Livestream is Live!

Livestream has begun!

Please drop by and say hello! Here’s the plan for today (8/4/2012). (All times listed are Pacific Time.)

9:30am – Start
10:00am – Monster Explanation
10:30am – Q & A – Part 1
5:00pm – Q & A – Part 2
9:00pm – end*

The graphics and animations you’ll be seeing in the development are in an ALPHA stage. Everything will be polished up in the final game.

1. REDDIT: We’re really trying to drive traffic from Reddit today. Please take a moment to upvote our Reddit page.

2. CONTEST: All day long we will be running a retweet contest. The person who gets the most retweets on our Livestream link by 9 pm will receive our $100-level Kickstarter reward.To participate, tweet using our URL ( http://www.twitch.tv/siegegames/ ) and mention @siegegames . We’ll count all these tweets at the end of the day and contact the winner through Twitter.

3. POLL: We are creating a Kickstarter exclusive in-game hat for our $25 and up backers and you can vote on which hat you’d like to see in Crea at our blog. (It is at the top on the right side panel)

4. CHALLENGE: We are going to set a few fundraising goals, and for each goal we meet we will give a little more to our backers. First we will make the exclusive Kickstarter item available for all backers. Our next goal would give our $25 and up backers get a digital copy of an art book for Crea. That is all the best of Kelley’s concept art, doodles and pixel art will be collected into a sweet little digital booklet. We have even more goals if we make these! Tune into the livestream for more details.

*A little secret from Kelley: although the livestream is scheduled to end at 9 PM, I’m pretty sure that Jasson will continue to program for as long as people are cheering him on, even if it means pulling an all-nighter. Let’s see how long we can keep him up tonight!

Crea’s Vision Part 3 – Worlds

In my last two posts I have been covering our vision for Crea. The first was on Crea and the community. The second post I talked about gameplay in Crea. In this final part I will be sharing our vision for the worlds in Crea.

Worlds in Crea will be randomly generated. Worlds will be constructed out of many different “biomes,” which can be true biomes (such as a tundra) or constructed areas (such as the aforementioned casino). We want players to be able to have complete control over the world generation and are planning advanced options that will allow players to pick which biomes the world will consist of and their frequency.

World generation is just the beginning. We are working towards having Crea worlds be organic. Plants have complete freedom in how they can grow and spread. At first weather will be purely for looks, but eventually we want weather to actually affect the world – for example, a forest could get caught in a lightning storm and burn to the ground. (Dynamic weather will be a post-release feature.)

In addition to being organic, Crea worlds will be dynamic. Events will happen randomly or after certain conditions have been met. Such as new NPCs appearing, monster swarms attacking, and bosses emerging. Possible quests will come and go and can affect the world on a more permanent level.

The last thing I’ll mention is connecting worlds together. At the moment each world is self-contained. Eventually I would love to make it possible to connect worlds together making it possible for players to go between them. This could be used to make instanced dungeons or lots of small worlds that could act like zones (towns and dungeons) in standard RPGs.

I hope you enjoyed reading this series of posts. It feels good to get this all out. I should have done it sooner!

Crea’s Vision Part 2 – Gameplay

Yesterday I relayed our vision for Crea and the community. If you have not read this yet, then I recommend you do! Today I will divulge our vision for Crea’s gameplay. We may not be able to include all of these features in the initial release, but they will be added later in the form of free updates.

Our primary focus with gameplay is to give players a true sandbox; one that enables them to play how they want. I believe there are two playstyle extremes, creative oriented and action oriented. Most players will fall somewhere in the middle of the two, but Crea will support the full gamut of personal gameplay styles.

For those that enjoy crafting, building, and tinkering with things, monster spawning has been designed in such a way that they won’t be obnoxiously attacking you while you’re doing your thang. You will be able to adjust the frequency that monsters spawn. For players who are solely interested in creating worlds, we are also planning a build mode that will make this much easier.

The action oriented players will be pleased to find that we are planning an involved combat system where skills and timing matter. Monster spawning will be an entire system involving fighting back monsters as they attempt to expand their territory. Crea will also feature several bosses that will test both your strength and skills.

There will be lots of content that fills the gap between these two extremes. We have several large biomes planned and are dreaming up other “biome” type areas such as battle arenas or casinos. There will be hundreds of items with many being interactive, automatons (self-operating machines), or generators (items that create other items). These will make it possible to set up intricate systems for collecting resources or traps to kill enemies. I am a huge sucker for these!

In the past we have mentioned several systems such as crafting, leveling and quests. As we say in our video, we love sandbox games for being so open-ended, but we also love RPGs. Crea will have HP, leveling, NPCs with quests, bosses and other goals to strive for. You will always have something to do in Crea.

Modding, which truly touches every single aspect of Crea, acts as a multiplier to the gameplay. Everything can be enhanced or expanded upon through mods. This is easily the thing I am most excited about; seeing what the community comes up with.

