Hello all. I hope you're enjoying the release though I'm sure some of you are frustrated as well since it's not a gametype you're used to. I realized that would happen which is why even though it's part of the main storyline, you could easily skip through it all just by letting it lose and use the free pass since that will still be there in the final version of the Gameshow planet. Most of the content for awhile will be mech stuff though I may still make some challenge levels and maybe even new obstacles.

Anywho, here's information on the new weapon specials which can be found at the Traveler, courtesy of Blues(design) and sent to me (and programmed) by Vivi.

Scorcher Series (back arm, 3 hits, CD of 3) 
Listed as NG (SC,NSC) 
Hit 1: 1.3 (1.2,1.1) times damage, increases bonus by 20 (15,10) for 3 turns 
Hit 2: Chance for either an HP or EP DoT (50/50 chance of either on the NSC/SC, NG gets to select which one) for 3 turns. If the old DOT is still active when you re-use the weapon, the new one grows by 50% (40%,30%), otherwise it's just a normal 1x DoT. Stays the same type of DoT for the entire battle. 
Hit 3: 1.3 (1.2,1.1) times damage, decreases defense by 30 (20,10) for 3 turns 

Gatling Series (front arm, 2 hits, CD of 1) 
Starts at 1.2x damage, increases by 33% per use if both hits connect, or 50% chance to increase by 33% if one hit connects

Not entirely sure what we're doing next week. If possible, I may begin the GEARS Games but I'll definitely have to think about that one to make sure we have all of our pieces in place.

Anywho, I hope everyone enjoys the weekend. I'm hoping to have a relaxing and productive weekend. Maybe I can figure out more about Unity.

Annnnnyways, later.

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.

The game challenges are over and I can finally get back to the gameshow planet. I think I can get the final quest done for it today. Not including the boss fight but that's simple. Then it's just cutscenes and getting George's voice recording assuming that's still an option. Not 100% about what the plan is this week yet as I'll be speaking to Maegwyn soon.

Reflecting on game week, I just wish we had more time to finish our game. We're still planning on playing with Unity in our spare time. So maybe we'll have more playable things in the future with Unity. One issue is that a lot of people blatantly didn't install Unity because their virus scanning software claimed it was a virus but that's because the companies that run the virus scanning software never did any research on Unity so it falls into the generic"must be a virus" category. Time was our big issue though. We didn't know enough of Unity yet. We planned to have another enemy in the game but most of it was going to be just mindlessly destroying moglins. I'm intending to continue a little mech game that will be in the same style of the old arcade game Police Trainer but it'll be Mech Trainer. Hopefully that'll be cool though realistically it'll take forever to finish, if ever.

As for the other games, I think Organism was the most original/neatest concept. I was surprised how often the random bounces would resemble a beat.

Soothe had a great visual style and I was surprised how many bullets and moving objects were on screen at once. Certainly proves Minimals coding guru status.

Fat Pandas has an awesome look though the game style has been done before. Earliest (yet not as detailed) version I can remember is a minigame from the old Lion King game on Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo. Still, the visual style and music sounded nice and it was certainly amusing.

The Isonian was pretty and had a hilarious soundtrack though it suffered a few gameplay issues such as not being able to hit anyone. Still cool though.

Ninja Shadow Assault was too difficult for me to play. Not hard difficult but for some reason I would often not be able to attack and I had a hard time punching the enemy's fists with my face. I liked the style though.

Battle Fruit was a cool start. It's too bad they only got the one level in with very little testing. Hopefully they can add more in the future.

I didn't play Gnome Man's land much. I've played a lot of games in that style and it seemed up to par with them. Not saying it's bad or boring though. I just literally didn't play much of it.

And Stick Quest. Lots of people seemed to enjoy it and while it's visual style is pretty, it felt more like an animation. There was no threat of dying but the attacks looked awesome. I didn't get through all of the attacks before moving on but I think I may have just been expecting something different.

Overall it was a fun week last week. I just really wish we had more time. I feel like I really need to prove more with the 3D stuff. We'll see. For now it's on to the work week. Probably going to release last year's Valentine's Day with some new items. Not sure about a new Braddock quest yet though. I don't know the details of the side-scrolling engine so I doubt I'll be doing any extra side-scrolling Braddock missions. I would like to do another quest to continue the story between him and whatsherface. If we don't do a new quest about her this week, we will write her in as part of the main story sometime in the future so don't worry, she's not forgotten.

