WOAH! That does not look very "shady"to me!

There is a fun game you can play with 3D programmers. It is called "How many seconds until they start talking about Pixel Shaders?" The answer is always a VERY small number :-) It turns out that Pixel Shaders are just as important as your 3D Model or the pretty texture you glue on on it. So what is a Pixel Shader you ask? (Unless you are a 3D super genious, in which case you should totally be explaining this.) The term Shader originated from the company Pixar (Makers of the movie Toy Story.) The name is a bit deceptive, because a Pixel Shader is not actually something you can look at. It is actually just a bunch of code!  It is code that is sent directly to your video card and tells your video card to do special things on different parts of 3D objects. Maybe they should have called it "crazy detailed 3D special FX code." Minimal wrote several shaders which made our forest look like.... this! (compare to how it looked a few posts ago -- the one with the X on it. Just sorta, peak around the X) Now, if we can just get this new version to stop crashing when you minimize FireFox.

A special "thank you" to everyone who made my arms stop working

I have been catching a lot of heat from Galanoth & Zhoom about sneaking onto Twitter/Facebook using my iPhone at the gym. So last night when they caught me checking my @messages they said I had to do 5 more reps. No problem! So then Galanoth said "No. You need to do 5 more reps for EVERY message you receive since the last time you checked." So, I told everyone on Twitter thinking it was funny... but I did not expect EVERYONE to send MULTIPLE MESSAGES BACK! Hundreds. When I finally got home last night, very late... my arms were so sore that I had to open the front door with my teeth.

P.S. OMG MAIL DELIVERY! The final Artix & Sepulchure collectors action figures just arrived here... *goes to open*

+5pts for bizzare post title

Happy Monday friends! Thank you for checking in on us. The entire AdventureQuest 3D team is working on the new assets for the pre-registration (Specifically: Assets without the CRASH DOOM DESTROY feature!). Since we will be talking a lot about 3D game design stuff this week, I would like to let you in on my "darkest" secret. I have seriously been wanting to tell you this story for the past 3 weeks -- it is finally time. Due to a tragic (and equally embarrasing accident which may or may not be related to the included video) accident, my pinky fingernail was smashed. Not unlike Ash's hand from Evil Dead II, my pinky went bad. It is now completely black, goth... and quite possibly evil. I fear *gulps* that the goth pinky finger may try to play songs by The Cure or Voltaire on my iPod when I am not looking. Those of you who have smashed a fingernail know that it takes months to heal... so until then, if anything surprisingly dark happens in the new 3D game, or I make typos resulting from the right hand side of the keyboard, you know it is the undermining work of my goth Pinky Finger. Maybe we should make a timelapse video of it healing. (Wish we had started that a few weeks ago when I originally injured it.) 

The MegaCon convention in Orlando took place this past weekend. Fox news was there and our friend, Roam, who was the long haired swordsman from the "Heromart: Loot the Treasure Chest video", got interviewed and was on TV Friday night! In addition to seeing a lot of old friends who also attended (apparently I am easy to spot because I ALWAYS wear the same outfit) I got a MASSIVE dose of inspiration... went home, and spent the 34 hours writing a design document for a crazy random adventure generator. I really hope we are able to use it for the 3D game. I think I am going to do a little 2D prototype to see if I can make the pieces work.

POLL QUESTION

As you likely know, our new game's full title is going to be AdventureQuest 3D: <insert a cool name here>. We have not actually decided on the <insert a cool name here> part yet. But when we do... we need to announce it! Do you think we should do it via a sockpuppet show, broadcast live, to about 30,000 people in AQWorlds? Official Facebook Poll

P.S. Do you like undead slaying pomeranians?

...because the only way to fail is to quit.

I want to thank you and the other players for being so understanding and supportive. I still feel so terrible about last night. You guys took the news a lot better than the team did. But, this morning, as I walked into the lab the entire team was already huddled, coming up with a strategy... and not to just fix the signup process, but to take it to another level entirely.  That is our game community's devlopment philosophy right? 1.) Make the next thing you do better than the last thing you did. 2.) Never give up. 3.) When things go terribly wrong... go back to #1.

The good news is, most of what we have is already working. It is not like we have to go back to the drawing board. Which is a really good because...

So we are going to fix the bugs (which were a result of the 3D makeup of our map), and make improvements that we wanted, but did not have time for. A big part of this test iis for both you and I to see how the 3D game will run (speed wise) in your browser. It should be surprisingly fast. Once it is ready and fully tested, I will announce the new date for pre-registration (you will get a minimum of a 3 day notice.) It is hard to believe it has only been a handful of weeks and we have already seen this level of craziness and drama.... what is going to happen when alpha actually starts O_O ? Please check back here each day for insider news on how all aspects of this 3D project are going. Until then....

