Thank you! Funny enough, I’m a fan of Tintin. And last time I was thinking about what I would do after Atlantic ‘41, and I was toying with the idea of a game putting you in charge of a daily newspaper.
I can’t believe it’s been so long! I’m determined to pick up pace this year, so hopefully it won’t take another 4 years! But it’s safe to say that you’ll have quite a few logs to read before it’s over :)
Thank you. I like the idea of the reflection, but I'm not sure about the execution. I can probably find a better logo too. Hard to find the balance between elegant and boring, in particular at low resolution. But there's time to think about it.
Thanks. I have a Steam Deck and I think Atlantic ‘41 would be a perfect fit. Of course you’d also be able to play on any PC, or Mac. I’m currently evaluating a few engines. The difficulty is that most engines don’t run on Lua, so I would have to rewrite the code. I would also want to retain the look and feel, while taking advantage of the more powerful platform. So for instance 1200 x 720 instead of 400 x 240 resolution, possibly customizable 2 bit palettes, better animations, etc…at the moment I already have my plate full with the Playdate version and the dev logs, but I might try a proof of concept demo, to get a sense of the work involved, and gauge the interest on Steam.
Thank you. If the game is sold through the Playdate marketplace then unfortunately you’ll need a Playdate. I may consider a PC port later but nothing is decided yet.
Thank you! It’s a great time for solo developers and small teams now. Game engines are more and more powerful and accessible. Al, in spite of its problems, can help getting more content out with less resources (I regularly ask chatGPT for help with my questionable math), Steam makes self publishing a possibility. There’s no reason not to make the leap anymore.
Thank you for the support. Frankly I learn as I go. But it’s true that it’s satisfying to turn what was a bunch of convoluted code into a simple and elegant solution. It doesn’t happen very often with me, but maybe a but more now than a few months ago.
Thank you! The fact that you and others enjoy reading them makes it worthwhile writing them.
Yes, I love when developers aren’t afraid to commit to hidden content. I find that theJapanese tend to often be the most dedicated in that area. Their games sometimes have huge chunks that only a fraction of people get to play. I was thinking that the chance of getting rare events could slowly rise over time, in a persistant way. So that amazing players who have put hundreds of hours (hundreds is presumptuous on my part, but you get the idea) into the game have decent chances to be rewarded with the secret content eventually, even if they’re particularly unlucky.
Yes. It’s been three crazy months. Apologies for the very long delay. Lots of progress on many fronts, including structural changes that needed to be done for easier scaling later down the road. The deck gun sequence is done, and the next log 90% written. Please hang tight for a couple more weeks at the most.
Thank you. It’s true that the Pacific theater could get more love. After Atlantic ‘41, I‘m considering making a sequel putting the player in command of a B-29 bomber in the Pacific.
Thank you! Well I never went to art school or had any formal design or videogame training. As a kid I tried to figure things on my own on the C64 back in France. Then more serious with the Atari ST, for which I made two games in the early 90’s. Then dropped from college before moving to Montreal where I got my first real job as an environment modeler. I began to train myself in concept art and it was still a time when they would just give a shot to anyone showing interest. Then weaseled my way into art direction, which I’ve done since then for various studios in Canada and the U.S.
But the good thing about working in a studio is that I could learn along the way from plenty of smarter and more skilled people. I don’t feel like having any real expertise in any specific domain. My experience is just the kind of empiric knowledge you get from mimicking others and tinkering with anything that falls in your lap. But I’d rather craft small projects to try stuff and fail at my own pace. “Serious” production environment is formatted and frankly quite boring nowadays, and no one expects you to make any breakthrough, just to do that same thing that you do, in time and under budget. In my experience working in a videogame studio has very little to do with making videogames. I guess maybe that’s why most videogames don’t feel like videogames? Anyway that’s beside the point.
I don’t know if that answers your question. I feel like it was a very underwhelming and meandering answer. :)
Thank you. That’s an excellent idea. The big shakes might be too much for the eye to register the motion of the pointer, but this could be something worth trying for light camera shakes. Thank you for the suggestion. I’m eager to move on but I’ll take a few hours to look into it.
