Blogs - Alamantus

Hello, Internet traveler!

You seem to have found your way to the Alamantus GameDev page on IndieDB. That's great! This is where you can find all of the games that have been developed by Alamantus GameDev. To see the most activity and to get the latest updates on what games we're working on and enjoying, check out our main website:

Alamantus.com

That's where all the magic happens. But you can still linger around here and look at the screenshots. We'll be trying to keep this page a bit more updated in the future, so hopefully it won't be as dry and empty as it has been. Until then, though, you'll just have to wait for what we have in store!

Thanks for dropping by!
-Robbie A

Hello everyone,

I have decided as of a month or two ago that I am ceasing development of Life, Afterlife in favor of a collection of several much more interesting and fun games. The first game is called The Sea, which I have completed a beta version of and made with no help from anyone, was started during a relaxed game jam called the Fishing Jam, and the second is tentatively titled Last Watch, which I'm working on with a few friends and is going to be super awesome.

The Sea is a top-down game in which you take control of Sea, the personified guardian of the Ocean's fish, in order to wipe out all of the islands on the surface of the planet so the Ocean can be freed from the plague of greedy humans abducting all of the fish. It is controlled with the mouse and is currently being reworked into a higher quality experience. I'm planning to completely overhaul the graphics, sound effects, and music in order to make it more worth your time.

Last Watch is an action platformer that follows a story by the great Descartez and features his art. I'm holding back a lot, but it's the game I'm most excited about right now, so be on the lookout for updates about it in the future. I'm currently finishing up the game's engines and inner workings as Descartez works on the art.

Just wanted to give a little teaser of the work I've been doing on Life, Afterlife since I've managed to do and add so much in the past two days. I've fixed some problems with the sides of platforms, added 3 enemies (all pictured), and added some temporary environment graphics to make it feel more like a real game!

Download the official pre-alpha 0.0.2.0 release at Indiedb.com

Originally posted at Alamantus.com

Wow! I've blazed through developing the game engine for Life, Afterlife so far! This development is going exactly as I had hoped...
I've already got the movement, including hanging from and ducking through platforms, I've got a base character sprite, with animations, I've got 1 enemy that flips out when you get too close and a way to eliminate it, and destructible/regenerating platforms. A couple of bugs to work out, of course, but I am really proud of this already! Let me try to whip up some screenshots for you...

Obviously not very impressive yet, but this is pretty much freshly coded and put together from scratch, so as far as that goes, I think it's pretty cool.
Here's what I've written in the Game Information text on the .exe version of it that I'll edit to add a link to eventually:
Welcome to the Life, Afterlife Pre-Pre-Alpha release! Woohoo!
This version of the game is being released/compiled literally minutes after I have finished the basic controls, physics, destructible platforms, and one enemy that doesn't hurt you... It doesn't look impressive yet, but don't worry, this is barely just the tip of the iceberg for this game. I don't know if anything in this will be in the final version or not. I just whipped up the sprites in about an hour and obviously not all of them are complete. Also, the platforms are a bit buggy. You can kind of get stuck in the sides of them if you're not careful...
Anyway, I hope this gets you excited for the releases to come!
Controls:

A: Move Left

D: Move RightSpace: Jump (Press twice for double jump)

Arrow Keys: Attack (You can only attack downward when in midair -- be careful what platforms you break!)

W: Hang from bottom of platform (hold to stay hanging -- you cannot attack while hanging)

S: Duck

S + Down Arrow: Fall through platform (Any platform! Be careful!)

F1: Re-show this screen

F2: Take a screenshot (experimental - I'm not sure where the screenshot will save just yet... and each new game will overwrite previous screenshots. But let's face it, there's nothing to really take screenshots of yet.)

F11: Toggle Fullscreen

Esc: Quit Game
So yeah! Pretty exciting for me! It's still got bugs, but that's to be expected when you come directly from coding it for the first time and not revising anything! Again, as I wrote above, I'm not even sure if any of the sprites I've created will even be in the final release. I'm still kind of iffy on the character design, personally.
Anyway, I'm celebrating tonight because I'm pretty dang proud of my work so far! Check back here for when I add the download of the extremely buggy pre-pre-alpha! Hooray!

