Humanity has risen!
Arcane
Hey guys, it's been another very very busy month for us as usual. The thrust of what we're working on right now is getting everything ready for the Alpha (yes it's finally began to loom on the horizon!). This consists mainly of lots and lots of little tweaks and fixes, making sure that every last button has the right sound effect, every item's stats are just right, and everything is generally balanced, etc. Programming-wise we've got two major tasks still open: (1) verify that combat works correctly; and (2) verify that spells all work correctly in every conceivable circumstance. This last one is pretty tough considering the high complexity of our spell system and the fact that we've got 45+ unique spells (which often interact with one another) to debug. Engine development and and asset production have frozen (aside from 2x outstanding atmospheric music tracks) so our focus right now is on adding polish, refining the world, eliminating bugs and making it fun, of course
Since we haven't talked that much about music and sound effects I'll just mention that they've all turned out incredibly amazingly! We have 21 ambient sound tracks (things like crickets chirping at night, rain, thunder, etc), 14 Atmospheric tracks (played while exploring outdoors, plus we've got 2 more coming), 6 dungeon tracks, 7 combat tracks, and around 130 sound effects. That's a lot of sound for any game! The music could not have turned out any better, and I really strongly emphasize this. Music, when it's done right, does so much to elevate the atmosphere of a game. And with a game like Antharion, atmosphere is super important. The toughest part in terms of sound design has been finding the right range of outdoor atmospheric tracks. We really wanted to touch across a whole range of moods (melancholic, magical, anticipation, soothing, adventurous, nostalgic, etc.) and we wanted to do it in a way where you could essentially shuffle between any 2 tracks randomly without breaking the mood of the game. In this we've really succeedeed way beyond what we could have a hoped for. Here's our final encounter combat track (we use it for a few other significant encounters as well).