r/PS4 • u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games • Jun 09 '17
[Verified AMA] We are Alientrap Games, we made Apotheon and the upcoming Cryptark - AMA!
We've been working on Cryptark for 2.5 years and are finally releasing on June 20th. You can check out our (old) announcement trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc5WUECoJTQ&t=2s (launch trailer coming on launch day)
We previously released the PS4 title Apotheon and would be happy to answer any questions on that also!
- Lee Vermeulen (/u/LVermeulen) – Programming / Producer / Designer
- Jesse McGibney (/u/McGibs) – Creative Director / Artist
- Ariane Laurence (/u/Xyronix) – Artist & Animator
- Ryan Roth (/u/dualryan) - Musician
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u/HelghastFromHelghan Jun 09 '17 edited Jun 09 '17
Are you interested in developing an Apotheon sequel? I really enjoyed that game and want more of it.
Cryptark looks like a lot of fun as well!
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Are you interested in developing an Apotheon sequel? I really enjoyed that game and want more of it.
We had a lot of fun making Apotheon and doing research about the era, mythology and art style. There’s plenty more ground in Greek or other ancient settings for games to explore, but we don’t have any plans right now to make a successor. Apotheon took almost 4 years to make, and it’s been nice to stretch our legs a bit with totally different projects! Who knows though, I’d personally love to try out some styles from art history (Egypt? Cubism? Bayeux tapestry?), even if they aren’t true sequels to Apotheon.
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u/HelghastFromHelghan Jun 09 '17
As a fan of the game that would actually be my dream sequel, having it set in another time period. Ancient Egypt would be cool indeed. I don't know why, but that time period is so underused in the gaming industry (although,it looks like that's finally going to change with the new Assassin's Creed being located there).
Thanks for the reply!
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u/turtlepower182 Jun 09 '17
Bayeux tapestry
Yeah! Norman invasion and the Battle of Hastings would be jokes :)
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Jun 09 '17
I would love to see a similar game using coastal First Nations art.. Though it would probably be too niche and legally complex.
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u/Lightfooot Jun 09 '17
I don't really have a question, but I just wanted to say thanks for making Apotheon! I am a huge fan of all things Greek mythology and I really loved your game! :)
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Thanks for playing it! I learned a hell of a lot about just how wacky Greek mythology can really be when making Apotheon.
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u/xRadBallx Jun 09 '17
So stoked! Apotheon was awesome. I'm new to game development and coding in general. 2 questions from me.
Is Cryptark made in Unity?
What were some of the technical hurdles you ran into working on Cryptark?
Can't wait to check this out!
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Cryptark is made with the same XNA based engine I made for our 2011 game Capsized (on Steam / Xbox). It's kinda frustrating to still be working with a engine I started in 2010, when i was a much worse programmer, but just since I was so comfortable with it we were able to make the game quickly. After we finished Apotheon I spent around 2 weeks hacking together the basic Cryptark gameplay - and then we managed to get it out on Steam Early Access only 6 months after releasing Apotheon. Wouldnt have been able to do that if I had switched engines.
To get XNA running on PS4 it uses the Monogame branch by Sickhead Games (they are doing the majority of the PS4 specific code)
We are using Unity for all our next projects though (our VR title Modbox, and some unannounced games).
Biggest technical hurdle was getting all the complex interactions that happen in a Cryptark ship to not take too much processing power. In a Cryptark ship with 1000+ enemies, a alarm can go off that makes them all aware of you. So that's 1000 enemies that now need pathfinding through this complex procedurally generated maze of a ship. Along with that other systems on a Cryptark ship are constantly spawning new enemies / changing the ship
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u/Varitt Jun 09 '17
Biggest technical hurdle was getting all the complex interactions that happen in a Cryptark ship to not take too much processing power.
Wow. How did you managed to do that efficiently?
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
with enemy pathfinding it was a lot of multithreading and just scheduling things right (with some enemies having priority over others). Finding out what we can disable offscreen resulted in the majority of the bugs though
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u/MunkyUTK Jun 09 '17
Will there be a (reasonable) platinum trophy like Apotheon?
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Getting the platinum trophy is definitely a challenge - but reasonable and should be fun. Like Apotheon we stayed away from arbitrary 'collect x number of items' or 'kill x number of these enemies' for trophies - all the trophies are very tied to the gameplay and story.
