Unity remake is chugging along. It's a proving to be very difficult. Harder than making it from scratch. We're plugging along. Lost half of the team, so we're moving a lot slower than we planned.

Here is the update I posted on kick-starter than explained things in a bit more detail (please excuse non-steam- relevant info) :


First things first is I've recently found out that some of you did not receive your rewards in the mail.

If you didn't please email me and let me know so I can fix this promptly.

So the few people who worked on Two Brothers originally jumped ship so it's now just me, Andrew, and Ian working on remaking it in Unity.

It's tough as we had to learn an entirely new program and work flow, so I want to sincerely apologize for how long it's taking.

We are actively working on the game but it's honestly harder to remake than it was to make the first time as now we are glaring aware of all the flaws.

Additional we have to change some of the content drastically as former team members have requested their content removed from the game.

But that's the reality of it and we soldier on.

I'm sorry if you were disappointed with the original project. I'm sorry if it didn't live up to your expectations.

It was our first game and we are proud of our effort despite the obvious bugs and problems it has. I'm rethinking our approach to the whole thing to try and streamline it. (No, not another kickstarter)

I'd like to address the fact that we are also working on another game, YIIK. I know some people wonder why we aren't devoting full time to TB, but the truth is we have bills to pay and a broken game doesn't pay them. So we took on work so that we wouldn't starve.

We are working on the Unity remake, we are just terrible at keeping people up to date. The issue with making a kickstarter game is there is great reward to everyone involved, you, and me.

If I mess up, I'm stuck working on something forever until everyone is happy because you paid to have it made. You stuck with a game you aren't happy with and a developer who is learning and moving slowly on a complete 100% remake.

Sadly mmf2 doesn't port easily to unity so it has to be a remake.

That's the truth and where we stand. I'm sorry for keeping you waiting and if I let you down.

Hey guys.
To prepare for the second life of Two Brothers, we're planning on taking the game down from being purchasable for a bit.

So, if it vanishes from the store page, and you're looking for it, know that it's because we're preparing to move forward with some serious changes.
-Ackk

Mac, Linux, PC, Beta/demo for Chromphore Coming in July.
Info to follow this month!
<3

Update: Hey guys! Small little delay on the demo, but should be up in a little bit. I'll likely have to host the demo through our website and put a link up for download... can't quite figure out how to do it through stream. But I'll be in touch with an update on that soon!

Going to start posting a devlog soon to www.ackkstudios.wordpress.com

Hey guys!

Gearing up for releasing the beta I wanted to talk a bit about what changed on a more technical level.

I guess I'll just jump right in!

The first thing is the game now supports 16:9 aspect ratio natively. To get this to work well we had to reformat some of the games graphics. Often things that you haven't gotten to yet are hidden just out of view in our previous level layouts.

During the process of reformatting the levels we made the choice to build the games world on a grid, much like most other pixel art games.

As you might see, this results in the areas looking a lot cleaner. This always bothered me during development, but when I admitted it to myself I was too far along to do anything about it in MMF2.

How does this change control?

If you think about pokemon, when you press the directional pad Red or Blue walks one grid space over in the direction you selected.

Two Brothers isn't that sort of game though. For action to work, you need a bit more finesse. In the Multi Media Fusion 2 build of Two Brothers Roy moved by the pixel. This ended up feeling a bit messy, and a tad inauthentic.

So in the unity version of the game Roy now moves on quarter grids, much like how Link moved in Zelda A Link to the Past.

I’ll post a video of this in action once youtube finishes processing.

—

Things to make playing better:
There will now be access to volume controls at any moment in the game.
You can also change control schemes on the fly.
Thankfully this was much easier to handle now that we’re using Unity. MMF2 really isn’t ideal for a game of this size. LESSON LEARNED!

—
Where we are now:
We’re about two thirds away from completing the new enemy AI. There were 3 basic enemy movement styles in Two Brothers, and now there will be 10+

Each one requires more strategy, and act differently depending on the weapon you are using.

We’re also redesigning the first dungeon in the game. Adding more action elements. We’ve done this to a few of the other dungeons. We worked in reverse.

We’re also overhauling the heroes of color quest to flesh out the story there, as well as to add bosses to the end of each quest.
—

We’ll be posting more info about when this all comes out shortly! :)

Hey guys!

So around the end of January to the middle of February I hope to upload a build of Chromophore (what I'm calling the Unity version of Two Brothers) onto Steam. It will be a Mac Version, a Linux version, and the PC version.

It's not entirely done, so there will still be some issues, and some areas will have to be accessed via a level selector.

After months of hearing the suggestion to just upload what I'm working on as I do it so I can get proper feedback, it finally got into my thick skull to do so.

First week I may put up the engine in the form of a sandbox area, just to get some feedback on the core new engine. Show people how it's shaping up. A week or less after upload larger portions of the game.

I've been doing testing privately and the feedback has been good. I won't talk it up, because that's just stupid.

So, that's the plan. I'll keep you guys updated.
Also going to start a devlog/change log so you can see which advice I'm taking from feedback as I do it etc.

Love
-Ackk

Hey guys!

