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[melos]

Buy it now! For Mac and Windows!
Itch.IO+Steam key https://seanhtch.itch.io/even-the-ocean
GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/even_the_ocean
Steam:  https://store.steampowered.com/app/265470




Trailer:





Releasing on November 16th, 2016 for mac and PC!!!



Even the Ocean is a narrative action platformer about balancing the Light and Dark energies that hold the world together.

From the creators of Anodyne comes a grand story about Aliph, a lowly power plant technician for Whiteforge City, who finds her world turned upside-down after a routine maintenance trip goes awry. Now, working directly with Whiteforge's Mayor Biggs to face an unknown menace, Aliph must navigate her newfound power and influence to save the city.

Aliph's identities, environmental issues and the world's fate all hang in the balance of Light and Dark energies.

-Balance your energy bar with Light and Dark energies to overcome diverse obstacles and stabilize the city.

-Meet and talk with new friends, powerful allies, and enigmatic travellers

-Explore the beautiful and strange geography in the overworld, towns, and environments surrounding Whiteforge City

-Super customizable difficulties and play styles: choose between Complete, Story-only, or Gameplay-only options to make your experience your own




Wishlist Even the Ocean on Steam! Coming November 16, 2016!

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Devlog Table of Contents


Entity Communication, Editor choices 5/11/13
First shot at describing the game 5/16/13 Okay
5/22/13 Sean makes his own data format
6/11/13 Game is named Even the Ocean, character = Aliph (not Alif!!)

OLD Focus of Level Design: (2013-12-12) Joni Sean
LEVEL BLOCKING AND SKETCHING (2013-12-23) - http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32220.msg977995#msg977995
Explanation of a "Nature" song (2013-12-25) - Link
talking about tutorial (2013-2-11) - here
Sean's music making process here [/b]

2014-7-25 level design here [/b]

Twitter | Facebook

Joni Kittaka and Sean Han-Tani-Chen-Hogan (me)  are developing Even the Ocean. We last worked together on Anodyne! Our roles are similar. We are both sharing game and story design, I write the music and program, Joni will be doing writing and art.


Music
I'm the only composer like with Anodyne, you can listen to music here:
soundcloud.com/seagaia


Release Date / Platforms
Even the Ocean is coming in August or September, 2016, for Windows and Mac.
A Linux release is possible but not guaranteed. No consoles or mobile ports are planned at this time.

Tools
 in-house editor, HaXe Flixel, flashdevelop, REAPER, Ableton Live, photoshop, GIMP, graphicsgale, Tiled map editor, openfl/lime, Sendy, dodistribute, google docs, gChat, email, twitter, facebook, tigsource, twitch.

------

Development Timeline

A gradual process through development is Joni and I's back-and-forth on discussing structure/design/story/etc of the game. Not mentioned much. Likewise is music-making.

The beginning
March 12th, 2013 - Development starts in AS3, as "PRMCA". Still in school.
March 22nd, 2013 - Move to HaXeFlixel

1 Month
April 12th, 2013 - Finish super-basic editor, player behavior, other architecture, and start on a level
April 25th, 2013 - Serialization + other stuff finished, start on other levels, finish more entities
May 7 - Sfx/music stuff working...etc

2 Months
May 15th - Dialogue/localization working
late may/early june - i am working on iOS anodyne so that takes up some time
June 8 - Get a test sprite, resizing window, various serialization thingies related to entity and dialogue data finished. Sean goes to E3. we both graduate college. i think most of the editor work finished around here
June 10th - Named Even the Ocean!

3 Months
June 17 - I get to NYC for the summer, change from HaXe2 -> Haxe3 + openfl
june 19 - finally fix fucking slope collisions for the last time
jun 27 - ios anodyne released
June 29 - Pause menu, death state fixes, various world state transitions fixed, level work, etc..

4 Months
Jul 12 - Lots of misc things, get cutscene support working (scripting basically with hscript)
Jul 15 - Joni moved into new apartment, starts work - I write importer for CSVs and stuff, explain how to use everything
Jul 19 - player sprite!!
late july - editor updates, misc level stuff, etc... start to get ready for PAX Prime
early august - i'm in taiwan and also am working on localization for anodyne. I do some misc things with even the ocean

5 Months
aug 12 - work resuming a bit more, but i'm still on semi-vacation (in cali)
aug 31 - pax prime show demo

7 Months
oct 13 - android anodyne done forever, yay, we figured out the detailed game world and structure and full story and now are just working through that...lots of assets

8 Months
nov 15 - Accepted to Steam
nov 26 - #OceanBucks(tm)

9 Months
dec 23 - Kinda winter break, but working.

11 Months
Feb '14 - Went to Indiecade East.

12 Months

Mar 12, 2014 (year mark) - almost really finished with one area in The Ocean. By that, final assets/etc. Lots of progress made on other areas, a lot of tiling/level designing at this point, implementing dialogue, etc.
March 2014 (middle) - GDC
Late March 2014 : Released the public Motion Demo for The Ocean's mechanics.

13 Months
April 2014 - constant work on areas etc, game coming together...

14 Months
May 2014 - Really finalizing some areas, The Ocean feels pretty good.

16.5 months
late july 2014 - Cancel even because it made sense (see http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=32220.msg1047603#msg1047603)

18 months

Sometime in september early: Main story writing all finished! sean does al ot of event scripting! yay! final art style! production! yay!

19 mo - Oct 2014
Joni and I bought Wii Us.  I started to try to finish all the music

20 mo - nov 12 2014
Finished all da music! (abt 4 hrs). still some left joni and i played lots of mario cuz sean got gamefly and joni bought mario. this had just thinking abt reducing entity complexity...making the game fit a lot nicer togethe with Town Story - Nature - Gauntlet stuff. joni got a new computer too plus a really great drawing tablet monitor.

