Bonus Developer Update
3 months ago – Sat, Jun 15, 2024 at 11:30:39 PM

Okay, I know I said that I was going to share part two, but I got inspired by all the positive comments... so I spend the weekend preparing this (part two is still coming). Also, happy Father's Day to all the parents out there! You deserve to have a great day. And to those who can't spend it with their children, just no that you deserve to be happy today as well.

You might want to skip this “Dev Bullshit” update Chris.😆So… I decided to spend the weekend putting together a tools-focused update, because I think it better showcases some of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. As you read, keep in mind that this is just a fraction of the tools and systems that had to be created to get to where we are today. In fact, months can go by when nothing substantial gets added to the game, because we’re all focused on supporting this work. This is why I think the iceberg analogy is so appropriate here. What you see in a screenshot, gif or video and what you experience a game, only gives you insight into a very small portion of the work that went into making it happen.

This update shows off only two of the MANY tools that we’ve made to help bring our vision to life. 

Shadow Offset Map Editor 

(We need to come up with a name that can be shortened…S.O.M.E. just doesn’t work)

First up, we have our height map creation tool, called our Shadow Offset Map Editor (ask Cameron why it's not called our height map offset tool). This tool was created to help us generate height maps for our game assets.

A height map is a visual representation of the distance a pixel is supposed to be from the ground. Since our assets are all flat 2D images, everything is actually on the ground, so we need to fake their height. Height maps use colour to encode data for our code to interrupt when you’re playing the game. It essentially gives 2D assets 3D information, so shadows know how far to “climb up” before wrapping around, and objects know how to properly clip and overlap each other, like when the player stands in tall grass.

The grass and the player both have height maps which allows it to properly obscure the player. The height map let's the game know when each pixel of the grass should be in front of the player or behind, and how high it should appear before it goes behind.

With height maps, our shadows properly climb up and over the top of the crate.

In order to give each asset in the game an appropriate height map, we needed to create a custom tool, because the amount of data in a single asset’s height map could take a game designer or artist hours to make by hand.

This is our Shadow Offset Map Editor which was created to generate height maps for each asset in the game. It has features that you would see in a typical image editor like free drawing, line drawing, fill, as well as parameters and properties to help make the process a lot easier for our team.

It’s important to note that every frame of animation or state of an asset needs its own height map, so the crate needs a map for both it's closed and open state. But the good thing is, we don't have to be perfect when using the tool. If you look closely at the height map for the crate (or look back at the first GIF I shared), you will notice some extra pixels in the height map. Height map pixels that hang off the sprite are ignored by the engine. So painting outside the lines is fine... even if it triggers the perfectionist in me. 😳

And here is our tool in action! For vertical surfaces, you have to first tell the tool where the ground should be, represented by the white square in the red line. That's called the offset point. Once it's set, you can then draw upwards over the row of pixels. The tool automatically sets the height data by colour coding each pixel. Since the crate is on an angle, we have to reset the offset point for each vertical row of pixels on each face of the crate. The top of the crate can be filled in much easier, because it’s a flat surface which uses the same offset position for the whole top.

Since there will be hundreds, or thousands of assets in our game, we needed to streamline this process as much as possible.

P.O.G.G.E.R.S. - Pose Organization Group Graphic Entry Reference System

This is another very important tool for WoA! Without this tool World of Anterra wouldn't have the level of customization combined with hand-animated pixel art. This tool allows us to manage, test and implement each animated asset that gets combined to create all our characters. This is not just for the player though, NPCs and creatures use it too so that we can easily customize them and have them change appearance in game. Even the horse uses this system! 

In this screenshot, you can see that each item is animated to line up with the character's body as he walks, runs, attacks, sits, rides a horse, shrugs… etc. And if you look closely, you will see all the layers on the left side that this character has assigned to them. Most of the layers are for equipable items, but some are for other things like effects. And if that wasn’t enough, some layers need their own sublayers, to accommodate animations that move an item in front and behind the character, like a weapon swinging in the character’s hand when they walk... and this needs to be done for every direction the character moves in.

The other important thing about this tool is the ability to test every animated asset to make sure the artist didn’t misalign a frame causing a shoe to look like it’s coming off a foot… We can also spot errant pixels. This tool is very robust, and each feature is critical for managing our layered assets and create a truly customizable and hand crafted experience.

By the way, those shiny gold pixels on his hands are actually gold rings! 🤯

P.O.G.G.E.R.S. is just a one part of a larger system that was created to accommodate our layered animations. For example, we still need to stack all these layers in the game, in real-time, and make sure that we’re doing it in the most efficient and optimal way possible… The last thing we want is for it to slow down our frame rates!