Here is the dealio with the Mac/Linux/Wii U release. When I developed Two Brothers I did it on the weekends and I worked my butt off making it the best game it could be... and it some regards people love it, in other aspects it fell short in my own expectations due to MY time constraints of developing weekends and night time. Moon Lighting as a game developer is very difficult, and I hadn't imagined anyone would even back Two Brothers!! I am really happy you all did, and I am so grateful.

I made Two Brothers inside of Multimedia Fusion 2... and to be quite honest, it's a terribly buggy program... and this lead to all the issues Two Brothers has in terms of glitches on some machines.

The original plan was to port to Mac and Linux using Anaconda. Which is a great method, but it feels terrible for a game the size of Two Brothers. Some playthroughs can take 20 or so hours, and it's just too much for that engine to handle... so it runs, but it's really slow and just not worth your time.

so here is what I had to do...

Since january I've been remaking the engine inside of Unity and it feels LOADS better. I ported/redesigned the more boring dungeons/ with Tiled and the game is loads more polished. I also added leveling up and other RPG elements that some people desired in the original release.

Because Unity can build to every platform porting the game will be REALLY easy.

Also the engine is mostly done and now I just need to get all the levels in and redo the cutscenes in Unity, which wont take too long since all the dialogue is written and the animations are all there.

It should only be a few more months and will hopefully be out before the end of the fall!!!

A friend of mine is taking over the process of getting the physical rewards out for me and they should go out this month (the ones that still haven't gone out. We had shipped out quite a few but then realized the company who filled our order didn't send the proper amounts and they made our lives hell in making more without us paying them again... but that's a story for another time)

Anyway, you've probably seen that I am working on another game called Y2K.

I want everyone to know that Chromophore release takes priority for ME, personally. I started Two Brothers and I will FINISH IT the way everyone will love it.

So here is the deal with Y2K... Some people (who will go unnamed for a bit) liked my work enough to publish/fund the development of a new game... and that game is Y2K. I was able to leave my terrible animation gig that was 2 hours away from my house, work closer to home, and devote all of my time to game development. Everyone who worked on Two Brothers also got to leave their jobs and they are working on Y2K full time, whereas I am splitting my time between Two Brothers and Y2K.

This was a deal I HAD to take as my mother is extremely ill and me being 2 hours away from her was difficult for her, and terrible for my own mental health... so now I am able to live my dream.

Anyway Chromophore is the updated version of Two Brothers... changed the name because everyone confused it with Brothers:Tale of Two Sons for some reason. Anyway, obviously it's free for everyone who backed us as an update or buys it on steam BEFORE the update comes out... even then the price point will remain the same.


Thanks for your extreme patience and kindness with my Mom and my situation BTW. I am so thankful for everyones outreach and support! Can't wait to get an even better version of the game in to your hands soon!!!

-Brian

Hey guys!
Quick update on life. My moms treatment is continuing as planned so thanks a lot for all the emails asking how she is doing! She is fighting her best and I am hopeful. Thank you all for your kind words.

So sadly due to the poor nature of the MMF2 engine I used to craft Two Brothers there are a variety of issues on certain hardware.

I've been programming the game from the ground up with a new engine and it plays like a dream. I will be releasing this update for free (obviously) as soon as possible.

I also changed somethings in the engine to make the game better after I read some criticism aside from the glitches in the initial launch. Enemies will be much smarter, the game will have a wide screen option without stretching and some graphic updates have been made from things that always bothered me with the animations. There is no longer the Z sorting issues so no one will stand on anyone else... so that's another fix...

I'm sorry I disappeared! More updates coming soon. I'll also post a trailer that someone cut of the new version and release info next month.

The Linux and Mac versions will come along with this update. Hopefully only a few more weeks til I put this up!

For the tech minded up of you here are some details of what we did. We reprogrammed the engine from the ground up in Unity and imported the maps. So besides remaking the cut-scenes and the engine it wasn't TOO much work so it's been a very realistic task.

<3 - Brian

I must apologize once again for the delay of both Mac/Linux version of Two Brothers!


My mother recently was diagnosed with very aggressive cancer and it has sadly put everything on hold. I am working as much as I can through all the confusion and strife but it's delayed me again. I've brought in a friend to help me out so I hope to get everything out within the next few weeks.

About the Mac/Linux/Console builds we've been polishing the game and fixing things up according to reviews and user feedback to ensure the game is awesome. Of course we'll patch the PC version to match... we're making some significant improvements so it's taking a bit longer than we had hoped, especially with my mothers illness.

I'll keep everyone up to date more frequently now too. I've finally got my head on straight and I'm ready to keep working.

Thank you all for your patients !

-Brian

Hey guys!
We just updated Two Brothers to have various options for how large the game is displayed on your monitor.

The game will no longer stretch and distort as it did on some graphics cards in the past.

You can try the various options at any time by pressing the keys 1-9 on your keyboard! (Pressing 0 will bring you back to Windowed mode)

We're working on improving the game continuously. Future updates will include improved combat, improved hit detection, improved controller support and new side quests!

Thank you all!