EDIT: The download is currently being checked for viruses on IndieDB, but once it's up, you can find it in the Downloads section HERE.
And until then, have a great day!

-Robbie

Originally posted March 9, 2013 at Alamantus.com

Something inside me says I should only work on one game at a time, especially since I haven’t put out a game yet. But my heart is telling me to go ahead and go work on other things that I have ideas for! And I think I’m going to follow my heart for only one reason–each of the game ideas I have are so vastly different from one another that it would be good to build different engines to have on hand anyway! So that settles it. I’m gonna start working on another game while I think of ways to make my puzzles interesting and fun for my locked-in game, I’m going to start building a super simple, fast paced side-scrolling platformer game with its own unique mechanic.

Here’s what I’m thinking: Enough games have taken the ridiculously cool and intriguing idea of reversing time to undo death, but none that I’ve seen have actually used death to their advantage at all. How can anyone use death to their advantage? By using the “afterlife,” of course!

In my next game project, tentatively titled “Life, Afterlife,” you will hack and slash through each level as fast as you can, avoiding direct contact with your enemies. If you die, instead of losing a life or starting over, you are sent to the afterlife, where you must then fight your way back to life. The catch is, every baddie you killed throughout the game is there in the afterlife, and they hate you more than ever. It’ll be a nice, fast-paced contrast to my locked-in syndrome puzzler, and therefore a relief when I get tired of thinking of puzzles. Hooray!

So if you’re into fast-paced games, you’ll probably like this one more than “Game Project 1″ and you’ll be able to call it something with its tentative title! Both awesome facts. I hope you’re as excited as I am!

Write some words at me in the comments, and I’ll always respond! But until then, have a great day!
-Robbie

Originally posted on March 9, 2013 at Alamantus.com

So as I’ve been thinking about my little snag, I realized that this locked-in syndrome game doesn’t lend itself to combat at all. Because of this, I’m changing my game development’s direction: The night/dream sequences are going to be puzzles that the man must solve to “unlock” his locked-in syndrome. That’s right. My first game is going to be a puzzle game. Now if only I can come up with a good mechanic for the puzzles… I’ll probably keep most of the engine I’ve already built, but that means that I need to figure out puzzles that will fit into a top-down adventure style. I really don’t want to make it a side-scroller, but if it becomes too hard to figure out how to make a top-down puzzler, I might have more luck rebuilding the puzzle engine into a side-scroller.

Who knows? I certainly won’t until I try!

Originally posted on March 6, 2013 at Alamantus.com

Hello friends,

So I just realized that I have a bit of a hold-up on my game. The game mechanics of the action sequences depend upon how the character’s inner demons are portrayed! Because I’m having a little bit of trouble figuring out their portrayal, I must ask you for your help. I have one full but generic idea, and one vague but potentially better idea, and I’m really hoping that someone can help me out.

My more-developed idea is to use the “seven deadly sins.” You know them: wrath, greed, sloth,pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. The only reason it’s more developed is because they’re basically pre-made. My challenge with this idea is to try to fit my own ideas into these pre-developed concepts, and I’m not sure if I really want to do that. Also, if the main character embodied all of these, then he would probably be a horrible person. Now that I actually write it out, I don’t think I really want to do those at all.

My other less-developed idea is to have him somehow defeat his biggest regrets in life in order to learn to become a better person or something like that. This would involve coming up with situations in which he screwed up, finding the source of the problem and overpowering/overcoming/outsmarting it in order to develop into a stronger, better person. I like that idea, but again, I’m still not sure how to implement it. I’d like some fighting and I’d like some puzzle-solving, but I’m not sure how to implement it yet…

And this is where you come in!

If you have a better idea for this, I would deeply appreciate your help! I could even include you either in the thank-yous of the credits or insert you into the game somehow. Or both, depending on how helpful your suggestion is! If you have a good idea for what sort of “inner demons” the main character should fight/outsmart and how he ought to do it for each one, please let me know!