FRIDAY IS RELEASE DAY!

• AQWorlds
  New trade skill - Fishing, the return of previous years' Heroes Heart day events, 10 new Dage the evil quests in Shadowfall and more.
  www.AQ.com
  
  
• AdventureQuest Classic
  New city "Deren City", which is controlled by a Drakel King. Several new quests and lots of hidden easter eggs, battles and item shops.
  www.BattleOn.com
  
  
• EpicDuel
  30 new drops for the PvP item drop system for all levels. There are also going to be new missions and iproving the housing system with privacy and home titled (You can name your house!?)
  www.EpicDuel.com
  
  
• MechQuest
  Planet Romero is off to a... surprising start! (I am not just excited that my character is in the storyline... I have always wanted to see Mechs mixed with Zombies!) The team is getting ready to  fill up their Vend-o-tron next week. So, this week will be the return of MechQuest's crazy DATING GAME planet! (Previous years Valentine's day release)
  www.MechQuest.com
  
  
• DragonFable
  Chapter 2 continues with Xan's backstoy. Take aportal to Mount Shiningstar and help a younger version of Xan, who is an ice mage, deal with his extreme fear of fire.
  www.DragonFable.com
  
  
• HeroSmash
  The Hero's Heart Day shop is open! New items added to the daily random shop.
  www.HeroSmash.com
  
  
  

Update #2: Not looking good.  (6:15pm EST)

It does not look like this bug is going to be solvable within the next hour. The alternative option is to rig up a web form to allow you to reserve your name... but this completely obsoletes the work we did this week for Test #1 which was to see if everyone could actually see the 3D game content in Unity3D, and use the interface to sign up (This was worth 100 alpha points.) I feel completely terrible those those of you who stayed up (or woke up early) to pre-register your name. So, instead of dragging this out and pushing things back 3 hours which would be unfair to those who could not wait that long... I am going to do, what I believe is the right thing, and reschedule pre-registration.

I cannot express how deepy sorry I am that we are unable to do this tonight. We were ALL looking forward to it. (Hears someone say something about "Well... this is ALPHA") But it is better to do this right than to release something broken. So we will fix this error and reschedule the pre-registration (probably next week) and make it worth 200 alpha points. Check back tomorrow for details on our status. Meanwhile: Captain Rhubarb updated http://portal.battleon.com When you log in, it now tells you if you are eligable for Pre-Registration. Just so you know for sure.

Update #1: Technical Problems (5:50pm EST)

Greetings all. We are being notified of a show stopping error. We built the signup process 3D, and our testersare reporting that after the fly through to the signup screen, the browser is crashing for users on specific versions of browsers.  I am meeting with the coders NOW  to see if we can fix this within an hour. I will update you every 15 minutes. If we cannot fix it within the hour, we are going to have to push back and reschedule pre-registration. 

AdventureQuest 3D Pre-registration @6pm-ish EST

Today's late news post brought to you by "Windows Update: Please wait while your computer updates.... do not turn it off. If you turn off your computer, evil goblin warlords will come to your house and pummel your compytron's hard drive with spiked clubs until it makes a scary squeeling sound. 2%" 

Our goal is to open Pre-Registration, right here, at 6pm EST tonight. All of you awesome players who have supported any of our games in the past will be able to reserve your name. Everyone else will be able to see if they are able to login using your Artix Account "The One Login to Rule them All". Remember, this is the same login you use for EpicDuel, HeroSmash, PvP and the Portal site. From now on, all of our future games will use this one, single login.

As you know, we are in the early stages of alpha. Which means... tests. Lots and lots of tests. GlaDOS would tremble with joy at the extreme number of bizzare and interesting tests coming your way. So as you may have guessed... tonight's pre-registration is ALSO A TEST! We will be using the Unity plugin. Unity is a lot like Flash, except that it specializes in 3D. If you do not already have the Unity plugin, you will be prompted to to install it to complete pre-registration. On a side note, I met David Helgason, the CEO and Founder of Unity3D at E3 last year. He is a great guy, and has the most authentic mad scientist laughs that I have heard since.... well,  those guys from ArcAttack broke into insane mad-scientist giggles every time we mentioned blowing up something. Sorta like that.  Anyways, I trust Unity3D's technology and am proud to be using it on this game project. The final version of AdventureQuest 3D  will be in Hardware Accelerated 3D Flash -- but early alpha testing will require the Unity3D plugin. See you tonight!

