A Week Without Updates!? An AVWW Status Report.

[x4000]

Original: http://christophermpark.blogspot.com/2011/11/week-without-updates-avww-status-report.html

Ever since beta started, we've hardly gone a business day without updates, but here we've now gone a week since the last AVWW update.  Fear not!  This isn't the start of some new trend.  It's just been a confluence of events.

First of all, I was out of the office last Thursday and Friday due to some personal stuff.  Then we've also been preparing for Minecon, where we're going to be an exhibitor.  This includes getting both a new trailer going (which is almost ready!) and that new Getting Started Guide that we posted earlier today.  Then there's been a whole bunch of stuff to do with various distributors for AVWW and our other titles, and some general nearing-year-end business maintenance stuff.  Oh, and a number of press interviews or Q&As on several subjects.

Goodness!  All of this has culminated in my being unable to work on the game directly much until today, but now all that seems to be quieting down (knock on wood!).  Meanwhile:

* Josh has been hard at work on a variety of things including the Getting Started Guide and helping to test multiplayer
* Keith has been powering through the last of the multiplayer stuff for pre-public-alpha of that feature.  He's almost got it to the point where we can start having some people opting in to testing multiplayer outside of the confines of Arcen staff, which is very exciting.
* Pablo has composed two awesome new tracks that I'm very excited about, one of which is for a new region type that isn't ready to go quite yet, but which will be really fitting for when that region is integrated.
* Erik of course has been busy as usual with all the PR/marketing side of things, but particularly with Minecon preparations and the trailer work.

I've got a number of items on my shortlist of features that I want to work on for myself, but what I decided to work on today is some more advanced enemy AI.  Basically allowing for single enemies to have more complex patterns of attacks, and even unique combinations of attacks for specific individual bosses, etc.  The existing bosses won't get these features since they are inherently meant to be simpler, but one of the new bosses I'm working toward is the first true Overlord type of enemy (versus the game just using stat-inflated minibosses for the overlords, which was always a placeholder mechanic).

There are also some other cool things on my shortlist, such as multi-boss rooms, outdoor boss arenas, underground rare commodity caverns, and enchants.  Not to mention just general new spells and scrolls and enemies.  And I keep meaning to add more stuff to craft at the outfitter, too, but that keeps getting bumped for other stuff that is more exciting in the short-term.

There's a lot that's coming, anyhow, and the next beta update should be either tomorrow or Friday, but probably tomorrow.  Just figured I'd give folks an update on what's going on internally here!  Definitely a really busy and exciting time, and we'll be back to our usual pattern of frequent updates starting late this week and into early next week.

[BobTheJanitor]

I think everyone just assumed you were playing Skyrim. If not, don't worry, everyone else was too busy playing Skyrim to notice. I think I'm the only one that isn't playing Skyrim!

[tigersfan]

I wasnt playing Skyrim, I was writing the new Getting Started Guide

[BobTheJanitor]

Speaking of that, the forum post with the new guide in it has some strange gap in it when I view it. The blog post version looks fine, but the posted version has the end-of-page graphic cutting across the middle of Chris's post, and then the rest of the guide continues below there. Is anyone else getting that or is it just me?

[tigersfan]

Speaking of that, the forum post with the new guide in it has some strange gap in it when I view it. The blog post version looks fine, but the posted version has the end-of-page graphic cutting across the middle of Chris's post, and then the rest of the guide continues below there. Is anyone else getting that or is it just me?

I am too, but to be honest, I have no idea how to fix it.

[Hearteater]

I assume the fix I mention for it in mantis doesn't work?  Because in Chrome when I apply that fix it solves the problem (inspect element, select the DIV block in question and find the postion: absolute style line and uncheck that box).  Don't know if it breaks other stuff, but it makes that page look just fine .

[x4000]

I think everyone just assumed you were playing Skyrim. If not, don't worry, everyone else was too busy playing Skyrim to notice. I think I'm the only one that isn't playing Skyrim!

Hahahah.  You know, I never played Oblivion, and I haven't really been following Skyrim.  Played a little bit of Baldur's Gate back in the day, but never Morrowind, and I know those are different series.  But Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights (and, further back, Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures) are about the closest I've come to the Elder Scrolls series.  I did play through Fallout 3, though, so I guess that was at base the Oblivion engine.

I assume the fix I mention for it in mantis doesn't work?  Because in Chrome when I apply that fix it solves the problem (inspect element, select the DIV block in question and find the postion: absolute style line and uncheck that box).  Don't know if it breaks other stuff, but it makes that page look just fine .

Yep, that worked great!  I just hadn't had a chance to get to that one yet, but I just put it in.  Thanks for the sleuthing on that, hunting around CSS is not my favorite thing!

[Hearteater]

No problem.  I find myself working with CSS too much at work myself, but I've been doing it long enough that it isn't a chore anymore.  That and Chrome has a lot of nice features that make debugging style issues vastly easier.  Inspect Element with dual monitors almost feels like cheating.  Anyways, I figured any time I could save you from messing around with silly CSS bugs is more time you could spend working on epic games.

[x4000]

I appreciate it!  And good tip on chrome's stuff, too, I'll have to check that out.  Last time I was doing hardcore web development work, IE7 wasn't even out yet and Firefox 1.5 was the main alternative to IE6.  Things have sure changed a lot since then!

[Dizzard]

To be honest I haven't noticed too much because of Skyrim. So it's fine.

[x4000]

To be honest I haven't noticed too much because of Skyrim. So it's fine.

That seems to be a common theme -- seems my timing on that was good.

[Hearteater]

Here is a 30 second overview of Inspect Element, in picture format.  In Chrome just right click on a webpage and pick Inspect Element to access.  Have fun.

[x4000]

Here is a 30 second overview of Inspect Element, in picture format.  In Chrome just right click on a webpage and pick Inspect Element to access.  Have fun.

Whoa!  That is insanely useful!  Talk about making the web feel more like a compiled environment where you can use a debugger to change stuff on the fly.  I love it!  Thanks for putting that together, that's really helpful.

[snelg]

Here is a 30 second overview of Inspect Element, in picture format.  In Chrome just right click on a webpage and pick Inspect Element to access.  Have fun.

It's available in pretty much all the major browsers (yes, even in IE). Just thought I'd point that out if anyone's interested and don't have chrome installed. One of the most useful tools there is if you ever need some CSS changes done. 

[Echo35]

I wish I were going to MineCon! Take pictures for us.