Alora Fane

Gasp! I'm ready to start the next Atonal Dreams alpha test next week! Also I've maybe revised Alora Fane's logo and cosmology a bit? And a brief look at another 'solo' dev's Kickstarter, which evoked very mixed feelings in me...

I spent this week readying the game for the next alpha, which I've mostly completed. There are still a lot of things like particle and sound effects that I would have liked to add first, but I suppose it makes sense to get opinions first in case I need to change stuff around.

It seems fair to let supporters of ∞ my Patreon ∞ test first, so I'll post there either over the weekend or early next week about how that'll work.

I remember seeing something a few months ago about how Steam has a new beta testing feature or something, so I should look into that to see whether that's the best way to go about it. (I hoped to do that this week, but... I'll get to that.)

Or if you have any experience with it, I'd love to hear about it!

Atonal Dreams uses a novel musical 'reaction' system when executing skills, where you use an interface like this:

Each thing represents a bar of the background music, and you have to press a button when one reaches the middle, then release it when the next one does, forming a line (or 'concord') between them.

I tried this for the first time on my widescreen monitor at fullscreen earlier in the week (typically I test in a small window within Unity), and the way I'd coded it meant it didn't function properly at arbitrary resolutions! So that was one of the many annoying little things I had to fix this week.

While fixing it, I was also inspired to revise how the barline sections looked; now they look like eyes, which are a consistent motif in the game:

And while making the graphics for those, I had a flash of inspiration!

I came up with the Alora Fane world many years ago. In 2013, I think; that's the date on this old logo:

There you can see the aster, the flower logo, which I designed without much thought one day back then and have been reusing the exact same file of ever since.

My ideas for the world have developed a whole lot since then, though. Something subconscious must have bubbled up this week, for some reason, with the aforementioned spark of inspiration as a catalyst, and I was randomly motivated to play around with a potential Alora Fane logo redesign:

The one on the left is 'intact', the one on the right includes the Fracture.

So it's still a six-petalled flower, but made of three eyes in the three equidistant colours that are a motif of the world (teal = drealm, yellow = light, purple = dark). Rotating so that points were on the sides rather than top and bottom was necessary for at least one eye to read as such.

I think it looks more interesting maybe, and it's certainly way more meaningful, though it also brings to mind garish harlequin colours - and if you're familiar with the old one, it'll register as different - so I'm not expecting enthusiastic embrace of it or anything.

Mostly I just wanted to see what the aster might be like if I used the eye symbol!

But it also got me thinking about the layout of the land, because if I were to keep this, it suggests the 'petal' worlds are connected in pairs and layered on top of one another rather than separate and discrete. Some quick brainstorming revealed a possibility that already fits with much of what I've already got:

Perhaps the world is made of three layers that 'overlap', in that they occupy the same space but are on different 'frequencies'.

The lowest, the Dark realm, is a fairly brutal place driven by the pursuit of base physical desires. It contains Bronzeal, the Passion-elemental home of the Bold, at one one end, and Gravegrove, the Fear-elemental home of the Meek, at the other. Travel between the two wouldn't be like traversing the landscape on Earth, but the 'barriers' between them would be 'thinner' than between the other realms. This could explain how there are Meek in Bronzeal.

The next, the Light realm, is more contemplative and abstract, perhaps resembling what we'd think of as an afterlife. It contains Yden, the Harmony-elemental home of the Lucen, and Fulgur, the Discord-elemental former home of the now-extinct Elarna. Fits with some planned lore stuff.

The highest, the... Drealm realm... (Aether realm?) contains the Viva-elemental home of the Varnyn (name undecided; I've got 'Idyall' in my notes but I don't like it), and Carna, the Languor-elemental home of the Sindrels. It'd make sense for this to be more dreamlike, but I've already depicted Carna in Memody: Sindrel Song as not like that, so I don't want to completely revise the ideas presented in that.

It's all very much just a raw, freshly-inspired idea that still needs a lot of refining, but I thought I'd present it in its just-born form anyway so you can see how it evolves if you're interested!

Finally, I want to talk a bit (again) about some struggles related to moving onto the scary next stage, where I'll need to rally up financial support for Atonal Dreams and face a lot of things I've been avoiding for a long time.

I've been struggling with insomnia for the past couple of weeks because of it, just lying in bed for hours struggling to sleep as my mind fills with fears and fretting. I slept so little last night that I ended up going back to bed all morning when I'd usually be working, which is why I wasn't able to get as far along with the testing preparation as I intended to.

