Echoes of Aeons - Our 2d Action RPG - Is now available for iOS after 8 years in development!!!!
AlchimiaStudios
Member Posts: 1,069
Wow, surreal to be writing this but after 8 years Echoes of Aeons has been released!! It has been a crazy journey and I just want to thank all of GS forums and users for the support and help (especially early on) thorough-out the development of this game! Also shout out to @adent42 who has been so great about keeping GS updated lately allowing us to launch!
Would love for you all to try it out! You can pick it up on the app store link below.
🤩😍😁
Comments
Are you using tiles? How do you line up the tiles? Anyway. I am buying it now.
Thanks! We're not using the tiling features of GS (well, in one stage we do for a lava BG) but generally we are using 1024 or 2048 texture cutouts and assembling manually while also being conscious of ram usage per scene. In battle areas we just use these assets very specifically so they can be repeated/replicated to make a large stage while seeming to be unique assets.
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Amazing! 8 years! Will check out this evening!
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Thanks! Yeah was a crazy long road!
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Been playing a bit, great experience so far. On a (somewhat) side note, I see the game was published by CMS! Why go that route instead of self publishing? Are there any benefits to going through them?
Thanks! We actually signed with them many years ago when we we're early in development. CM has provided us with marketing/promotional services and has contacts at various outlets/Apple to try and give the game a better chance at success in terms of visibility. The premium mobile market is very tough right now, but unfortunately since I have no comparison, I have no idea how self-publishing would have gone vs. this route since we already we're committed to this.
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Interesting. I’m assuming that they take a share of the profits as well?
Seems like a good job, congratulations! For Android nothing?
Would love to, but the game is 3GB so would need expansion files.
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Aaah right! I would have liked to play with it, however you may already know, in June it should have fixed this problem, so you should also be able to publish for Android!
I would like to make a game probably not 3 GB but still more than 100 MG, this is because I will have a person for the drawings and it will be easy to overcome the limit.
Then congratulations again!
Yeah art adds to the size quite a bit for sure. Well, looking forward to it then. Thank you!
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I have a curiosity, how many attributes and actors have you used in all? To get an idea of how they can behave in a big project.
looking at the trailer, i’m guessing you used some techniques involving layering black magic fkery? (ie. you have multiple sprites for each character constrained to each other that display depending on where they are relative to other actors to give a 3d effect).
regardless, it looks impressive on the trailer, and is a great example of what can be done with gs.
good luck with it!
Thanks! Yep, Gamesalad's weakest point in my opinion. You'd think you could move an actor to another layer or layer position in real time, but not in GS! But yeah, that's exactly what it is, one character has a "front" and "back" sprite constrained to the master movement actor, the other is always middle.
We do this with environments also sometimes (tried to avoid as much possible though) and that one is even more sprites because we have two characters with three layering positions, so we need 4-5 actors to compensate. Ugh.
Thousands! 3,677 actors to be exact. Hundreds of attributes. Several tables that are 999x200 or 999x500, etc. Tables are honestly the strongest point in GS. I wrote a sort of puesdocode system that reads numeric sequence values from tables to execute pre-defined behaviors to do things like control cut scene sequencing, or initiate a dialogue tree, or start merchanting. We did have to plan carefully when designing systems to maintain performance. Things like making sure code only runs when called, or using change attributes when a constrain would be easier, because too many constrains can add up, etc.
The project is definitely not fast to load or work in, but GS does seem to handle it ok for the most part.
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Yes, unfortunately the question of the levels has led me to abandon some projects, the system of multiple equal constrained actors discouraged me, after all I still have to make the first game.. I will already do a job big enough to make something that I like first of all , but not so complicated.
I've seen different parts of gameplay on youtube and it's a great job
However, it is a relief to know that large quantities of actors and attributes can be inserted into the game, thanks for the reply
bye!
Wow! Amazing. 8 years is a long time. Great achievement. Congratulations!
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Big congratulations on the launch of the game. Beautiful art, just picked up a copy love to support GameSalad developers.
@AlchimiaStudios Looks super-impressive! The most professional GS project by far, in my opinion. Lovely art style, reminds me of Broken Sword.
How has it been doing, if you don't mind me asking? It has a great rating on the App Store, but unlike Google, Apple doesn't reveal download numbers. Hope it's been good!
I was curious, so I did some googling:
A bit late, but congrats on the awesome reviews!
Wow! Super impressive. RPGs are brutal to dev properly. It's not my type of theme but love to see a release like this from a GS user : )
Thanks for the links, @adent42!
Especially considering the great responses online and good reviews and the many years it took @AlchimiaStudios to get this done, I hope it was a success for them commercially as well!
@pHghost @adent42 @sinbot Thanks so much everyone! Sorry for the delayed response, haven't been on the forums as much recently. While it's been a critical success and generally seems to be very well liked, I definitely wouldn't call it a commercial success. We haven't been able to secure a US feature for who knows what reason. I also think Apple Arcade took a huge number of premium gamers away from the market a few months before release, so it's been interesting. Although, it does continue to sell a few copies every month and I think it may have a "long tail" so to speak. Might also do an update sometime soon too and see how that does.
Overall I'm super proud of what we were able to accomplish and think it ended up being a pretty good product.
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@AlchimiaStudios said:
I definitely wouldn't call it a commercial success.
Sorry to hear that. Have you done any promotional events or limited-time discounts? Not sure how well these work with a game like this, but I do see it happening with larger games now and then, and usually it is also timed with an Apple feature -- you can actually request a feature from Apple and if you add in a little blurb about the creation of the game, the process, the art, that seems to be quite common on the app store recently, where it's not just a feature to sell the app, but almost a virtual "meet the devs" kind of thing.
@AlchimiaStudios said:
Apple Arcade took a huge number of premium gamers away from the market
Did you consider applying to Apple Arcade with the game? Seeing as it cannot be published on Android anyway at the moment due to lack of expansion support on the GS side. Not sure if you can do it now that it's been published regularly, but still could be worth trying. If the premium gamers are over there, it could give you a much bigger audience, and especially so since people have paid for the access already, so won't balk at a game just because it feels "expensive". There are some big games from established developers on Apple Arcade, so it must be working out for them financially, if they are willing to do that.
We actually did try applying/pitching for Apple Arcade before release but weren't able to get in. It's an Apple exclusive, full length RPG, so we thought we had a good chance, but it didn't work out. I think they said they were looking for "high fidelity 3d graphics" or something of the like.
We also have requested an Apple feature but nothing has come of that either. Our publisher also worked with Apple and we were in the "New Games we love" in many countries, just not the US. No special features, or little articles like they do or anything.
The game does pop-up on the RPG charts from time to time and occasionally cracks the top 100 RPG's, so like I said I think we can at least look forward to a long tail.
We are definitely considering some sales/patches soon and that could lead to a feature like you mentioned, who knows.🤷♂️
Beyond that I've been in Unity a bit lately and that's been fun learning another engine. Considering we have a huge amount of assets ready to go, we're looking into doing a "remake" of sorts and bringing it to other platforms that may be more receptive of it.
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