Antimatter Dimensions has had a very interesting and complex history. It has had highs and lows of devolpment, with there being some long breaks in its devolpment period. The game is divided into several eras, represented by updates of Antimattter Dimensions and the more notable mods.
May 2016-August 2017: The Early Days[]
In the begininng, the game was a very simple game. It was also very short and ended at infinity. You beat it when you got 1e308 antimatter and it overflowed. There were several smaller updates during the very begining of this period, fixing the game and adding smaller or foundational features such as import/export. After that period, there was a 15-month long hiatus of no updates,
During the early days, because of its brevity, no one really cared about the game. People quickly beat the game and never came back to it. It was a one and done experience, which made the game not very remarkable. People would rather play other games after they beat this game, instead of playing this game multiple times. They beat it, and it was the end.
August 2017-July 2018: The Golden Era[]
During this period, the game got a steady stream of updates, but the updates slowed down as the time got later. The updates were first every couple weeks, but slowed down to a few months between updates. Now, Hevi started to gradually add more content to the game, and the game was no longer super short, so the game got better and became one of the best idle games.
This era started with the Infinity Update, which added a prestige layer. Now, people could keep playing once they got to 1e308, because you get to infinity, which you an Infinity Point, used to buy upgrades to make the game faster. This was the begining of the "golden era" of the game, which made it last more than a day, and gave it is merits. Then there was challenges, which some add certain restrictions to the game in which you have to get to infinity in, and others revamped the game into something different, which varies the experience and makes it less boring. Challenges unlock autobuyers, which can be upgraded with Infinity Points, which, you guessed it, automatically buys stuff.
Once you max out the Big Crunch Autobuyer, you Unlock Breaking Infinity, which lets you get past 1e308, and lets you prestige for more Infinity Points based on your antimatter. This also unlcoed a new set of updates, and a set of challenges, called Infinity Challenges. You had to reach a certain amount of antimatter for a bonus. There was also Infinity Dimensions, which were unlocked by reaching a certain antimatter threshold, and gain Infinity Power, which boosts all dimensions.
At this point, devolpment started to slow down and updates will only come out every few months instead of a couple every week, but the updates were bigger. First, Replicanti was added, which is unlocked at 1e140 IP. Replicanti is an exponenitally growing state which boosts Infinity Dimensions and you can get Replicated galaxies at Infinite Replicanti, which are free galaxies which don't increase the cost of galaxies.
The same update added Eternity, which is unlocked at 1e308 IP. It is a new prestige layer which gives EP based on IP unlocks many features, including Eternity Milestones, Time Dimensions, Eternity Upgrades, and Time Studies. Eternity Milestones give a starting boost to Eternities to make them less grindy. Time Dimensions produce Time Shards which give free tickspeed upgrades. Eternity upgrades are upgrades buyable with EP. Then they are Time Studies. They are a tree of upgrades, which are bought with Time Theorms, a currency bought with Antimatter, IP, and EP. They have many boosts, including to IP, EP, and Antimatter. In the tree, they are colored 3-way splits where each path has its own name, and you must be strategic about what path you choose in order to make progress.
The next update adds Eternity Challenges, which are a new set of Challenges, but your goal is to eternity for a certain number of IP. They can be unlocked by buying certain Time Studies, and meeting certian requirments. Each challenge can be completed up to 5 times with an increasing requirment, but with a higher reward, Completing EC's 1, 2, and 3 at least once unlocks a powerful new study which allows you to gain IP without having to big crunch, but it costs way more than you can intially afford. This is a major QoL change, as you no longer have to build up your antijmatter to gain IP. Once you complete EC10, you unlock the rest of the Time Study Tree, filled with expensive studies that are very powerful, including one which uncaps replicanti. The next update adds the light/dark split, where you must pick 1 TS per pair, and 2 more EC's, and a buch of QoLL additions, and smaller changes.
The final update adds Time Dilation. It was a "desencion" mode, which means everything is nerfed when you dilate, but if you reach certain antimatter thresholds while in dilation you get Tachoyn Particles when you exit, which generate Dilated Time, which in turn get you free galaxies and can be used to buy dilation upgrades, 3 repetable and the rest nonrepeatble. There was also an upgrades which generates TT and makes your TT gain explode, making you never need to maunally buy TT as the amounts you can afford are negilegible in comparison to the TT you can generate from TP. The TT can be used to unlock Time Dimensions 5-8, which have huge costs, that you wondered "How in the world can I possibly get that much TT?"
With the Reality Update, Hevi was going to take a very long time to devolp it. That was because he had a very ambitious plan for the next update, a new prestige layer, and things called Celestials, which are essentially minigames. So, it was a very big plan for the next update. Also, there is solo devolper burnout, where solo devolpers, or even small teams sometimes slow down devolpment or even get to the point where an update gets endless promoted as "coming soon" despite never coming out, and devolpment eventually becomes all but stopped because they lose incentive to work on the game. Because of all of that, reality turned out to be taking an etrenely long time to come out and people started getting impatient, leading to mods being created. to occupy them
August 2018-Early 2020: Era of NG+3[]
Since the Dilation update, many mods have been created of the game to occupy the time of the players while witing for reality, because of the lack of release date, and they knew it could be years before it came out. The best and most popular mod was NG+3, in which despite all the flaws people make fun of. It was still the mod with the most content, and had a relatively steady stream of updates at first, unlike the vanile game, which Hevi was working on a the reality mega-update, which was going to take a while. So, people switched to NG+3 to occupy them once they beat the game and during the wait for reality, and only occasionally checking on their vanila games, because it had an idle endgame, and it had decent (although not perfect) offline progress.