21 mo - Dec 12 2014

vacation time! sort of a break in parts. i've been programming things hte past week, jonis been doing art for Areas.

Early 2015
finishing up room design, working on level arrangement. all cutscenes pretty mcuh done by now

Mid 2015
Finish up most room design
Line collider implementation
New art style implementation
Art style roughed out for each main area
Finishing up more content... post-game

September 2015
Polish intro/etc for tokyo game show

October 2015
plan out the final city area and the world map
arrange more final levels
revision of the main game script

Nov 2015
arrange more final levels
add visuals to some cutscenes, finalizing cutscenes
some sfx
more npc writing...
entity code edits

Dec 2015
Holiday break, some misc work on area art here.

Jan 2016
Prepare an announcement trailer by polishing some things.
Show game to some chicago dev friends.

Feb 2016
??

Mar 2016
Finish rough tiles for all gauntlet areas, finish making powerful autotiler tool to tile the game's power plant levels.

Apr 2016
??

May 2016
Start finalizing art for Nature areas.
Add rough portraits for each NPC, sprites for each NPC, finalize sprites and animations for each game's entity.
Finish all alternate game modes.

[melos]

One thing we learned through Anodyne is that the more level design we can do in-game, the faster the workflow. a lot of issues with Anodyne's workflow is we had to edit in DAME, export, recompile to change small things. NO MORE.

Here is the glorious video of the "in-game editor" after an hour or two of work.





THIS IS NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE GAMEPLAY.

The only FOR SURE thing is that the game has a 2D platforming perspective, but it is not necessarily true that the focus is on platforming/etc

I did more work today so you can delete entities and move them. But of course there's more work to be done with importing/exporting, how it links into the game in the end...

[AD1337]

Awesome! I'm very much looking forward to this after Anodyne.

It'll be great and insightful to look back on these early posts after the game is finished.

[poe]

That atmosphere makes it look like an Anodyne clone.

Too early for me to actually comment on much, excited to see you guys work together again though.

[Kurt]

Oh, that DIDN'T represent the gameplay? But it looked so fun!

[Graham-]

Looks way better than Anodyne.

[melos]

We hope it will be better than Anodyne! More coherent, more original design, better game design...etc.

I'll probably use placeholder stuff from anodyne hahaha

[DrunkDevs]

You had me at in game editor  . Gonna make development/prototyping/tweeking so much easier. Can't wait to see what you guys make next.

[Alec S.]

You had me at "game".

[mushbuh]

zelda II like?

[AD1337]

zelda II like?

I'll bet it's a CD-i zelda-like.

[melos]

You had me at in game editor  . Gonna make development/prototyping/tweeking so much easier. Can't wait to see what you guys make next.

Yeah. Don't understand why I was tweaking stuff with recompilations with Anodyne, that was awful with bosses...

You had me at "game".

WE'RE GONNA MAKE A MATCH 3 NOW HAHAHAHA

zelda II like?

There's probably going to be a little influence but hopefully not as much as Anodyne had from Link's Awakening. We're definitely trying to step away and put in more original design rather than borrowing stuff that is proven to work.

zelda II like?

I'll bet it's a CD-i zelda-like.

This. I'm going to work on my voice acting.


--------

Since I've been doing mostly post-release stuff (and have a few finals early this week), haven't worked on this much. Maybe I'll just fail my finals and work more on the editor. Did some design brainstorming...so hope to implement some stuff soon.

[forwardresent]

Anodyne had from Link's Awakening.

HOLD ON. It's my favourite Zelda. Well that just sold Anodyne for me.

It's great to see you're jumping right into another game, and an in game editor is really neat, it'll definitely speed things up.

[Chris Polus]

You're already working on another game? Wow, that's dedication Good luck Sean, I'll follow your updates.

[melos]

yeah, i was getting antsy a few weeks after anodyne's release...still stuff to do with anodyne.

i mostly did steam anodyne stuff (mostly failure today), but I did get the chance to note down 16 bars of a melody for a song that might fit into this game. as music goes, it will probably sound like crap in the morning...

[poe]

yeah, i was getting antsy a few weeks after anodyne's release...still stuff to do with anodyne.

i mostly did steam anodyne stuff (mostly failure today), but I did get the chance to note down 16 bars of a melody for a song that might fit into this game. as music goes, it will probably sound like crap in the morning...

I feel like any art goes like that. "WOW THIS IS GREAT" a month later "why would I ever think that was good?"

[melos]

yeah. i guess i should hold off on the music until more world is built.

well, i am (theoretically) finishing an essay on rousseau for school today. then tomorrow, wrapping up GOG stuff (release thursday), fixing anodyne on linux for steam, and getting back to programming stuff for this because we have some sort of solid things designed.

maybe there will be something to show later this week. maybe not (probably not.)

[Kurt]

If there's nothing later this week, you're losing a loyal customer! Chop chop, I didn't spend $9 for nothing!

[mushbuh]

yeah, i was getting antsy a few weeks after anodyne's release...still stuff to do with anodyne.

i mostly did steam anodyne stuff (mostly failure today), but I did get the chance to note down 16 bars of a melody for a song that might fit into this game. as music goes, it will probably sound like crap in the morning...

I usually have the opposite problem.

Can you give us any details about what you will be doing in this game?

[melos]

Oh, my role's the same - programming, music/sound, and then design whereever I happen to fit in. Jon will be doing art and then design whereever he fits in (design has been very collaborative so far). As for world design, we have an idea we're happy with but of course having to build out the world toeghetr, I think there will be more dialogue (maybe not, idk), Jon might write it, or we might both.

I'll probably be doing marketing and business again cuz that's so fun u kno