Project Update #34: Progress Update
For backers only Posted by Orphic Software
Hey guys, I'd like to start out today's update by announcing that Antharion has officially been green lit on Steam! Obviously this is a great thing for Antharion as it will allow us to reach a lot more people so we're very excited. Thanks so much everyone for you help in getting us on Steam!
It's no secret by now that Antharion, like most other similarly scoped/understaffed/underfunded projects, is running late on it's scheduling. We're really very appreciative that you guys have been so patient and understanding in these regards. And since we're frequently being asked for ETAs we're going to throw out some worst case scenario release dates... Release: Dec 5th 2014; Beta: November 5th 2014. Alpha September 15th 2014. Keep in mind that this is a very broad window and in all likelihood some or all of these ETAs will be moved forward in time to earlier dates.
For the past couple of weeks we've been working on Antharion's intro sequence. One thing that's always bothered me about intros is how disconnected they often are from the actual game's look and feel. With Antharion we're trying to make the intro's look and feel as consistent as possible with the actual game world. The intro consists of five images. Each image is a set of layers that scroll or move independently of the other layers to create subtle parallax scrolling effects that serve to reinforce a sense of depth and perspective. The main purpose of the intro is to twofold: (1) to connect the title screen and character creation interfaces with the actual game world; and (2) to setup the backdrop for the game world. The intro sequence begins with a cosmic shot looking down at the world of Antharion from a planetary perspective. Each success shot zooms in closer and closer until you find yourself inside of the game's starting dungeon (connected to the town below via a well). This provides a pretty seamless connection between Antharion's interface and the actual game. The sequence also has a markedly cinematic quality which helps with the overall smoothness of story and background narration. We also crafted a pretty cool looking death sequence where when the last player dies, his spirit ascends to the sky in alignment with the other party member's spirits already floating above, as the scene fades out to a cosmic scene.
Technically we're on very solid ground. No major bugs remaining. We've got our memory footprint down to around 170MB. Our bundle size is at 82MB uncompressed. We're running on very old machines with great frame rates and stability. And we're in the midst of the Windows port which is going nice and smoothly thanks mostly to a highly portable codebase. Additionally we added a load screen progress indicator consisting of an animated medieval-looking hour glass along with a message indicating what is currently being loaded. We've managed to consolidate all major loads into a single large one that takes place upon opening the application (post-launcher of course). We're also currently working on Antharion's icon, which is actually a set of icons ranging from between 16x16 and 1024x1024 pixels. Each icon has to be made from scratch basically since resizing (even scaling in powers of two) destroys the images. The current design is a blackish castle set against a moon and a purple night starry sky background. It's looking pretty cool and conveys pretty well the tone, look and feel of Antharion.
One major gameplay change we've made is to make the player start out on an island off of the coast of Antharion's mainland. The first overarching goal (which is part of the main quest line) is to figure out how to get off the island and onto the mainland. You'll be able to do this in several different ways including through boat acquisition. I also would like to take a moment just to reiterate the importance of exploration in Antharion. There are tons and tons of random little islands to explore on which you'll find all kinds of cool and surprising stuff. All of this stuff is totally optional, but if you're inclined to explore you'll be duly rewarded. However boat travel does not come without a cost. You'll need an adequate stock of supplies, as the farther you travel the more supplies are consumed. So you can easily imagine being stuck and left to rot on a desert island somewhere without any supplies. If you travel far enough by boat in any one direction, you'll eventually loop around to your starting point as on any real planet.
[The above screenshot actually consists of a series of independent layers that parallax scroll over one another to create an exaggerated but realistic sense of depth and perspective]
or not.
