Beginning
Everything started on 13th of March 2020 when COVID-19 appeared in my country. Schools started to work online, which meant that I will have more time for making games and software :).
At first I started to learn deep and advanced game development and created few small games of which I published only two of them. Also, I started laerning Ethical Hacking and Security. In this time, I have got rights from artists to use some assets that I found on the internet for commercial purposes.
After few months, somewhere in summer 2020, I made an idea for serverless multiplayer and I decided that I will made one game with that idea.
I am not fan of mutliplayer games, so I decided that I will made singleplayer mode as well.
Also, I concluded that the time for small games passed and it is time to make something big, that users will be able to play for months, years....
First few lines of code.
So, I grab, pice of paper and pen and start making full game idea. At first I was inspired by Dark Souls 2 and Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion, but, also, I figure out that it is unrealistic for me to make 3D game on my own and even with the team it would take me couple of years to make it and that is too big step for me right now, so I said that it is going to be 2D. Most of assets that I have got rights on, were made for platformer perspective, not top down, so I say that it is going to be from platformer perspective and at this point I kind of knew where I am going, so I started making it.. Also, I made one secret mechanics idea, that I hope is awesome and that people will like it.
I imagine it being the game with a lot of modes and stuff to do and this was its first description:
"Ok, Aeternum is a huge 2D adventure with survival mechanics, deep story and multiplayer mode game. It is placed in medieval and it will be diffrent then any other 2D game. The story is that young knight is lost in cursed lands and just want to survive, but after that the story will develop based on players choice. There are story, adventure, survival, dungeons, endless runner and endless jumper mode and there is a multiplayer mode.
I have made a couple of mechanics, art and design and endless runner and endless jumper with full menu system and first few story steps, but I realised that summer will end soon and I will have less time for making it, so I said that I need someone to help me with it.
Reflection of Detection is established.
I posted offer in Discord Game Development Communitys and I have got a few people at the beginning of October.
Also, in September, I did not work much on Aeternum, I spend studying and finding team members.
After I got a few of them, I realised that this is actually going to be big game and I started seriously working on it.
Until then, I had a few short modes done, like endless runner and endless jumper, but I said, that we are not going to have a 100 modes in one game, because that is stupid, we are going to have only 1 game mode and everything in it - Story (Break the Cycle) Mode is born. I decided that it is not going to be story that we are going to tell players, it is going to be story that players will tell themselfs. There are going to be muli possible paths with 6 different endings and everything will be based on players choice.
Over full October and almost November, I was only making good path in story and beginning in evil path and, of course, studying for school, noting more.
Also, with our CSW (Chief Story Writer) I made a few changes to beginning of story, so some of the stuff need to be remade.
With all of the people that I got in team, I decided that we are going to start calling ourselfs game development team, it is not company, just team for now and and we will see what will future bring.
I made up the name: "Reflection of Detection", because I wanted something that sounds serious and artistic at the same time.
Also I made our logo in Krita.
What now?
Somewhere in November, I realised that in one mode, story, we will have a lot of mechanics and player will have a whole lot of stuff to do. I said that game is NOT going to be like WoW in 2D and it is NOT going to have a lot of modes. So I seperated everything into two modes - Survival (Age of Unrest) and Story (Break the Cycle).
In story, is going to be only story and world exploration noting too complex and in survival I moved everything that makes a game complex with a lot of stuff to do, so if players are interested in story of the world and exploration, they can play story mode and if they are interested in survaving, fighting in huge fights, building their own world and finishing small side quests - they can play survival mode. There was a problem - make this two mods to be 1 game. So this is a solution: they are going to be in the same world with same characters, same enemies, same resourses, same weapones, same armor just a little different in mechanics and some of same NPCs. Also 50% of all mechanics are same in story and survival mode. Differences: Survival mechanics, building stuffs and maybe combat system. It is a little hard to explain, but you will see it when we publish the game.
From than until now, I had a lot of stuff to do for school, but I worked on Aeternum in all of my free time, but now I am really excited, because from 21th. December, I will be able to work on Aeternum from 8-10 hours per day, because then schools wont work until February, so my plan is to work on it all day and somewhere in January to publish a official beta.
All of the design and planing how this game will look was done in November and now we have very very clear picture where we are going, so at the begining of January, I am going to send close beta just to team members and some close friends and if everything went great, at the end of January open beta will be live.
Also, during this time, some of the members left the team and some new joined, so now there are 7 people in Reflection of Detection, including me and soon it will be 8, because we are getting new game devs every month and when we publish 1.0 version of the game I am predicting that there will be at least 10 members in Reflection of Detection. And I want to thank Jonathan Martin for being the most loyal mamber.
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