's when we take applications. I think we have a pretty stable amount of testers and mods at the moment. If you are interested in seriously helping, such as participating in the forums. Get involved, we read it, and we know who's active. We recognize people who help the community overall. That's how you can find yourself working in a company, like many people in AE. Alina and geopetal started out as ArchKnights on the forums, the AQW and DF co-heads. A lot of the industry works that way, and you learn a lot of things and get experience.
Q: What was the hardest bug you've ever tested?
A: There are many. There's actually one me [Lycus] and Titan found. You had to click the strike button 3 times in a row. I could do it but Titan couldn't, we eventually fixed it, though. There was the banning one too, where people would get randomly banned in Beta.
Q: Who voiced the Kimberly and Chairman Platinum NPCs?
A: That was actually Kimberly from OED and Chairman Platinum voicing them. Cinderella was so happy that she got to write for OED.
Q: How do you guys come up with the base of your features.
A: We collaborate and find out what people want on the forums. We have meetings every Monday and refresh our 'to do list.'
Q: Is there gonna be any tutorials ingame?
A: Overhaul in the mission system, and through that, you will see players quickly be involved overall in a chain of missions to help you understand the game.
Q: What kind of tablet are you guys using?
A: I have a medium-sized widescreen tablet.
Q: We've seen a fair bit of map expansion lately, are there any plans to make better use of the blank parts of the map?
A: We've been restricted to one area to drive people, rather than spread out. There are people who come to test the game and don't know they can go out of the train hub. We need to focus on getting that information out, at an early level.
Q: Is EpicDuel ever going to expand the West Naval Yard?
A: Yes.
Q: Will there ever be a downloadable version of AE/ED games?
A: Hopefully not, the mobility of the game is it's largest strength.
Q: Is Mirv ever gonna grow tall?
A: Nope, he's stuck! Mirv's happy, just as he is.
Q: When will Support be revamped?
A: There are some large scale changes we plan to be looking at to solve issues with stats. Hopefully we'll look into these in the near future.
Q: How do you guys test releases exactly?
A: Throughout the week, mostly Friday, the developers use Google Docs to say what needs testing during the day. We are just given a list of things to test, such as challenging an NPC 50 times, for example. We continue to test until the issue is fixed, then the release goes live.
Q: Drawing Tutorials
A: Watching Char draw on the stream channel is a good way to start. Flash is expensive to have, drawing everyday is a good way to practice.
Q: Taking a broader base for suggestions
A: With the new polling system, we can make open ended polls rather than storyline related, such as a poll asking which feature you want implemented.
If we didn't get to your question, save them for next time - we hope to do these more frequently!
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Hey there!
This month's EpicDuel LiveStream happens this Sunday, October 14th, at 10AM EDT in the EpicDuel Artists Livestream Channel. If you're having trouble converting your time to EDT, you can use this handy timezone converter. A lot of your questions would probably be answered in this thread, but I'll give a quick rundown on what this is.
The Livestreams are a way for YOU to ask questions directly to the developers and possibly some other staff members, while watching one of ED's artists - Charfade or Nightwraith drawing some in-game content live!
Understandably, not everyone can attend the streams, so the purpose of this thread is to gather questions that you have for the stream, and we'll pull out questions directly from here on Sunday for the devs to answer. Once the stream concludes, the video will be available at the Livestream Channel (link above), along with all the other streams. The Q/As will also be posted in this thread once the stream concludes.
The stream happens in 2 days, so be sure to get those questions in before then, and be sure to join us if you can!
Note from Practel: While I'm sure everyone has good intentions, there will be some people who do not want to follow the rules. If you break any rules which includes, but is not limited to, Trolling, Flaming, Flooding or being unfriendly will result in a ban from the channel. Also impersonating us. Furthermore, here is a list of the current attendees:
- Titan
- Nightwraith
- RabbleFroth
- Charfade
- Practel
Have a good weekend, Hero's! Fight off EbilCorp - I'll be back Sunday to check in on you. Battle On! ~Practel
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