First, there was NG+, which speeds up the main game and starts you with a bunch of lategame features. Then, NG++ came along which adds a few more dilation upgrades, which speeds up the dilation grind, and makes you get further. It then adds Meta Dimensions, which are like the begining of normal AD, but without Sacrifice, Tickspeed, or Antimatter Galaxies. They also made Dimesnion Boosts more Powerful based on your best Meta-Antimatter. The first 3 dilation upgrades in the bottom row boost meta-dimensions, to compensate for the lack of tickspeed and sacrifice.
Then NG+++ starts with Mastery Studies, which are like an extension of Time Studies, but with a different name, and the cost multiplies by a certian amount when you buy them. To unlock them, you have to get the 1e100 DT upgrade, in which the first mastery studies price seems a bit out of reach, and requires a bit of waiting to get They boost several things, including meta-antimatter. There is also 2 more EC's in the bottom of the intial section of the tree.
After you complete EC14 once and get 9e446 Meta-Antimatter, you can quantum, the next prestige layer. Quantuming gives you 1 quark, and you can put it into red, green, or blue. Each color will produce color power, which gives a cetain boost. It also unlocks more mastery studies, which won't be bought until later, and more studies will be gruadually be unlocked after buying the last study in the tree. Red boosts galaxy efficiency, green power gives extra replicated galaxies, and blue power maeks dilated time be produced faster. While it may be tempting to put the first quark into blue because how much a wall dilation is, it should be definitely be put into red, because you are going to have a painful early game otherwise as the NG+ buffs go away after quantum. Eventually, you qill get to quanntum again, and you can quantum for more quarks based on MA. You should go for 2 to get another type of color power, because if you only put 1 in another quark color, the quarks will cancel, and you won't gain any color power, because color power is based on the the quark with the most quarks minus the color with the second most quarks, which is cancelled.
After you get all 3 colors, you can attempt the Quantum Speerdun milestones, which require to quantum under a certain time. Doing those unlock various things such as letting you keep things on quantum and unlocking more audomation. These make quantums less painful and faster, which allows you to unlock more milestones. They can also be disabled when you quantum, which is required for some achievements. After completing most of the milestones and a bit of waiting for TT, you can finally unlock Electrons, the first new study. Electrons make the multiplier per 10 dimensions much larger, and therefore make your antimatter jump up to much higher. They can be upgraded with TT, DT, MA, and MDB in order to get more electrons. You will be able to get the newly unlocked Mastery Studies, which require you to sarcifice some mastery studies to afford the studies lower down in the tree due to the cost scaling.
Then, they are quantum challenges which are unlocked by buying a mastery study. These challenges require a certain amount of electrons to unlock, and their completion requirement is based on antimatter, not IP or EP. These challenges are also far longer than any of the challenges you have completed, taking hours and each one is a relatively short timewall (in the context of the game). After completing all QC's, you can unlock a new set of challenges called Paired Challenges. There are also many mastery studies below the paired challenge one, which will help with completing them. These challenges are 2 QC's at a time, and you can pick any 2 QC's to be a PC. They boost both QC rewards, but with a higher electron count. You can assign up to 4 PC's, and each QC must be part of no more than 1 PC. Be sure to choose which PC's carefully (or use a guide) as some combinations have to be completed later, and some are impossible at this stage or just simply take a long time to complete.
After assigining and completing 4 PC's, you can unlock replicants. They are like an ant colony, which can be fed with quantum food. Earlier on, you can reset your replicanti once you hit the requirment, and gain a replicant, where the requirment will increase. Replicants generate preons, which boost green power. Replicants, however are reset on quantum so it is benifectual to do longer quantums. Eventually, you can get worker replicant with all 3 types of gluons and upgrade the maximum worker replicants. However, you also need quantum food to "feed" the replicant and make it a worker, which is bought with gluons. They produce eggons, which gets turned into baby replicants which produce preons at a lower rate then normal replicants, which in turn grow up into normal replicants. Later, Emperor Dimensions are like higher dimensions of workers, which produce lower order workers by promoting them a level higher.
After that, is Nanofiedl, which you can generate preon charge which consumes preons, which in turn produces preon energy and preon anti-energy. Preon anti-energy produces preon power when it reaches thresholds, which gives rewards based on best preon anti-energy, which boost various things. Preon anti-energy stops production of preon energy when they reach a certain threshold, dictated by your preon charge, which required you to go quantum to get better stats to get more rewards, instead of just waitingg endlessly for more rewards.
Since early 2020: What's next?[]
[WIP]