This article has a talk page!This is a sub-page of Proto:Antonblast.
The Kickstarter Demo of Antonblast was released on May 17th, 2022 alongside the game's reveal trailer and Kickstarter campaign1. This demo is pretty barebones, featuring Boiler City as its only playable level, while encouraging players to back the game on Kickstarter in several menus. The final version of this demo (a hotfix titled ver1.1.8, not to be confused with v1.1.8) was released on May 21st, 2022.
Thankfully, the game managed to reach 100% of its $75.000 funding goal in under 72 hours, with the final amount coming in on $144.741 - not including additional funds obtained via Pledgebox2.
Sub-pages#
General Differences#
- The demo overall feels a lot slower in comparison to the later demos.
- Boiler City is using its more Antonball-like design.
- Instead of smashing Beet Crates to get health, you originally plucked them out via sprouts ala Super Mario Bros. 2 / Doki Doki Panic. This was changed, possibly because it broke the pace of the level too much.
- Slingshotting through enemies via the Clutch wasn't added yet.
- The Crash Team Racing styled boost is here, but it's never explained, and the boost number appears above Anton's head, rather than in the bottom right corner of the screen.
- The Bossbuster Blimp rooms first seen in the Dynamite Demo are not present here.
- There were originally only 2 collectibles, the Spirit and the Vinyl. The final game adds in Annie's Mementos (those junk items), and Spray Cans.
- Debris didn't scale up to give the illusion of them getting closer to the camera.
Unused Rooms#
rm_BoilerIntroB_old#
An early version of The Loading Dock. The room is fully tiled and has a spring to quickly jump to the background without having to go through the escape sequence. Some foreground objects were moved and the background was changed completely. It's also missing the manhole in the upper right corner leading to Smoke Spot.
rm_BoilerIntroH_old#
An early version of The Whine Cellar. This room is less wide and lacks tiles compared to its used counterpart. The wrong music also plays.
rm_JBsHouse#
A test room made by JB, one of the game's level designers. This was likely intended for testing the dethonators and other level mechanics. By default, this room will crash on startup as several objects refer to a deleted room titled rm_JBsHouse_Basement.
rm_TimeAttackResults#
An empty room that probably served for showing time attack results in an early build.
rm_mario#
A simple room for testing two-layered platforming, probably used as a template room. It's got nothing to do with Mario.
rm_testStage1#
A simple test room for testing springs, doors and room warping. If the variable targetRoom is set incorrectly or doesn't exist, the game will warp you here. Some November indev footage shows that this may have been one of the first rooms created for the game.
rm_testStage2#
A test room that serves several purposes and links to rm_testStage3 (although blocked off) and rm_testStage4. Despite the broken tiles, this seems to be the only room that was regularly used and updated.
rm_testStage3#
A small vertical area with some enemies and a spirit to collect. The background isn't tiled.
rm_testStage4#
A largely empty underground section with some crates to bounce off.
Unused Backgrounds#
bg_BoilerCity_brulos#
A colorless version of Brulo's casino and bar, likely intended for a cutscene. It uses a design similar to its design seen in the Antonball opening cutscene in Antonball Deluxe.
bg_boilerCity_placeholder#
A static placeholder background for Boiler City.
Unused Sprites#
fn_placeholder_1#
A different variant of the font displayed when a room name or tutorial prompt appears. It's blue, has its highlight come from the middle and lacks two of the last characters present in the used variant. What this would've been used for is unknown besides presumably being a placeholder font.
level1#
A full map of stage 1 from Virtual Boy Wario Land, probably used as a temporary overlay for getting the two-layered platforms right.
Placeholder Tiles#
Two identical placeholder slope tiles that are stored as a sprite exist under the names tile_boilerCity_placeholder_FG and tile_boilerCity_placeholder_BG.
sp_anton_jump107#
A rough sketch of Anton's jump animation, downscaled to match the rest of Anton's animations. It's missing one extra frame from the finished animation.
sp_boilerDoorOpen#
An animation of a door opening. It's never referenced.
sp_airHammerHitboxOld#
An Air Hammer hitbox that's thinner than the used hitbox. It probably wasn't wide enough and was thus changed.
sp_placeholder_nineslice#
A simple blue placeholder square for placeholder objects.
sp_virtualController#
A controller overlay that would've shown up on the bottom left. It's fully functional, and can be enabled by setting b_virtualController in ob_player_create to 1. It also detects key L, a keyboard command that isn't used in any part of the game.
sp_wario#
A walking animation of Wario, ripped straight from Wario Land 4.
Unseen Tiles#
While the game does make use of all of its tilesets, some tilesets contain images that aren't used at all.
tl_boilerCity_Graffiti#
Some graffiti of a Ballbuster going nuts. There's an unusual amount of empty pixels and likely would've been too big to stick to any walls in Boiler City. Note: Gray background has been added for visual clarity.
Graffiti of possibly the Anton Ball.
tl_boilerCityDec_FG#
A beaten-up barrel that could've been placed anywhere.
An orange car, similar to the one seen in the ending of the Antonball campaign of Antonball Deluxe.
An early idle sprite of Anton. His overall palette is less bright, his eyebrows are the same color as his hair highlights, and his hand is smaller.
