Dev Blog #002 December 06, 2021

Hey everyone, so it's been about a month since my last update, things are going really well and a lot more of the core gameplay is done and playable. Today I wanted to go over some of the new community features I've added for AQ2.

The game is almost at a state where I can show some videos, so I expect to start showing off more in the new year. While the core engine is completely new, I've taken a few things over from AQ1 and improved on them, as well as adding in new bits. One of the new bits added is Wings, so I thought I would share a quick bit of info about them.

Wings

A new feature for AQ2, Wings allow you to join up with friends, corporation mates or randoms and become a group. While in a wing you get realtime updates on shields, armor and your wing-mates locations, even if you are on the other side of the galaxy.
You also get the option of joining voice chat, this is really handy if you're playing with people on different platforms as most mobile players don't use discord or other chat services.
Wings come with all the features you expect, kicking, invites, muting etc.
The wing commander can also grant bonuses to other wing members based on their skills, these bonuses will apply to anyone in the same area as the commander.
Wings also allow you to share bounties and other rewards, this is great for support ships that won't be directly in combat. So if you're flying a dedicated support ship you can still get bounty rewards when other members of your wing destroy pirates.
Wings have been designed to be quick to create and join, so if you find someone who needs help or you want to quickly play alongside someone you can create a wing and share rewards. They don't need to be in your corporation, they don't even need to be in the same region of space as you, you can join a wing from the other side of the galaxy.
Wings are slightly persistent, so even if you are playing on a weaker mobile connection and get disconnected, you will still be in the wing when you come back.

Friends

s part of making the game more community friendly a new, fully featured friends system has been added. The new friends list works exactly how you would expect it to work. It also shows your corporation members by default, so you have a nice easy way to contact people and/or see if they are online. You can quickly send private mail or invite them into a wing from here.

Mail

All the mail systems have been updated, with a major upgrade to chat groups. In AQ1 group chat was a bit limiting as there was a very low cap on the number of groups you could join. The new system allows you to create a fully featured mail channel with a group of people, the channel is secured with a password but you can also directly invite someone without having to send them the password.