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Weekly Recap #4

This last week has been a whirlwind of progress and flew by so quickly! In order to prepare Crea for beta release, we took this last week to focus on polishing. Lots and lots of polishing. Here are some things we did.

Kelley and I finally cleaned up the main menu. Not final but still a much better placeholder than before.

Without quality loss

Explosives!

Normal Bomb

Sticky Bomb (work in progress)

Equipment names are now based off of the best attribute.

Game settings work nicely now as expected.

And some other notable tasks:

Added more sound effects and some music
Kelley added description and flavor text for nearly all the items
Added a few more items.
Fixed several bugs

For this upcoming week we will likely dedicate a large chunk to launching the beta and providing support. Other than that, Max and I have planned to greatly enhance the modding API. Our goal is to get mod support up and running. This will most definitely span multiple weeks but I’m going to try to timebox it in order to keep more content coming.

Expect more news soon!

Weekly Recap #3

Another week has already gone by! This last week was quite eventful. On Thursday I discovered that, amazingly, a TIGJam event (indie game jam) was taking place in a nearby city. It was Max’s last day of his stay at our place, so together we spent Friday at TIGJam. We got a lot of work done on Crea and also met some really cool people. We played Munchkin with Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpeace the composer of Fez). I even briefly met Edmund McMillen (Super Meat Boy and Binding of Issac), Derek Yu (Spelunky and Aquaria) and several more people. I’m absolutely looking forward to the next TIGJam. In the meantime, more Crea!

We have just about wrapped up the item tooltips. They have received a major style overhaul and several other enhancements. Researchable items now have a nice little icon on them, equipment now has colored names based on its quality, and the positioning of tooltips is improved. We’ll continue to work on tooltips next week.

way-shard-tooltip broadsword-tooltip

Max spent a large chunk of his time cleaning up the world generation. We managed a massive win with handling the underground generation. Previously, we would define a rectangle that would be considered the underground section of the world, but since the surface of the world is not flat there was always at least some space between the visible surface of the world and what the game considered underground. This lead to a large “fun-free zone,” as Max called it, large swaths of earth with nothing interesting going on. We came up with a solution where now we know exactly where the underground starts across the entire world. The difference is quite visible.

Old Underground vs New Underground

Water has finally been added to the world. This required a surprising amount of work. First I had to add in the concept of breathing and checking to see if the player was underwater. Along with that was the need of some type of visual indication of how much breath you have left. I decided to add it to the HUD.

After that I had to add the water to world generation which was not too bad thanks to the changes Max has been making to it. Immediately after doing this though I discovered that having 30,000+ water cells in the world was a little too much for the cellular automation system. I then went to work on optimizing it even more and am pleased that now the game can handle an immense amount of water at a time.

A segment of a world with water in it.

Lastly, I have been working on finishing up the Way Crystals. Now Way Shards will slowly grow nearby the crystals and players can harvest them. Players are able to attune themselves to a single crystal and immediately transport there at anytime by using a shard. Additionally, shards can be used to quickly travel to other crystals when nearby a crystal. way_crystal Progress has been good and we are looking to keep it up this week. Here is what we have planned at the moment:

Implementing more sound effects
Implementing some music
Fall damage
Adding window icons on HUD (Talent, Craft, Research)
Help Tooltips
Bug fixing and general cleanup

We are getting amazingly close to a public beta release. I’m both excited and nervous. It is very likely beta will be happening in the next two weeks.

Weekly Recap #2

Here again with a new recap. I am pleased that we managed to finish most of what we set out to do this week.

I finished upgrading the crafting system to make it possible to provide equipment as an ingredient. While I was at it, I cleaned up the crafting, equipment and talent UI. Both the crafting and talent UI used dropdown menus to select your current category/talent. At first I thought this was a wonderful idea because it is extremely expandable making it mod friendly; however, after time I have realized that this is a pre-optimization and 99% of new items could fit into the existing categories.