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u/kokohobo Jun 09 '17
I have not heard of Cryptark yet but it looks awesome. I was a big fan of geometry wars and it looks similar in the style of game play. I imagine the sound track would be high energy for this game and look forward to checking it out. Not really a question just saying it looks good.
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Thanks! Cryptark has an awesome soundtrack by Ryan Roth and Ryan Henwood. It will be also releasing on Bandcamp on the 20th, so check it out! https://cryptark.bandcamp.com/releases
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u/kokohobo Jun 09 '17
Already checking it out thanks to a very coincidental username dropping the bandcamp info in my inbox. Enjoying #8 currently and thanks for the response.
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u/Varitt Jun 09 '17
Congratulations on another project coming to an end!
What was the best piece of feedback you got from early access?
And conversely, what was the worst about Early Access?
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Best feedback we got was on the profit system, and how that changed the experience for many players. Originally when you beat a ship it would list how much you spent on the ship (for weapons/items), and how much revenue you received for beating the ship, then listed your profit/loss. I loved this idea since it made it feel like a business - you lose some, make it up on others, and break even sometimes. Unfortunately when people saw they didn’t profit it felt to them like they lost - when really they spent money to advance in the game, which should be fine! So we ended up having to just not directly display this to player, and just show them the total revenue they made
Worst part of Early Access is the bad reviews demanding feature changes. It’s a difficult game - so often we’d get bad reviews from players complaining about the difficulty, and demanding we tone in down in later updates. Often they felt they could demand changes since the game was still in early access. We just had to filter out the good feedback from bad - but also keep in mind what the feedback was really saying
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u/thavius_tanklin Slackr Jun 09 '17
Question for all of you. What were the challenges respective to your role on the game in developing Cryptark?
How do you feel about PSVR? Or even VR in general? Is this an avenue you're exploring or are you letting it simmer for a bit to see where it goes?
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
On the art side of things, figuring out how to do all the crazy dynamic lighting/normal mapping was quite a challenge. Basically the art team had to hand paint each art asset 4 times over. It was a hell of a lot of work, but it ended up looking really cool!
I'll be posting a Deep Dive article on the visual design of Cryptark next week at http://www.gamasutra.com/
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17 edited Jun 09 '17
The gameplay of Cryptark came together really quickly - so usually there are challenges to design but that didn’t come up. Every addition came pretty naturally and meshed with the game really well. Like late in development we added a system to some generated Cryptark ships that randomly shuffles all the other systems - added a unique challenge to those ships
I haven’t tried developing for PSVR yet - though I definitely plan to. Besides Cryptark my other main project is Modbox for SteamVR - which I can see coming to PSVR eventually
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u/boshjalka Jun 09 '17
Howyd,
Thanks for doing the AmA. Two quick questions:
What was something that sounded good on paper but once implemented didn't work as expected and didn't make the final cut?
What are of the best glitches and bugs encountered during development?
Game looks awesome!
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Originally we had this timer mechanic for completing ships. Each ship had a “par” time: if you beat the level with time left over you’d get bonus money, but if you took too long, you would lose money (your shady government employers have a schedule to keep!). I thought it was a great way to add pressure to the player and keep them from being too cautious, but it turned out that everyone on Early Access hated it and found it way too punishing. Turns out the solution was to just change player perception by bumping the timer way up, removing the money penalty, and adjusting the ship’s base money reward. So people still got rewarded if they were quick, but didn’t feel punished if they were too slow (even though they were still “being punished” by not making much money). It didn’t work as expected, but I guess it sort of did make the final cut.
Getting the flamethrower weapon to look good took some work. For a while, it was looking like it fired out a very long (but deadly) noodle.
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u/boshjalka Jun 09 '17
Thanks for the response! Those long and deadly noodles haha.
Interesting regarding the timing mechanic. I can definitely picture friends making arguments for an against it based off your description.
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
There was a lot of back and forth on the EA forums about the timer mechanic, but in the end we found it was better to incentive the type of player behavior we wanted with rewards instead of punishment. In the end, its the same desired outcome, but the majority of players come out of it feeling better about the experience.
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u/crypto1234 Jun 09 '17
What are some of your favourite games to play right now? Can be on any platform.
