Anathema News

Hello all,

As mentioned in the December post, our goal is to bring you regular updates throughout the course of development. Our first update is some general information regarding concept art and a new tool in development for Anathema.



If you're like me, you've played the demo and you're familiar with the first few areas of the game. It's incredibly refreshing to be able to create new areas and concept art. I'm bored of looking at the areas in the demo and am so happy to sink my creative teeth into new areas.

The first new area concept art that I would like to unveil is The Ossuary. This is planned to be the stage immediately following the swamp area and will probably have the most gothic aesthetic in the game. The image speaks for itself, but among the litters of bones will be numerous traps and hazards waiting for the player. While we have made a conscious effort to make Anathema more original and lesser of a Castlevania clone, I can't help but feel the original inspiration will shine through here.




The first new enemy that I will share isn't anything that far out of left field (I have to save some of the juicy bits for along the way) but gives further insight into The Ossuary.

This Revenant Knight will be a basic enemy of the level, however I have a few ideas for its attack patterns. While a lesser enemy, it will also have a bit more variety and unpredictability to its aggression.




During our last team meeting in January, I proposed that we take a little time so that I can create a level editor for Anathema. As some of you know, Anathema is developed in Clickteam Fusion 2.5. The level editor (aka Frame Editor) in the engine can be cumbersome when building a game such as this. CTF is built with rapid prototyping in mind, and the Frame Editor is what I have always used in the past but it leaves me longing for more intuitive controls to rapidly test level design ideas.

Over the last few weeks I've been designing and programming this level editor with the rapid approach in mind. The image you see is far from finished, but already is incredibly powerful. I have drawn a lot of inspiration from Super Mario Maker and its design approaches. The level editor will be entirely mouse-driven so that I can create levels from my Surface Pro 3 using just the pen. I found the aspect of "drawing/painting" a level in Super Mario Maker to be very satisfying.

While creating this tool will slow development down on the front-end, it will greatly speed up the actual creation process in the future. So taking a month or two now to make it will actually save many more months of development time in the future.



I have several more enemy concepts completed but have several stage concepts left to create. The Level Editor has taken full priority right now over the concept phase, but I don't expect the level editor to take too much longer to finish.

While I work on the editor Josh and Nic are hammering away at the final script. We had long deliberations about what exactly we wanted to do with the story and characters. We want the story and characters to be memorable so we had to take extra care with much of the plot-points, character interactions and their story arcs.

After the editor is finished I will resume with concept art which will be remaining enemies, bosses, stages, level layouts and everything in between. The goal is to have a mostly 100% blueprint moving forward so that we can just start hammering everything out. We made the unfortunate mistake at the beginning and throughout development by just working as we go. It caused a lot of hiccups, delays and doubt. While we had an approximate idea of what we wanted, it wasn't thorough enough. The steps we're taking now will ensure that development progresses at speedy rate once we finish the current stages.

Thank you all for reading. I will be bringing these updates to you monthly now as I find this will strike the best balance of providing new information as we work on Anathema, while still allowing for time to develop the game. We still have our day jobs so we only get so many hours a day to work on the game but are glad we have the ability and opportunity.

See you in March!

-Matt

Hello all,

As mentioned in the December post, our goal is to bring you regular updates throughout the course of development. Our first update is some general information regarding concept art and a new tool in development for Anathema.



If you're like me, you've played the demo and you're familiar with the first few areas of the game. It's incredibly refreshing to be able to create new areas and concept art. I'm bored of looking at the areas in the demo and am so happy to sink my creative teeth into new areas.

The first new area concept art that I would like to unveil is The Ossuary. This is planned to be the stage immediately following the swamp area and will probably have the most gothic aesthetic in the game. The image speaks for itself, but among the litters of bones will be numerous traps and hazards waiting for the player. While we have made a conscious effort to make Anathema more original and lesser of a Castlevania clone, I can't help but feel the original inspiration will shine through here.




The first new enemy that I will share isn't anything that far out of left field (I have to save some of the juicy bits for along the way) but gives further insight into The Ossuary.

This Revenant Knight will be a basic enemy of the level, however I have a few ideas for its attack patterns. While a lesser enemy, it will also have a bit more variety and unpredictability to its aggression.




During our last team meeting in January, I proposed that we take a little time so that I can create a level editor for Anathema. As some of you know, Anathema is developed in Clickteam Fusion 2.5. The level editor (aka Frame Editor) in the engine can be cumbersome when building a game such as this. CTF is built with rapid prototyping in mind, and the Frame Editor is what I have always used in the past but it leaves me longing for more intuitive controls to rapidly test level design ideas.

Over the last few weeks I've been designing and programming this level editor with the rapid approach in mind. The image you see is far from finished, but already is incredibly powerful. I have drawn a lot of inspiration from Super Mario Maker and its design approaches. The level editor will be entirely mouse-driven so that I can create levels from my Surface Pro 3 using just the pen. I found the aspect of "drawing/painting" a level in Super Mario Maker to be very satisfying.

While creating this tool will slow development down on the front-end, it will greatly speed up the actual creation process in the future. So taking a month or two now to make it will actually save many more months of development time in the future.



I have several more enemy concepts completed but have several stage concepts left to create. The Level Editor has taken full priority right now over the concept phase, but I don't expect the level editor to take too much longer to finish.

While I work on the editor Josh and Nic are hammering away at the final script. We had long deliberations about what exactly we wanted to do with the story and characters. We want the story and characters to be memorable so we had to take extra care with much of the plot-points, character interactions and their story arcs.

