I know it’s been months and months and months since I posted anything on the blog, but I’d like to basically bring official closure to Atmosphiric as Atmosphir is slowly dwindling away. The death of the Atmosphir community as we know it is already occurring and I am almost 100% positive the game itself will also never be the same again. Why is this happening? Well, the entirety of the Minor Studios Dev Team left the scene a little while after Dave Werner left because of disagreements with MiSt’s investors and parent company; Minor Ventures (abbreviated MiVe). Halsey Minor–the devilish head of Minor Ventures–has a horrid vision for the future of the game revolving solely on money and nothing more. This man, in my own opinion, is not going to improve the game with his ideas; rather, he is going to destroy it.

Atmosphir functioned almost perfectly whilst Dave Werner was the Creative Director of the Minor Studios team. The way Dave saw it, the game was a community-driven project where the love of the players was going to keep the game alive–and it did; it kept the game thriving on one of the greatest game communities one could find anywhere.

Now that Halsey Minor is closing his iron fist on the developers the community is being neglected and mistreated. The way I see it, and many others see it, without a community Atmosphir won’t get any new content. It may get new design content and new clothing for characters but without a thriving community there will be no new levels and no one online having fun in multiplayer. Atmosphir will become stagnant and the only levels to play will be reminders of what the game used to be and indicators of what the game could have (and should have) become.

I’m still sticking around as a moderator until all hope is lost, but that day will surely come soon. I can’t even log in right now because of some obscure site glitch and threads won’t even load when I view the forums as a guest. With a lack of devs at the moment the game is falling apart. Glitches and bugs are becoming more and more prominent and without anyone there to fix them they are affecting more and more people. It’s a sad sight to see–Atmosphir, a game I’ve been so closely involved with for over 3 years is reaching its final days.

It’s been a great ride I’ve had with all of you in the Atmosphir community, I hate to see this happen.

Oh, and one last thing… Go burn in hell Halsey Minor.

Today three new ranged weapons were added to Atmosphir: the Plunderer K-460 (bomb cannon), Berryblaster SW-22 (laser gun), and the AX-70 (laser gun). The Plunderer looks almost like a bazooka and shoots bombs emblazoned with a skull and crossbones that explode on impact; so no more bouncing around! The Berryblaster is a more feminine pink color, but still packs a punch! It shoots pink ring-shaped lasers but does not have any advantage over the default laser gun. Last and certainly not least is the other new laser gun, the AX-70. This gun is probably the most advantageous of the new weapons because it shoots bursts of two red lasers and only depletes a single ammo point for each burst. It is by far my favorite.

Below are pictures of all three new weapons. All pictures were taken by Dave Werner.

Above is the Plunderer K-460: The Pirate Cannon!

Above is the Berryblaster SW-22: The High-Powered Pulse Ring Gun!

Above is the AX-70: The Red Burst Laser Gun!

Dave also hinted that we may be getting animations for our characters tomorrow, so stay tuned!

First off I’d like to apologize for how delayed this blog post is. I recently took a trip to Florida to see my family and I haven’t had very great access to the game itself. I can stay up to date with the community though, so I am moderating the forums as much as I can but I have not been able to write any editorial staff reviews lately.

My life aside, Atmosphir received arguably one of the biggest new features in its history: teleporters. These simple yet amazing devices allow designers to place objects within their levels that can transport players instantly to other portions of a level. Below is a screenshot (courtesy of Dave Werner) of the new teleportation design props.

Like I said in the first paragraph: I’m sorry this is so delayed. Teleporters along with new star shoes that make stars when you walk around a level came in update 0.9.8.2 and Atmoball came in the earlier update 0.9.8. Sorry this is so out of order!

The star shoes sell for 100 Atmos each in the character marketplace and are pretty cool. I don’t like to wear them though because they may give away my position in multiplayer and I like to stay stealth-like. Atmoball is very fun too. I played my first game and won 26-1 I believe. Minor Studios really knows how to make multiplayer modes and I can’t wait to see what they implement next.

Have fun everyone! Stay posted here at Atmosphiric!

Above is a video Dave exported to YouTube. It shows off the features of the upcoming Atmosphir game mode: Atmoball.