Max spent the majority of the week working on monster spawning. Now spawners are permanently placed in the world and, when taken down to 0HP, instead of being destroyed the spawner is temporarily disabled for 15 minutes. We have plans to give the player the power to destroy spawners and have them respawn much more slowly than what we had before. This is one of those things that needs lots and lots of tweaking to get just right.

Boom!

The other big task I worked on this week was adding in water to the world. The simulation was a little broken from months of neglect and once I did get it back up I spent some time smoothing it out. A large chunk of my time was spent on getting the water to be saved with the world and transmitted to clients during multiplayer. I began to incorporate it into gameplay but only got as far as having it affect player movement when I made the decision to wrap up other things so we could release a new early beta build today.

Water (work in progress)

Wrapping things up involves lots of tiny tasks remaining from the larger features such as ensuring that all new items can be obtained one way or another. There is also the task of fixing the bugs that we have created over the last few weeks; fortunately there aren’t too many of those!

Over the next week we are going to be focusing on finishing up several features that need some love.

Way Crystals
Water
Tooltip visual overhaul
The “underground” biome, which is being reworked by Max

We will hopefully get to a few smaller things on our list as well but we have lots of planning to do before Max heads back home on Saturday. We have a great momentum and if we can keep it up then the next beta phase is just around the corner.

Equipment Upgrade

Up to this point, we have been very focused on implementing new features and adding in as much new content as possible – quantity over quality. A few weeks ago we started taking a harder look at our existing content and systems. It was then that we made the decision to switch our focus on polishing existing content rather than adding new content.

During one of our design discussions, we began to explore the idea of scrapping the linear equipment progression (iron sword -> copper sword -> silver sword, etc.) in favor of a more original equipment upgrade system. After a few more discussions we had refined the system design and come up with new equipment that is multitudes better than we had before.

The best way to explain is by example. Our swords start with the Wood Club and then progress to a Bronze Cleaver and then a Broadsword. This keeps things simple at the start but once you have the broadsword things start to get interesting.

The next best sword is obtained by upgrading the Broadsword by using it in a recipe to craft a Broadsword+. Going from there, the Broadsword+ can be upgraded to one of four different swords: Rapier, Greatsword, Sylic Blade and Artisan Broadsword. Each of these has a different focuses.

Rapier provides attack speed bonus
Greatsword provides knockback
Sylic Blade does magical damage
Artisan Broadsword focuses on raw damage

Upgrading Broadsword+ to a Greatsword

Each of these will upgrade to the corresponding “+” version and then can be upgraded to the next tier which have their own unique focuses. For example the Greatsword+ can be upgraded to either the Zweihander which can stun an enemy or the Executioner which does more damage the lower HP the enemy has.

Sketches of the sword progression by Max

Attributes carryover when upgrading equipment which makes your choices have a meaningful longterm impact. Such as a Broadsword you found with high Magic Attack bonus could make a good Sylic Blade. We have even talked about allowing the player to choose to reset their weapon to a Broadsword but choose to keep some of the attributes making it possible to create truly unique pieces of equipment – like a very fast Rapier type weapon with knockback.

Using a Greatsword to kill an oil slime

Of course, swords are not the only thing that can be upgraded. In addition we currently have bows, helms, chests, and legs armor with upgrade tiers. We will likely add a few more weapon types with upgrade tiers as well. There are other items the player can obtain that do not have upgrade tiers or have smaller upgrade tiers. Gloves will grant bonuses for doing things such as gaining bonus TP (Talent Points). Boots provide movement type bonuses such as movement speed or jump height.

Quick concept art of early tiers of chest armor

This is not everything that we have planned for equipment though. We have two other systems for making your equipment even stronger that we plan to implement once we get our first boss in. I know I’m really looking forward to seeing the final equipment – I hope you are too!

Weekly Recap #1

I (Jasson) am going to kick off these weekly recaps with a big one – we have a lot of catching up to do!

