🎇 Athena Crisis Devlog: Gamepads & Sounds
Hello there!
We just finished migrating to Buttondown for the Athena Crisis newsletter so you'll receive emails through a new address.
tl;dr: Athena Crisis now works with Gamepads, and on the Steam Deck. We now have the first key art, the map art was refreshed and we added sound effects!
On to the highlights:
Gamepads & Steam Deck: A month ago the game could only be played using a pointer device (mouse, trackpad or touch) and a keyboard. Now you can play the game using any gamepad, and it works great on the Steam Deck. You can even connect an Xbox controller to an iPhone! It's an incredible feeling to play your own game on a real game console – and it's awesome to make a turn on one device, and then continue playing on another.
Sounds: It took me a lot of time to find the right sound for Athena Crisis but when I started working with SFX artist Matthew Harnage, he was able to quickly put together the perfect sound effects.
I spent all this time developing the game without sound, but as soon as we integrated the first attack and movement sounds, anything that didn't have a sound felt broken! All of the attacks and unit movements have their own unique sounds now.
Art: Athena Crisis received its first Key Art which you can see at the top of the email, thanks to Null's Art Director Jeanna. We just finished the redesign of all the game's map art.
We also updated the design of in-game messages. Here is a screenshot of one of the prototype-campaign scenarios:
Building the AI for Athena Crisis: I did a talk at the JS Gamedev Summit to show how to build a basic AI for a turn based video game. The slide deck was made with ReMDX, a slide deck tool developed by Nakazawa Tech.
Private Beta: Starting late November the first players will be able to buy the game at a discount and start playing as part of the private beta. We'll likely do a slow rollout, so watch out for the next email!
Thanks: Finally, I want to say how grateful I am to everyone who is working on Athena Crisis – and for your support as fans. It's the best feeling to see this game world come to life with their unique characters through art, music, sound and code.
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