Alora Fane

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.

12 COMMENTS

Marwan6~4Y

Tobias, the game looks outstanding!!! I admire the way you make the map, climate and the tent. Also, I listen to some of the music you made during 2007. I think you did a wonderful job. Also, I will try to buy ost as fast as possible.

spritebob10~4Y

I remember having a thought the other day, that after seeing previews of your work in progress over time there seems to be something about the overall look which isn't quite to my liking, and I even concluded that it could be something about the chosen colours that were unsatisfying :P (..it's funny we had the same-ish thought at the same-ish time..)

Just now I tried processing the unprocessed sample image above a bit to see if I could get something a little more to my liking; well I think I did so quite easily by doing a "hue shift". To describe the result, it removed a red glow from the grass, sand and water and made the image look more "saturated", something like Super Mario 64. Maybe that's not quite what you're going for, though. (The red glow resembles the colours you'd see during sunset perhaps, but the shadows suggests that the sun is still quite high up..)

Tobias 1115~4Y

A global hue shift wouldn't change the relationships between the colours, which is the biggest factor that gives an 'arty', harmonious look. Like for example if you had the numbers 1, 2, 6, a hue shift might give a result like 2, 3, 7 - so different numbers but the same distance between them - while I'm interested in something like 1, 3, 5 (a more consistent relationship between colours). If that makes any sense at all. Not sure what you mean by 'red glow' though!

Relevant image: [LINK]

I'd like to use a teal + orange + purple overall colour scheme for the game, since I'm using those as key colours anyway. I'll probably need to tweak some individual colours rather than just applying a global post-processing effect.

spritebob10~4Y

Haha, not sure what's unclear about 'red glow' :P
The screen shot right below the unprocessed one is a more pronounced example of the trait I tried to describe. Anyway, the main purpose of the description was to indicate which direction I did the hue shift in case you wanted to try it yourself. However, I'd say the overall colour scheme became green, blue, yellow.

There is in particular something about the relation between the colour of the sand and the grass that doesn't quite please my eye, I think. Maybe they don't agree with what time of day it is, the sand in particular gives the impression of a red sunset.

Spectre35~4Y

Stardew Valley is a great game and I feel like now is a good time to jump right in since it got a HUGE update not long ago. It is a fun and relaxing game with great music. It is rather cheap anyway why don't give it a shot?

Verdusk21~4Y

I finally decided to check all these newly posted music in your Bandcamp. I remember having spent a lot of time listening to the old Raider's music, which have some of my favorite pieces among your music...

Have you ever thought about doing one of those music contests on Newgrounds they sometimes hold? There are contests where you can enter music, they are very welcoming (which is why I bother participating myself at all, since I'm not really much of a composer), if you compose non-Atonal Dreams music in your off time anyway, you might get a few new audience members from submitting your music there. There is of course also constructive criticism from the judge(s).

In particular, there recently was a "Video Game Music challenge" where you would pick a theme, and the guy in charge of that theme would give you a review, and everyone's encouraged to review others' works too, which we do. This one's not a contest, there are no winners, but it's cool to see everyone's approach on the same theme. This one's already over though.

In particular, Newgrounds annually holds the "Art-Inspired Music contest", where you choose an art piece from the art portal and submit a music inspired by that piece.

Anyway, I'm not saying you should do these, just thought it'd be good to know.

Have you ever thought about doing one of those music contests on Newgrounds they sometimes hold? There are contests where you can enter music, they are very welcoming (which is why I bother participating myself at all, since I'm not really much of a composer), if you compose non-Atonal Dreams music in your off time anyway, you might get a few new audience members from submitting your music there. There is of course also constructive criticism from the judge(s).

In particular, there recently was a "Video Game Music challenge" where you would pick a theme, and the guy in charge of that theme would give you a review, and everyone's encouraged to review others' works too, which we do. This one's not a contest, there are no winners, but it's cool to see everyone's approach on the same theme. This one's already over though.

In particular, Newgrounds annually holds the "Art-Inspired Music contest", where you choose an art piece from the art portal and submit a music inspired by that piece.

Anyway, I'm not saying you should do these, just thought it'd be good to know.

Tobias 1115~4Y

I thought I replied to this a few days ago, whoops!

That's an interesting idea! I used to actively avoid other amateur composers due to comparison envy in the past, but recently I've been listening to a few who post on Twitter so that wouldn't be a barrier anymore. I also often wonder what to compose 'about' if not a game, so it'd be good for inspiration.

I haven't visited Newgrounds in years, so it's interesting hearing stuff like that's going on over there these days. I wonder if people form meaningful connections from commenting about each other's creations like that.

I'll keep this in mind. Do you have a link to anything relevant on Newgrounds, like a page about contests or something?

Verdusk21~4Y

Music contests are posted in the Audio forum of Newgrounds, which can be found here: [LINK]

In addition, from the Newgrounds main page, you can see upcoming dates of events in the left side, including contest deadlines. This is normally how I find out about contests, since I don't bother checking the Audio forum regularly.

There isn't exactly a page about just contests in general, so I'm going to talk about specific contests below, for the reference.

