This is a little late but it’ll have to do. Yesterday and today I became consumed with a fun feature I will be showing off tomorrow. Now that it is done I wanted to give a brief update of what has been going on this last week and what is coming up.

Most of this last week was spent fixing bugs and working on multiplayer, as well as a few features. Multiplayer is finally coming along. The largest victory with it so far is that I managed to reduce the horrible lag considerably. It still needs work but it is much more playable from my limited testing. There are still several crashes I have yet to track down, as well as a few oddities that occur when the connection experiences a hiccup.

Standalone server running with client in background

I finally spent some time working on the standalone server and that is in pretty good shape already. It is working on all platforms and has some basic commands available. The best feature about it is that it is mod friendly – I made it easy to add new commands to it. There is still more I’d like to add but my initial goal was to get the basic server working for now.

Some of the code for the standalone server

Another cool feature I got in was the ability to provide a world seed during world creation. If you provide the same seed and select the same world size then it’ll create the same world (with a few small differences). Starting with the next version you will be able to find the world seed by opening worlds/world_name/seed.

World generation now with seed option

Yet another 40 games were greenlit today which gave Crea a little bump. We are now 55% of the way to the top 100 Greenlight games. Not too bad, but we’ll need more exposure if we want to be greenlit in the near future. I’m continuing to reach out to people who can provide some more publicity for Crea.

As for this next week, I am getting tired of fixing bugs and working on multiplayer. I know I need to finish multiplayer, but I’m getting to the point where it’d be much more productive if I took a break from it and worked on some new content or fun features for the next big release. I will persevere a little longer and try to get multiplayer to a state worthy of another update in the next few days.

Don’t forget that I have something awesome I’ll be showing off tomorrow. Be sure to stop by!

I am getting quite anxious with the approaching release. Crea is currently in the hands of about 500 people. When I give access to all the remaining Kickstarter backers, which is soon, that number will double. Additionally, Crea will become available for $10 and there were many people who said they would preorder it at this price.

This is very exciting because it means many more people playing Crea which translates into even more feedback. Our Kickstarter backers have been beyond patient with me getting Crea into their hands, so I am happy to be finally delivering this part of our Kickstarter. While Crea has come a long way since the Kickstarter, it still has further to go. I hope players will keep this in mind when they run into bugs or see areas that need improvement. Also I’m a little scared because I will once again be handling all the bugs by myself.

One step at a time. This last week has been about trying to wrap things up. The newest version of Crea is now in the hands of the omega testers and thanks to their help many issues have been fixed. I am once again working on multiplayer. There are some latency issues most noticeable when fighting monsters but beyond that it is finally coming together.

Kelley and I have been working on a new website landing page to help introduce people to Crea. We are also starting to sketch out our thoughts on some new videos.

This week will be dedicated to finishing up all of these tasks and getting the new version out. Lots and lots to do!

Another week filled with much progress, bringing us closer to the next game update. The remaining skills were finished this week. They turned out great and will really make a difference in game! I also worked on several miscellaneous tasks some of which had been floating around in the icebox for months. Here are some of them.

• Collect skill can be used to harvest some of the small plants. No punching trees though.
• Engine now supports image masks which will be used for pixel perfect collision. Some things, such as small plants, were hard to hit since they are so skinny.

• Dialog placement is now saved with the settings
• Added a timer for status effects

Yet another thing I managed to work on was the underground. Now lava and pots are spawned underground, which looks awesome. Lava now causes massive damage when you fall into it – don’t do that! Pots can be broken and occasionally drop some loot. Gotta break’em all!

Oh, I also fixed a handful of issues that our amazing testers reported. As I said, this was a good week for progress!

I am now working on cleaning things up and trying to balance combat. Everything was extremely loose before and with the addition of 30 new skills it is now completely awkward. Once I make at least one pass on balancing, I will push a build to the omega testers. While they are testing I will be working on a spiffy new landing page for our site and fixing up multiplayer. I also want to fix up the underground more and do some polishing before the next update. Lots to do!

Wow the weeks are flying by. Already at week 17 on these recaps! Are you guys enjoying these recaps? I appreciate the comments you leave on these posts.