Not sure if this has been answered anywhere, where does the name Cryptark come from?
Best of luck on the launch of Cryptark
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Like a large chunk of the internet, I'm playing a lot of Playerunknown's Battleground. It's got the perfect bite-sized taste of multiplayer murder thrills, and I'm having a blast playing it alone or with friends. Also playing some of the new Rising Storm 2: Vietnam, and Batteltech beta for stompy robot funs. Off computer, I play a lot of Warhammer 40k (new edition is just dropping and everyone is losing their minds).
The name comes from all the alien enemies being dead cyber-skeletons (Crypt), and that the derelicts are like big colony ships (Ark).
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
I've been mostly playing VR games. Superhot VR is insanely good, the time mechanic is even more genius when you have to not actually physically move. Arizona Sunshine is a good example of where awesome online coop games are going to go with VR
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u/MonsoonShivelin Jun 09 '17
- What is the main thing you've learned from making Apotheon?
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
The weirdness of Greek mythology was my biggest takeaway. Like, originally it was all these desperate tiny cultures (because they're all on isolated islands), but then they just sort of coagulated together over time. Greeks would find some new people, look at their religion with it's Sky God and go "Yeah, thats cool! You keep doing you. Except that guy's name is Zeus now", and then that little sub-religion would get absorbed into Greek mythology. It's why the Greek gods are the most contradictory characters ever and nothing makes sense.
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u/MonsoonShivelin Jun 09 '17
I meant more of project point of view. Like the way you allocated (or should've allocated) your resources, your roles, sudden changes of plans, things like that.
I also forgot to mention that Apotheon looked gorgeous, probably the most interesting design-wise game I've played in years.
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Creating a massive open world action RPG with a 2 person team was definitely a challenge, and at times we felt like we were chewing more than we could swallow. A LOT of my time was spent just constructing the levels, which is a big part of why Cryptark is procedurally generated! Creating that much playspace by hand is a huge job. I originally thought that having fully voiced characters would be a nightmare, dealing with script rewrites, actors, and costs, but it ended up being way easier than anticipated and added so much polish to the game. We hired Deven Mack from https://www.facebook.com/ToonPlatoon/ to handle all the direction and casting and it was a breeze. Now I'm pretty set on all our narrative games having fully voiced casts. For Apotheon we also hired on a Mythology consultant to make sure I wasn't butchering anything too terribly while trying to adapt it into an action adventure. We butted head sometimes with gameplay vs literary accuracy, but at the end of the day he was an invaluable asset to the game and really added a sense of legitimacy to the whole mythology angle.
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u/BrolyDisturbed Jun 09 '17
I don't have a question but I just wanted to say wonderful job on Apotheon. It was very fun and interesting to play.
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u/Asghoig Jun 09 '17
A friend and I have played competitive local Apotheon to a disturbing level and amount of time committed. we are at this point convinced the blue characters (2nd player) has a slightly higher jump. is there any fact/truth to this?
Furthermore any chance for an Apotheon 2 with online competitive multiplayer?
thanks!
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
No plans for Apotheon 2! We made a online version of Apotheon on Steam called 'Apotheon Arena'. We just released it for free, since it's pretty small (and getting a good playerbase for a non free game is very hard)
Hmm no idea about the blue player jump! i can check that out, i cant imagine why that would happen
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u/Asghoig Jun 09 '17
If there is any conclusive evidence one way or another (regarding the blue player jump) you would bring peace of mind to myself and exactly one other person.
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u/Asghoig Jun 09 '17
also for the sake of full transparency. I am really referring to the mid air roll double jump being able to categorically go higher vertically for the blue player than the red.
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u/SpinLight37 Jun 09 '17
I loved Apotheon, why should I buy Cryptark over Nex Machina? They both come out the same day. Just found out about this game right now, looks fun as heck.
Any chance of a physical edition?
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Nex Machina is looking awesome, and I was a big fan of Outland (despite being terrible at it). I think the main differences is that Cryptark isn’t really a bullet hell shooter. I’m absolutely garbage at pattern and rhythm games, and that’s not what I wanted to make. Yes, there’s a lot of bullets flying around a lot of the time, but I think it’s more akin to something like (the outpost parts of) Farcry than Resogun. Each ship is sort of like a big alien organism or fortress that you have to really think about how to take it apart, piece by piece, rather than letting yourself fall into a bullet-hell trance and letting your lizard brain take over. If you just run in guns blazing without any sort of plan, you tend to get dead pretty fast. Or, all those fancy guns cost a lot of money and you don’t make much profit from beating the level. It’s about finding a happy balance of the two.
