Design Notes
July 03, 2018
Patch Notes Extras! - Screenshots!
Screenshots 101
It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. This is usually true. But are those a thousand good words, or swear words is the question. So today, let’s go over how to give the best possible screenshots for your bug reports!
The first thing we need you to know is we aren’t going to hack your computer to look at your screenshots. If the “link” you send us begins with C:\\ or file:\\, this is not a URL we can look at, it is the file location on your computer. Once you have taken your screenshot, we need you to upload the picture to a public hosting site so we can see it.
What do we mean by public hosting site? A website where the picture can be viewed without requiring us to download anything, or to have an account. We highly recommend Imgur and LightShot.
What other sites can you use? A lot of people like to use Twitter and Facebook. Both of these platforms have what can be serious drawbacks. Twitter pics tend to be too small to be able to see fine details on. And too many times, Facebook pics are behind a lock and we cannot see them. If you do plan to use either of these, please try to get a good quality shot and set it for public viewing.
What makes a good quality shot? First of all, don’t crop it so tight we cannot tell what it was supposed to be of. It’s best if you just go ahead and screenshot the entire screen, and use circles or arrows or even stickers to point to the spot you want us to look at. This is especially true when you are reporting about things on a map. Too tightly cropped and we can’t tell what room you are in.
Can you recommend a really good screenshot tool? Absolutely. My personal favourite is ShareX. You can get it here: https://getsharex.com/
ShareX allows you to take the screenshot, edit it and upload all in one easy to use window. It’s free, customizable and can be set to upload to a variety of sites.
Another really good tool is LightShot.
You can get it here: https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html
LightShot is easy to use and allows you to edit and upload directly to prntscr.com.
April 09, 2018
Patch Notes Extras!
Lag Monsters Identification Guide
Hi again! This week, let’s talk a little about everyone’s least favourite monsters, the Lag Monsters. Now some of you may already know that there is actually more than one type of this monster. For those that don’t, here’s a short guide on how to tell them apart.
Server Lag Monster: This monster shows up when commands are sent to the server, such as saves, buying and selling. When a lot of them happen at once, this monster attacks. This monster can sometimes be avoided by playing on less populated servers.
Database Lag Monster: This monster is most likely to attack when servers are restarted, such as for updates, when everyone is trying to log in at the same time. This monster usually makes brief appearances and then goes back to sleep on it’s own.
Graphics Lag Monster: This monster is a particularly obnoxious breed as it manifests different to different people. It generally appears around highly animated items, or lots of action on screen. It has been found that this one can often be tamed by a decent video card, and making sure your drivers are up to date. Can also be affected by CPU speed.
Cache Lag Monster: This monster is a sneaky one. It sits around and waits while you fill up your browser with all kinds of information and then just appears and wrecks your day. It will cause everything you do to be a little bit slower, and slower, and slower. The good news is this one can be chased away by clearing your cache.
Tab Lag Monster: This monster appears most often when 3 or more tabs have been opened. It’s also far more likely to put in an appearance when those tabs have streaming content on them. It’s like a summoning ritual. The more tabs open = the stronger it gets. And the last thing anyone wants, is a lag monster, let alone a super strong lag monster.
Flash Tab Monster: This is a rarer version of the Tab Lag Monster. This one attacks when you are tabbed over, and return to the game screen. It will either freeze your graphics and you may need to drag the tab to a separate window, or it will try to play everything you didn’t watch at the same moment.
March 13, 2018
Patch Notes Extras! - Misc and Stacking Items
Tired of seeing these yet? TOO BAD! I’m not tired of writing them.
So this week, there were several reports about Misc items and picking up items that stack, so I’m going to do the 5 cent replies for these.
Stacking Items!
The first thing you need to know about accepting these is you do have to have a free inventory space. This is due to how the game handles item collection. It is first placed in your inventory in it’s own little spot, then moved to the stack. (Yes! We are already looking into improved ways to do this).
The next thing you need to know is that once you have reached the maximum amount of these items, no more will drop. If you have a stack in your bank, more will drop, but you will also get an error message when you try to pick them up. Please check your bank for the stack when this happens!
Finally, at times you can get a zero or even negative amount of these items when merging or turning them in for quests and lag is playing tricks. If the items are non AC, you can delete the busted stack. If the items are AC tagged, you can sell the busted stack. If you tried to get rid of it and it still won’t go away, then send us a bug report and we’ll get rid of them for you.
Misc Items!
There are two types of Misc items, Quest Items and Resource Items. While both types sort into the Misc tab in your inventory and bank, the two different types mean that they stack separately in your inventory, bank and on your character page.
If you do not see the item you are looking for immediately, look lower in the list for the next type of item.
AQ3D
BattleGems
BioBeasts
Dragons
Undead Assault