Hey hey gang, Brandon here just want to give a quick update with Ato.
So far I have scripted in most of the side content in, there’s still a handful of rooms left and some other fights. After that, I’ll have to get the music, sound effects implemented. Then code in the menu and map system.
Eventually when I have gone through the game several times I’ll announce the beta.
Don’t forget to join the discord so you can partake in playing that when it’s ready:
Hey guys, let’s give a quick rundown of things done this month.
I’ve been cranking away at endgame areas, I finished the environments and rooms. In fact I even got the final boss done including the ending cut-scenes and credits. The finale was pretty tedious to code in, lots of trial and error, changing values, bugs left and right. Generally boss fights are not very fun when you implement them for the first time.
Of course, game development usually involves making you think you’re done when in fact there is still plenty of work left (side bosses, menus and so on). But overall finishing this aspect of the game will be a good benchmark.
I WISH I could share the work I’ve done for it, but it would probably be best to not spoil too much. (Until I eventually reach the point to have public beta play-testing)
I’ll be making some minor tweaks to the UI, hopefully these little additions will spice things up a bit.
Here’s another music sample for another encounter…what kind of opponent could this be for?
I don’t have much else to share, but here are just a few of the many hundreds of particle effects that have been put into the game. enjoy!
I’m kind of ashamed to even talk about Nameless. I don’t want to delve too much into my thoughts on it because honestly there’s not really much to say that’s positive. Please understand that I rushed development because it wasn’t worth investing more time into it because people were not interested at all in it. I know it’s disappointing to anyone who was eager to play an incredible game, as was I. But I just lost all morale when it became clear that people were not interested when I tried to crowdfund it in the past (it didn’t reach it’s goal).
I will still try and put it on sale when appropriate and just hope that people understand that it is inherently risky for them to play a game like it as I don’t think many will really enjoy it. You might think that I should just “fix” the game and all of the problems will go away. But to “fix” the game would basically involve throwing out 2 years of work and redoing everything.
I feel that in today’s day and age of highly polished, high expectation software development, a lot of those highly awarded games start to become a bit “artificial” and “factory made”. I say this in how you can compare a real painting to a digital painting. One is very real and tangible and has mistakes, while the other is robotic and cleaned up. I say this because, Nameless is like a real painting, it was not made to be perfect and is a very “human” game.
I just want to say I’m sorry to the people that were eager to play this game, hoping that it would have been the next best crowdfunded game but were disappointed by the final result. I feel that development was extremely mentally draining and morale was pretty low (albeit similar though a bit worse than Frog Hop’s development).
I feel that Nameless truly suffered from comparing itself too much and didn’t really have a clear identity (which is funny because the main character kind of represents this). It simply tried too hard to be like Earthbound, Undertale, Hotline Miami, but in actuality achieved a result that did not represent any of those. In some ways, Nameless resulted in a reflection of myself (More so by the feelings that are felt in the game were what I was experiencing). I wish I didn’t try to outshine those games. Undertale was obsessed with itself to the point where it knew it had a huge following coming and would hide secrets knowing people would find them. In Nameless I worked hard to try and implement easter eggs and all sorts of endings to try and match it. But frankly it ended up being pointless because there wasn’t really anyone there to play it and explore it all. But, uh…I’m not gonna talk much more about that.
A sequel would be incredibly unlikely, so unlikely that it will never happen ever. But because it’s fun to come up with game ideas, if it ever did make a sequel, I probably would make it:
Drastically more focused on being consistently light hearted and funny, no more edgy, weird sensitive topics.
Removal of moral decisions (because frankly killing and sparing was not interesting at all, period).
Just make a shooter with deeper mechanics and abilities, maybe upgrades.
Remove gimmicks like the mini-games, money system and store.
No more 4th wall breaking gimmick nonsense, that stuff gets old fast and wasn’t at all interesting.
Would probably be shorter, arcadier, bite sized fun game without all the pointless dialogue (but would keep the funny dialogue).
Much less story focused, but still have some kind of simplified narrative.
Thank you for reading through this, I know it was a bit heavy and depressing. I sometimes feel anxious with my current game Ato, but at the same time I feel I’ve learned a lot from the past to make my current project Ato at least a little bit better than last time.
I know I’m not one of those people in the web articles where I’m a legendary 5 year old game developer who makes his 1st game that looks like ori and the blind forest that sells millions of copies and gets all sorts of awards. Nameless is not perfect, please understand that it is very much like a real painting, presented as it is in its flawed and real state by a human being who is still learning to get better at creating games…
…Just know that Ato would never have existed if Nameless never got fully completed.
I am not going to promise anything with Ato, I can’t even guarantee anything until it’s done. Just know that when it reaches beta, I will need all the help I can get.
Hi ho gang, just want to give an end of the month update on what has been done.
Launch Animations Code
Added more variations to launch animations, nothing huge, but took the extra time to have a bit more variety when they get hit by certain attacks.
And while I’m still cranking away at the last area for endgame content, I might as well show this environment art off
(not related to endgame)…
(also not related to avengers endgame)…
(also not related to ender’s game)…
I spent a bit of time adding more frames to the run animation, perhaps if I have extra time (which I generally don’t) I’ll see if there’s any other animations that can be smoothed out.
and who knows what else i’ve been working on…
(TLDR) Comphrehensive list of things completed:
3 environment art assets made (just need to actually MAKE the levels and then decorate with these assets)
Encounter added
1 Area completed (1 more left)
20 Rooms added
Decorated area 4 with new assets (not related to the assets mentioned earlier)
Footstep sounds bass levels reduced
Cuttable bamboo
More launch code animation work
Cornucopia of bugs fixed (and plenty more to come)
I still have 1 more main area to complete, after that, I’ll spend some time adding side encounters (including that backer boss), fixing endless amounts of bugs and important features like menus, map system, extra decoration work…and plenty more…man the work just never stops piling on does it?