The biggest thing is that middle age is rather horrifyingly just over the horizon; while my twenties felt like they went on for a lifetime and I progressed through several important creative and social phases during them (Fig Hunter days, giving up Flash, getting therapy, uni attempt 1, spiritual awakening (sadly fleeting), uni attempt 2, first friends in years, finding out I had brain cancer), my thirties have just been a big blank blink, a rut so without variation I've no idea where the time has gone. I'm very worryingly aware that I'm very old to have never had a Normal Job, and at the rate the years have been zipping by I'm scared I'll be even older by the time I even start trying to address that. I really need to get my life sorted out in general.

I made a list of things - the first of which is just registering at a local doctor, and eventually I'll work up to getting regular therapy if possible (the barriers are bureaucratic, not mental) - but it'll take a while to work through.

I've been hoping that I could make a living from games dev... though Atonal Dreams has taken several times longer than I thought it would, and I've still got a long way left. And I don't feel confident about the necessary marketing/promotion aspects at all.

I've written on this blog about other devs' Kickstarters in the past. ∞ Here's another one for a game called Kokopa's Atlas ∞, by a dev I've followed on Twitter for a while... which I may actually have mentioned before (if I have I forget), but which I (re?)discovered earlier in the week. I kept note of it and meant to ramble jealously a bit about it... but I just took a closer look at it while writing this and I've changed my thoughts about some things a bit.

What I was going to say originally is that it all seems super professional and has a positive, upbeat voice to it, offers a bunch of reward tiers and all this other stuff that's extremely impressive for a 'solo' dev (it bothers me when dev say they're 'solo' when they get someone else to do the music, as seems to be the case here) already juggling too much stuff, the game has many features people seem to like these days like crafting and base building (I personally find them irritating but am probably a minority)... Plus it sounds like he has the direct support of a bunch of professional people. And yet despite all that, the campaign still generated 'only' €49,421 even though he'd spent five (?) years on the project, which is discouraging compared to the obnoxious six-figure annual salaries American tech types are always mentioning online, or even compared to the supposed 30k average here in the UK (which is what my friend is getting as a newbie data analyst)...

But then I saw ∞ this update ∞, where he talked about all the stress, headaches, sleepless nights, which eventually produced concerning eye issues. He tried to see them as par for the course, to power through them, but ended up in hospital where he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He had to hand the project over to the previously-mentioned team (or whatever they are) who he seemed to have connections with.

So that's... certainly something! Sad. But deeply familiar to me as well. I recognise the constant headaches while trying to work all day every day, the powering through, the ignoring of symptoms because you need - and want! - to get stuff done... It's why I got MARDEK 3 done in 3 years, but was pretty much destroyed at the end. I ended up with brain cancer instead of MS, but I can't help but wonder whether there's any causal relationship at all between that mad pushing and neurological collapse or whether it's just coincidental genetic misfortune.

It's why Atonal Dreams has taken so long, though; I never want to return to those dark days of constant pushing and pain.

Without that kind of pushing though, is solo indie dev a viable path forward? Probably not. But then what could someone like me even do?

While reading that left me feeling sad for him, I got something strangely positive out of it, too. Seeing other people reaching out, showing compassion, offering to take over duties. Maybe there are kind people with the right skills and connections who I might come into contact with if I break out of my shell while attempting to run a kickstarter?

I still flinch at the thought due to past trauma - people who've been psychologically wounded are conditioned to see the world as a dangerous place - but maybe it won't be so bad??

I do need to finish Atonal Dreams regardless, though. Having a finished project - no matter how well it sells - will be far better for me in so many ways than just abandoning it when things get too tough.

So yes, I'll post on Patreon re the testing once I figure it out myself! It'd probably be wise to do it over the weekend while other people might have more time, but I feel I need yet another a break myself - how annoying!!1 - so I might have to postpone it until Monday. We'll see!!

There won't be any rush with it though and I'm assuming the testing will run at least a couple of weeks, whenever people have the time/interest/motivation for it.

7 COMMENTS

Kalin24~2Y

I like the new logo. The eyes are very obvious, and the colors make it clear this is a more compassionate RPG than normal.

I do have some doubts about the Fracture: the old one looked like it shattered, but bits are still connected to the other realms. The new one looks like it was deliberately cut off and then broken.

And players will likely assume the white circle represents some sort of connecting realm (Figrealm? Aether?).

Lordofsea19~2Y

I personally prefer the original design. I think the minimalist design carries more meaning than the busier one you show us here. Less is more, no?

