God forbid people emulate me, unless they want to spend five years on a Playdate game!
But thank you for the kind words, Pat, and for giving such exposure to the game. I love that the interview is done in the same spirit of openness that I try to have in the logs. :)
I know. I must apologize because the editor of the magazine asked that I push back the post by 2 days. I promised to respect the exclusivity to the magazine subscribers and shipping has taken him longer than expected, which I can’t blame him for because I know how much work he puts into it, doing everything by himself.
Sorry about that, but I will publish on the 24, no matter what. Thank you for your patience.
Thanks :) I have a few of the required social accounts but I’m not very active. Only posting the occasional progress report. Posts are redundant. Pick your poison.
Please don’t apologize! I keep up with the devlogs in great part because of messages like yours. Many devlogs turn into tutorials, and strip out all the clumsiness. But I’m never in total control of the work. It’s a messy and sometimes frustrating process, and I just want to share it for what it is. Let the reader take what they want from it. I don’t claim the paternity of that approach though. It was inspired by Jordan Mechner and his journals for Katateka and Prince of Persia. I highly recommend them, since you seem to enjoy this kind of report. They’re highly detailed development accounts of legendary games, but also more personal and intimate views into the daily life of a kid in the U.S in the 80’s.
Thank you for the very kind words about the art. Someone else mentioned the book on social media. Maybe it was you. I really like that idea. It’s a significant additional workload because you can’t just copy and paste the web posts into a book. There’s a big job of editing and proof reading, and the question of image rights will be an issue. It’s not like a non profit website. Interestingly my devlog was inspired by the wonderful journals Jordan Mechner wrote for Karateka and Prince of Persia so a book would be full circle.
Same here. All animated gifs stopped working on the new devlog I wanted to post. And animated gifs on the front page of the game have been broken for a while too.
Thank you! I appreciate all the support. Too early to talk about the release date I’m afraid. I’ll announce it as soon as I’m confident that I can meet it. I’ve been too often bummed with games being pushed, so I want to avoid the disappointment to people supporting Atlantic ‘41.
Thank you both. I miss the 80’s video-game manuals. I’ll support Atlantic ‘41 with a detailed manual, maps and historical and technical brochures, like they did at the time. May just be PDF but at least it’ll exist. I also plan to make a 80’s style box, complete with illustration on the front and screenshots on the back, so people have all the material to print and build their own package.
Thank you! Makes me happy because that was the goal for these animations. As for time, I guess we all aspire to be more efficient but I agree about finishing being what matters.
Thanks for the feedback. It’s the explosion flash. There’s no gun involved here, since this is a torpedo hit. This may change down the line, especially the camera shake that may be a bit too intense.
About the watch, I have to keep feasibility and timing into account. An animated hand is very hard to do well, and would add a few more seconds to each time lapse, which the player would likely get tired of after a while. Repetitive non interactive animations tend to break the flow of the game. It may be already too long as it is. I wanted to find a way to keep the full screen stopwatch but sometimes you have to kill your babies for the greater good.
Exactly how I feel about difficulty. I feel like we ought to trust the player and let them learn from their own mistakes, rather than holding their hand.
Thank you :) I’ll post here and on other platforms when I’ll need testers, which will be an opportunity for them to give feedback on every aspect of the game, including sound. I’m not sure how many testers I’ll be able to welcome, but make sure to get in touch then.
Thank you. I don’t plan to have an early access period like they do on Steam, but at some point ’ll give a build to a small group of people to test/submit feedback. I’ll announce it here and on Twitter. I don’t have a date yet.
Thank you very much for your support. After the Playdate release I’ll spend some time evaluating a PC port. I think a port would deserve taking advantage of the better PC resolution and memory. I wouldn’t want to make something that feels short of the best I can do for each platform. But my idea is to keep the simple control scheme and 1-bit art style, which places Atlantic ‘41 in its own place. I’ve always wanted simulations deep and historically accurate enough without doing so granular and heavy that I need several hours and a high end PC to play. UBOAT is fantastic and I can’t compete with it, but sometimes I crave for a game that I could play between two train stations on a Steam deck, but somehow there seems to be a void there. Atlantic ‘41 came from that idea. But I may be part of a small minority, so I’ll need to figure some way to test the community somehow.
Just wanted to give an update about my feline friend, to thank you for the kind messages of support. I don’t want to jinx it but it looks like we’ve found the right treatment and she’s now over the hill. So fingers crossed!
You’re right! The box art was done by an artist named Stéphane Polard. I loved his illustration, which seemed inspired by Christopher Foss and Jim Burns, whom I was a fan of. And the title font was my not so subtle homage to Iron Maiden. Funny I had not realized how 80’s this looks before you mentioned it :)
