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Weekly Update - Almost, Ardrungs

4 years ago - Edited 4 years ago1,436 words

I hoped to have Atonal Dreams ready for alpha testing this week, though depression got in the way of that. I've almost got there though; just a few more tweaks. Also another album of non-game music, from the same time I composed the OST for MARDEK.

Atonal Dreams Progress

I've pretty much finished off everything I need to before alpha testing now, at least all the major features, but I also ran into a bunch of new bugs, which ate up a lot of time and energy. Plus I lost some time to depression. I've been meaning to write a personal post about that for ages, not because it's anything new, but because it helps to write things out. Things like ∞ this ∞ at least give some idea of what it's like trying to live with this, though.

I'll need to do another full playtest, making sure everything works as it should and correcting stuff along the way; that's what I'll be doing next week.

For now, here are some of the show-offable things I did this week:



I revised the mausoleum to just be a pure pyramid. It keeps the eye of providence symbolism, and it's simpler and much more visually striking. The glowy eye adds a lot too. I really like it, and keep just staring at this image!






Games with striking 'arty' looks typically use limited and carefully-chosen colour palettes, in some way or another. As I've added more to Atonal Dreams, I've become aware of how little harmony there is between the colours, giving a feeling that's simultaneously crowded and empty, or even childish with its discrete primary colours.

A post-processing effect called colour grading allows the colours to be tweaked as a whole to create a more unified look; compare the bottom (with colour grading) image here to the top one (no colour grading). It's something I barely understand though - here, I just tweaked some values for literally two minutes - so I'll need to look into it if I'm going to be incorporating it into the game properly. I might do a subtler version of this, or I might not bother doing anything with it, who knows!!!



I've finished making the first island, which serves as a tutorial; this'll be the content of the alpha, and probably the demo too if I do one of those. This island ends with a battle against Pierce outside the Courage Mausoleum, which I wrote the script for a while back. I'd planned for him to summon three Brigrrnds, though now you fight through the maelstrom - which includes eight Brigrrnds as just one wave - before reaching him, so that felt too underwhelming. Plus he has no connection to the Blight Wolves, so Brigrrnds have no relevance to him.

So, I decided to make a Brigrrnd variant that was born from his mind; something more suitable as the first boss. (The maelstroms would take the place of 'plot-unrelated boss monsters', though the plot I've already planned also includes a few story-related bosses.)



It's a Courage-elemental monster that represents his impotent rage about something where his own mind is holding him back; it'll be explained in-game so I won't just spoil everything here. I've gone with the name Impotantrulf (IM-po-TAN-trulf), from impotent + tantrum + wolf.

That's impotent meaning "unable to take effective action; helpless or powerless", not "(of a man) abnormally unable to achieve a sexual erection", to be clear. Though Pierce is supposed to be quite pathetic, so that's not completely unfitting either.

I really like this design and keep staring at the gif! Seems much more interesting than a "Flame Wolf"-style variant or a Brigrrnd with a different coloured bandanna or something. I also wondered whether it might be unintentionally horrifying though. Either way, I wonder if anyone else would share my excitement about the design. The chains were a pain to get right without overcomplicating the model!



Next, I'll need to do a playtest with notes and corrections, as I said; I'm not sure how long that'll take, but hopefully I can finish early next week. Then if I have time, I'll look into what to do next regarding alpha testing. I'll need to upload the game somewhere, probably Steam, and that's a tedious process in itself. It'll require making a store page and everything, which I feel I should research first this time. I should probably get more people on Discord - probably from Patreon, if anyone there is interested - and run the testing through that. Lots to do, and I don't know how much of it I'll be able to do - or even start on - next week. We'll see.

Music Album of the Week

This album contains non-game music I composed at the same time I was working on MARDEK, so it's of a similar style and quality to the OST of that, probably. All the stuff I've said about previous albums applies here too: the pieces are free outpourings of naive creativity, unrestrained by any knowledge about how music 'should' be composed. Lots of memories for me in this one, though I don't know about anyone else. I probably put most of the pieces online somewhere - Fig Hunter, most likely - so if you were around then and listened to any of my stuff, it might be familiar.

There's more info in the album's description on Bandcamp.

Link: [LINK]

Other Indie Games

I still haven't decided on a game to play next! Again I blame depression; I tried to pick something a few times, but it's tough when everything feels joyless and like "what's the point?". I should choose something though. I feel I should play an indie, but there are a couple of AAA games I'm curious about... They're so expensive though. Annoying.

I made note of some things I saw via Twitter:

I saw ∞ this site (blog?) ∞, where a guy writes reviews for 'turn-based' games, a category which includes Atonal Dreams. Seems like something I should check occasionally just to see examples of others on the same path as me, or to find games to play (most of what I see on Twitter are pixelated side-scrollers). Seems all the reviews are by one guy though; there's an About page where he mentions wanting other contributors, but there don't seem to be any, and the posts get about as many views as my posts here. It's tough getting attention on sites outside the social media hubs these days, sadly.

∞ A Kickstarter for another farm sim ∞ which has earned £371,484 of its £50k goal in 13 days. Impressive, and makes me wonder if Stardew Valley clones are always popular (I posted about another one that was quickly successful recently, I think?), though this one seems to have a relatively big team behind it so that gives them a lot of advantages, plus they're obviously able to achieve a higher quality. Not really my kind of genre, though. I've still never played Stardew Valley. I've been wondering whether to make that my next game, since the solo dev made a fortune from it, but... eh.

∞ Here's a Patreon which is earning $3,279 per month ∞, which is way more than most. The creator is a woman who makes some high quality in-depth tutorials. Makes me wonder whether I could do that, but it's not really something I'm passionate or confident about, plus I've seen way more examples of tutorial creators who seem largely ignored. She's also making an impressive-enough-looking game solo, though I wonder if it'll earn as much as her Patreon. Or maybe people are following her primarily due to interest in that? I wonder. Always nice to see people succeeding on the platform though (surprisingly I don't feel jealous about things like this anymore; mostly I just feel hope, or happiness for them).

Also...

This is a bit earlier than the past few Weekly Updates! How exciting!! Hopefully next week I'll post on Patreon or Twitter or something if I get to the alpha test point mid-week, but it's hard to predict anything.

And honestly, I'm dreading the following stages since it'll mean several big changes. Has to happen at some point though... Chances are everything will be underwhelming anyway. Maybe.