After weeks of wondering and planning, I feel I've got the ball rolling on Atonal Dreams now! I've made an info page and a roadmap to explain what the game is and when it might be finished, as well as some new systems that I just added this week!
1. Info Page
I've created this page - ∞ alorafane.com/atonaldreams ∞ - to explain what the game is. I've been getting the feeling that it's not clear, so this should help with that, plus it helped me get a better idea of what I'm doing by writing it. I can also use it when it comes time for marketing.
I'm not sure how many people actually view pages like this though; I suppose I'll find out!
Currently it looks terrible on mobiles; I'll look into that.
2. Progress Bar
Unlike with most past games, I've made a roadmap for exactly what I need to do on the game and when I'm likely to have finished everything. I've incorporated it into the site such that I can mark off completed tasks and a progress bar fills. I'm planning to add that bar somewhere obvious on the site, so hopefully it's already there by the time you're reading this!
3. Potions System
I want to avoid having a bunch of inventory-cluttering trash, but items are a big part of most RPGs, so I wanted to include at least something. I've added six reagents - peppers, insects, flowers, fangs, herbs, and bones (each corresponds to an element) - which you can find in the environment and get as battle rewards. You can combine pairs of them into potions for a variety of both restorative and destructive effects.
Combining two reagents of the same element produces a damaging potion of that element, for example, while healing potions can be produced by combining a flower and a herb. The others have various effects like altering arousal, runes, or the light and dark values.
Potions each have a unique name and colour, and they're discovered when they're first used, so discovering them all could be a mildly entertaining achievement (in the code it's called the 'PotionDex'). They're also created on the fly; you don't have a stock of potions.
I've also added this weapon - called a 'syringe' - for Ossoum. Instead of using normal attacks and magic, he'd use this to convert potions into gasses to deal the same effect as the potion on a whole party, kind of like Meraeador's Flamethrower or Potion Spray (which it was inspired by). It might take a turn to load up, though, to prevent it being too overpowered.
4. Musical Melodies
Normal attacks use a reaction system which is similar to - but has slightly more potential than - MARDEK's, but magic instead uses musical melodies, which use what's essentially the same system but with more points to hit.
With physical reactions, you can either miss, hit, or get a bonus. With magic, you always hit, but successfully hitting the rhythm notes gets you the bonus. So it's not necessary, but it is rewarded.
It uses some of the code that I wrote for Sindrel Song to play notes procedurally, though it's not nearly as complicated. Hopefully it'll add to battles in the same way that normal reactions do rather than being an off-putting nuisance, but who knows.
The melodies interfere with the background music, and you might find the sudden muffling of that background jarring in that video. I almost gave up on the idea because of this, or tried to completely rethink the music so that it's completely procedural and any melodies you play blend in with it perfectly... From playing around with this, though, it grew on me after a few uses, and now it feels fine. It's hard to gauge - and easy to find fault with - just from watching a video without all the surrounding context though.
I've been wondering recently whether porting MARDEK to Steam was a mistake. I hoped it might increase traffic to my site and interest in my new projects, but it seems interest is waning if anything. Maybe it's because I've changed course and people aren't sure what I'm doing or doubt I can finish, or maybe it just takes so long that people find other things and wander away (understandable), though it's something that's on my mind quite often since it's tough devoting hours of work a day to something which might not be able to sustain me financially in the end.
I'll need to try to generate interest, and I have some ideas for that, which I'll write about in a personal blog post soon.
9 COMMENTS
codyfun12329~4Y
Indeed, muting the background music entirely caught me off-guard, but I believe you when you say that you became used to it. So I'll support leaving it as is.
Though I am left curious about could be done with it if that problem *was* explored further. A fully dynamic music system that synchronizes with the magic system is probably overkill to the max, of course, but what about a middle ground? How well would it work if the percussion was played isolated from the rest of the music, then the minigame was timed to match up with that?
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Tobias 1104~4Y
The percussion track and tempo wouldn't be the same between different battle tracks, or even within one, so to get something like that working wouldn't be any easier than just having a fully dynamic system!
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Astreon152~4Y
as far as i'm concerned, the pause in the BGM to use the reaction system is actually quite enjoyable. The music picks up exactly where it stopped, and the interlude is very short.
But that was with just one character, i wonder how it feels when all 4 characters successively use magic...maybe it becomes a bother then ?
Also, i'm not sure i understood correctly: the pause in the BGM is only for the magic reaction, or is it also for physical attacks' ?
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Tobias 1104~4Y
It's muffled down to 1% rather than paused, and it only applies to magic reactions! It's different when playing to watching because - from my own experience so far - it's a welcome thing since I'm trying to focus my attention on playing the rhythm rather than the BGM anyway.
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Spectre35~4Y
The music cut caught me off guard. Maybe a gradual slow down of the music would work better. Not too sure on that tho.
Other than that, I love the battle interface! Well done!
Edit: after giving some thought, It might just be a first or second time thing because the player already saw that coming and expected the music to become almost silent. Maybe we can get used to that.
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Tobias 1104~4Y
I do think it's the sort of thing that'll be surprising the first time or two, but players will likely quickly get used to it! That's been the case for me, anyway.
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kasheeste2133~4Y
Firstly, I love the info page. Its a nice condensed way of telling folks what exactly they're looking at and serves as mission statement of sorts plus it could easily be simplified into a steam-store page or other advertisement.
I will say, the whole music cutting out/in is rather harsh and aesthetically displeasing although I'm not musically inclined to offer an actual solution.. having listened to it several times perhaps a slightly longer fade out/in? Also, why is the shaker(?) not quieted like the rest? it really brings attention to itself and seems out of place.
Otherwise it really seems like you're making progress which will hopefully renew interest. From the outside looking in it seems that has always been the duality of developing publicity; too quiet and folks get uneasy and are quick to proclaim the project abandoned but too much leads to excitement which will quickly burn out should releases take too long to materialize or the "I've waited a year for this damn game to finally be released I can wait another year to pick it up on sale." mentality.
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Tobias 1104~4Y
It'll be valuable to see how people feel about the music muffling when they've actually played around with it during full battles rather than just watching it in a clip without the surrounding context. From my experience so far, it's welcome because it helps to focus on the task at hand without distractions.
The shaker is the beat that the rhythm you're trying to play is based around, which is different to the BGM's percussion.
I'll just have to hope that this apparent waning interest now doesn't mean that it's a flop when released in a few months... It's a shame how long things take.
2
mount201046~4Y
I have to admit I was not as interested in Atonal Dreams (as opposed to Divine Dreams), but you changed my mind after I visited your site. So yes, your site works - if you can get people to go to it in the first place! I'm an existing fan, and not a new one, so you might want to see how people who are new to your work react to it. In particular, I love the music that you're writing!
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