AETHUS - February Development Diary
Hello again, Pioneers!
Welcome to the February Development Diary for AETHUS!
You may have noticed there wasn't a January Development Diary - apologies for that, but there just wasn't that much of interest to show at the start of the year while lots happens in the background and just general work on the game continues!
We're back now though, and have a couple of things to share!
[h2]New Key Art[/h2]
You may have already noticed from the cover image of this post, but AETHUS now has new key art!
As we ramp up towards launch this year, I wanted new key art and Steam capsules (which are also already live, check them out!) which better represent the themes of the game and try to make it clear what type of game this is - a survival-crafter, all about exploration, mystery and discovery!
I hope you love the new art as much as I do, I'd love to hear your thoughts, either on Discord or in the comments!
[h2]The Magma Rifts[/h2]
Here's the final biome of the game, at the border of the very mantle of Aethus itself... the Magma Rifts.
What's that weird floating crystal? What kind of resources await you here? What kind of mysteries lie in wait?... All will be revealed!
[h2]Loading Times[/h2]
A small but important one - you'll be coming and going from the caverns and underground of Aethus very frequently, and it's important that your time isn't wasted while doing so.
To that end, I've recently been optimising the level loading/unloading and related functionality to make sure that this process is as quick as possible, getting you out of black-screen-fades more swiftly and back to doing what you do best - gathering resources and building your Outpost!
So far, after a first optimisation pass, I've managed to improve loading times by 25-30% over previous (e.g. in the Demo).
There's always more work to be done, but from playtesting I've already noticed a big difference!
That's it for this development diary!
Next month may well have some very exciting news to share, that's been a long time in the making...
Until next time,
Alex (and Apollo)
Welcome to the February Development Diary for AETHUS!
You may have noticed there wasn't a January Development Diary - apologies for that, but there just wasn't that much of interest to show at the start of the year while lots happens in the background and just general work on the game continues!
We're back now though, and have a couple of things to share!
February Development
[h2]New Key Art[/h2]
You may have already noticed from the cover image of this post, but AETHUS now has new key art!
As we ramp up towards launch this year, I wanted new key art and Steam capsules (which are also already live, check them out!) which better represent the themes of the game and try to make it clear what type of game this is - a survival-crafter, all about exploration, mystery and discovery!
I hope you love the new art as much as I do, I'd love to hear your thoughts, either on Discord or in the comments!
[h2]The Magma Rifts[/h2]
Here's the final biome of the game, at the border of the very mantle of Aethus itself... the Magma Rifts.
What's that weird floating crystal? What kind of resources await you here? What kind of mysteries lie in wait?... All will be revealed!
[h2]Loading Times[/h2]
A small but important one - you'll be coming and going from the caverns and underground of Aethus very frequently, and it's important that your time isn't wasted while doing so.
To that end, I've recently been optimising the level loading/unloading and related functionality to make sure that this process is as quick as possible, getting you out of black-screen-fades more swiftly and back to doing what you do best - gathering resources and building your Outpost!
So far, after a first optimisation pass, I've managed to improve loading times by 25-30% over previous (e.g. in the Demo).
There's always more work to be done, but from playtesting I've already noticed a big difference!
That's it for this development diary!
Next month may well have some very exciting news to share, that's been a long time in the making...
Until next time,
Alex (and Apollo)