Today I want to start with introducing Golfing In Aether with a summary of its features and how the game came about in the first place.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/
Why are you making this?
Originally this was created out of the desire to create something for playing on the big screen in split screen play with freinds and family. It had to be accessible too, so it would appeal to everyone, be it all age groups or just people who weren't really used to playing games. Not being a chore to set up each time was also high on the priorities.
At first this was really something as simple as having something where the game would be fully playable with the gamepad; including the ability to type player names via an on-screen keyboard. But this soon evolved into wanting to store these player names and other customizations to a local profile for easy recall, as it’s no fun having to spend a good 5-10 minutes setting up everyone’s customization each time you want to play.
Per player gamepad settings were soon also needed as for those of you who also use a stick inversion can relate to how annoying it is when games don’t give you the option; leaving either you with the poor choice of switching settings constantly or take it in turns to have backwards camera controls.
The idea for the floating islands came about more out of practicality at first when looking to solve the common problem where players get confused by tons of hole flags and other elements densely packed into a small area. This combined with a minimalistic HUD makes the screen less cluttered and game overall more straight forward to play.
An additional step to truly answer the question of ‘Where do I go?’ lead to opening levels with a sequence showing the route from start to finish for the specific hole. It will only last for no more than five to ten seconds, so helps with players who may quickly loose attention or simply want to skip it.
What direction is the game going?
One key feature with this game is looking developing around the idea of procedural courses. Sure, map editors can be fun, but when you just want to get a game out at Christmas or other family occasions for a few rounds, you neither want to be messing with that nor do you want to play the same course over and over.
Because each hole is its own floating island, there can be essentially a pool of these islands that the game picks from. These are tagged with various difficultly levels for placement in the overall course.
Plus, because courses are separated into individual holes, no longer do ‘new courses’ need to be made 18 holes at a time; instead, new holes individually can be created and fed into the procedural pool for selection. As a solo developer for this project, this opens up to updates for new content being able come regularly rather than maybe one new course every few months.
And yes there will of course be ways to play fixed playlists or play indivdual courses as well. It is certainly recognised for those of you who want to have tournaments or events the random isn't best suited.
The game will feature 16 player online multiplayer with the ability to play either in real time or in hotseat mode (take in turns). Local play has four player split screen mode in addition to hotseat.
Release date?
The game is scheduled to be released later this year, but I hope to get this in your hands much sooner with a playable demo during the next Steam Next Fest in June. It's important to me to collect all your feedback through demo's and beta tests long before release. There will also be no early access, this will be a complete game at release (with the hope to snag most bugs with pre-release beta's).
Can I ask about…? What about...?
If you have questions or suggestions then I’m happy to hear them, either reply in comments or take it to a dedicated Q&A discussions post here. You are also free to create individual threads on the forums around specific suggestions and I’ll do by best to keep track of those.
I fully intend to follow up with several more posts over the coming months covering the specifics of various features and keep you all apprised of how the game is progressing.
In the meantime, please don't forget to follow this game for news items and/or wishlist it.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1914980/