This week I worked on fixing up colored lights, gave lava a light source and started reworking the talent skills. I already showed off the colored lights and lava earlier in the week in this post.

The skill rework is fairly extensive. Much of it has been behind the scenes so far. I am restructuring some things and prepping for many more skills to be added. Not all of the changes are in the infrastructure though.

The Talent UI has been needing some love for quite some time. Here is what I came up with so far.

In addition to looking much better, there are a few other improvements. The character’s current skill level is now displayed in the upper right corner. I may change the placement in the future, but I just wanted to get it in there and move onto more important things.

Another improvement is when hovering over the skill icon, a tooltip for the current level (or level 1) appears. When hovering over the button to level the skill up, a tooltip will appear to explain the next level. Soon tooltips will include the cost and cooldown time for active skills.

This next week I’m going to continue working on the skills. There are many new skills that will be added. These will likely keep me busy for the entire week. If I do manage to finish them up then I’ll move onto working on the underground once more.

Progress! This week has been a productive one. Kelley and I are now settled in to our new home and have been putting our new workspace to use.

The long wait is finally over – the newest Crea beta build is available to download from the Humble Store! If you don’t already have beta access, you can preorder here. Shortly after the next big patch (2~ weeks from now) the price will drop from $25 to $20 for the bundle, with an additional $10 option for just the game. At that time, we will also finally launch our greenlight page and give access to the rest of our ever-so-patient kickstarter backers. Exciting times are just around the corner!

Two months of development has gone into this newest build. As you’d expect, there are quite a lot of additions and changes! Here is a preview of the v0.6.0 changelog.

• New Monster Spawning – ‘Conflict System’
• Monsters are now more aggressive and frequent at night
• Added new attacks for some monsters
• Completely rework content files
• Engine now supports Realms
• Reworked inventory UI
• Add dashing with double tap in direction

As usual there are some known bugs but nothing too major. One downside for this release though is that multiplayer is not functional at the moment. I did not want to delay this release any more. Multiplayer will be a high priority for the next release. Seriously!

This week I spent most of my time working on bug fixing. However, I did manage to work on the underground biome. I began working on playing with the distribution of holes, caves, stone, ores, and gems – mostly increasing them. I worked on optimizing water simulation some and even began to work on lava.

Latest World Gen Map

This next week I’ll be fixing any critical bugs that are found, working on more underground changes and starting to work on revamping talents and skills.

Kelley and I are almost done moving into our new place! The new Crea update is almost ready too. It is currently in the hands of some testers and I’m fixing bugs as they are found. Not too much to report on this week due to the move and fixing miscellaneous bugs. However, I did make two welcomed additions.

When mousing over an interactable item it glows

Vines can now be cut with a swing of a sword

I’m anxious to get this next release out and then move onto refining the underground part of world generation to get it much more interesting. I’m going to keep it short this week since I have unpacking to get back to!

We made some good progress this week. Most notably, I am nearly finished with planning out the next several months of development. My pages of notes are now laid out in a rough schedule which I’m currently translating to Crea’s project plan.

As for other progress this week, I managed to fix a huge rendering issue that has plagued me for quite some time. When anything would be slightly transparent it would get a white tint added to it. This was caused by how the lighting was rendered. The main reason for fixing this finally was because I wanted to add in a trail effect when you dash.

Notice the trail effect when he dashes backwards from the monster

Another small feature we got in this week is the ability to do colored text in our chat. This was done by Matt, the new developer, to help get his feet wet.

This next week I am finally finishing up combat changes and cleaning various things up. Matt will be looking into getting multiplayer to a more stable place. Kelley is working on the new skill animations. We’ll have a lot to show off next Monday!

The next beta update will be ready soon. It will include a major overhaul on the skills, with many new skills being added. There will also be improvements to the underground biome.

Once that update is released and proven to be stable, I am thinking I will finally release Crea beta phase #3 and start our Greenlight campaign! Beta phase #3 will include the first boss and a few new features, such as a type of magic called “remna.” Then we will finally see the addition of NPCs! Lots of exciting stuff coming up. Just have to get over this development hump.