Let me know what you think! 

- Stephane and the team.
 

Update from Stephane
3 months ago – Wed, Jun 12, 2024 at 05:41:58 PM

Wow, has it really been 5 months!? Sorry to those of you who solely rely on Kickstarter for updates, but the truth is, I have been pretty quiet on Discord as well. The silence has been a combination of workload, studio struggles and stress management. It’s been a very busy and challenging 5 months to say the least, but we’ve come out of it stronger than before and we continue to make great progress on World of Anterra. The recent comments and criticism about our communications here has me re-evaluating my approach to Kickstarter updates. As you all know, I am the founder and game director at 81monkeys, and that means all marketing and communications falls on my shoulders along with all the other work that comes with running a studio and leading a development team. It can be easy at times to push off things that seem less important while focusing on keeping the team funded and busy making World of Anterra… but this has definitely been left for far too long! As for re-evaluating my approach. I have been working on another large update, but it’s clear that this isn’t working for some community members, so I’ve decided to break it up into 3 smaller updates and stagger their releases. And going forward, I will be working on much smaller updates.

My sister Sasha has recently taken over our comment section, so please be nice to her! She will make sure that all your feedback is shared with the team. I will continue replying to things myself as well and we will start signing off on our comments and DMs so you know who you’re talking to. Also, Sasha will help me with some of the smaller updates.

So why so long between updates? Well, it turns out that keeping us on track has become quite the fight... In fact, it has become the fight of my life! A fight that requires creativity, sacrifice, and sheer grit. A fight that takes a toll on my mental health. I could write a book about all the challenges we have overcome to get to this point, but the biggest challenge has been keeping us funded while also growing the team to help get WoA out sooner than later. Thankfully I have been able to find investors who will fund us on our terms, but that hasn't been enough… So I had to get creative! Last year, we started negotiating for a large work-for-hire contract and it took way longer than expected, about 5 months to be exact. It took a lot of effort and time, and almost caused us to run out of money… but we signed the deal! This project is the perfect side gig for us! It only requires about half our team and gives us the funds to grow as we push towards completing WoA. I wish I could share more about this project, but we’re under very strict contracts that prevent us from saying anything about it. All I can say is that it’s expected to be done before the end of the year. As you can guess it has slowed down WoA a bit, but thankfully the rest of the team has picked up the slack!

Now, let’s talk World of Anterra updates! Here’s the first of a three part series of catch up updates.

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Continued bug fixing and polish 🪳🐜

Bugs may not be the most glamorous topic, but it’s very important to us and we know it’s important to you as well. We work hard to keep the bug list as short as possible because bugs are like game development debt, and you’re going to have to deal with it sooner or later. This is a trap that many studios fall into, especially when you have strict deadlines. But it’s even more important as we work towards releasing our backer demo. We have a few methods for tackling our bug list, but the most important is our gameplay “smoke test”. A smoke test is a list of gameplay moments lined up with how a typical gameplay session would look, while touching upon all the core features and UI in the game. It’s essentially the ideal way that we think you will play the game. As the tester works the gameplay session they track all the bugs they find and turn them into tickets for the team, and the bugs seem to never stop coming… but just a few weeks ago, we had our first bug free smoke test! This is a huge milestone for the team.

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Hunger, rations and edibles 🍗🍖

This system requires some strong design elements in order for it to work with the rest of the game. We knew that we didn’t want hunger and rations to become its own micro-management system that adds friction to the game. And we also know that it is an important part of the open-world gameplay loop that we’ve designed.

Each party member has their own rations pack, that they will automatically consume food from.

Like everything in WoA, it’s not as simple as it may seem. Integrating hunger and edible items into the game comes with its own unique challenges. For example, we want ration consumption to be an automated process, so party members just eat when they need to and the player only has to worry about keeping the party's rations topped up. 
 

And we also want the player to control what each party member is able to consume. There are a few reasons for this. Let’s say you had a quest to feed 5 apples to a pet pig, but then your drunken bard eats them before you get to the pig… or maybe you’re in a dungeon and start to run out of food and want to control who gets any hunger debuffs so that you can increase your odds of surviving combat on your way out. Our solution to all this was to design a rations pouch for each party member that the player can keep stocked with food while also being able to easily distribute food among the party. So items like meals that give buffs or quest items can be left in the inventory and manually eaten while items in each party member’s ration pack will be automatically eaten.

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Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for part 2. 

Here’s a sneak peek from our next update! 👀

Thanks again for your continued support. ❤️

 

Steam Page Update
8 months ago – Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 02:29:12 PM

Get your wishlist clicking finger ready!