Early |
Demo |
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Unused Objects#
ob_blank#
A blank object that does nothing, and isn't called by any other objects otherwise.
ob_car_FG#
A frontfacing car object likely intended to be placed in a dark or humid level. The object's functionality is unfinished: hitting it from the sides won't damage it, but hitting it from the top will make it disappear without debris falling.
ob_gameover_glassCrack#
While technically not unused and working as intended, this object's visibility is turned off by default. Turning it back on will create a glass crack when Anton hits the screen after getting a game over.
Green Dice#
Identical to the dice seen in the VB room, these green dice (ob_greenDiceBlock and ob_greenDiceBlockSwitch) will activate upon hitting them. The only difference is that Anton's hammer hit animation won't activate when hitting them from the sides. This object can be found in rm_JBsHouse by default.
ob_moleRocket#
A rocket with a mole painted on it that isn't currently known to appear in any level. It doesn't function properly, though is likely intended to explode on impact. The object draws some hitbox sprites but never can come in contact with anything. Hitting the rocket from the left will make it rotate clockwise by 90 degrees, in which it'll start moving to the right endlessly. Hitting it from the right will cause it to bug out, reach higher grounds, and stop working.
ob_varTweaker#
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To do: |
An object variable tweaker that doesn't work as intended anymore. By default, it's set to destroy itself upon being placed and misses some scripts.
Naming Oddities#
Build Name#
The game's internal name is "_ANTONBLAST_Proto'".
Hammer Slam Internal Name#
Anton's "Hammer Slam" attack is known in the game's files by several strings and sprite names as "Ass Blast".
Cannon Sprite#
Lining up the cannon sprites in the order they appear in creates the sentence "get In and Fuck My Butt". According to developer Tony Grayson, this was an inside meme among the developers where they would post a picture of Crash Bandicoot with the captions "GET IN AND FUCK MY BUTT!", and they just left it in the game. Unfortunately, this humorous inside joke was removed for the final game.
Boiler City Tracks#
The music tracks for Boiler City are named mu_test1 and mu_test2.
Revisional Differences#
A total of four different revisions were released publicly from the game's announcement to the final update:
- v1.1.6, compiled on May 17th 2022 at 02:29.
- v1.1.7, compiled on May 20th 2022 at 03:47.
- v1.1.8, compiled on May 21st 2022 at 01:25.
- ver1.1.8, compiled on May 22nd 2022 at 01:38.
And yes, there's two versions labled v1.1.8.
Gameplay#
Only gameplay changes are mentioned. See the other contents of this page to see changes made to rooms and sound effects.
v1.1.7
- Anton now moves slightly into the other direction when bouncing on enemies. This fixes an issue where it was possible to get softlocked in the hurt state when bouncing on an enemy.
- Fixed the fire that would suddenly pop in during Happy Hour in tall rooms; now it rises quickly depending on the room's height.
- Fixed a bug where Anton could start rolling off slopes in the opposite direction by standing in between a slope and solid.
- Fixed a rare bug where rapidly pausing and unpausing the game could cause a crash, related to the score counter.
v1.1.8
- A checkpoint system was added. If you died during Happy Hour, you would return to Demolition Zone, but still lose all your points.
ver1.1.8
- Fixed bugs related to the checkpoint system and player death state.
Kickstarter Status#
On the title screen, next to the version number, a status percentage of the Kickstarter campaign was added by v1.1.7 to show how much was funded. This changed with every update.
v1.1.6 |
v1.1.7 |
v1.1.8 |
ver1.1.8 |
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Rooms#
Small bits of level design were tweaked between updates, mostly to iron out a few annoying spots.
The Loading Dock#
v1.1.8 removed the slopes in the background and extended the raised platform to the left to fill the gap. The old room layout made it very easy to accidentally roll down the slopes while trying to slide into the gap.
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< v1.1.7 |
v1.1.8 onward |
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Pickup Passage#
Between v1.1.6 and v1.1.7, both solid walls were stretched up a bit for some reason. The room's functionality remains the same.
v1.1.8, however, would fully revamp the room, centering the cannon and adding both a sprout and an extra secret to the right of it.
v1.1.6 |
v1.1.7 |
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v1.1.8 onward |
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In The Crack#
v1.1.7 added a Pippo and replaced the four red chips with a purple chip.
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v1.1.6 |
v1.1.7 onward |
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Demolition Zone#
v1.1.8 added two walls of Brulo blocks in order to prevent the player from going to the adjacant rooms without activating the Happy Hour switch after respawning from the newly added checkpoint (this wasn't necessary before as you land on the switch when first entering the room normally), in turn also letting the player immediately see how they function as soon as Happy Hour is activated. The room string was also updated to add the text "(CHECKPOINT)".
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< v1.1.7 |
v1.1.8 onward |
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The Ace of Spades#
In v1.1.7, two solid objects to the left were stretched even to fix a boundary break (and potential softlock) and two explosive crates were removed, making the rolling challenge a fair bit less demanding.
v1.1.6 |
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v1.1.7 onward |
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rm_testStage2#
This room was updated with every released revision, showing that this test room was actively used.
- v1.1.7 fixed the background looping and moved one of the solids way lower.
- v1.1.8 blocked off the area entirely and the only spring in the room was moved into a solid object, leaving you unable to do anything useful without moving stuff around in a room editor.
- ver1.1.8 added a 2nd Spirit Timer and fixed the spring so you could jump to the 2nd layer.
v1.1.6 |
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v1.1.7 |
v1.1.8 |
ver1.1.8 |
