Wednesday 23 December 2015

Atom Republic shuts up shop for Xmas.

It's that time of the year again, the Festive Season is upon us. The Atom Republic team have emerge from their work and have returned to the warm embrace of their family and friends. 

Over this holiday, our development and support staff will be on vacation from 1pm GMT on Wednesday 23rd December 2015 until 10am GMT on Monday 4th January 2016.

Social networks


During this time, we will not be on hand to reply to your support queries via our social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc.), so now you’ll know where we’ll be instead!

Forums


We also won’t be maintaining an active forum presence during this holiday period on the Atom Universe forums. You’re on your own kids, please don’t leave it too messy when we come to clear up after you in the New Year!

Here’s to an awesome 2016!


In 2015, we managed to raise an whooping £25,073 on Kickstarter and we also managed to bring the Alpha version to Steam and PS4, allowing our backers to help us track down all those pesky bugs.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported Atom Universe and Atom Republic throughout 2015. Thanks to you for your patience and continued positivity, we all remain extremely passionate about Atom Universe and are looking forward to bringing this experience to everyone!

In 2016, our desire is to bring Atom Universe into the Early Access phase of the development and continue working with our community making Atom Universe an enjoyable experience for everyone. And as always we’ll be sharing more details and keeping you up to speed on the development process throughout 2016.

So, that’s all for 2015. Here’s to 2016! We hope everyone has a great holiday and we’ll look forward to bringing more exciting news in the New Year! 

Friday 18 December 2015

Atom Universe Devblog - Part 1

Hey Atomz,

Welcome to Atom Republic’s first ever development diary! Over the course this series we’ll be aiming to keep communication with the community open and to able to discuss the design of Atom Universe as we move forward. We’re not necessarily going to be using this series to announce big flashy feature each time, but we’ll be aiming to keep you informed as much as possible.

Now, earlier this week we shared a picture of our Designer, Luke working on something mysterious across our social media channels and we had a great response from the community sharing their thoughts about what Luke was working on (hyper sonic rollercoasters, bowling alley, and some Jedi stuff).

Earlier today, we managed to pull Luke away from his work to find out exactly what he was working on;

“Recently, I have been focused on implementing the new bowling game into Atom Universe. The first step in this process was to create a game framework that allows us to create games externally from the main Atom Universe world. At first, this may not seem so important, but as a developer this is invaluable as it means we can spend more time in the future focused on creating content without having to worry about the specifics of implementing it.”

“Once the framework was completed I moved on to the bowling project. The first task was to add a little more polish to the game and to remove the snapping of the camera between different states of the game by replacing them with smooth interpolated transitions between these states. Next up was removing all 2D UI elements from the game and replacing them with interactive 3D objects that are projected in the games world space. For example the execution meter, which controls the power and accuracy of your throw is now projected onto the bowling lane itself instead of taking up unnecessary space on the screen.”

“Previously, the bowling alley has gone through 2 iterations. The first was initially the prototype and involved creating the core game loop and the basic mechanics that were required to make the game function, at this point the user had the ability to play a basic 10 frames of bowling with one ball.”

Bowling Alley - Work In Progress


“The second iteration involved a little more polish. At this stage we started to add some of the UI to the game and added a ball selection stage. This allowed the user to select different types of bowling balls with a variation of statistics and skins to change the way the game plays and feels. An interactive scoreboard was also introduced to add a little more dynamism to the game and allowed the user to track their score.”

Friday 11 December 2015

New Atom Universe Update and Community Q&A Recap

Good evening Atomz,

The weekend is finally here and it’s been quite the week here at Atom Republic, the team have been hard at work getting the v0.06.410 patch ready for PS4 and Steam. Yesterday, our CEO Tanguy Dewavrin also took some time out of his busy schedule to take part within Q&A session with the community on the Atom Universe forums.


v0.06.410 Patch


We’re happy to announce that the latest patch will be live on Steam today, the patch has also been submitted to Sony and we’re hoping that we’ll be able to make live on the PS4 over the weekend (keep an eye out on our Facebook page, we’ll be making an announcement the second it when goes live).

Customization of avatar colours for dress and highlight


Patch Notes:


  • Improved text chat 
  • List of online players in The Hub 
  • Customization of avatar colours for dress and highlight 
  • Fixed the ferris wheel (carriages no longer appear in the centre of the ferris wheel)

Known Issues


  • Inverted controls on the virtual keyboards (X closes chat, O inputs text) 
  • Missing exit triggers in Crow Bots (Use the option button (PS4) & ESC (PC) to exit Crow bots to The Hub) 
  • Collision barriers anomaly outside of Crow Bots (we're currently investigating)

Q&A With Tanguy


Yesterday, our CEO Tanguy Dewavrin took to the Atom Universe forums to take part within an community Q&A session. Over the course of an hour, Tanguy managed to answer a handful of your questions:

Q: Will pc players get new additions (clothes, spaces, etc.) before ps4 players?  And if so, how long before ps4 players have access to the same stuff? - Lionhrt41

A: We will submit content at the same time, and will try and release at the same time. But realistically, we can push content a lot quicker on PC. - Tanguy


Q: The PlayStation Home "fam's" that used to use app's to mod the servers that used to freeze users on PlayStation Home, Sniff for codes, & bully/harass other users, This has been big topics not only in the Atom Universe community on the PS4 - Ransom_Stark


A: We take cyber-bullying very seriously. We will do everything in our power to prevent it. - Tanguy


You will be able to find the full Q&A session here. We would like to thank everyone who took the time out and posted their questions and took part within the Q&A. 


Monday 7 December 2015

Q&A with Tanguy Dewavrin



Hello everyone, Tanguy here! We’re sure you’re curious to know we’ve been up to, so its Q&A time!

Wondering what we’ve been working on, what’s down the line or what I’ve had for lunch? Post your questions here and let’s have blast! I’ll be coming on to the Atom Universe forums this Thursday 10th December to answer as many of your questions as possible about the development of Atom Universe and about going-ons around the Atom Republic studio. 

Looking forward to your questions and see you all on Thursday!