Knowledge is Power!

Long time no see! Amidst the deep silence, there has actually been a ton going on here. We've been bashing our heads together trying to come up with the best way to go forward with Odonata.

We heard what you were saying about the 2D format and we questioned why we made the decision to change in the first place. The thought of a 2D aspect took a huge weight off our shoulders but we wrongly presumed that it would be much easier and would satisfy the gameplay mechanic we had planned.

One month into a 2D prototype we realised that while the physics and collision was easier to work with we felt that it would have too much of a knock-on effect concerning the gameplay (like many of you had said!). With the problems happening first hand, we came to terms with switching back to 3D and facing our main problem, implementing a custom 3D collision and physics engine.

In the older builds (the ones you’ve seen in the videos) we were using Unity’s PhysX implementation but it was largely limited and required a lot of hacky workarounds to get what we wanted out of it. Rigidbodies are crazy unpredictable and with a bit of speed, objects can also easily penetrate walls and floors, which is just terrible!

Due to these issues with built-in features, we went back to the drawing board and learnt how to write physics and collision ourselves from scratch, which has a huge amount of background work and prerequisites, none of which you can even see, so we can’t even show it off!

It was devastatingly difficult with the general lack of online resource and while the learning process had really set us back, it is finally done with so we can get back to where we had left off.

So this comes to where we are now and what we are doing. We are done with the item and inventory system, physics and collision. Which leaves AI behaviors and pathfinding, “random” levels and the gameplay content...which is where all the fun is!

From now on, hopefully we’ll be able to deliver some interesting videos and previews, so stay tuned!

Aethena now has shorts! Yay!

Conversion to 2.5D! *Not anymore

In the past few weeks Odonata has really been going through some drastic changes, namely with us deciding a definitive format for Odonata to really flourish, aesthetically and gameplay-wise.

Up to this point, we've made sure that no element in Odonata is ever safe from questioning and revision, and with that in mind we questioned Odonata's 3D top down aspect. Here is a quick prototype mock up of the new format we have planned for Odonata.

While this new format may seem like it will have a substantial knock-on effect we can assure you that the gameplay will still remain true to our original plan.

We'd love to hear what you think!

Odonata Dev Launch!

Huzzah! It is finally here, our new development blog is aliiive!

We're really excited to finally show you what we've been up to, it's been one tough month. We've been busy plugging away, trying to pull together some sort of early launch to preview what Odonata is and what it's all about.

So far we're about 3 months into development so, of course, it's very early days yet. Despite our first intention, Odonata is a pretty large game and will require a great deal of undertaking, especially just for us two little people in a room. However, so far we have managed to lay down the major foundations of the code and some very early (experimental) gameplay/content.

The process during this last couple months has been quite a surprise to say the least, given that we've never worked on a game before! However, it's all been going well...so far!

We'd like to strongly express that Odonata is in a kind of super-baby-foetus-alpha at the moment, so everything is either temporary, a bug, broken, a joke, unfinished or a placeholder for now, haha. The visuals are very much at the dusty bottom of our list, so the next 4-6 months will be about features, function and gameplay!

Anyway, here are a few videos and screenshots demonstrating some of the features we have. We've just finished up on the deployables and signal logic system in our game so here's some of them in action.











We've put up quite a bit of info about the game and FAQ in the "About The Game" section at the top, so if there are some things that might be eluding you, it may help answer some of your questions!

Expect more very soon, we'll do our best to keep you posted with the new features and nerdy development stuff as regularly as we can :)