LORE OF THE EMBER
THE top-down game that could have shipped in 1992.
A gothic action game where a plague contaminates the map, tile by tile, in real time. On the three machines of the golden age: the Atari ST, the Megadrive and the Amiga. Open devlog, development in the open.
Three machines, one worldThree machines
The game was born on the Atari ST. Today it also runs on the Megadrive and on the Amiga. Same world, same story, and each time the best that machine can do.
Atari ST
The machine where the game was born, and the one that decides everything.
The opening level plays from beginning to end. The following acts are being built.
The Atari ST version → On cartridgeSega Megadrive (Genesis)
The Megadrive is the best console to host the game.
Two levels already. The remaining acts advance at the same pace as the Atari version.
The Megadrive version → Stock A500Commodore Amiga
The Amiga is getting its port too.
The world runs, and so do the monsters. The rest of the game is coming, keeping pace with the other two versions.
The Amiga version →The solo dev behind the game
Frédérick, born in 1978. A potentiometer Pong at the age of four, an Atari 1040 STe at ten, and Tilt, Joystick and choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks for reading.
Lore of the Ember is a deliberate return to the machine where my passion took root. Machines like these do not let you do everything, so you cut. And what you cut is often what gives a game its character.
A solo project, coded in the evenings. Picking up an old Atari engine I have been tinkering with for years, finally pushed all the way, and which ended up taking the game to two other machines of the same era. A public devlog at every step.
Project progress
Atari ST
21 / 22Core engine
Done - The foundations: a smooth 50 frames per second displayPlayer movement
Done - Pixel-perfect movement, gravity and jumpingScenery and scrolling
Done - Tile-based scenery and smooth scrollingScenery collisions
Done - Floors, walls, platforms and ceilingsSmooth characters
Done - Sprites that move without flickeringGrid corruption prototype
Done - The map corrupting itself, and the respite you earn by clearing an areaMove to C and assembly
Done - Tidier code: a reusable engine on one side, the game on the otherA real world to explore
Done - A map larger than the screen, a camera that follows the hero, and a plague that sleeps off-screenBuilding the world
Done - The scenery of all 5 acts laid out on the gridOne game for STe and STf
Done - The same game runs on both machines, detected at startupPlague outbreaks
Done - The plague spreads from outbreaks that can be tuned one by oneHorseback level with depth
Done - A ride where several layers scroll at different speeds, on STe as well as STf50 Hz scrolling with enemies
Done - The scenery races at full speed on STe, steady even with enemies prowling out to the edgesIn-game HUD
Done - Hearts, score, lantern gauge and lives, in a banner that stays rock steady while the scenery scrollsBoss on a plague arena
Done - The Ashen Wolf: a boss who seeds outbreaks of plagueMusic
Done - The title screen and intro themes, written for the gameTwo-player ride
Done - A side-on ride in the saddle for two players, with scenery on two layers of depthTwo-player co-op
Done - The second hero joins the game at the press of a button, with their own lives and scoreIntro in five shots
Done - Waking up, the lantern, crossing the village and the castle, before the first joystick in handScenery read from disk
Done - Scenery moves out of memory and onto disk: bigger levels, and a hard disk installThe screen takes the hit
Done - Shakes, shards and a white flash when a monster blows apartAll 5 acts
In progress - Morteveille playable from beginning to endMegadrive
5 / 6The game boots on Megadrive
Done - The scenery and the hero show up on Sega's consoleThe whole game
Done - Enemies, plague, outbreaks, co-op, intro and the ride: everything the Atari version doesScenery in colour
Done - The scenery is no longer held to the Atari's sixteen coloursNight and the halo
Done - A territory where you only see what the lantern lightsThe second level
Done - A second territory, and the roar of the collapse when you diePlayable start to finish
To do - All 5 acts on cartridgeAmiga
3 / 5The game boots on Amiga
Done - The foundations of the A500 portThe real world runs
Done - The level, its enemies and its real colours, on a 1 MB A500In-game HUD
Done - Hearts, score and lantern gauge, steady while the scenery scrollsThe whole game
In progress - Everything the Atari version does, on AmigaPlayable start to finish
To do - All 5 acts on Amiga floppyThe story - 5 acts
The Forest of the Hanged
The trees bear strange fruit tonight.
The Cemetery of Morteveille
The dead don't rest here. Someone woke them.
The Castle Ramparts
The storm lights up what the night wanted hidden.
The Castle Entrails
Every room tells of a sin. The last one is mine.
The Scarlet Dungeon
The price of a miracle is always paid by the innocent.
Latest devlog posts
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The game no longer fits on a single machine
Lore of the Ember was born on the Atari ST and never intended to leave it. Today it also runs on the Megadrive and on the Amiga. Here is why I finally went there, what it changes for you depending on which machine you kept, and what it does not change at all.
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On the ice, our reflection has to appear
The world of Lore of the Ember is matt, dusty, eaten away. I wanted one place doing the exact opposite: a surface that gives back the image of whatever walks on it. A sheet of ice on the ground, big enough for two players, with the monsters reflected in it too.
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The screen takes the hit
Until now an enemy died cleanly: it disappeared, and nothing else moved. There was the explosion, of course, but I wanted to go further. I spent a few days preparing this. The screen now shakes under explosions, monsters blow apart, and a white flash appears before the screen tilts ;)
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The scenery arrives from disk
On a 1 MB Atari, everything that is in the program stays there forever, and I need that memory! So the level scenery has left memory to live on the floppy, from where it's read when you enter an area. Along the way, the game now installs on a hard disk.
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An intro in five shots
Before you play, the game has to tell a story and set the mood: five shots in sequence, from Alaric waking up to the silhouette of the castle under the storm. An intro is expensive on a 1 MB machine, and yet almost everything that moves in it costs nothing.