Maniafig222~2Y

Bah, my PC is broken!! I hope it can get fixed before the alpha test begins, I don't want to miss out!

I believe the way betas on Steam work is that you hand out keys to the game to your beta testers and then they can select to play the beta branch of the game through Steam. I've seen this mostly for early access games or games with a continuous production cycle where there's a main branch and a beta/testing branch and the beta branch is locked behind a password or something.

The eye-UI for the attack timing looks better than the bland oval, a good and thematically cohesive change.

The new design is more meaningful, whereas the old design was simpler and cleaner. I see a lot of brans these days go for cleaner and simpler designs, that seems to be the general trend anyhow.

The old symbol gave the impression of a Nexus point with 6 petals scattered around it, all equal except for the one that's clearly shattered. It immediately brings intrigue to that shattered petal, why is it like that?

The new one instead gives the impression of three distinct layers with overlaps in the middle, like a strangely-shaped Venn Diagram. Fracture looks a lot stranger here, it looks like it's outright cut off rather than merely fractured. It also makes it look like there's a bunch of overlaps between all the realms, in a way the old one does not.

Interesting that Meek are now Fear, that's new! It seems the Meek, Lucen and Varnyn all swapped around elements a bit.

I'm very curious to see what Yden and Fulgur look like. Those Elarna designs you posted way back when were really cute!!

I could imagine that Carna was meant to be more ethereal and dreamlike, until the gods left and the ecosystem collapsed into its current brutal cycle. A dream turned into a living nightmare, or something. We've also only seen a small bit of Carna anyhow!

Hm looking at that trailer I was expecting a collectathon in the vein of Yooka-Laylee or A Hat In Time, but when I realized it used Minecraftesque blocks for its tiles I realized it's just kind of a clone of that. Interest waned.

These features might be well-liked overall, but it's also an immediate turn-off for others and it's competing in a very crowded marketspace. From the little I saw there wasn't really another that stands out about the game.

€50.000 is quite decent, actually. That seems to be about where these kinds or projects top off AFAIK. Telepath Tactics and Fell Seal got about $40.000. Even UNDERTALE got about $50.000 I believe. You're only going to get more if one is really lucky or already has professional experience in the business and an established portfolio like the Castlevania or Banjo Kazooie developers.

I think it's good to keep in mind what Kickstarter is actually for: While it is a lump sump of money that is being carried forward from the point of sales to the point of development, the purpose has always been to amass the funds needed to make the game. Whether that is the costs of reimbursing people brought into the project or simple things like living expenses and required software and the like.

At the end of the day there's two parts of why someone should invest in a project:
1) The finished product looks worthwhile
2) The project needs investment or the investment rewards are good

The first one is covered by the game itself, but for the second a solo dev needs to make clear why exactly the game needs to be kickstarted, why is the project not possible without it? How does the game Kickstarter earning €50.000 directly translate into a better product and timelier release?

Here's to hoping my PC is fixed soon!!

Bah, my PC is broken!! I hope it can get fixed before the alpha test begins, I don't want to miss out!

I believe the way betas on Steam work is that you hand out keys to the game to your beta testers and then they can select to play the beta branch of the game through Steam. I've seen this mostly for early access games or games with a continuous production cycle where there's a main branch and a beta/testing branch and the beta branch is locked behind a password or something.

The eye-UI for the attack timing looks better than the bland oval, a good and thematically cohesive change.

The new design is more meaningful, whereas the old design was simpler and cleaner. I see a lot of brans these days go for cleaner and simpler designs, that seems to be the general trend anyhow.

The old symbol gave the impression of a Nexus point with 6 petals scattered around it, all equal except for the one that's clearly shattered. It immediately brings intrigue to that shattered petal, why is it like that?

The new one instead gives the impression of three distinct layers with overlaps in the middle, like a strangely-shaped Venn Diagram. Fracture looks a lot stranger here, it looks like it's outright cut off rather than merely fractured. It also makes it look like there's a bunch of overlaps between all the realms, in a way the old one does not.

Interesting that Meek are now Fear, that's new! It seems the Meek, Lucen and Varnyn all swapped around elements a bit.

I'm very curious to see what Yden and Fulgur look like. Those Elarna designs you posted way back when were really cute!!

I could imagine that Carna was meant to be more ethereal and dreamlike, until the gods left and the ecosystem collapsed into its current brutal cycle. A dream turned into a living nightmare, or something. We've also only seen a small bit of Carna anyhow!