Hey guys, I’ll do my old GM games next week, in the mean time I thought I’d do an update post regarding Ato’s Progress this month.
So far I was able to hit my goal this month in terms of game content. I’ve finished adding some new encounters, 2 new areas and plenty of tweaks and improvements.
Lighting – This probably will be used at a minimum, but this new lighting system will be utilized in some parts of the game.
Environment sample – one of the areas I was able to get done this month.
Animation Sample – A spear type opponent, tall, fast and tries to control the space between you and him.
note: (size of image was cut for size reasons)
Coin – Collect all of them and…?
What could these be for?…
(TLDR) Comphrehensive list of things completed:
2 new Areas finished, environment, encounters, puzzle elements etc.
5 Enemy Encounters added
Tweaks to combo system, damage scaling decreases further when hit alot.
Coin asset added
Minor updates to UI, such as Health UI Shake when damaged
40+ rooms added
Converted some old enemy code to new parented code (not really going to affect you guys but helps me with adding more bosses and not have to spent extra time when coding new encounters)
Particles now slowdown/speedup
Bug Fixes Galore
Currently I want to continue getting the main parts of the game done, 2 left to be exact. And then afterwards I will be focusing on side content like optional bosses and power-ups.
Hi everyone, just want to quickly drop by that the celebration stream went well. I went ahead and uploaded the Archive to youtube.
I made this video jump to probably the most interesting part of the stream which was the developer vs stream moment. Viewers were able to type into the Stream chat and it would affect things in game.
Otherwise if you go to the video page itself, I put some time stamps to jump to the different sections of the stream such as the pixel art animation, old game versions and so on.
Hi everyone, thank you so much for supporting the project. Ato’s Indiegogo has been successfully funded.
To celebrate, on August 10th saturday at 3PM (CT) I will be doing a celebration livestream, it will be fairly short, so come join and hang out if you can!
-Developer playthrough and commentary of Ato Game Demo
-Quick showcase of some new features added to the game.
-Minor showcasing of workflow, some pixel art and effects.
-Live Q & A throughout stream!
I’m sorry if I haven’t been super active in posting information regarding news or doing marketing on the game itself, but here’s a rundown of the things I got done since I last posted an update on Indiegogo:
Here’s a more comprehensive list of things I got done:
-1 area completed
-2 cutscenes added
-minor ability added in
-30 rooms added
-2 bosses coded in with their own attacks and effects
-Clash propery added to attacks
-Modified chain dash system, increase of cooldown when chained.
-PS4 Controller functionality
-Lots of other tweaks and adjustments
-Bug fixes galore
As much as I want to get the game done this year, I just want to forewarn that, again it’s possible that the game could get delayed (since it’s just made by me). But I still want to try and get to beta and have the game be tested, tweaked and bug fixed!
That should conclude this update, thank you again for supporting this project and I hope to see you drop by for the livestream!
Hi guys, Brandon here just wanted to drop some news regarding my current plans for this Indiegogo and my direction for Ato. (This post is the same as the one on Indiegogo)
For those who don’t know Ato is a game that takes place in the era of feudal Japan, it heavily focuses its design around a strong atmosphere, visual driven story and personalized sword duels.
Right now the Indiegogo is 70% funded since its launch, which is pretty awesome.
The good news is that I already have enough funds now to be able to put the game on steam (which I will probably get around to when the game is near completion.)
Speaking of game development, when is the game coming out? My current goal is to try and get the game done this year. Of course the chance of a delay is possible as this game is made by just myself.
The game is around 50-60% done, I started the project back in 2018.
Currently what is on my plate is to keep making content (Bosses, unique puzzles, more rooms, special powers, environment work, cutscenes, sprites, music, sounds, etc.). What I’m striving for currently is to layout the entire game, create the content and try to reach Beta as quickly as possible. By reaching beta, the game can be rigorously tested, bosses adjusted, features tweaked and bugs fixed.
Here are some things I just finished creating since I launched the Indiegogo:
Entire Game and Map Layout setup.
5 new puzzle assets
3 new special abilities
4 areas are finished being conceptualized
2 environments coded in
Anyways, I hope this update helps give you guys some insight as to what has been going on and what is planned for in the future! Now it’s time for me to get back to making some more content!
Here’s just a quick bit of info regarding the campaign:
Ato is a game set in the era of feudal Japan with a beautiful atmosphere, visually driven story and combat that is focused on unique and memorable sword fights. Every duel has its own characteristic and personality.
The funding is used to publish the game onto steam and to pay for marketing costs.
The game is around 50% done.
Be immersed in a world of beauty and mystery
Even if you don’t have money to spare, you can still support the game by telling your friends and playing the PC demo!
Following, sharing and liking Ato’s Twitterand Facebookposts helps!
And if you have a windows PC playing the free demo and giving your feedback at my Discordhelps too!
…Also VideoChess did a stream of Ocarina of Time Randomizer…I’ll have to get to that sometime, please excuse the delays.