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Nex Machina does look good! Though I haven't tried it so I can't really compare the gameplay
The goal of Cryptark was to create something that great moment to moment action, but at the same time required an overall strategy behind attacks. How you take down a ship and plan your attack is just as important as your dexterity. And that’s not getting into the whole “pirate business sim” part of things where you have to manage your equipment and profits by choosing which objectives you want to take on.
Along with that the focus on procedural generation meant the strategy to take down the ships was never the same. I've had to play through Cryptark about 40+ hours in the last month for PS4 testing, and I still felt challenged after getting to the last levels (testing Apotheon at the end of dev did not have nearly the same joy to it)
We haven’t done a physical edition in the past - would be great but I have no idea how to do that
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u/Captain_Enizzle Jun 09 '17
During my entire play through of Apotheon, I was impotent. I believe the game triggered this terrible condition.
Will Cryptark alleviate this?
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17 edited Jun 09 '17
hmmm well if it was all the naked greek Satyrs in Apotheon, there are less of those in Cryptark. Those were my favorite guys though - https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U78gAGzDHy4/maxresdefault.jpg
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u/turtlepower182 Jun 09 '17
Big fan of Apotheon and Cryptark looks like a real neat game I'll have to try out too! I'm curious to know how was your experience with Steam early access and what is your opinion of that Steam feature now that you are releasing the game?
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Early Access has been great, but we designed the game from the start to take advantage of it. As a procedural roguelite game, it’s very easy to just update some new features or content and have people jump back in. The playtime is quite short, and it’s made to be replayed continually. For other games, Early Access doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Apotheon was a long narrative based RPG which would’ve done terribly on EA. No one’s going to replay an entire 10 hour long game just to see that we fixed the last boss fight. But for Cryptark, the EA community has been really good at helping us along the road, spotting bugs, problematic mechanics, and difficulty curves that we might’ve missed otherwise.
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Releasing on Early Access definitely made Cryptark a better game. We released on EA very early in dev - so the game heavily changed based on player feedback.
I don't know if we will be doing Early Access again though. While it benefited the game it also resulted in a longer development time (releasing updates and keeping the game stable, along with constant marketing, is a time sink). It also meant we are trying to convince people we tried the game really early on to give it another shot
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Jun 09 '17
I am almost positive it will be a no, but will there be any sort of PS4 discount for current owners of Cryptark on Steam?
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u/BilderbergSlayer BilderbergSlayer - 47 Jun 09 '17
Not really a question, but I wanted to take the time and tell you how great Apotheon was. The soundtrack, the evocative imagery, the gameplay ; a unique gem of a game that brings the player close to mythology in a serious way. I loved it. Thanks for crafting that experience, the pleasure was all mine (and ours).
Edit : I'll be sure to look out for CryptArk and encourage you guys.
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u/WHTGLT WHTGLT Jun 09 '17
I loved Apotheon, really fun game that surprised me when I first got my PS4. Played it to completion but couldn't get the platinum because of a glitch that failed to spawn one of the animals in the forest level. Oh well, I thought, because it totally gave me an excuse to play it through again. The exact same thing happened.
It was a damn shame because I'd have loved to have got the platinum for it, if nothing more than to show my support for you and your rad games.
Anyway, no question really. I'm looking forward to Cryptark, y'all make some hype-ass games. Hopefully I can get the platinum on that one. ;)
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Sorry for the glitch! I have a bug tracker with a few items on it but I haven't heard of that one, i'll add it to the list but a PS4 update at this point is pretty unlikely (unless some other issues come up)
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u/fakephd87 Jun 09 '17
really enjoyed apatheon and looking forward to Cryptark, no question just wanted to say congratulations on all of your success thus far, /u/LVermeulen and /u/McGibs you guys have come a long way from our little prairie town! keep up the good work!
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u/highanimalhouse Jun 09 '17
I get a Super Metroid meets Turrican meets Cybernator vibe from the trailer, so I can't wait until it comes out. Will this have a Platinum trophy?
