Before we get into any of this, AQ3D has been updated today. Build 0.0.66 features the new first pass UI and a bunch of other changes. Oishii listed all the changes on our handy-dandy PATCH NOTES CHANGE LOG.
We've all known that it's been coming for a while but the time is coming. We're moving testing to STEAM as Unity kills off their web player. But why is this happening? Why kill off the web version at all? Why is it a good thing?
To fully appreciate this you need a little back story...
A few years ago, we tried making a 3D MMO. Long ago, I explained what happened in greater detail IN THIS POST, but here's a quick summary: Things were going well until Adobe announced that it was stopping all efforts to develop Flash. Unity, who had developed a 3D engine and plug-in that could play through Adobe's Flash plug-in, rightly saw this as a dead-end road and dropped all support for Flash. Since we had been developing Legends of Lore to be played exclusively through the web browser like our other games (pushing Unity through Flash) this left us high and dry with no game.
So... we took a step back and reevaluated our path moving forward. The gaming industry saw more and more people moving to mobile while the web browsers declared an all-out war on plugins like Flash. We decided that, for Artix Entertainment to survive, we needed to branch out and mobile was the right direction. We got back on the horse and produced a few great mobile games (Battle Gems, AQ Dragons, Undead Assault and BioBeasts) while getting our mobile game game on fleek (Yup. I did that. Now stop using it.).
Meanwhile, we had learned from our mistakes. We had come up with an idea for a new AQ3D. This one would not just be on the web... not just on mobile... not just on PC... but a true cross-platform that we would build for as many platforms as possible. .
This turned out to be an unbelievably great idea!
In October of last year, Unity announced that it would begin the slow process of killing off their web player. If we had decided just to go with the web player, putting all of our eggs in one basket, we would be right back where we started. Thanks to the decision to build this game as true cross-platform we are still able to continue development of AQ3D without even stopping for breath.
This was a very public announcement. We've all known that the web player would be killed off in March of this year and, oh look at the time... it's MARCH!
We are currently using Unity 5.3, but as of their 5.4 update (coming out THIS WEEK) Unity will no longer be able to publish a web player build of any project, including AQ3D's web playable version.
We can't just stick with 5.3 forever because every release fixes more bugs and we need all the Unity bug fixes to build AQ3D and future projects. Zhoom says that he probably won't update for a couple of weeks so there is time to get our house in order, but by the end of this month... the AQ3D web build is dust and we will have moved to our new testing environment: STEAM.
Unity gave us about 5 months to prepare for this and WE ARE PREPARED!
We were greenlit by the STEAM community mere hours after reaching our Kickstarter goal, the Steam build of AQ3D is up to date and keeping pace with the web build and, Steam has recently generously provided us with 45,000 unique Steam Keys for AQ3D! That's just about exactly the number of accounts that we have testing AQ3D between our pre-exiting testers and all the Kickstarter Early Access people!
What's even better is this solved a few issues for AQ3D. Mac users will finally be able to chat (the inability to chat was a specific bug with the Unity Web Player and Macs, so... no web player, no bug). It also looks super crisp in full screen mode on Steam. You'll be able to take screenshots with a simple key press (F12 for Steam noobs) and for the few that were getting poor performance through your Firefox browsers, this should clear that right up (unless you just have a really old machine that needs to be retired).
We're set. We're golden. We're a leaf on the wind. Wait. Strike that last one. Bad luck.
For those of you who wish to keep testing:
Steam is a free download for your PC and/or Mac.
Once we are ready, the Steam keys will be available on your AQ3D Account Management page. We'll let you know when.
Things are looking great for AQ3D! Questions? Comments? Leave us a message in the comments below.
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