Maegwyn

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Frostval 3011

The War Is Over! Rewards are all unlocked already!

You can still play through it so don't worry - it's just all unlocked and here is how it went down.  Freddy Yeti was trying to send you tech as a Frostval present, and Mr. Z sent EC units to intercept the shipment and get hold of it for EbilCorp.  There was a war - and you won it in what just might be record time!  You went out on Thoh to find the parts that went missing when the starship crashed, and you had to fight mini-bosses to get each piece of the mecha.  (You can still do this.) You are able to collect them for a build-a-mech style or just to use as weapons as you go along - and if you can defeat Mr. Z you open shops with a chassis (NSC, SC, and NG versions) and a fully-decked-out mecha model (for Nova Gems only).  

Happy Frostval to All! You really pulled together and fought valiantly - great job!! This release was a lot of fun to put together. It was kind of crazy and a lot to do - and with it being a short week & people on the team having limited time with school committments, travel, computer issues I have to say I'm amazed & proud of us for getting this release out to you! Also even knowing that, for some reason I decided I should make a bazillion levels of everything so everyone would be able to have nice rewards so I gave myself a ton of extra work - but it all came together in the end! I like to try to fill you in on who did what, and I'm hoping I don't forget anyone's contribution... Lyris did the opening cutscene and Korin set up the mecha & did the war questing.  When Korin finished vectorizing and animating, Minar shaded & colored the mecha.  I learned how to break off the weapons to make into standalones and also how to make an empty chassis.  Vivi's laptop is having serious issues so I asked blues for relatively simple specials design & then I coded the weapons with Vivi's help when he could get online on his family PC, and then when Korin finished the quests & came back from a bit of Christmas shopping, I turned the chassis (body attack) and fully-equipped mecha over to Korin to code so I could do some Christmas shopping.  Vivi & Korin are really good teachers and Warlic laid a good foundation in helping me understand the basics - not that I was writing new code or anything, but you have to know what to modify and where it belongs in order to get things working as intended. The worst thing that happened (that I know of so far anyway) wasn't a coding issue - I made some kind of weird error when setting everything up in the database and for a few hours the weapons were unsellable and un-destroyable. That's fixed now, though.  I'm hoping there aren't any major bugs with any of the specials!! If you find one, please let us know on the Gremlins forum.

A facebook friend of mine, David Lark (a.k.a. davids8765 if you play AQWorlds), helped me with names for the rewards - huge thanks!! The language of Latvia is featured - and it's my fault if anything is misspelled! Also a forum member, Master Merlin, mentioned on the forums that he had suggested pricing the Build-a-Mecha chassis the same as a standalone weapon - I used that concept (& it may be that others have suggested the same but his came to my attention) with a bit of tweaking from Vivi to keep it affordable and in line with our 1000-NG pricing of a completely-built model.   

Specials: 

  • FA  Sniega Lielgabals SC only ---> CD=0- starts with extra damage- adds +20% damage per use (only the weapon), caps at 300%- adds +10 BtH per use (only the weapon), caps at 100 BtH
  • BA  Ledus Bumba (NSC, SC, NG) ---> CD=3- starts with extra damage- normal (NSC) /1.5 time, double) HP DoT for 3 turns- SC and NG only: 20 roll for stopping enemy EP regen for 3 turns- NG only: 40 roll for a crit
  • FS Laasteka Shot (NSC Only) ---> CD=3- starts with extra damage- Chance for a 1.5 time EP DoT for 3 turns- chance for a critical strike
  • BS Laasteka Shard (NSC, SC, NG)  ---> CD=3- starts with extra damage- Chance (NG guaranteed) for a normal (NSC) / 1.5 time (SC) / double (NG) HP DoT for 3 turns- SC and NG only: chance for a crit- NG only: chance for stopping enemy EP regen for 3 turns
  • HD Sniegapika Volley (NG only) ---> CD=5- starts with 1.5 times damage- general damage boost of +12 per turn over 5 turns- general BtH boost of +15 per turn for 5 turns- defense BoT of +10 per turn for 5 turns
  • Chassis Milziiga Sniegapika (NSC, SC, NG) ---> CD=5- Uses 0 EP- gives the mecha higher EP reserves. - starts with extra damage- NSC & SC have a chance and NG guarantee for damaging also EP with half of damage done to HP- SC and NG only: double HP DoT for 5 turns- NG only: chance for a critical strike.

  • If you have the fully-equipped Nova Gem model, in addition to the NG specials described above, the weapons which don't sell as standalones for NGs have the following:
    FA: - starts with extra damage- adds +25% damage per use (only the weapon), caps at 300%- adds +15 BtH per use (only the weapon), caps at 100 BtH
    FS: starts with extra damage- double EP DoT for 3 turns- chance for a crit- additional chance for damaging EP with half of damage done to HP

Ok I think that should cover it all!  Oh - also if you are a Star Captain be sure to grab the gift boxes - they will open on gift-giving day which is traditionally New Year's Day so I'm shooting for that as our deadline for having them all ready but if we have to be a little later this time it'll still be early January - and the wrapped gifts are fun to play with before they open, anyway!

Have a very happy Frostval! Thanks for playing MechQuest!