The Art-Inspired Music contest which I mentioned, where you pick an art piece (drawing) from the Art portal and make a music based around it, is the only "regular" contest that I know of, being held annually. It appears that they've taken to hold this in July~August. Last year's thread, for the reference, can be found here: [LINK]

The recently finished Video Game Music challenge where you pick a theme to compose a video game music about, has its main thread here: [LINK]
And another thread that lists all the submission to this contest: [LINK]

A recently started, still ongoing contest for orchestral pieces can be seen here:
[LINK]

Music contests are posted in the Audio forum of Newgrounds, which can be found here: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/forum/13

In addition, from the Newgrounds main page, you can see upcoming dates of events in the left side, including contest deadlines. This is normally how I find out about contests, since I don't bother checking the Audio forum regularly.

There isn't exactly a page about just contests in general, so I'm going to talk about specific contests below, for the reference.

The Art-Inspired Music contest which I mentioned, where you pick an art piece (drawing) from the Art portal and make a music based around it, is the only "regular" contest that I know of, being held annually. It appears that they've taken to hold this in July~August. Last year's thread, for the reference, can be found here: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1453807

The recently finished Video Game Music challenge where you pick a theme to compose a video game music about, has its main thread here: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1459468
And another thread that lists all the submission to this contest: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1463646

A recently started, still ongoing contest for orchestral pieces can be seen here:
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1464421

ChuckNorris18~4Y

Interesting - I've followed you on Bandcamp. Intrigued to hear the 15-minute 'Ardrungs'.

Edit: My favourite part (of the title track) is the sequence of low bass notes around 2:15. Sometimes MIDI music feels a little treble/mid-heavy, but this takes more advantage of the lower frequencies.

Chris

MontyCallay101~4Y

Whenever you post these music albums, I usually listen to at least the first track, and today I liked it so much that I kept going and listened to the album in the background for a bit! I think it really shows that it was made around the same time as the music from MARDEK, your style was clearly coming into its own at the time - the way that you used triplets, for example, reminds me quite a bit of the MARDEK soundtrack, and the instrumentation feels generally similar as well.

It's a strange sort of nostalgia, listening to these things and remembering how I found out about FH way back in the day and would spend hours with the blogs/music/art... and that must be a fraction of how strongly you must feel about that! Though, of course, it wasn't only good times for you.

It's also really great to see that you're looking at other stuff without getting too self-conscious/jealous, which is probably a good step when trying to keep in touch with what's going on or what works in these spaces! It wasn't all that long ago that Undertale was this great monolith to be intimidated by, compared to how underwhelming you actually found it in the end...

Anyway, surely there has to be some part of you that is looking forward to advancing things and putting the game into the public eye! Sure, you might already like the work in itself, but isn't the best part seeing other people get something out of the finished product?

It's a strange sort of nostalgia, listening to these things and remembering how I found out about FH way back in the day and would spend hours with the blogs/music/art... and that must be a fraction of how strongly you must feel about that! Though, of course, it wasn't only good times for you.

It's also really great to see that you're looking at other stuff without getting too self-conscious/jealous, which is probably a good step when trying to keep in touch with what's going on or what works in these spaces! It wasn't all that long ago that Undertale was this great monolith to be intimidated by, compared to how underwhelming you actually found it in the end...

Anyway, surely there has to be some part of you that is looking forward to advancing things and putting the game into the public eye! Sure, you might already like the work in itself, but isn't the best part seeing  other people get something out of the finished product?

Tobias 1115~4Y

Thanks for listening to the music! The strong nostalgia I feel for it is why I'm bothering to upload it all, and I'm always acutely aware that that nostalgia won't be shared by other people, but I'm glad to hear you got at least a little something out of this album!

I've definitely come a long way with the comparison insecurities, but it's a process I'm still having to work at. I'm getting to the point where I'm a functioning human being, I hope!!

I don't even know whether getting feedback is the best part of it. Maybe it was at some point, but I got so much good and bad feedback from MARDEK that I became more numb than I'd like to the praise, and more wounded than I wish I was by the criticism. This seems to be the case for a lot of people in the public eye; avoiding reviews is common among actors, or so I've heard. It's been years though since I got a lot of feedback on a game (Sindrel Song got barely any), so I'll be... interested to see how I feel about it if I ever do make a Steam game with a bunch of reviews. Maybe it'll feel different to how the depression has conditioned me to expect.

I've definitely come a long way with the comparison insecurities, but it's a process I'm still having to work at. I'm getting to the point where I'm a functioning human being, I hope!!

I don't even know whether getting feedback is the best part of it. Maybe it was at some point, but I got so much good and bad feedback from MARDEK that I became more numb than I'd like to the praise, and more wounded than I wish I was by the criticism. This seems to be the case for a lot of people in the public eye; avoiding reviews is common among actors, or so I've heard. It's been years though since I got a lot of feedback on a game (Sindrel Song got barely any), so I'll be... /interested/ to see how I feel about it if I ever do make a Steam game with a bunch of reviews. Maybe it'll feel different to how the depression has conditioned me to expect.

astralwolf92~4Y

Pseudo unrelated question, as a psych grad how do u deal with people dismissing most of the field (ie most of psychology is bullshit) via citing the replication crisis and how pop psychology is misleading