All in-game footage in this blog post comes from an EA beta build and may differ from the final game.
Read the dev blog down below or watch the vlog here!
Dearest Vagabond! How nice to see you again!
Time is moving as fast as ever. All of a sudden, you can now buy pumpkin lattes, scented candles and raincoats here in Sweden. How did that happen? Didn’t summer just start?! Luckily, if you look at ATMOSFAR, you can tell that we’ve had much more time to work on it. At least we’ve been productive!
Going back in our dev blogs, we’ve talked a lot about the art and creative direction behind ATMOSFAR. Art direction and visual style is incredibly important for a game, and is often something that players themselves notice. It’s not uncommon that the audience have preferences and clear opinions about a look or specific style: It is something that we often consciously notice and think about when experiencing a game.
There is, however, a lot more to game development than everything that is included within the artistic side. (Creating a game is a pretty big project, if we haven’t made that clear by now…). A big subject within game development, that when implemented well often is overlooked, is programming. It sounds a bit unfair, and well, it is! It’s just like with your health: You take it for granted when you feel healthy and strong, but the moment you start feeling ill, you notice it immediately. Most of us are probably guilty of this when it comes to games. You don’t think much of it when everything is working, but the moment you stumble upon a bug, it’s immediately all you can think about. Now, it might be hard to change this view, as it would be rather immersion breaking to constantly remind oneself that “there is so little bugs in this game”. But on the other hand, we wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves if we didn’t highlight the patience, knowledge and skill of our developers! This is your daily reminder to show some love for your local programmer!
Okay, so we’ve established that programmers don’t get even half of the cred they’re due for. Cool. But what does the developers at Apog Labs do? Well, they write code, obviously. But what does all that mean, in the bigger picture? We’ve managed to pry one of our developers away from his UE blueprints and C++ code, and so today, he’s going to talk a bit about programming in a more holistic view.
“Some would say that programming is the heart of game development, while there is some truth to that statement, I would say that our work is mostly to help others achieve their ideas and visions. As a programmer my day to day is very varied depending on where we are in development. In the early to mid sections, we work to implement gameplay features, build systems and set up the structure of how those systems interact. However, now in the later parts building up to Early Access release, we mostly work to increase performance and fixing bugs.
Before I started programming I thought it was this rigid and rule-heavy process with no space for creativity. But when I got into it, I found that it is a really creative and inspiring process. There are so many ways to solve a problem, and even more ways to cause more problems… Every bug and system is a challenge and it is very stimulating to try and find what causes it and how to fix it.
Working on ATMOSFAR is an interesting challenge. We have some really large and complex systems such as the Wasps and the Cloud Cruiser and since it is a multiplayer open world game, that adds even more complexity to the whole process.
It is hard to explain the process without it getting very technical and too specific. But it all boils down to problem solving. One way to look at it is using a jigsaw puzzle as an analogy. Just like a puzzle, you need to identify which pieces you have and how they can fit together. Though one big difference is that you sometimes have to build your own puzzle pieces, using another puzzle. ATMOSFAR is built using Unreal Engine which gives us a whole lot of puzzle pieces to start with. But it is us in the programmer team that translate those pieces to gameplay for the player and systems and features for the rest of the team.
I can’t wait to see how our players will interact with the game and how many fun ways they can find to interact with our systems.”
And it’s not only our programmers who look forward to let all of you get your hands on ATMOSFAR! Everyone at the studio is incredibly excited to let you discover the secrets and dangers of planet Tycos.
It has certainly been a long, and at some points unpredictable journey. A lot of factors have come into play the last year of production and we’ve tried our very hardest to work around them and overcome them. We know this has resulted in you having to wait longer than we all expected, and while we of course wish that we could have gotten ATMOSFAR to you sooner, we are still so very happy that you are sticking with us, and having patience. None of this would ever have been possible without all of you.
As always, thank you for staying with us on this soaring journey. We’ll reach that horizon soon enough!
// Apog Labs
