Development journal
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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.
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