Tag Archives: indie game

Crea’s Future in Early Access

Crea has come a long way over the last two years. The progress is clearly visible and the improvement is undeniable. Now with Crea coming to Steam Early Access we are in some ways entering a new stage of development. There is still a great deal of work remaining before Crea is considered complete. I don’t have everything planned out between now and 1.0; however, I’d like to share with everyone what I do have planned for the near future.

The top priority for Crea is stability. I know that multiplayer is crucial and I would love to get it to a stable place. Additionally there are still some game crashes that occasionally occur along with many smaller bugs. Before moving onto the next major update I would like to resolve most, if not all, of these issues. Oh, and a new boss and standalone server are in the works!

The focus of the first next major patch is improved modding support. The addition of Steam Workshop support will allow modders to share their work more easily. I will be listening to modders feedback and adjusting the API accordingly.

The second update will likely be one of the largest updates Crea will ever see. Movement, exploration and combat will all dramatically evolve. The goal here is to free players of the current rigid movement. These changes will consist of new movement options, possibly a new “Exploration” talent, new character animations, and new combat controls. All of these will require much experimentation so keep in mind though that these plans may change. More exact details will be revealed once development of this update is underway.

Beyond this, things begin to get fuzzy. There are many things I know need to be done but their priorities are unknown. Here is a list of at least some things to follow (not in order):

  • Revisit Crafting Interface
  • Balancing existing content
  • New content (boss/monsters/items)
  • More gather skills to speed up mining
  • Dungeoneer NPC and Dungeon System
  • Grafter NPC and Grafting System (Weapon upgrading)
  • More Steam Features (Achievements, Cloud Saves, Trading Cards)

Crea will leave Early Access once these features and likely a handful more are done. Development on Crea is a very iterative process that uses everyone’s feedback to help get it to be what I envision.  If you have any suggestions or feedback, please post it in the forums. I value player feedback very much and if there is something I deem urgent I will always make room for it. However, please keep in mind that I am the only full-time member of the team, and it takes time for me to get around to addressing every issue.

I am looking forward to seeing how the Steam Early Access release helps the world of Crea to continue to grow and improve.

Massive Update and Sale Incoming!

Prepare yourself! Crea just received an incredibly massive update. This update has been in the works for several months and we’re very pleased with how it has turned out. Here’s a highlight of the features and changes.

  • Full multiplayer support!
  • New spear and wand weapons
  • New monsters and new Paragon monster type
  • New Cartographer NPC with Maps
  • New Bamboo Forest biome
  • New character progression via infusions
  • Redesigned main menu
  • Customizable controls
  • Heaps of improvements due to player feedback
  • Multitude of bug fixes (50+)

This is already available on Steam for those that have claimed their Steam Key from Humble and the DRM-free version has been sent off to Humble and should be available soon.

Not only is the game bigger and better than ever, but we’re also putting it on sale to celebrate! For 24 hours only, Crea will be featured on the Humble Store’s Spring Sale. The sale kicks off at 10AM PDT on Sunday, May 18th. Once the game launches on Early Access, it will be at it’s standard price of $14.99, so don’t miss the chance to get it an awesome discount!

For those who want to experience the full might of the patch notes for this update, you can read them here.

 

Upcoming Steam Early Access Release

We are planning out and working towards the Steam debut of Crea. This is truly an exciting time – something I have dreamed of for years! We will be making use of Steam’s Early Access with Crea while we finish up the game. Though before we even get to that we wanted to add more content, a few more features, and clean some things up. As of right now we are planning to release Crea on Early Access in mid to late May. Here are some of the changes we’re working on for this upcoming release.

The most important of all is that multiplayer will now work. It has been far too long that multiplayer has been semi-functional. There have been some dramatic changes to the code to make this possible. We are doing lots of internal testing to ensure it works. However, our testing can only take us so far and consequently we will look to our omega testers to help out.

Another large change we will make is to the main menus. In truth, these menus were always intended to be placeholders. We are now working to streamline them such as reworking the character creation colors to be much simpler.

Treasure!