While you wait

• Mia was getting a lot of requests from players for her song "One Way Ticket" that she wrote just for the AQWorlds event. So she put a link to it, for free, on the *coughs* You know, I never feel bad about plugging her music... we should just rename the the company to Mia Entertainment and make all game upgrades just buying her CD... of course... more than 30 of you would have to buy her CD for this to work... o_O *end cough* special page she made for you and the other players to get a discount. (Download it free and then buy her album.)
  
• The "Dragon's Notes" just posted on the AQWorlds Design Notes!?
  

Updating the website (Now with 100% more LOVE.)

Today, Miko and I are updating this website. I missed the black background... so EVERYTHING is going back to black! Behold... the dark, sweet embrace of HTML's eternal darkness. Hex color #000000, will you be my valentine? I added a romantic zombie love song in the upper right hand corner of the site today so we can celebrate.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team is setting up the 3D game database and building the interface for Thursday's pre-registration. Do you know what name you are going to reserve? You should use the name that everyone in the community knows you best by. I am going to pick Artix! Trust me when I say, I know how frustrating it is when you cannot get your name... *coughs* I have  not been able to get the my name on ANY game or web service for the past 5 years O_O.

Today's game news

• Randor's new HeroSmash Heart weapons
• AQWorlds "Heroes Heart" returns along with the release of "Fishing" on Friday!

Pre-registration for AdventureQuest 3D

Today you are going to learn EVERYTHING you need to know about reserving your name for our upcoming 3D game. But first, I would like to express... seriously... OMG seriously... my heartfelt gratitude to you and the other players who sent the team and I such awesome cheers and congratulations on the AQWorlds event, "The Eternal Curse of Love", the MechQuest "Planet Romero" release, and everything leading to the launch of this new website. I honestly cannot remember the last time I felt this overwhelming amount of joy and creative enthusiasm.

The comment that perhaps touched me the most was a personal note from this week's musical guest, Mia J. Park (I probably should have asked permission before posting this.) who kindly wrote, "I think you should be proud, as I can see from here how much love there is in the world for Artix. Thank you for sharing it with me and giving me this dream come true. I could honestly just die happy now as I think it's all I ever wanted. To watch the music fly and touch lives . You made it possible. So, I think if anyone's really part angel... it's you! Wishing you huge success!" I want Mia and her music to be a success as well... so I am going to shamelessly plug her debut CD, Metamorphosis one more time in hopes that you will support her by getting a copy.  (Remember, this is a link to a special page she made where she is giving our players 20% off) Perfect Valentines gift? It is also available on iTunes. 

How can I get my name for AQ3D?

It will take place Thursday (unless the bug monster rises from the grave and destroys us all), right here. You must have support one of our games (any game) to qualify. Here is what you need to do:

Questions & Answers

Check back tomorrow....

Because I am going to write something. I do not know what, yet. It could be anything! You will have no way of knowing unless you read. O_O

Pre-registration is coming next Thursday
We have recovered the files (and comfy sofa) and the new AdventureQuest 3D game project is officially back on schedule. To celebrate, we redesigned this site. From now on, all new behind-the-scenes development secrets will be posted for you right here on the new Artix.com homepage! (Be sure to bookmark it and hit the like button to the right!) Please let me know what you think of the new site and projects on my official Artix Facebook page or Twitter.

Thank you to everyone who cheered and supported us through the events with Ebilcorp. This new game, and the creation of it so far has been unlike anything we have done before. We love that you are being a part of it. Although... dos anyone else get the feeling that we have not seen the last of Chairman Platinum?

Nulgath defects to EbilCorp

OMG! Nulgath joined EbilCorp!? Was it him that made it possible for them to infiltrate the lab? We may have gotten back our files, but EbilCorp has just taken one of our most skilled and talented artists. It appears that Nulgath is creating a new competing game titled OverSoul. It looks like a PvP focused game with interesting card-game-style mechanics. You better check this out for yourself.

This week's new releases

Almost there!
Xero, Thyton and I spent the morning working on our female 3D character model's face. (TRANSLATED: Xero had two overly-suggestive back seat drivers hurling non-stop, conflicting thoughts at him for hours straight... it is amazing that we did not end up creating something that looked like this.)

I am really glad we are slowing down and spending lots of time to perfect the character models. Xero is very humble and sooo easy to work with. Although I have only known him for these last two weeks, he has already achieved "Zhoom-like" respect from us. We have made some pretty significant changes since this picture was first poted.