Late yesterday Dave announced the new moderators that would be joining our moderator team. There are three:

Boss0Alex [Teams]
Prototype [Support]
KaitouKid [Ideas]

Congratulations you three! It’s going to be great having the extra help in the ideas section and throughout the forums. If you didn’t get picked, don’t be discouraged–it was a tough choice. We had to pick 3 people out of 62 applications.

Also late yesterday, Dave left us some screenshots of an upcoming new game mode in Atmosphir: Atmoball! Below are the two screenshots he showed us in the thread.

As you can see, there are scaled balls that the player is playing with.

Just like the first picture, the character appears to be wearing a numbered jersey.

Very little else was said about the matter, but I’ll keep you guys posted on what does come up.

As promised, I updated the header of the site when I got my Atmos. I tried to keep it as true to the original as possible by taking the picture with almost an identical character and in the same level. The new header also marks the time when I will be much, much more active. As school finally comes to a close, I can sit down and blog more. I have much more free time now as we only have a week or so left in the school year.

My phone broke about a week ago too, and to replace it I ordered a HTC Droid Incredible. I’m using an unlimited data plan with the phone, so with 3G internet on the go I’ll be able to update Atmosphiric whenever anything of importance within the Atmosphir community occurs. So stay posted!

Atmosphir has been in a private beta stage for almost two years now (more like a year and a half). On June 7th that all changed. A week ago the Minor Studios team launched Atmosphir to the public–not as a finished product, but still as a beta. New users have been frequently posting on the forums and the kind members of our community have been welcoming them all.

My private beta shirt, to show off to all the new open beta users.

But I must warn everyone on the forums now: As the community grows, the moderator team will be much stricter. It’s a great deal of work sending out warnings to every person who spams the forums, so temporary bans may become quite common. Now, don’t take my word for it, but the team has been discussing things of this nature and I just thought I would warn all readers. Make sure you behave your best on the forums, because we will not tolerate spamming and/or flaming.

The following is a quote of Dave’s post announcing the next design challenge, Story10. The forum post can be found here.

“The next design challenge is Story10.

If you are an old-school member, you remember Atmosphir before info stickers. These wonderful simple little tools have added much-needed storytelling into the game, and it’s now hard to imagine them not being there. Yes, eventually NPCs and dialogue will take that to the next level, but it’s actually pretty impressive what users are already doing with multi-level adventures, secret messages, hints, and enemy dialogue.

In Story10, we’re looking for the best story-driven level – the only requirement is that you tell a compelling story of some sorts using info stickers, and preferably, the environment and gameplay. Some ideas to get you started:

+ A narrative-based adventure in one of the many worlds of Cirrus
+ A mystery level where info stickers provide clues to solving a bigger crime
+ A treasure hunt where there clues to hidden stashes of treasures
+ A trivia level where you have to know the answers to questions to proceed (pick the right door)
+ Having interesting characters/enemies who talk with you
+ An interactive story you watch from afar, like being in a theater
+ An Atmosphir recreation of a famous book, movie, TV show, video game, or song

Make sure to include [Story10] as one word in the title of your level to enter. The deadline is Thursday, July 1.

As usual, the top 3 levels as voted by the community will win atmos. But instead of a random winner this time, now that we’re live, the designer who has the level with the most number of plays by midnight PST on July 8 will get an Atmosphir tee-shirt – so tell all your friends to play your level!

Good luck!”

That’s it on Atmosphir news! Make sure to subscribe to us on Twitter at @Atmosphiric for all the latest Atmosphir updates and check the site everyday because I’m going to much more active over the summer and hopefully in high school.

Dave just announced today that enemy characters called “Bungees” will be added to the game in an up-and-coming update. He compared them to Goombas (for those who play Mario), saying that they will be less intimidating for younger users and will be much easier to defeat.

New enemies called Bungees will soon be implemented into Atmosphir.

The plan is for these enemies to have customizable skin, so that they fit with the mood of the level. Colors range anywhere from blue to yellow. I personally think these great new enemies will make a wonderful addition to my levels and I can’t wait for them to implemented into Atmosphir.