The treasure chests now promise tasty loot. Before the items found in a treasure chest was very random which made finding some items very difficult. With this new loot system in place many more items are found in chests and there are reserved spots for different item types.

Control Settings

Some of the remaining changes include:

  • More monsters
  • New weapon types with their own upgrade trees
  • An entirely new way to customize your character
  • Fancy Maps
  • Game options with control bindings
  • Much more!

As you can see, this is going to be quite the update!

We will be releasing an early version to omega testers to help us iron out the kinks – especially with multiplayer. You can setup Crea to be omega testing now on your Steam account. You will see a download queue up on Steam as soon as it is available! We will of course make an announcement when it is up and available – stay tuned!

Big News: Greenlit! Update! Upcoming Livestream!

February is the shortest month of the year and yet so much has happened for Crea and the team. It has been awhile since I shared an update so there is much to tell.

crea_greenlit

The biggest news of all is that Crea was Greenlit on Steam! Our current plan is to release on Steam Early Access in May. Launching onto the Steam store is a huge opportunity , so we’re taking this time to polish up the existing content and new content as much as possible.

Even though Crea’s Steam release is months away, you can still play Crea on Steam now. Your Steam key for Crea can already be claimed on your humble homepage. This enables us to release updates more frequently, fix issues quicker and most importantly gets you the latest updates automatically.

Speaking of updates, we just launched a new update – v0.7.4. This update focuses on resolving issues, making many engine optimizations and implementing players’ feedback. Here’s a quick highlight.

  • A dozen multiplayer issues have been fixed
  • Underground cave system is now multitudes better enabling underground exploration
  • Made several optimizations to help alleviate framerate loss
  • A new monster, Venfear, has been added
  • Birds will now appear in peaceful plains

venfear_flying

Lastly, to celebrate Crea being Greenlight, Crea fan Wookiee will be hosting a 24-hour livestream on Saturday, March 8, from 12Pm GMT ( that’s 6 am EST / 3 am PST). Kelley and I will join the livestream around 10 am PST. Wookie will be giving away 24 copies of Crea and an ASUS 680 graphics card! We hope you’ll stop by so you can see how Crea is looking these days. Check out this forum thread for more updates. The livestream will be hosted on Wookiee’s channel, twitch.tv/pocketwookiee .

Last month, Kelley, Aaron and I moved to Portland, Oregon. It was quite a trial thanks to a huge snowstorm that hit the area the day we were moving. Even with the roads iced over and 20 car pileups shutting down half of I-5, we managed to get here in one piece. Between snow flurries we scurried back and forth from the moving truck to our new apartment on the third floor.

snowy_wasteland

We’re settled in now with super-fast internet. I’ve been streaming Crea development again and will be doing more soon! You can find my livestream here.

Crea Release v0.7.3

Another bug fixing patch. Lots of people experience some massive lag while playing with the latest two versions. I finally got that sorted out with a few other bugs fixed.

Available on your Humble Bundle Library

version 0.7.3
General:
- (Feature) Added splash screen with Siege Games logo
- (Feature) Added misc. sound effects
- (Bug) Resolved issue where loading the world does not work for some people
- (Bug) Resolved issue with water and lava disappearing when obsidian is created nearby
- (Bug) Resolve issue with attributes, attribute locales, and divine gloves stat attribute
- (Bug) Properly resize tooltip view

Combat:
- (Change) Added light source to quaridin when it attacks
- (Bug) Resolved multiple issues with conflict system by simply ignoring older versions. (Does leave orphaned spawners/speep)
- (Bug) Resolved issue where attacking the speep at night would cause an issue with it trying to flee

Talents:
- (Bug) Resolved yet another issue with Artisan skill

Craft/Research:
- (Change) Made it possible to craft cloth with wool
- (Bug) Resolved issue when updating craft inventories could run into an issue if an inventory was destroyed
- (Bug) Resolved issue with research materials window not working properly

Weekly Recap #31

Crazy week! It consisted of more interviewing, hiring two new developers, helping them get setup, attempting to fix bugs, and planning to move to another state. So yeah, two new developers. This is super exciting since with their help we’ll see development pick up quite a bit. I’ll be sure to introduce them once they’ve settled in.