Ah! Wall of text! There’s so much to Crea’s gameplay that it’s impossible to explain it all in one post. Much more in depth blog posts are on the horizon! If there’s any particular aspect of Crea that you’d like to know more about, then be sure to leave a comment. Tomorrow, in my final part of Crea’s vision, I will share with you what we have in mind for the worlds in Crea.

Crea’s Vision Part 1 – Community

Since the launch of our Kickstarter campaign we have been asked about the different aspects of Crea many times. We have been accused of being a “Terraria Clone” even more often than that. When I (Jasson) started Crea, I made it one of my development goals to be open with the community. Keeping true to that, I want to share with you our vision for Crea. I have decided to split it up over three parts to keep the wall of text to a minimum.

First and foremost, we are about the community. We don’t want to be isolated in some ivory tower of development. Instead, we want to be actively engaged with the community on as many levels as possible, updating the game according to feedback from players. I plan to continue to provide development updates on the blog at least once per week. To add to that, we will soon be launching forums, a wiki after that, and we are always listening to the community for other suggestions.

I want to ensure that Crea is fully accessible to everyone. That is why we are pushing hard to release on Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. We have already implemented localization support, which makes it easy for anyone to create a translation of Crea. As we get closer to release it would be great to work with the community to create some official translations.

After Crea is released, we’ll be working hard to fix any bugs players stumble upon. After that, we’d like to give players a chance to vote on what new features they’d like us to develop. I also want to assist modders who are creating interesting and original mods for Crea. We’ll be regularly participating in the forums to answer questions and provide assistance to players.

But before we can have a community, we first need a solid game. Tomorrow, in part 2, I will cover our vision for the gameplay in Crea. Thanks for reading and feel free to ask any questions.

Advanced Modding Video

Before getting to the video, someone has created a page on reddit for Crea. Help us spread the word. Thanks! http://redd.it/x22mt

Moving on, this is my follow up video to the modding video I posted last week. This is some advanced modding and consequently is much more involved but don’t worry about that. We will be writing lots of documentation and tutorials which will explain everything in full detail. Enjoy!

Modding Video and Development Update

I forgot to post the modding video I put together the other day. It only covers some very simple modding but it really shows just how easy it is to mod Crea. I have another video planned that I will be putting together within the next few days (maybe even today!). This follow up video will have showcase some advanced modding.

Aside from putting together videos and keeping up with the Kickstarter campaign, I have been doing my best to keep pushing forward with development. Lately I have been implementing the real inventory system. Once I finish it and get some screenshots I will go over the details. I will say that it will be a lot less like Terraria and Minecraft and more like Torchlight.

Character Progression

Want some details on the “RPG elements” that will be included in Crea? You got it!

One of our major focuses for Crea is adding in character progression and a sense of personal attachment to characters. There are several aspects to character progression – this post is about character leveling.

Characters will have a set of the usual stats: HP, AP (Action Points), Attack, Defense, Magic Attack, Magic Defense, Agility and Dexterity.

Additionally, characters have “proficiencies.” These are skill levels in four different areas: fighting, crafting, exploring, and gathering. Each proficiency has its own experience level and experience points. So, craft items to gain proficiency in crafting. Pick mushrooms and other plants to gain proficiency in gathering, and so on.

As a proficiency levels up the character will unlock new skills. Once a skill is unlocked the character is able to allocate experience from that proficiency to their new skill. Some skills are passive, and always in effect. Subsequent levels in a skill will raise its efficacy.

As usual, all of this is going to be easily moddable. Want to add a “cooking” proficiency? New “Triple Jump” skill for the exploration proficiency? Not a problem! Are there any proficiencies you’d like to see us add to Crea?

Be sure to subscribe to the blog to get the latest updates and details on Crea!

Progress Overview

We have been working on Crea heads down for the last few months and have made great progress. Now we are beginning to share Crea with others and are getting some attention. Many new people are coming here and likely are wondering a few things such as “What is Crea?”, “What platforms will it be on?” or “When will it be released?” See the Crea, FAQ and Team pages for answers to these questions and more.

One thing these pages do not cover is our current progress on Crea. Here is a quick summary of what we have accomplished thus far and what features are coming up soon. Links are to the related blog posts.

Implemented:

Coming Soon:
  • Lighting
    • Not much to be said here. Lighting to add to the atmosphere and exploration.
  • Leveling
    • Unique proficiency leveling system where you gain experience according to your actions
  • Equipment
    • Equipment system that can have consistent stats or randomly assigned stats.
  • Monsters
    • Monsters are spawned from monster spawners that will spread if not destroyed.
  • NPCs
    • Start with basic NPC interactions such as dialog and item trading (for stores and the likes). More involved NPCs will come a little later – such as quests.
  • We have many more features we will implement but these are the highest priority features at the moment. If you want to see our timeline be sure to check out the project plan.

We will be continuing to update regularly. Be sure not to miss any and subscribe to the blog!