News, Cast Page, & Biographies

Hello everyone!

We have so much going on here at MADSOFT right now, and haven’t had much time to post in the blog because of that. We’ve resumed work on Project: Velyria, we’re working on enhancing and adding new features on MADSOFT Connect, as well as the Aikonia website.

We also recently enlarged our team and acquired some new game development teams. We’ll be talking about that soon though, so keep an eye on the blog :)

We’ve recently changed Aikonia’s cast page entirely. We gave it a brand new design, merged the team members and cast members in the same content area, and categorized the cast members so they’re easier for you to find.

We also added more information to each cast member and started writing biographies, which expands the story of the characters and the world of Aikonia. We haven’t released all the biographies yet, but we’ll be releasing them one by one as time goes by, so keep an eye on our Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ pages for new biography announcements.

We’re proud to announce the brand new advertisement system we built for the Aikonia comic website. If you’re an advertiser, or own a product or web comic you’d like to advertise on our site, you can now place your ad at the bottom of every page of the Aikonia website. We use the iSocket advertisement system and you can buy the ad space through their BuyAds marketplace. We get about approximately 230,000 page views and 72,000 visitors per month. You can place your ad on the site for $1.00 USD per 1,000 page views (minimum order amount is $5.00 USD). And remember that you can also get a link to your site on the Aikonia links page if you place a link to Aikonia on your site in exchange!
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We’re proud to announce the brand new advertisement system we built for the Aikonia comic website.

If you’re an advertiser, or own a product or web comic you’d like to advertise on our site, you can now place your ad at the bottom of every page of the Aikonia website. We use the iSocket advertisement system and you can buy the ad space through their BuyAds marketplace.

We get about approximately 230,000 page views and 72,000 visitors per month. You can place your ad on the site for $1.00 USD per 1,000 page views (minimum order amount is $5.00 USD).

And remember that you can also get a link to your site on the Aikonia links page if you place a link to Aikonia on your site in exchange!

We’re proud to announce Aikonia’s brand new donation & goodie page!. Here’s how it all works: every time we receive a donation, the amount is added to the progress bar.If you donated $5 or more, we send you an exclusive PDF file that contains Cyril’s report (the one he reported on page 7 of the comic) along with Katie’s original sketches for the first 30 pages. You’ll also be entered in a draw that takes place every time the progress bar reaches $100. When the progress bar reaches $100, a new free goodie is unlocked on that page for you to download and enjoy. And a draw will take place for all of those who donated $5 or more for a chance to win some stickers or other merchandise (as we release them)!Goodies could be wallpapers, documents, artwork, sketches, icons, IM avatars, mini comic strips, or anything we can come up with, we also like to hear your own suggestions for goodie ideas! For all of you who have donated so far, thank you! We really appreciate it and you really help us keep this comic going! We’re hoping to open up a store soon for you to purchase merchandise such as stickers, pins, posters and t-shirts, but for now, you can buy an Aikonia council print from right HERE!
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We’re proud to announce Aikonia’s brand new donation & goodie page!.

Here’s how it all works: every time we receive a donation, the amount is added to the progress bar.If you donated $5 or more, we send you an exclusive PDF file that contains Cyril’s report (the one he reported on page 7 of the comic) along with Katie’s original sketches for the first 30 pages. You’ll also be entered in a draw that takes place every time the progress bar reaches $100.

When the progress bar reaches $100, a new free goodie is unlocked on that page for you to download and enjoy. And a draw will take place for all of those who donated $5 or more for a chance to win some stickers or other merchandise (as we release them)!Goodies could be wallpapers, documents, artwork, sketches, icons, IM avatars, mini comic strips, or anything we can come up with, we also like to hear your own suggestions for goodie ideas!

For all of you who have donated so far, thank you! We really appreciate it and you really help us keep this comic going!

We’re hoping to open up a store soon for you to purchase merchandise such as stickers, pins, posters and t-shirts, but for now, you can buy an Aikonia council print from right HERE!

Novel Direction

Hey everyone!

We haven’t updated the development blog in a while! To be fair, we’ve been really busy lately, and we hope this post will cover most of the things we’ve been up to, as well as what we’re planning on doing with Aikonia.

For this brand new year, we decided to completely re-brand MADSOFT. We used to develop flash games, but after much thought, we came to the conclusion that we will not be dealing with flash any longer. We now build browser-based games and web applications only. We’ve also redesigned our logo and we’re currently still rebuilding our site. For now, it’s just a blank page with our new logo in the center.

We’ve already started working on games, and we hope to get them done before the end of the year. The first one is a sci-fi themed browser-based MMORPG called “Project: Velyria”.

Since we’re switching to web development only, we’re going to take this opportunity to completely rebuild our community site. It currently is a flash portal, with tools for collaboration (project management system, file storage and sharing, etc). We’ll be removing features, as well as adding new ones. Basically, we’re planning on making it similar to apple’s “Game Center” or the playstation’s “PSN”. You’ll have an account, which will be linked to all our upcoming and future games, and things you do will be stored on there. This includes friends you add, achievements you earn, messages you receive, etc. So look forward to that!

And now, on to today’s main topic: Aikonia!

When we first started building Aikonia in late 2009, it was a simple, and slightly silly, flash RPG. The project has grown and changed a lot since. We were still planning on making it a flash game, but we were introducing new elements to the game, such as online multiplayer and character customization. Unfortunately, the more we added to the project, the harder it got to build, and the more time it ended up taking.

Unfortunately, flash is really hard to deal with and it requires a lot more work and effort than you’d expect. This is the main reason we switched to web development.

Which leads me to this official announcement:

We’ve changed Aikonia entirely. It is not a flash game anymore, instead, it’s a browser-based game. It still has all the elements we intended to include such as quests, beat’em up-style combat, multiplayer (guilds, item trading, etc), a large & open world, custom character building, etc.

Flash will still be involved in the equation, but only for a single element, which we can discuss later on. For now, know that flash is not the main element of Aikonia, and the fact that it is browser-based makes it easier to implement multiplayer elements and seamlessly add new features in the future. It also means everything will be stored online, so you will be able to access the game from wherever you want, on any device you want, and continue from where you left off!

We hope to have your support on this, as this was a tough decision for us to make, and we hope that, in the end, it turns out to be a great one!