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The second player joins in
Lore of the Ember is now played by two. The second player isn't just an extra: he is the Ardent, a champion of embers summoned by the lantern, with his own weapon, his own lives and his own score. He can join the game at any moment to help Alaric.
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A ride for two
Lore of the Ember isn't only played on foot. I have added two-player parallax handling to the engine, with enemies coming from every direction.
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Two machines, two ways of scrolling
Lore of the Ember runs on Atari, from the STf to the STe. The scenery has to scroll with the same smoothness everywhere, and to get there I needed two very different ways of scrolling the game: the STe hardware scroll on one side, redrawing everything by hand on the STf on the other. Here is why, and what it means for you.
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Polishing the interface before showing the game
Before showing Lore of the Ember and gathering the first curious people around the game, I wanted the very first thing you see, the HUD, to be crisp and readable.
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A HUD that doesn't move a single pixel
The hardware scroll that moves the scenery so nicely on STe has an awkward side effect: it shifts the entire screen, including the HUD at the top. So my brand new HUD wanted to slide left and right with the scenery. The story of the technique that nails it in place, and the one-frame hiccup that nearly ruined everything.
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50 Hz on STe: the bug that only showed up with enemies
The STe hardware scroll finally gives me 50 Hz. I thought the engine was settled. The day I let loose enemies that prowl out to the edges of the screen, a piece of scenery started appearing in the wrong place. The story of a trap that had been lying in wait for months.
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A level on horseback, with depth
I wanted a horseback level that scrolls fast, with a real sense of depth, and that runs just as well on STe as on STf. Here is how I got there with an old professional trick: prepare the images ahead of time, but only as much as you need.
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One game for two machines: making the STf scroll
The STe can scroll on its own, the STf cannot. To ship a single program that boots on both, I had to teach the STf to scroll by hand. The story of a port where the real difficulty was never where I was looking for it.
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One hour of play, five acts, zero boredom: thinking about the hook like a Netflix series
The engine holds up, the smooth scroll passes muster. It's time to think about what will really matter: why the player keeps playing. An evening digging into serial hook techniques, and the Lore of the Ember mechanics that come out of it.
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Assets: borrowed music and borrowed scenery, and suddenly it looks like a game
Lore of the Ember finally has sound and real scenery. They aren't mine, they are placeholders. Why I made that choice, and what it changes for the rest of the project.
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The little hitch that came once a second
A micro-hitch in the scroll, exactly once a second. Three attempted fixes, an old trick to finally see the culprit, and a well-hidden trap.
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A real world to explore: the camera finally follows the hero
Until now my game fitted in a single fixed screen. Here is how I moved to a world bigger than the screen, with a camera glued to the hero, and why I agreed to make my life easier on the tooling side.
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Pivot: what if the map itself were the enemy?
Lore of the Ember changes direction. The platformer becomes an arena game where the plague spreads across the ground and the player fights it tile by tile. Here is why I pivoted, and the feel this prototype confirmed.
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Sprites that finally flow: prepare rather than compute
My hero flickered and left trails as soon as he moved. Here is how I got out of it, by borrowing an old trick from professional games: prepare everything ahead of time rather than recomputing it live.
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Goodbye parallax, hello bitmap: the day I chose beauty
I'm dropping my three-layer parallax for a level drawn entirely by hand. Less technical showmanship, far more character. A look back at a choice that changed everything for the game.
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Scrolling the STe without breaking a sweat
I wanted scenery that slides pixel by pixel, without stutter or flicker. Rather than redrawing everything frame by frame, I let the STe do the work itself.
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The level takes shape: a world bigger than the screen
How I built scenery out of reusable tiles, then made the world scroll so it follows the player. The moment the game stops being a single fixed screen and becomes a real level to explore.
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Pulling the engine back out of the drawer: a character moving at 50 frames per second
First public milestone of the revival: I get the old engine skeleton standing straight again and finally have a character moving perfectly smoothly on the Atari STe.
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Before the first pixel: the engine I've been dragging around for years
Lore of the Ember isn't a project that started from zero. It's the culmination of an old STe engine I have restarted more times than I can count, and of a platformer prototype I never finished. Here is why I'm picking it up again, and this time for good.
Frequently asked questions
What machines does Lore of the Ember run on?
Three of them: the Atari ST (STe, STf and Mega STe), the Sega Megadrive (Genesis) and the Commodore Amiga. The Atari is the original and the most advanced version; the other two follow. Each version has its own page: Atari ST, Megadrive, Amiga.
Why three machines rather than one?
Because the game was made for those years, and three machines mattered back then. The Atari ST is where the game was born and the one that decides everything: whatever fits there fits everywhere else. So the Megadrive and the Amiga do not get a watered-down version, they get the same game plus whatever their machine can do better.
Are the three versions identical?
The world, the story and the mechanics are the same everywhere. What changes is what each machine allows on top: the Megadrive shows far more colourful scenery, for instance. No version is held back to look like the others.
What is "grid corruption"?
It's the game's signature mechanic: a plague contaminates the tiles of the map in real time. The playfield itself becomes an enemy, one that keeps evolving even when the player stands still. The player can clear areas with the lantern, which grants a short local immunity.
What is the story pitch?
Auvergne, 1347, the Black Plague. A knight named Alaric wakes covered in blood that isn't his own, with no memory. Beside him, a lantern holds a presence, and a promise he has forgotten. He has to reach the castle of Morteveille before dawn, across five gothic acts.
Where can I follow the project?
The devlog publishes an article at every notable step, and it filters by machine. The homepage also shows progress bars, one set per machine. You can also sign up to the newsletter to get the important announcements by email.