Anyway, I’m going to get going for now, so leave your suggestions however you see fit, just as long as I can see them. I’ll respond. :)

Until next time,
-Robbie

Originally posted on March 5, 3013 at Alamantus.com

Yesterday and today, I’ve spent my time working on the cinematics for my locked-in syndrome game. During the cinematics (a.k.a. “daytime” or “non-dream/action sequences”), you hear only your breathing machine and heart monitor, as the words of whoever is talking appear as text on the screen with some “ba-bo” sounds of varying pitches to express who is speaking. It’s ridiculously simple, but I think it’s perfect for this game in particular. I also was able to come up with a way to play sound effects or make other things happen in the midst of the talking, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, I can’t play a sound in the middle of something that’s already being said, but I’m sure I can figure out ways around that.

One problem that I had mentioned before is that I didn’t know how to implement the idea of “holding on to” things that were mentioned in conversation during the day, but I’ve come up with what I think is a cool. As certain words are said, their mental correlation appears in your conscience (on the screen), moving randomly, trying to escape, but you can nudge them slowly away from the edges of the screen by your mental willpower, but each heartbeat sends it moving again, and you will only be able to truly control your thoughts when your willpower is strong enough.

The hardest part of this for me at the moment is getting the “mental correlation” to appear at the same time that the word does, or at least as soon as possible after. I have a vague idea of how to do this, but it might make the text seem a little bit unnatural… I’ll just have to work with it and see.

Wish me luck! Maybe I’ll get some screenshots up here so you can see what I’m doing. You know, eventually. Once I have some graphics. :)

Oh yeah, and an unrelated question: Would you prefer a vertical or horizontal bar to indicate how much time you have left? Or would you rather have something else completely? Maybe a line with a pointer moving slowly toward a point or something? I’m partial to the vertical draining downward on the left side of the screen, but you can potentially change my mind if you have any better ideas.

Be sure to drop some words for me!
-Robbie

Originally posted on March 4, 2013 at Alamantus.com

So I had already started building my other massive role-playing game, which has some pretty solid controls already, so for this game I have pretty much just spent my time ripping out my other game engine’s guts to make it right for this game. By comparison, this game is ridiculously simple as far as the game engine goes. My process for building the game engine has been “Remove the inventory, take away menu controls, drop the mouse aim, etc.” and I have a pretty good start at the engine already.

I’ve been working on the cinematics engine more than anything—getting fading and timing right, working out how to present things, restricting view distance, etc. If all goes well, I should only have a couple more “game engine progress” posts left for this game! The rest will be the exciting stuff—graphics, music, sound, and story. Hooray!

I should have music covered, but graphics are a little dodgy for me. I really want the game to look good, but I’m terrible at graphics, so that should be quite the adventure, to say the least.

Anyway, I’ll update again once I do more. For now, though, it’s bed time!

Originally posted March 3, 2013 at Alamantus.com

So I’d just like to announce the first project that Alamantus GameDev will be working on. We are currently building the game engine for what I think is actually a pretty unique premise—you play as a man with total locked-in syndrome who must use what he hears during the day to face his inner demons at night within his own mind. It definitely has “indie” written all over it.

Right now I’m trying to figure out the kinks in the gameplay, for example, how exactly will this game be played? What do I use as the mechanic of using what he hears during the day so he can use it in his dreams? What are his dreams like? Is it just fighting or will it also be puzzles? How do I keep it interesting for the player?

As someone with little to no artistic proficiency, I know that I will need to rely almost exclusively on story and gameplay to draw the player in, so I need to make the story powerful somehow, and I’d prefer to do that without just making it depressing. Apraxia is a hard enough subject, especially for those who have it or who have loved ones who have it at any level, so I need to make it respectful and still interesting. Maybe even educational, who knows?

At any rate, I think it’s a really cool idea, and I think it’ll be really interesting to play once I’m done. But for now, I need to just go and finish my engine so the game will actually be playable.

See you later!
-Robbie