This may seem like just another milestone on our road to bringing World of Anterra to the world, but it’s a big one for us. We’re so proud of the work our team is doing, and you should be proud of your support in helping us get here… So, get your wishlist clicking finger ready, because our Steam page is now LIVE!!
We would love to hear your feedback on the page, but also know that we plan to continue updating it with new exciting content and mechanics.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2402470/World_of_Anterra/

Developer Fireside - Steam Page Discussion and Q&A

Join us for our next live Developer Fireside on Monday the 29th, at 10:30 PT. Follow this link to RSVP to the event. But if you can't make it, you will be able to find the recording on our Discord after the event.

https://discord.gg/tuwENmyVt4?event=1199745898197032961

BackerKit store is open!

We have officially launched our BackerKit Store page! (well, a few weeks ago we did) This is a great opportunity for new people to join our growing community of backers and help make World of Anterra a reality. Make sure to share this link with your friends and online groups!
https://world-of-anterra.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

All new backers will get access to the Backer Demo when it becomes available later this year.

Some BackerKit stats:

• 88% of Kickstarter backers have completed their surveys.
• 291 new orders have been added.
• 1832 backers have shared our project via BackerKit.
• 1651 add-ons have been sold.
• 37,836 individual items and rewards sold!
• Backed by 72 countries.
   

New feature preview!

No update would be complete without sharing a new feature!

Horseback riding

After a lot of tweaking and polish, we have finally completed horseback riding! As with many of WoA's mechanics, there’s more to riding than meets the eye, but you’ll have to discover that on your own. One of the challenges that we had to overcome when designing this is we didn't want it to be annoying to hop off and on. So, if you're out riding and see a resource you need, you can hop off, grad it and hop back on without missing a beat!

BackerKit Store launching soon!
9 months ago – Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 11:40:33 AM

We are thrilled to announce the 🎈 grand opening🎈 of our BackerKit store! Late backers can now pre-order the game with exciting rewards and become part of our fantastic community. Existing backers will be able to manage their tiers and add-ons.

In the coming days, we'll be sending out a small batch of surveys to conduct a thorough smoke test of our platform and ensure we haven't missed anything crucial, so keep your eyes on your inbox. As long as there are no issues with our test group, we'll promptly roll out the BackerKit surveys for all Kickstarter backers.

A huge thank you for your patience and understanding. (Except for you, Bruce 😄) We can't wait to continue this amazing journey with you.

Sincerely,

The 81monkeys Team

Feature and QA update!
10 months ago – Mon, Nov 27, 2023 at 12:54:49 PM

Enhancing our environments

As shared in previous updates, an important aspect of how we approach game development is making sure we don’t go too far, too early, with regards to polishing UI, UX and assets. We just want to get things to a workable state so the team can better understand the game before putting time and resources into polish. This is because we will discover so many little things about your processes and the player experience during development that will change how we see the game and even how we make the game. The less polish we put in before making these discoveries the easier it is to improve things. Here’s an example of our “Grasslands Paths” environment before and after our polish phase. Let us know what you think! 

(Apparently someone couldn't be bothered to find him clothing for the new screenshot...)

Question of the week!

We know we don’t update weekly, but we want to start highlighting questions from our community and couldn’t think of a better name (all our brain cells are focused on the game!) We receive a lot of questions and love answering them, but sometimes a written explanation is just not enough. Here’s our question of the week.

How big is our Anterra?

It’s not a simple answer although it may seem like it. Sure, we could share the virtual square kms/miles but that wouldn’t do it justice. So instead, we made a little GIF to highlight the scale of our world.

Here’s our world map superimposed on the game's overworld. It’s worth pointing out a few things though. The whole overworld is currently in the game. The zoomed in area shown is one 32x32 pixel space of the overworld, which also happens to be the height of the player character. This means that every square of the overworld is a unique location that can be traversed and explored. Although you never have to leave the zoomed in view, the overworld is an important part of the game and serves multiple purposes; It’s the primary way to fast travel. It allows the player to find areas of interest and quest locations easier. And from a game experience standpoint, it helps maintain the grandeur and epic scale of the world.

Upcoming Fireside

We have scheduled an upcoming Fireside and special announcement for this Friday at 3pm PT. To help those that do have time to listen to our Firesides, we are going to be trying out a new tool, AI transcription! Once the Fireside is complete and uploaded, we share a link here along with an AI generated summary. Hopefully it does a good job.

You can RSVP the event here - Discord/💬-fireside-chat 

Speaking of fires, check out our new fire lighting mechanic. It’s missing a few animations and bits of polish, but you can light things in WoA now!