I'm sure we'll have more info throughout the week. So for now, enjoy and talk to you later.

First off, this week we have a release planned. Maegwyn is working on an intro quest to the Knife and Spork part 2. She says that's going fabulously so far. I believe we'll be having the SC challenge for next week, if not we'll probably release the last year's Valentine's Day release like apparently everyone else is doing. For this game challenge thing, I'm on team "Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like?" with Dumoose  and Llussion. We're hoping to do something with Unity so we'll see. Anywho, here's some questions. 
turtledude asks: How many people work on Mechquest overall? (The design, storyline, gremlins, balancing etc)
I see that MQ uses *Quality > Quantity*. It's nice, but sometimes I wonder if you go a little too far with it. Every flare of a flame is detailed so highly and sometimes the flares of light on screens are just.. just.. amazing. The trees on Planet Lagos are just.. just.. my mouth fell open when I saw how detailed the palms are.But don't you think you could go a little easier on the detail? I mean, EpicDuel has a pretty small staff-base and they still seem to be releasing a lot, why not try going a little easier on the details, like, in the Yokai storyline, I was a bit shocked that you guys were actually working doubletime for the quests and it's just a little bit.. cruel q_q. Or is it a *MUST!* on mecha?
1) 10ish. It's a very rough count. 2) The detail isn't a huge issue in the design process unless we're building an all-new area with all-new elements. And that's kind of the difference between us and EpicDuel is that they're design pipeline doesn't have them building whole new areas as often as we may have to in a week. That said, we've been steadily pushing the graphics and it would be hard to slow down on that. Especially for Thyton. He feels like once the bar has been raised, you should never be under it. Yokai was pretty harsh though. At the same time, I had a lot more weight on my shoulders then than I do now.
Xeru asks: 1) how long will the gameshow planet be? 2) will it be like planet 51 or whatever it was called? (the planet your npc was introduced) 3) will the game show be like a survivor type one or a wheel of fortune type game? 4) will the second verified mecha be like the riptide or will it actually be based of a combination of guardian and dragonlord. also could there be levels like the riptide but the second one actually scale?
1) It'll be all one release but it'll have 10 levels of minigames which each consist of 5 small stages that shouldn't take long to win unless you run out of time in each little stage. It will get difficult towards the end but you'll get a skip if you lose too many times ( I think I set it to 7 or 8 losses) but you won't get EXP or credits if you use the skip. At the end if a longer quest with fights against 2 new enemies. It'll be a maze. Then boss fight. It seems small but a lot had to be built from the ground up which shouldn't be the case for the next planets. A lot of time went into the minigame for this one. So basically after gameshow planet, you'll likely get faster planet releases which may go quick but at least they'll come around faster and have more story content. 2) Well I guess I answered this one. And no I didn't spoil any of the storyline because none of you really know what I'm talking about :P 3) I guess like neither? 4) We tend to stay away from scaling items and mechs unless they're promotional so it's not likely it'll scale. As for the style, it's undecided.
earth breather asks: 1:What is you're favourite mecha? 2:What is you're favourite animal? 3:If you could have you're characters head highlighted any colour, what would it be. 4:Will you're MQ char ever get married?1) I'm really not sure. I'll just say Sepulchure mech. 2) Water Monitor, Bearded Dragon, or... Something else. I forget what. I know I posted my favorite animals before. 3) Is rapidly changing colors an option? 4) Nope.
DARK cal asks: 1)do you know anyone from the uk? 2)whats your favorite shop? 3)what's your favorite website? 4)who is your idol? 5)what do you want to be when you grow up? 6) are you aware that the goverment has millions of safe ways to save the environment but they are hiding it somewhere to save money? 7) what do you think of number 6?
1) I know some people. Not very well but I know them. 2) In real life? Comp USA. I can lose a lot of money in there. 3) I don't think I have one. 4) George Lowe? 5) Astronaut. 6) To be fair, that stuff does tend to be super expensive. An expense that our country can't really afford at the moment. We do need to get off of oil as soon as possible and the oil companies are the bigger threat than the government. They don't want anyone making a gas-free engine. 7) Strange.
kevin282819 asks: do you guys actually sort through all the suggestions?
1) Not so much sort as look at. We do need to pull from the suggestions pool more often though. Overpowering is not a valid suggestion though.

Hoping i just fixed the black-on-black color issue. =Mae