After the editor is finished I will resume with concept art which will be remaining enemies, bosses, stages, level layouts and everything in between. The goal is to have a mostly 100% blueprint moving forward so that we can just start hammering everything out. We made the unfortunate mistake at the beginning and throughout development by just working as we go. It caused a lot of hiccups, delays and doubt. While we had an approximate idea of what we wanted, it wasn't thorough enough. The steps we're taking now will ensure that development progresses at speedy rate once we finish the current stages.

Thank you all for reading. I will be bringing these updates to you monthly now as I find this will strike the best balance of providing new information as we work on Anathema, while still allowing for time to develop the game. We still have our day jobs so we only get so many hours a day to work on the game but are glad we have the ability and opportunity.

See you in March!

-Matt

Hello all,

First, I must apologize for the silence. Working on Anathema in our spare time means that we don't usually get to invest as much time on development on a daily basis as we would like. Our goal is to really change this in 2018 and we've spent the last few months really planning the rest of the game out to the most minimal detail. During the course of these meetings and plans, we've refined many of the details of the game on many of its layers and hope to wrap up the planning completely. Up until now, most of the game was planned as we went and drastically slowed development down, in tandem with working within the confines of our means available to us. The goal is to have everything planned out so from there forward it is simply a matter of making it happen.

I will be making it a goal to issue monthly updates in a blog style format to really showcase what we have been working on and to keep you informed about the development. It's tough to make a game - it's even tougher to make a game without a lot of resources or people on the team.

That said, there are some very exciting things in the works and we're looking forward to showing them off in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Hello all,

First, I must apologize for the silence. Working on Anathema in our spare time means that we don't usually get to invest as much time on development on a daily basis as we would like. Our goal is to really change this in 2018 and we've spent the last few months really planning the rest of the game out to the most minimal detail. During the course of these meetings and plans, we've refined many of the details of the game on many of its layers and hope to wrap up the planning completely. Up until now, most of the game was planned as we went and drastically slowed development down, in tandem with working within the confines of our means available to us. The goal is to have everything planned out so from there forward it is simply a matter of making it happen.

I will be making it a goal to issue monthly updates in a blog style format to really showcase what we have been working on and to keep you informed about the development. It's tough to make a game - it's even tougher to make a game without a lot of resources or people on the team.

That said, there are some very exciting things in the works and we're looking forward to showing them off in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Hello Everyone!

Apologies for the delay in the patch. We had hoped to release it last week, but there were unforeseen delays with our group of external testers so we did as much internal testing as possible. Unfortunately, there are only so many bugs that we could squash in this patch and really wanted to get more external testing in. So please note that this patch has only been moderately tested and you may run into some bugs.

Please do not hesitate to forward any information on bugs you find as it will help us ensure a higher quality experience. Being that we're just a few guys and rely on the goodwill of outside testers when they can test, it's tough to catch everything. But please know that we do want to whip this into top shape, we just don't have many avenues to get the feedback needed before releasing to you publicly but this may be the best avenue. Below is a list of everything changed/updated/added in this patch. Thank you all so much for playing! Hopefully this will expand play for many more users that had issues with the prior version.



IN THE LATEST UPDATE...
Added launcher so players will be aware of what options can be adjusted. Players seemingly overlooked these options in the pause menu.
Added DirectInput Controller support.
Added support to use the left analog stick on controllers for movement.
Added keybinding for Xinput and DirectInput controllers. (Keyboard keybinding already existent.)
Refined "Controls" sub-menu.
Improved video file compatibility so that cutscenes should play on all machines now.
Darkened "Continue" on Title Screen to reduce confusion as this function isn't used in the demo.
Fixed a bug where the crow placement in the Title Screen was not proper.
Fixed a bug in the Options Menu where the sound volume could be set below 0.
Fixed a bug where zombies didn't provide souls if killed using the crossbow.
Removed controller rumble as it would cause certain controller types (such as the wired Xbox 360 controller) to become unresponsive and you must disconnect/reconnect the controller to regain input.
Added controller refresh. If controller becomes unresponsive, unplug, replug and press F5, wait 1-3 seconds and functionality should return. NOTE: This is implemented in response to a rare issue we've heard about where a controller randomly stops responding that isn't related to the rumble bug listed above. We've been unable to reproduce this to discern if it is a software issue or a hardware conflict on the user end.
Discovered a conflict if you have multiple instances of controllers installed. Open "Device Manager" and select View > Show Hidden Devices. If you have multiple instances of the same controller, uninstall all of them and reconnect your controller to install the drivers. You should then not have any further issues due to multiple driver installations.
Deathbringers now operate on a recharge system, rather than using souls. They will recharge automatically over time, although only the Bone Dragon is available in the demo.
Changed the effects for the deathbringer power-up animation. The prior effects were hitting the frame-rate hard.
Revised Options menu UI text to make it cleaner and more legible.
Revised boss name text to make cleaner and more legible.
Added additional checkpoints before bosses.
Added a soul font to power up players should they respawn at the boss.
Buffed your main attack against the wood witch boss.
Improved load time between opening cutscene and stage 1.
Statue removed at the beginning of stage 1. Players were confused by its purpose.
Increased hitbox size on whip swing latches to make it easier for players to connect a hit.
The game can now be exited using Alt+F4.
Pause can now be activated via the "Escape" key.
Added physics to the crates in the Stage 1 Lookout Tower...why not? They also give souls. Look for the secret.
Reduced frequency of in-game vocal effects.
Reduced volume of sound effect when player lands on the ground from higher falls.