Yes you’re not the first one to raise that point. I did it for myself as a development experiment. Honestly it doesn’t matter much whether you know what the ranks mean. But there’s only five to remember, so that could be taught in tutorial form or as part of an in game encyclopedia, for curious players. Wachoffizier means watch officer. The life aboard the boat was divided in 4 hour watches, and each watch was led by an officer, who kind of ran the daily routine for his watch. I. Wachoffizier can be translated as 1st Officer. The closest in the U.S navy would be the XO, or Executive Officer, second in command after the Captain. You’ll start a campaign by picking a Captain. Then the dBU (the body of the German navy running U-boats) will assign you a boat and 4 officers: a 1st Officer, an Engineer, or Chief (LI in German), a radio operator (Funkmaat), and a Navigator (Bootsmann).
Thank you. Interestingly I began making games on the Atari ST a long time ago. I can’t imagine how you would have it fit in memory and run at a decent frame rate though, but maybe a ST genius could.
I know it seems so obvious now :) But thank you, and please don’t hesitate to share your suggestions in the future. I would hate knowing that you could have spared me going down the wrong path.
You’re very kind. I agree that the Playdate seems to attract developers who like to tread outside the beaten path. In fact, from the get go I wanted to make something that you couldn’t find on any other platform, in particular portable; a serious simulation that anyone could play in short bursts and that wouldn’t require investing in a powerful computer. I love simulations and strategy games in a historical setting, but it’s a domain almost exclusively reserved to PC, and I really miss playing this kind of game on the go. So hopefully Atlantic ‘41 will fill a void for people with similar interests and maybe get people like yourself to discover something new.
I’m so glad that someone got the reference! I read a few books in the series, but I’m taking my time because I don’t want it to be over :)
Thank you for the kind feedback. Because I love working, it’s easy for me to indulge into every detail, and to forget how long the game has been in development. So I’m very thankful that everybody is so patient and supportive. Hopefully it will be worth it in the end.
This is so kind of you to say. Every encouragement I get makes the project so much more meaningful to me, and helps me going through the bits of doubt. In particular when it comes from people like you who aren’t into this kind of game.
When I’m ready to go into beta, I’ll leave a post here and you will have the opportunity to “apply”. I don’t know how many people I’ll get/need yet but I hope to have people covering the whole gamut of players, from simulation veterans to casual players.
Thank you very much. Initially I didn’t plan to have any tutorials but this was a bit different, as I got requests for it. But it’s tricky because I don’t want people to assume that I pretend to know what I’m doing ;)
Thank you :) you can absolutely count on seeing more areas of the boat. I have plans for at least the Hydrophone, and in the same place the radio/enigma. And then other things that I’d rather keep under wraps for now.
You’re right though: it will be a challenge to show larger rooms, as the amount of detail crammed into these may make the art difficult to read.
Yes, context is the right word. I just want to make sure that I don’t stray too far from reflecting the U-boat experience in broad strokes, and despite my personal research, I’m sure that you guys can provide tremendous help.
I’m not a Facebook user but I would love to check your discord group. My id there is Stephanrewind.
Thank you very much. It’s a great confirmation for me that experts see value in the project. UBOAT is amazing. Obviously Atlantic ‘41 doesn’t have nearly comparable ambitions in terms of technical accuracy. It’s not intended for simulation purists (even though I hope they can still enjoy it somehow), but rather for people with an interest for old school submarine games. I’m afraid that you guys may find the game quite simplistic. For instance my TDC is nowhere near accurate, but rather a crude shortcut to its concepts. There’s a chance I may not be able to implement many of the ideas you have, considering the limitations of the platform, my resources, and the objective of the game. But obviously I’ll sure take all the help I can in making the game as faithful as possible within its parameters. The best at this point may be for you guys to read through the logs, and see if you feel like the project doesn’t stray too far from what you find acceptable, and if you want to DM me a link to your discord on Twitter, I would love to be able to ask for questions there about translations in other matters.
