Dev Blog

Wow, it's been a while since we had a blog update. There have been minor updates on Discord, and if you haven't joined that yet, you really should. That's the best way to stay in touch. If that isn't your speed, consider joining the newsletter mailing list. I will start to send newsletters once a new release is ready for you to check out.

So, what's new and what's been going on? I'm here to share this with you! Let's dive in.

Shift in Focus

It's been a while since the last patch. Not because the game was done, far from it, but because the updates we were pushing were more like dressed-up tech demos than real progress toward a finished game. I got caught in a loop of making cool things for alpha testers. Stuff that looked good in the moment but didn't move the project forward. A lot of time went into short-term content. Not into building the actual game. So I decided to stopped shipping patches. And shifted my focus to the finish line.

The alpha was always meant to be playable, just not permanent. It taught me a lot. Watching players explore, struggle, break things, and have fun. Those sessions were full of useful insight. I saw how players played the game. What confused them, what got skipped, what made them smile, what made them complain. It helped shape the game's priorities. But I realized I couldn't keep designing around the alpha forever. It was time to stop chasing the monthly release and start building something whole. No more placeholder systems. No more one-off events, items or areas. 

This shift came after months of rethinking everything, what kind of game I actually wanted to make, what would make it good, and what just didn't belong anymore. It wasn't just about cutting features. It was about stepping back and being honest about what was working, what wasn't, and what needed to change. Some things stayed. A lot didn't. The systems that survived were the ones that fit the new shape of the game. The rest got rebuilt from scratch or left behind. What's in place now isn't just patched-together ideas. It's a clearer plan. A stronger focus. Something I'm excited to play.

Designing as an MMO First

For years, the project tried to blend a single-player JRPG with an online shell. That tug-of-war showed up everywhere: cutscenes you had to sit through, story beats that only made sense if you played alone, and mechanics that worked against grouping.

I stopped forcing it.

Now, every decision starts with one question: Does this make a better MMO? If the answer is no, it's gone. Cutscene after cutscenes were the first casualty. Most of you skipped them anyway, and I never blamed you. Being interrupted every 5 steps by Ravril broke momentum. No more walls of dialogue. No more spamming space to skip the messages.

The world handles the storytelling now. Environmental clues, gossiping NPCs, themed monsters,  quest objectives into new lands, and hidden treasures will tell the story. The world is the main character. 

Opening the World

Now with the world center stage, it means exploration is going to be a priority.

Instead of locking players into just the first zone, the Domhan Forest, a pretty linear area, why not build the game with the whole kingdom in mind. That means deserts, frozen coasts, haunted woods, swamps, farmlands, elven forests, mountain passes and mysterious catacombs. All the biomes that were originally planned for "later" are now part of the planned release.

No more holding back the good stuff.

Reusable tilesets make it possible to map fast without losing the hand-crafted feel from the alpha. Every 10 to 15 tiles, you'll run into something. A hidden chest. A strange little side quest. An NPC with a throwaway line that accidentally leads you to a new corner of the world. That level of detail is still here, it's just scaled up.

Exploration has always been a core of Aether Story. Now the world finally reflects that.

Playable Races and Campaigns

With more space to work with, the races finally get the attention they deserve.

Each one begins in its own homeland, with its own tone, culture, and problems. You'll uncover a piece of history unique to your people. And early on, you'll meet an antagonist and be immersed into a conflict and campaign. All of which leads to a final showdown in a unique dungeon for each race.

These dungeons aren't locked off behind story progression. Friends on different paths can still team up, allowing everyone to get loot and seek help from their allies. No gating. Just good party synergy.

The idea of a main story that is the same for every character, that drives which key locations you to go to in a rather linear fashion is no more. This will improve replayability, and new ways of experiencing the world from the perspective of the different playable races.

System Overhaul

With the game's world and story getting an overhaul it was only natural to look at the tech side of things.

The original engine was built with Adobe AIR and Starling. I loved the tech back when Flash still had a pulse. But ActionScript never got modern features like async/await, which made the asynchronous nature of networked logic turn into callback-hell, unmanagable and hard to maintain. On top of that, I was dealing with a buggy code-base that was a pain to debug and build new features on top of. And then there's the runtime itself. Adobe AIR limited performance, audio playback was a pain, and the whole stack came with the constant risk of becoming obsolete overnight.

I have felt that I needed to move on past Adobe AIR for years, but kept kicking the can down the road. The sunken cost fallacy is real, but it's not a good enough reason to stay stuck. Time to move on.

After spending time with Unity, Godot, Haxe, and plain HTML5/Canvas, the clear winner ended up being the HTML5 Canvas approach. I found a strong rendering framework called PIXI.js that works similar enough to Starling, for minimal porting pains.

This rewrite isn't just about using a better language or cleaner tools. It opens the door to real improvements across the board.

• Pixel-based movement
• Taller entities (mounts are finally possible)
• Higher resolution options
• Smooth 60+ FPS
• Playable in the browser without any downloads.
• Proper tile layering for bridges and cliffs
• Cleaner dev tooling out of the gate
• Party size rises from 3 members to 4.
• New battle design is on the whiteboard.
• World bosses that need multiple parties are on the whiteboard.
• Professions rebuilt from the ground up for depth and synergy.
• Skills and talent trees for maximum replayability.
• Grid-based, drag-and-drop inventory replaces the old scrolling table list.  
• Server architecture and internal tools are under review for improved creation pipelines.

So many awesome things are being reviewed and every aspect of the game's platform is being looked at. Not everything will be improved, but this is the time to make radical changes, while everything is in this malleable state.

Schedule and Reality Check

Okay, so listing everything out and looking at it all here big-picture, its obvious that things have gotten a bit out of hand. Realistically I need to scale it back so we get something to play sooner than later.

Everyone on the project works part-time, including myself. I work a full-time job now, no longer able to devote all my free time to Aether Story. But this doesn't mean the project is cancelled or in hiatus. Far from it. I'm bringing in contractors when budget allows, including a few familiar faces from the dev team that worked on the Alpha, but also new faces. We target monthly milestones and usually hit them. The goal was to get a new playable tech demo out for you all by the end of this summer. I'm not sure if we are going to be able to hit that at the current rate. I'd rather be honest about that now than make hollow promises.

As for me Dev Streaming, I disappeared while the soul-searching took over my mind. I didn't feel comfortable streaming brainstorming sessions, and wanted to figure out the scope and ideas on my own.  But now that the ideas are solidified its time to start sharing them. This includes returning to streaming. I'd love to return to streaming with a strict 2 or 3 hour dev stream bi-weekly or once a month. I'll announce it when I know the schedule and I know I can stick to it. No promises till it's real.

Looking Ahead

• Finish the engine port of rendering.
• Flesh out the core gameplay loops (quest, battle, explore)
• Implement the new UI and menu systems.
• Flesh out the starter zones for every race.
• Lock down the first wave of professions and talent trees.
• Test a set of dungeons and boss mechanics.
• Keep hiring smart people so momentum holds.

Drop into the Discord if you want daily chatter, playtest announcements, or a place to toss ideas at the wall. See you there.