Hello everyone, Luke here.
Four years, three guys, and a tiny budget. Welcome to the Spance.
I'm Luke, and along with Brendan, and Aleks we've been piecing this game together for what has felt like eternity. I don't really remember the times before ATS, and at the rate we've been working to get this thing done to release yesterday I can hardly remember last week!
We released last night, content and happy in a Discord call bridging three continents, we hit the release button. After finally sleeping for the first time in a few days I thought I'd give a little look back over the last years and reflect a bit on how it's been going.
To be clear, we've been working on this for four years out of our own pockets, and to finally be here today with ATS released and - potentially - earning us something to live on... is a relief hard to express.
I would like to quickly mention our testers, who have been great friends and critics over the years. I'm leaving them out of this write up mostly for brevity sake. But without them I assure you this game would be rubbish and incredibly buggy - as well as us three simply having lost the will to continue at one point or another.
Our little team started because Aleks and Brendan wanted to learn game dev from me, something I had been doing a bit on my own by then. (Solo dev is hell, don't do it, get help) After about two weeks we had a bare, terrible little prototype modeled faithfully after CW Wallis's Obliterate Everything. This got me thinking, hey, a three man team with common ground, shared interest, and specialised skills? This could go far...
Seems I was right.
Now look my memories are unreliable but as far as I recall the first functional version of ATS was about 4 months later. Boy, was it WEIRD. Hahah. It was 3d models in a 2d board, a weird box platform, and... of course... the Tolly. Because everything starts with the Tolly. And not just any Tolly, a Tolly with 200 DPS and 100 hp meaning it was like watching a knife fight. Of course, they rammed directly into each other, and barely worked but hey, progress.
The key thing was figuring out Unity's brand-new DOTS system. An Entity Component framework that enabled far far superior multithreaded and base-line performance than anything Unity had before. And it was easy to use. Okay.. not easy, nothing is easy, but easier than having to make it yourself.
Figuring out Unity's DOTS and Burst systems and pushing them HARD really is the core of ATS's performance. Aleks and I spent a very very large amount of our time just learning this stuff and getting good at it.
A year later, somewhere in 2022 we had quite a lot of the core gameplay working. I had just taken Turrets and ships through Quaternion hell to get them shooting at and predicting targets reliably in a moving 3d space (We went from a 2D battlefield to a 3D one). Brendan had time off from uni to make more Vaalkorei forces (why did he start with the Eyrie!? WHY IS IT HUGE!?), and Aleks had learned how to talk the computer into building AI bases for us to fight against, among many other things.
It was shaping up.
Another year later in 2023 and frankly we were ready. It was content time. We knew how to make a ship dance, knew how to make thousands of units exist in harmony with your computer. It was time for some fun story. Or "content" if you want to be sterile.
We had been forging the story of ATS over the years in the fires of ambition. It was time to make it real.
The Level Editor was always my baby, the basics of it were cooked up over a weekend in 2021 or 2022. It's had a lot of growing pains and has been overhauled in behavior a few times. Not as many times as other parts of the game, but quite a few times.
Every game needs an editor. Because people are the backbone of making a game that's funner than what the Devs alone can make for it. Look we're pretty okay, but we're a bit more on the tech side than the creative - unhinged - side.
The Editor is what every mission in ATS was built in. Absolutely everything... hah... Okay, ah, no. Almost everything. Vagabond's Rest and Husk Field's tutorials are scripted. And sadly Scenes can't be edited from outside the game. But of the non-tutorial missions in the game, and ignoring background scenes, absolutely EVERYTHING is made with the same tools available to everyone else.
So the demo released. And people loved it. 14,000 downloads can't be wrong!
But unit movement was held together by bailing wire and duct tape, and frankly nothing was working correctly. Or at least working well enough to do more than what they were already doing.
So the rest of 2023, and the first half of 2024, was tech time. Overhauling AI systems, rethinking movement logic, yadda yadda yadda time time time, money money money we can't keep doing this Bob! (Incredibles reference) So it was time to set a launch date, make some story levels, and release.
Kreydell... yeah I had to make that, and it was only done a few days ago... cutting things pretty close don't ya think? The story of ATS as a whole was done in 2023 but the exact nature of how things get to be can change. So Kreydell went through quite a lot of changes and rethinkings. Improvements. Maturity. Rewrites, remakes, and of course all the while trying to make the Soul Warden. The less spoilers said the better, but some things take a bit more effort than others. Thankfully I had Brenden with me to give me a critical second opinion on what I was doing. Aleks weighing in rarely to offer Input for very specific scenarios. It was a team effort, and here it is. Done.
Next up is Apocrypha which Brendan is working diligently on - pulling his hair out on much the same problems I have. Making things fun, making them interesting, making them good. It's not easy, and it takes sweat.
Then lots of Skirmish work and improvements.
Then a functioning Tychon, which Aleks has been cooking over for many months already.
( Did I mention we're each responsible for a faction? Mine are the Kontaalen, Brendan's are the Vaalkorei, and Aleks' are the Tychon )
Then Fortune's Progress and White Tower, then alllll the rest of it.
And I promise those in the audience whom love the Glowfish.
You will have a chance to play as them.
TAAAAD BAAAAR SOOOOT
VEEEER KOOOOS RAAAAV VAAAAR
I would have written this with Aleks and Brendan, but then Brendan would have made me edit and *proofread* it, (I mostly have; to be clear) and this will be much funnier for me if they are surprised by it.
Cheers.
Luke AP
Co-Director, Skyglow Softworks