As usual, the Atmosphir community received an update to the game–excuse me, not an update, but a couple updates. This time Minor Studios released Atmosphir Private BETA v0.8, shortly followed by 0.8.1, 0.8.2, to the point where we have 0.8.4 at the moment. With these updates can a new crystal lamp prop: the predecessor to the firefly lamp. Dave told us in one of his recent posts that it was originally supposed to replace the firefly lamp, but they decided to keep both within the game. Also with the new prop came the ability to scale interactive props, such as beach balls, doors, moving platforms, etc. Not only were there game additions, but there were also forum updates that improved mainly moderating features more than anything else. Normal users may not see some of the changes, but they have sure helped out on the Moderator side of things!

The biggest treat was for new users: A entire new ‘red-carpet’ experience for new players to get them acclimated and accustomed to Atmosphir. I have only seen videos of the feature, but I’m sure it’s much better than what it used to be like.

Yesterday (May 3, 2010) Dave accidentally released a new update to the site, fixing some bugs, creating new bugs, and cleaning up level pages. If you guys get a chance, go check out a level page or two on the website–they look slick and clean now!

In other news: the Castle10 design challenge has been extended to May 9th. I do not believe Dave specified this at all on the forums, but he did tweet about the extension. Make sure to follow him on Twitter!

Aside from that, nothing much has happened in the way of Atmosphir lately, besides Editorial Staff applications. I’ve read all the applications sent in and am still contemplating my choices. Great reviews everyone, you really made it hard to choose!

Atmosphir is constantly changing and new updates containing fresh new features are always being released. The latest version of Atmosphir is 0.7.5 and has been out for a little while now. It contains new features, namely the scaling and free-rotation of all blocks and platforms, minor bug fixes, and a sleek, refurbished marketplace.

Already the community has cranked out some unbelievable levels using just their new ability to scale and free-rotate blocks and platforms. It’s something that the Atmosphir community has done very well of the past two-or-so years: they’ve always made due with what they’ve got. Just a small little feature that Minor Studios may think is minute can cause some of the most drastic level design changes the game has ever seen. Just the last new feature with blocks and platforms has caused some people to create futuristic spaceships, perfectly rounded planets, and magnificent landscapes. It has totally moved Atmosphir out of the area of blocks and squares and landed the game in a whole new realm of possibility.

In addition to the aforementioned feature is the refinement of the Atmosphir marketplace and character creator. The two now go hand-in-hand as opposed to being separate from one another which has made a great change for the better. Right now the marketplace serves no real useful purpose but eye candy because no one has received their old Atmos yet, but once we all do get our money, the brand new marketplace will be much easier to navigate and use to preview and purchase Atmosphir character items.

“The next design challenge is Castle10.

Let’s face it – a castle is pretty much the ultimate video game environment. A walled fortress might require some brute force or stealth to enter. Huge towers beg to be climbed. Secret passages and treasury rooms could be around any corner. You could be in the middle of a battle, have to deal with royalty, or explore abandoned and haunted ruins. The possibilities are endless.

So your task is simple – make the ultimate Atmosphir castle adventure. What type of castle is totally up to you – Gothic, European, Sand, Space, Blockland, Forest…or whatever you can dream up. The very best levels will not only look great, but also have the gameplay to back them up…a big empty castle isn’t going to be fun for anybody.

The deadline for this challenge is 11pm PST on Wednesday, May 5. Make sure to include the tag “Castle10″ (as one word) in your title in order to be considered. As always, atmos will be awarded to the top 3 spots, and once again, one random entrant will win a free Atmosphir tee-shirt.

Good luck!”

Those were the words of Minor Studios’ Creative Director Dave Werner as he recently announced the latest design challenge: Castle10. I don’t think I need to add much to Dave’s notice but a wholehearted good luck! I can’t wait to see what the wonderful community creates this time!

I’m sorry guys that I haven’t written an article lately. I will hopefully update more frequently starting in a few days. There hasn’t really been much that has happened, just a small update to the marketplace in preparation for the Atmos users are waiting to receive. So, keep updated; I’ll be sure to write another new post quite soon!