Back in March, I brought a new developer on board to help with Crea, Max. He is a freelance programmer and self-described “monster hunter” who supported our Kickstarter and ran a successful Kickstarter of his own. Two weeks ago, Max flew out from the East Coast to stay at our place for a while to make some serious damage to Crea’s task list. This is what Max looks like:

As I mentioned in my last post, we are working on refining existing content and systems. Since Max got here we started doing a lot of designing and planning out how everything in Crea fits together. This includes things like items, game progression and bosses. Lots of fun stuff. This last week we heavily focused on equipment (weapons and armor).

There is so much to talk about regarding the equipment that I’ll save it for its own post. What I will say for now is that we completely scrapped all of the existing equipment in favor of a much more interesting system. Before our equipment was in tiers awfully similar to Minecraft and Terraria – i.e. “Copper Sword” -> “Iron Sword” -> “Gold Sword”. There is beauty in the simplicity but after talking we realized we wanted something else; something new. Now equipment will be upgraded and provide more unique attributes that will actually have an impact on gameplay rather than only increasing stats. Ok I’ve already said way more than I was wanting to…

Some sketches for the weapon progression

The majority of our week was spent designing the new equipment and implementing it into the game. Kelley worked on the equipment art assets, Aaron helped implement the equipment content files and I finished off the equipment by working on the unique attributes.

The Winged Bow shoots 3 arrows at once!

Beyond equipment I did a plethora of small to medium changes:

Finished up a completely new physics system
Added in movement sloping (so players can run up one high blocks)
Trees and blocks emit particles when hit
Added tile placement preview
Fixed a handful of bugs

Look at those particles bounce!

Max spent the first half of the week finishing up some world generation enhancement with a focus on making the underground more interesting. The second part of the week was spent working on reworking the monster spawning system some because there was some fundamental problems with the frequency at which monster spawners were created. We are still going to have spawners but we are trying to get the rate at which monsters are around to fight to be just right. In the current beta version monsters are rather scarce and it breaks the pacing of the game completely.

Some of Max’s monster idea doodles

This next week we have lots planned. Here is a quick highlight:

Crafting system needs to be updated to enable the new equipment upgrade system
Monster spawning is going to be wrapped up
Design and implement some equipment accessories
Water – Simulation is done but needs to affect gameplay
Waycrystals – Quick travel system

Alright, that’ll do it for this week’s update. Let me know what you think and if there are any parts you’d like us to go into detail more/less.

Max and Jasson hard at work

Aaron making a cheesecake, which directly goes towards fueling Crea’s development.

Crea on Linux

This means that we are now running on all 3 launch platforms! Yay!

Realms

waycrystal

Because Crea’s biomes are randomly generated, they are always totally new worlds for players to explore. However, after playing in one world for awhile it starts to become too familiar. While it it’s wonderful to start from scratch and create a totally new world every once in awhile, sometimes players just want another dungeon to delve into. To remedy this, Crea will have what we are calling realms.

A realm is an entirely new area to explore separate from the main world but still accessible by special means. New realms can become available through exploration, unlocked by completing a quest, killing a boss, or any other means imaginable. Traveling between the world and realms is done through the use of Way Crystals; large crystals that mysteriously allow teleportation.

waycrystal

In Crea, certain rules apply to worlds, such that as players can build anywhere or that the world size is always very large. Realms, however, don’t have to stick to these rules. One realm could be as small as a single room. Maybe another realm doesn’t allow construction. By breaking the rules, realms enable the creation of areas and scenarios that were impossible before.

My favorite aspect to realms is that since they are loosely connected to the world they can be added and updated alongside existing worlds. For example, you could install a mod and through a quest gain access to an entirely new dungeon. Later you could get an update for this mod that builds additional content onto the dungeon. So realms can be continually evolving without interfering with the main world.

We plan to fully take full advantage of realms. Dungeons are a perfect fit. Some dungeons will be at a set level, while others grow in levels with your character so they will always provide a challenge. Most dungeons will be procedurally generated but some could be hand-crafted. All of the dungeons will be updated alongside existing worlds.

