hey guys! sorry i haven't posted a while, i have a few posts in drafts, i'm just not fast at finishing writing posts lol
but, i learned this news today and i got excited enough that i wrote this up! basically, it's an explanation on why animal jam classic hasn't had a major update in years
this month, @delocate.aj on instagram posted an interview with clark stacy about aj classic. and it's really good news!!!
here's the link: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfjcBFnIE3g/
first of all, ajc is not shutting down!!! direct quote from clark stacey: "There are no repercussions to us continuing to operate aj classic as it is. ... It still generates revenue, it supports itself, we would have no incentive to shut it down."
it turns out that ajc still runs on flash, and the app is like a mini browser that still supports flash. (which was news to me, i more or less figured that it still used flash but i didn't think about it too hard)
because of that, it's very hard to add new features to ajc. that's because flash is very out of date and not supported (and there's a bunch of unpatchable security risks baked into the nature of flash). this is something i hadn't even considered, but it makes sense and explains a lot!
i remember seeing an interview with the creator of aj where he said that when he left the company, they were planning on converting ajc to webgl (and thus make it playable on browsers), but that never happened. i was really mad that they didn't do that but according to this interview, it turns out that at the time, webgl didn't have all the features needed to support ajc
now, webgl is more advanced, and it seems like wildworks is seriously considering moving ajc to it!
this is awesome for a bunch of reasons. for one, ajc will be playable on browser again, INCLUDING mobile browsers. (chromebook users can finally play ajc again!!!)
two, this means that the game will finally get updated again!!! clark mentions that there were a lot of ideas for ajc that got shelved because of the shut down of flash (some ones he mentions are revamping the player profiles and trading system)
lastly, this wasn't explicitly mentioned, but i bet porting the game to webgl would make it run better. current ajc tends to run rather horribly, and i'd assume that converting the game to an up-to-date browser protocol can only help.
clark also talks about how hard it it to create new animals (and clothing) for ajc- how each item has to be animated for each pose of each animal, and that needs to be done for each clothing item when a new animal is introduced, and most of the work can't be automated. and, apparently, all this animation needs to be redone in order to port the game to webgl
but excitingly, he says that wildworks is working on establishing a partnership in the next year or so "That could involve us basically having access to an army of animators that would make it easier to pull that off." he then states that this isn't a guarantee, but i really hope it happens!!!
all in all, i have a lot more hope for ajc now. this interview definitely gives off the impression that wildworks doesn't want to abandon animal jam classic!
