Here is a video presenting an update on the state of development of the Unity rebuild of Eternium, narrated by Josh Quick, Head of Games at Making Fun.
The original Eternium, developed by Dream Primer, is one of the top-rated mobile games ever, with 4.8 stars and millions upon millions of positive reviews. With Dream Primer's support, Making Fun, the original publisher, is now rebuilding Eternium in the latest version of the Unity game engine so it can entertain fans of classic action RPG gameplay for the next decade and more.
A LOT had to happen to get from a blank Unity project to what you see in the video. Progress has been swift, as we have experienced Unity developers who have the original Eternium assets and data to leverage and the Eternium Marmalade C/C++ source code to reference. Still, there is an immense amount to absorb when a new team picks up the work of another studio that has been working diligently for a decade. Not only picking up development, but starting over on a completely new engine/architecture. This is going to take a while! That is why we are also investing time in continuing to update the live version of Eternium. (We’ll have another release out in a few weeks.)
This past month marked our transition from a heavily experimental "pre-production" phase of development into an early production phase. To quantify this a bit, previously most of our efforts were explorations and experiments necessary to figure out how to proceed. Now, we are at 80% of our Engineering time being invested building items necessary for the initial release, heading to 90% shortly, while only about 10% will be experimental.
While Engineering is pushing ahead with production tasks, Art is still experimenting with new ways to create and improve content and player experience before switching gears to new asset production. This includes areas like terrain, visual effects, and the UI.
The team has been working towards a formal "first playable" milestone, which we will complete in early May. Expected features for this deliverable include:
We waited a while to give this first update as we wanted to eliminate most of the technical risk before starting much of a conversation about the new game. Now, we feel confident that we will be able to share progress on a regular basis. With that in mind, you can expect another update along with a video of gameplay of level one in Unity in a couple of weeks… after the next live Eternium release is complete and available on all platforms.
John
The original Eternium, developed by Dream Primer, is one of the top-rated mobile games ever, with 4.8 stars and millions upon millions of positive reviews. With Dream Primer's support, Making Fun, the original publisher, is now rebuilding Eternium in the latest version of the Unity game engine so it can entertain fans of classic action RPG gameplay for the next decade and more.
A LOT had to happen to get from a blank Unity project to what you see in the video. Progress has been swift, as we have experienced Unity developers who have the original Eternium assets and data to leverage and the Eternium Marmalade C/C++ source code to reference. Still, there is an immense amount to absorb when a new team picks up the work of another studio that has been working diligently for a decade. Not only picking up development, but starting over on a completely new engine/architecture. This is going to take a while! That is why we are also investing time in continuing to update the live version of Eternium. (We’ll have another release out in a few weeks.)
This past month marked our transition from a heavily experimental "pre-production" phase of development into an early production phase. To quantify this a bit, previously most of our efforts were explorations and experiments necessary to figure out how to proceed. Now, we are at 80% of our Engineering time being invested building items necessary for the initial release, heading to 90% shortly, while only about 10% will be experimental.
While Engineering is pushing ahead with production tasks, Art is still experimenting with new ways to create and improve content and player experience before switching gears to new asset production. This includes areas like terrain, visual effects, and the UI.
The team has been working towards a formal "first playable" milestone, which we will complete in early May. Expected features for this deliverable include:
- Navigate from Hometown into level 1, complete level 1, enter portal, return to Hometown
- Play with the Mage character including Fireball and Immolate abilities
- Touch / keyboard / mouse controls (gamepad and gestures will be in the next milestone)
- Updated UI for gameplay (while in a level)
- Emphasis on Windows & Mac for internal testing with builds also available on iPhone, iPad, and Android phones and tablets
We waited a while to give this first update as we wanted to eliminate most of the technical risk before starting much of a conversation about the new game. Now, we feel confident that we will be able to share progress on a regular basis. With that in mind, you can expect another update along with a video of gameplay of level one in Unity in a couple of weeks… after the next live Eternium release is complete and available on all platforms.
John
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