Hm looking at that trailer I was expecting a collectathon in the vein of Yooka-Laylee or A Hat In Time, but when I realized it used Minecraftesque blocks for its tiles I realized it's just kind of a clone of that. Interest waned.

These features might be well-liked overall, but it's also an immediate turn-off for others and it's competing in a very crowded marketspace. From the little I saw there wasn't really another that stands out about the game.

€50.000 is quite decent, actually. That seems to be about where these kinds or projects top off AFAIK. Telepath Tactics and Fell Seal got about $40.000. Even UNDERTALE got about $50.000 I believe. You're only going to get more if one is really lucky or already has professional experience in the business and an established portfolio like the Castlevania or Banjo Kazooie developers.

I think it's good to keep in mind what Kickstarter is actually for: While it is a lump sump of money that is being carried forward from the point of sales to the point of development, the purpose has always been to amass the funds needed to make the game. Whether that is the costs of reimbursing people brought into the project or simple things like living expenses and required software and the like.

At the end of the day there's two parts of why someone should invest in a project:
1) The finished product looks worthwhile
2) The project needs investment or the investment rewards are good

The first one is covered by the game itself, but for the second a solo dev needs to make clear why exactly the game needs to be kickstarted, why is the project not possible without it? How does the game Kickstarter earning €50.000 directly translate into a better product and timelier release?

Here's to hoping my PC is fixed soon!!

Tobias 1115~2Y

I'm also hoping that your PC is fixed soon!! That's very frustrating timing for this impending alpha test, but surely frustrating for you in general so I wouldn't want that prolonged!

Is the way you described Steam betas the same as what I did with the first Atonal Dreams alpha, or different? I can barely even remember what I did last time, though I think I must have researched it back then? I don't think there's much point having a separate beta branch though as the game won't be an ongoing, continually-updated thing.

There's an idea that I think I first heard about in sci-fi a few years ago, of multiple universes or 'dimensions' overlapping but on different 'frequencies', and I've recently been seeing the same concept talked about as if it could be the nature of our actual reality in things like UFO communities (so rather than being aliens from a planet a bajillion miles away, they're from physically here but a different frequency). Whether or not there's any truth to that, I like the idea of structuring Alora Fane's 'pocket dimensions' in this way, kind of like how the whole consciousness substrate - drealm - thing is based on similar inspirations. It doesn't clash with anything I had before, just elaborates on it a bit. And of course the new logo would fit with that!

Something I prefer about the old logo is that I can have a flat colour version of it, which would be lost with this new one. So if I do decide to keep it - and I'm still in the wondering phase - I might have to make a single colour version of it in addition to the colourful one.

I wondered whether Carna's winters started happening after the Fracture! But could sindrels have realistically adapted to them so quickly? I suppose in a fantasy world with magic, anything's possible.

I read this comment yesterday (I should really reply to things straight away, but...), and I've been thinking about what you said about Kickstarter. On the one hand it's somewhat discouraging knowing that indie games often don't make much - at least compared to those US tech job salaries I know I shouldn't compare to but do - but I suppose it's also encouraging knowing things like Telepath Tactics got around that 50k amount. And hearing that the one I linked to doesn't have the kind of appeal I feared it might for having those kinds of features (though I find it interesting that it registered as Minecraft-like to you when it doesn't have the super blocky look; I didn't perceive it as such).

I've also been wondering whether 'I need the money so then I can pay the basic bills' is reason enough for people to support a Kickstarter, since that's the main angle I'd be going with. I wouldn't intend to be buying, say, people to make various assets, but maybe people expect that??

I think the biggest thing about doing a Kickstarter for me is that it'll hopefully push me out of my shell, force me to do some hard promotion!! for a whole month, and I feel I need to see whether I can even cope with that. Because if I really can't, then I definitely need to start looking into something else. But just thinking about doing all that is leading to a lot of feet-dragging already, bleh...

I'm also hoping that your PC is fixed soon!! That's very frustrating timing for this impending alpha test, but surely frustrating for you in general so I wouldn't want that prolonged!

Is the way you described Steam betas the same as what I did with the first Atonal Dreams alpha, or different? I can barely even remember what I did last time, though I think I must have researched it back then? I don't think there's much point having a separate beta branch though as the game won't be an ongoing, continually-updated thing.

