Archived Design Notes

Alpha Test Results!

Posted by Artix on

AdventureQuest 3D: Legend of LORE

We conducted a stress test (version .002) for our new, browser-based, 3D, massively multiplayer game AdventureQuest 3D: Legend of LORE! The purpose of this test is to have 2,000+ testers (known as AlphaKnights) online, running around a small sample map and fighting a few monsters. Below are the results! Thank you to everyone who helped test -- even if you just opened up the page and crashed. You helped more than you could ever imagine! Below are the result of the test and what we are going to do to fix the bugs you found!

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REMINDER: An Alpha Test is not a game, it is a test. If you wish to play a fully functional game with final graphics, animation, quests, deep combat and rich character progression, please wait until live launch of the game. Everything you are seeing in this test is likely a placeholder. But, if you do have the guts, patience & passion to help build and test this game from the ground up, become an AlphaKnight.

 

TEST RESULTS

World Exploration & Loading into the game

This was the #1 success of the test. I honestly thought the files would be too big and make it impossible for anyone to load into the game. While there are dozens of horrific bugs we found, all of those can be fixed -- this was the only one that could not be. So I am extremely excited to say that this part of the test was a 100% PASS!

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Monsters, Primitive Combat, Item Drops, & Respawn

We scattered monsters around the map with item drops. Players rushed into find and fight them all. The monsters were designed so if they "broke" it would produce an error, but not bring the game server crashing down around it. Pretty much all of the monsters broke! But the game kept running which was pretty impressive. Unfortunately, when a monster broke he stopped attacking or chasing you. So the super challenging dungeon with a crazy hard boss monster was a piece of cake for our AlphaKnights. Rock BalBoulder says, "LOOKING FORWARD TO REMATCH HUMMANS!" Items drops worked perfectly, and monsters respawned properly.

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While weapons and items are slowly disintigrating and will crumble to dust before the next major test... they were really fun for the players (and the the team) to fight for!
 
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100 PLAYERS PER AREA TEST

We started the game with 10 people per area. Simliar to AQWorlds, if more than 10 people are in an area, it creates a new copy of the room for the next 10 people. We wanted to see what happened when 100 people joined the room! This test went... LOL.... comically. Having that many players in the room did two things. It spiked the RAM usage of players who were actually able to log in to about 3.1 Gigabytes. But that was nothing compared to what happened when the server tried to keep up with sending every action of 100 people to each of the other 99 peopl ein the room. The server message backup got to about 500,000 messages waiting to be sent... and a lag of about 1 minute per action. But this is exactly why we were doing the test, and the findings were good. Minimal has plans to combine and compact these messages.
 
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50 PLAYERS PER AREA TEST

This test went much better. Simliar results with the lag (and same solution), but it was playable if you computer could handle the memory requirements. Minimal and Zhoom believe we can reduce the RAM usage with some clever texture tricks. So, it looks like 20 and 40 man raids are really going to happen! Building this from scratch has been a really exciting challange. Hard to believe we never touched a 3D model before this project started. Look how far it is coming!
 
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BUGS!

 

 "Blue Screen" Bug

This was the most common graphical bug and will be fixed quickly. It is caused by a glitch in our camera controller. This happened because something caused your camera to zoom out to infinity... you are looking at the spacious endless void of Unity. I am impressed at what a pretty color the void is made of.

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"Pink Screen" Bug

This is the worst of the graphics related bugs. If you saw something like this, it likely means your graphics card is old or your drivers are out of date. Any video card created after 2005 should work -- but this test debunked that belief pretty hard. A lot of players experienced this. The pink area represents places where shaders could not be displayed by your video card.  A "Shader" is written in a programming language that 3D cards read. They determine how things look. For example, if you look at the grass and leaves in AdventureQuest 3D, you will notice that they appear to sway in the wind and that light effects them differently than stone. This is all because of the shaders that were coded for them. I am going to talk to Minimal, Zhoom and Swolicus about making it possible to turn off the shaders for those of you having this problem. It will make the game look pretty terrible compared to people who have the shaders turned on... but vastly better than a screen of pink!!! (Beleen says, "What is wrong with pink?")

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Quick Sand & Flickering

If only this were a feature. Some monsters fell into the world or did a wierd flickering thing. This was caused my the monster moving to a location where it colided with itself producing unusual results. Should be a reasonably easy fix.

 
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Unity Crashing & "Server Execution Failed"

There were a lot of other Unity Crash bugs reported in the Bug Tracker System that we are investigating. When we restarted the servers, players attempting to log on were met with a lot of odd errors. We will be adding checks so that if the game is not online it tells you instead ot just hurling scary error messages at your screen. Although, the screen where we hurl Zorbak at your screen was sorta funny.
 

Walking through walls and areas

These bugs are very low on our priority list. A lot of players figured out they could climb up the trees -- that was really fun. The current maps are small ones for testing only. We will be focusing on these type bugs after the major onesare solved and we start releasing "LIVE GAME" ready maps.
 
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Thank you again! (And ALPHA POINTS)

To everyone who helped in this test, thank you! The maximum # of AlphaPoints you can earn is currently 450. If you have 450 Alpha Points, congratulations, you are at the cap! The next test will be worth more points. If you are new, then good news.. there will be opportunities to earn A LOT more Alpha Points in coming tests. Players had a lot of good ideas for what the points could be used for. Some said use it like currency to buy permanent Alpha Items. Some said use it like experience to have an Alpha Level. Looking forward to figuring out what we will use them for later.
 
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The NEXT Alpha Test is coming!

The team is working on fixing the bugs listed above. Check back here on www.Artix.com for news on our progress and when the next test will take place. I am going to put the gray "Play Now" button on the homepage. It will light up red whenever a test is active and link to instructions about the test. Also, follow me on Facebook and Twitter -- I always post to let everyone know when tests are happening.
 
QUESTION: Did you Alpha Test? Did you do your job and post Bugs? Are you excited about the next test?