Dungeons are not the only use case though. We are considering some boss fights to be in special realms or perhaps at the end of a dungeon. We are also thinking other special areas could find themselves in realms. Casino?

Realms are currently planned for Beta Phase 3.

Upcoming Beta in Humble Store

Beta (phase 1) is finally in sight. We hope to have it released in about a week. As we mentioned in our earlier roadmap post, Phase 1 will include Windows/Mac/Linux support, multiplayer, leveling, skills, combat, crafting, randomly generated worlds with several biomes, character customization and our beautiful day/night cycle. Note that this phase of the beta is private. Crea will become publicly available starting with phase 2.

So far we have had only a handful of people regularly testing the alpha. Meanwhile, there are about 70 early beta testers eagerly waiting. Going from 5 to 70 testers could be a bit overwhelming for us, so we are planning to incrementally add beta testers. This will help us keep up with bug reports, so there isn’t a huge deluge of reports all at once. Also by doing it this way, we can fix any big game-breaking bugs without exposing everyone to them. We are planning to invite a group of early beta backers ($50+ Kickstarter Backers), if you are an early beta backer and want to be subjected to the earliest beta stage then send Jasson a message on the forums.

Starting with the beta, Crea will be distributed through the Humble Store! This does not mean we are going to be in a Humble Bundle. What it does mean is that you will be able to download the game through your Humble Store account. Steam keys can be easily claimed through the Humble Store if/when Crea is published on Steam. Also we will be selling Crea through the Humble Store via a widget on our site, siegegames.com. The widget will look something like this.

Crea Humble Store Widget

We know that you guys have been patiently waiting for a chance to play Crea, and we are super excited to be able to finally start sharing it with you. Thanks for your continued support and encouragement!

Update Time!

It has been far too long since I posted an update. I don’t have too much exciting news to share at the moment; however, I figured I could mention what I have been working on at least.

For the last month I have been slowly figuring out how to make multiplayer better. It has been a long road involving switching from TCP to UDP and all the insanity that contains. Things are finally starting to shape up though. I have it mostly stable while testing with myself and will start stress testing it soon.

Shared access to Treasure Chest

All other features are in place for the first beta phase and we are working on adding in more content (biomes, monsters, items, and so on). In fact, this is exactly what our new developer is working on now. We will introduce him properly on the blog once we are past the trial period.

Some much more exciting updates are just around the corner. Stay tuned!

Updated Roadmap

It has been awhile since I posted an update regarding our release schedule. I want to thank everyone for their patience. Here is what we have planned.

Beta Phase 1 (Early Beta)

Time Frame: Early April
Duration: 4-6 weeks
Availability: Only $50+ Kickstarter Backers
Features: Windows/Mac/Linux support, Multiplayer, Leveling, Skills, Combat, Crafting, Generated Worlds, Character Customization, Day/Night Cycle

Beta Phase 2

Time Frame: Mid May
Duration: 4-6 weeks
Availability: $25 Kickstarter Backers. Publicly available for $25. (contains game, digital soundtrack, and digital artbook.)
Additions: NPCs, Researching, Grafting and additional Biomes, Monsters, Equipment, Items, Skills, etc.

Beta Phase 3

Time Frame: Late June
Duration: 4-8 weeks
Availability: $10+ Kickstarter Backers. Publicly available for $10. (game only)
Additions: Official Mod Support, Bosses and more content.

Release

Time Frame: August
Availability: Can be purchased by anyone for $15.
Additions: Quests, Mounts, Second Playable Race and more.

Some things to note

Any of this is subject to change but I have waited to post it until I was reasonably certain on the time frames.
Updates between releases will be posted on a weekly basis
Beta Phase 3 marks the official mod support. At this point I will do my best to provide all details regarding mod changes, provide mod API documentation and additional features such as in-game mod management. Before this it is still very possible to mod Crea.

EDIT: I have updated the original estimates to better reflect our current status.