There's an idea that I think I first heard about in sci-fi a few years ago, of multiple universes or 'dimensions' overlapping but on different 'frequencies', and I've recently been seeing the same concept talked about as if it could be the nature of our actual reality in things like UFO communities (so rather than being aliens from a planet a bajillion miles away, they're from physically here but a different frequency). Whether or not there's any truth to that, I like the idea of structuring Alora Fane's 'pocket dimensions' in this way, kind of like how the whole consciousness substrate - drealm - thing is based on similar inspirations. It doesn't clash with anything I had before, just elaborates on it a bit. And of course the new logo would fit with that!

Something I prefer about the old logo is that I can have a flat colour version of it, which would be lost with this new one. So if I do decide to keep it - and I'm still in the wondering phase - I might have to make a single colour version of it in addition to the colourful one.

I wondered whether Carna's winters started happening after the Fracture! But could sindrels have realistically adapted to them so quickly? I suppose in a fantasy world with magic, anything's possible.

I read this comment yesterday (I should really reply to things straight away, but...), and I've been thinking about what you said about Kickstarter. On the one hand it's somewhat discouraging knowing that indie games often don't make much - at least compared to those US tech job salaries I know I shouldn't compare to but do - but I suppose it's also encouraging knowing things like Telepath Tactics got around that 50k amount. And hearing that the one I linked to doesn't have the kind of appeal I feared it might for having those kinds of features (though I find it interesting that it registered as Minecraft-like to you when it doesn't have the super blocky look; I didn't perceive it as such).

I've also been wondering whether 'I need the money so then I can pay the basic bills' is reason enough for people to support a Kickstarter, since that's the main angle I'd be going with. I wouldn't intend to be buying, say, people to make various assets, but maybe people expect that??

I think the biggest thing about doing a Kickstarter for me is that it'll hopefully push me out of my shell, force me to do some /hard promotion!!/ for a whole month, and I feel I need to see whether I can even cope with that. Because if I really can't, then I definitely need to start looking into something else. But just /thinking/ about doing all that is leading to a lot of feet-dragging already, bleh...

Maniafig222~2Y

I'd thought my PC was fixed yesterday, when I got it back, but it's still broken! So it's brought back for repairs again, hopefully this time it won't take almost a week... Spending all my free time I'd be spending on the PC on my mobile phone instead is really irritating.

I think what we did for the Alpha is just using keys and a main branch, I suppose that works just as well since there's no need to do multiple branches!

Any and all lore questions can be answered with "The Aolmna Did It". Why do Sindrels have their flower brains? Why is Carna like this? Why are the Elarna cute? Who caused the Fracture? Who impregnated Mardek's mom? Why did Mardek have a sloppy make-out session with Deugan and Steele while Emeela was recording it? And who the hell are Mardek and Deugan??

While Minecraft is known superficially for its very pixelated and blocky look, a lot of Minecraft clones (and mods!) go for a more visually complex look that nonetheless apes the same cubical-tile based crafting/mining experience. It looks very clear at the 0:25 and 1:18 marks that despite the look, the world is clearly tile-based in a manner similar to Minecraft.

I think most true solo devs do use the reasoning that they need it to cover living expenses, yes. There probably is a general expectation that even solo devs do some outsourcing, or at least collaborative work, but it's not unheard of for everything to be done by one person either.

I think what we did for the Alpha is just using keys and a main branch, I suppose that works just as well since there's no need to do multiple branches!

Any and all lore questions can be answered with "The Aolmna Did It". Why do Sindrels have their flower brains? Why is Carna like this? Why are the Elarna cute? Who caused the Fracture? Who impregnated Mardek's mom? Why did Mardek have a sloppy make-out session with Deugan and Steele while Emeela was recording it? And who the hell are Mardek and Deugan??

While Minecraft is known superficially for its very pixelated and blocky look, a lot of Minecraft clones (and mods!) go for a more visually complex look that nonetheless apes the same cubical-tile based crafting/mining experience. It looks very clear at the 0:25 and 1:18 marks that despite the look, the world is clearly tile-based in a manner similar to Minecraft.

I think most true solo devs do use the reasoning that they need it to cover living expenses, yes. There probably is a general expectation that even solo devs do some outsourcing, or at least collaborative work, but it's not unheard of for everything to be done by one person either.

ElektrikMagenta20~2Y

I think keeping the original aster would make it easier to understand the elements for new players, but there's no reason you couldn't have both symbols be used interchangeably at some places. After all, in the real world religions use all sorts of variations of symbols to signify similar concepts.

Spectre35~2Y

I prefer the new logo, except for the fractured part. It doesn't look 'fractured' to me, maybe the gaps are too wide. That said, the new logo not only looks good it tells a lot about the worldview, which is great.