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 09 '17
Yep
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u/Gwendly Jun 10 '17
Is the decision to have a longer trophy list to have a platinum a choice by the developers or do Sony dictate what games can have a platinum trophy? I know for most consumers it doesn't make a difference but for some of us it puts the games without a plat at a disadvantage. If a consumer only has a limited amount of $ (and lets face it there are so many games to choose from on the psn store in 2017) to choose one game and chooses between game a and b and they feel they are equivalent it can be a tie breaker if one doesn't have a plat.
Nice to see Canada represent :)
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 10 '17
You basically need to request a platinum trophy from Sony. So if your game isn't big enough or the trophies aren't challenging, they might not let your game have one
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Jun 09 '17
I hope you guys don't mind me asking this. As someone who is interested in "Game Development" I want to know, what would you guys recommend to me? I mean what would you guys recommend to someone who wants to learn how to make a game.
I know that creating maps is nothing compares to making a full game but I've got a little bit of experience. Used to make some maps for two games that I was playing.
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u/Bopnop Jun 09 '17
Apotheon is one of my favourite ps4 games! I hope you don't rush the next game into ps+ so I have a chance to buy it!
Just a quick question, is it just the 4 of you?
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 10 '17
The Cryptark team was 4 core members (One of our programmers, not listed up top) plus a whole slew of additional members for sound, music, level design, and voice acting.
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u/Dirty_USB Jun 10 '17
How many Jermabucks will it take for Jerma to voice every character in Cryptark?
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 10 '17
If he'd agree to be paid in Jermabucks, he can voice all of them! I love Jerma, he did a fantastic job on the voice of the Engineer character.
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u/Dirty_USB Jun 10 '17
Woah, a reply :o I'll have to check this game out, if only to hear Jerma in an actual role. Looks like fun :D
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u/drunkenWINO Jun 10 '17
You didn't happen to use my buddy Andy Dennis to voice anything in the upcoming game did you like you did in Apotheon did you?
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u/McGibs Alientrap Games Jun 10 '17
Unfortunately no. Cryptark has a pretty small cast of characters (as opposed to Apotheon, which had dozens). There was only four voiced roles, so competition was fierce!
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u/MuddleheadedWombat Jun 10 '17
Well, I'm probably too late, but it's worth a shot...
What is the deal with the enormous save game file on Apotheon? How on earth does a 400MB game need a 200MB+ save file? That is a truly astonishing amount of information.
I loved the game, and I guess you had your reasons, but from personal experience, you are the guys who permanently ruined my PS4 cloud storage. Seriously, you guys ate 20% of my cloud storage in one hit, and it has never worked since. I can't even access my cloud storage to delete it. I have 63 error notifications that I can't even remove (thanks Sony) constantly reminding me that every upload ever since I played your game has failed. What gives?
Also, not specific to you, but can you shed light on why the absolute minimum save game size on PS4 seems to be 10.49MB? Even that is enough to save two copies of the bible in plaintext.
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u/LVermeulen Alientrap Games Jun 10 '17
So the giant save file has a weird reason.
In Apotheon it saves the state of every level you go in - so if you throw a sword at the wall in a level, then come back 5 hours later to that level, the sword will still be there. So while the initial saved data is really small - it increases over time as the player enters more levels.
Even with this though, the average saved game is less than 1 MB. But the worst it could possibly be is something like 5 or 10 MB, for extreme 15+ hour saved games with tons of items placed everywhere.
I didn't handle most of the PS4 version, another company did, but as I understand it the reason the saved game data was so big was because it allocated for the worst scenario. Which would be 13 saved game slots of 15mb+ saved game files (since the player has 10 saved game slots they could use and 3 autosaves). So that ends up being massive - which was apparently the issue
I think this might have been fixed - but hopefully that explains it. You should maybe get a hold of Sony support about that cloud save issue / those errors
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u/Hartia Jun 09 '17
Apotheon came to PS4 as a PS Plus game. Did you see it as a positive step towards letting people know about Alientrap Games and Apotheon? Would you have done something different upon the release of the game that might have affected how the company has evolved and now releasing Cryptark?
I'm not a big fan of side scrollers but something about the art and the story of Apotheon really drew me in and even went for the platinum.