Crea is now rank #47 on Greenlight! I think next week will finally be the week we get greenlit. Amazingly, I am most excited about this so that I’ll finally be free of obsessively looking at the stats page. But, it is cool to see how many more favorites and follows we have than the top 50 average.

greenlight_47

This week I’m wanting to get a new version up that fixes some really bad issues people are running into. I already have a build up for omega testers so if you have access or would like to help test it then head over to the forums. Once I get the green flag from a few players I’ll hand it over to humble to make it public.

Crea Release v0.7.2

Quickly patching v0.7.1! Some players found an embarrassing obvious bug that slipped by me. Please upgrade to this new version (0.7.2) immediately if you have v0.7.1 (released yesterday).

Available on your Humble Bundle Library

version 0.7.2
General:
- (Bug) Resolved issue with realms not saving properly when world is named with a space or special characters
- (Bug) Resolved issue with speep not properly becoming idle when the player is distant
- (Bug) Resolved issue where pressing spacebar would cause the UI to scroll

Crea Release v0.7.1

A new version of Crea is now available. This is a smaller update focusing on fixing some larger issues and incorporating player feedback from last weeks update. If you have any issues or feedback please check out our forums. Here is the changelog.

version 0.7.1
General:
- (Feature) Monster information shown on mouseover and contains name, level and HP bar
- (Feature) Implemented support for animals and first animal, the Speep
- (Change) Increased drop rate and drop range of keys
- (Change) Increased number of trees in plains
- (Bug) Resolved issue where invalid character in a world/character name would cause several issues
- (Bug) Resolved issue with interacting with dropped items
- (Bug) Resolved issue with water/lava running out into unloaded regions.

Combat:
- (Change) Several tweaks to conflict system
- (Details) Spawned monsters in a region stay the same level until the monster push
- (Details) Conflict regions take longer to become stronger at a increasingly slower rate
- (Details) Less monsters are required to kill to change the hostility level of a region
- (Change) Added trail to Torrend when it charges
- (Bug) Resolved a few small issues with boss

Talents:
- (Bug) Resolved issue with Artisan skill not working properly

UI:
- (Feature) Item notification area near toolbar showing recently aquired items
- (Bug) Resolved issue where replacing skills on the toolbar would cause the game to crash
- (Bug) Resolved slight graphical issue on toolbar
- (Bug) Resolved issue with available material quantity in crafting UI not updating properly with nearby treasure chests

Weekly Recap #30

The last few days have been crazy! As you may have seen, I decided to look for another developer once again. I have gotten a surprising number of responses from this and have spent the last few days just talking to people. I am trying to take it slow and be as certain as possible when/if I decide to bring someone on board. I did manage to get some work done on Crea earlier in the week.

The first change I made is truly a game changer. It will now be possible to see monsters information when mousing over them. This includes the name, level and HP percentage. The big one here is the level. With this you’ll be able to gauge how strong the monster is relative to you. Additionally it will finally explain why monsters have different stats. The support is mostly implemented for displaying this information at different times. Users will be able to choose to display the monster’s HP bar always, during mouseover, only when the monster is damaged, or never. I just need to hook it into the settings but first I think I need to revamp the settings UI to nicely support more options.

monster_info

Another welcomed change is that now you get item notifications on what you picked up or crafted. I really like how this turned out.

item_notifications

I have also been working on adding support for animals. They are now hooked into the conflict system. When a region has higher hostility less animals will spawn in it. Now it has an interesting good/bad balance. So far I have got the first animal implemented – Speep!

hearding_speep

I’m trying to wrap up what I’m currently working on so I can publish a new update with these changes and all of the bug fixes and balance changes I have made this week as well. I am hopeful this update will be available very soon!

For this upcoming week I will be continuing to interview people for the dev position. I will also be working on adding more animals and refining the underground some. I’d like to make it more cavernous and less holey, with more monsters underground as well as some other interesting things. I’d love the underground to be a really intriguing place to explore.