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Dev Blog #153 - Retrospection
Like mentioned above, on Tuesday we had a day long discussion about the current problems of Crest and how we'd like to fix them in the future. What came out of it can be read in yesterday's post: The Future of Crest. Two important dates to take away from the lengthy post:
Martin I've been working on the new trailer, most of the time has been spent on making a storyboard. It makes sense to create images outside of your head if you collaborate with others on a project, but the added bonus is that the ideas you have in your head sometimes don't look that good when you see them with your eyes. So it's always a back and forth between what you think and what can be made. Storyboards are great!
Emma I've been working on figuring out technical solutions for our new website and working on some new UI. From our long discussion about how to improve the game, an overview of cities was born. At the moment, it's kinda hard to get a clear view of how each city is doing if you don't go through every city pop-up and go over every tab. This new UI will provide the player with a summary of every city, easily readable with not too much information. At the moment, we need to figure out how to display this information without making it looking too "information-heavy", as it shouldn't scare the player away. Below are two of the mock-ups!
Johannes I've not worked much on the game this week, I've mostly done company stuff. I have however made a tool to find mismatched calls to Profiler.BeginSample() and Profiler.EndSample(), which helped us find a couple of mistakes in the code. I'm now back at focusing on improving the island generation, to make the islands more varied and interesting. Johannes W This week I fixed some minor bugs with the camera movement. There was some old code that kind of worked against the new camera movement which caused the camera to sometimes behave weirdly. I've also been working with the story builder for the new end screen. For example, a new feature for the purpose of development is the ability write sentences that refers to methods in the script that is responsible for the story generation. So the string "Your era came to an end when {FollowerName} died of old age." results in a sentence that has replaced "{FollowerName}" with the follower's name. For randomization, "{Random(proud, noble, grand, glorious)}" results in a randomized word from the arguments "proud", "noble" etc. The purpose for this is to enable us to create dynamic and interesting stories for our players! If you are a programmer reading this, the library Reflection in C# was used to accomplish this. Tomas I have finished the new Follower word discovery speech/thinking bubble I talked about last week. I am almost done with making it so that followers with high faith never do actions that the player tells them to not do. I was almost done but after some code reviews I have chosen to re-do the feature a bit. I also looked into a major change to how Followers choose targets when they build their orders. When I am done, this should make Cannibals, Killing Warriors and Hunters behave as expected. Previously there was a possibility that they performed the actions on unwanted targets. Like for example if the player had written the commandment "... eat old followers." and there were no old followers, they would still eat people... just not their favored target.
Jens This week I implemented the playback for all the new sound effects. This means that we can start testing them during play, seeing if they work or what potential adjustments need to be made. For example, the notifications will now play different sounds depending on the severity of the message. Monuments and expertise buildings now play rewarding sounds when built or upgraded. All in all, more than 20 sound effects have been added with this batch. Otherwise I've been working through some issues we have had with the disposition system (relationships between cities). Currently the trading is getting a makeover as the cities trade too often, with too many resources, essentially making them bounce resources between each other. We want to balance the pacing of the game from the point of the second city being founded. Right now all the different aspects of the disposition system, trading, diplomacy, alliances, and war kicks in with the second city, which can be overwhelming in its current state.
Emelie This week we had a workshop where we went through things that we want to fix with the game, it was very beneficial and added to my work as a designer. When we start implementing these things I hope that you will notice the difference and get a nicer time playing our game. Other than that I tested a part of the storybuilder, now that it's testable in a scene that Johannes W has made, I noticed some things that needed changing but it's coming along nicely.
Marcus Work on the Community Module is getting completed at a steady pace and most of the art assets are done, which means that we can have one of our artists, Emma, begin working on the updates and features we have scheduled for our next big update. These updates are based on community feedback and internal playtesting, which have identified the biggest issues with Crest, and I have begun scoping and planning these iterations. _____________________________________________________________ Have a nice weekend!
[ 2017-10-27 13:36:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
It's been an eventful week: On Tuesday everyone stopped what they're doing to talk about the future of Crest and on Thursday we were left without internet at the office due to heavy rain and storms. Nevertheless, a lot of progress has been made this week.
Community
Like mentioned above, on Tuesday we had a day long discussion about the current problems of Crest and how we'd like to fix them in the future. What came out of it can be read in yesterday's post: The Future of Crest. Two important dates to take away from the lengthy post:
- The Community Module will launch at the end of November
- The "final" release for Crest has been pushed back to Q1 2018 for now
Art
Martin I've been working on the new trailer, most of the time has been spent on making a storyboard. It makes sense to create images outside of your head if you collaborate with others on a project, but the added bonus is that the ideas you have in your head sometimes don't look that good when you see them with your eyes. So it's always a back and forth between what you think and what can be made. Storyboards are great!
Emma I've been working on figuring out technical solutions for our new website and working on some new UI. From our long discussion about how to improve the game, an overview of cities was born. At the moment, it's kinda hard to get a clear view of how each city is doing if you don't go through every city pop-up and go over every tab. This new UI will provide the player with a summary of every city, easily readable with not too much information. At the moment, we need to figure out how to display this information without making it looking too "information-heavy", as it shouldn't scare the player away. Below are two of the mock-ups!
Code
Johannes I've not worked much on the game this week, I've mostly done company stuff. I have however made a tool to find mismatched calls to Profiler.BeginSample() and Profiler.EndSample(), which helped us find a couple of mistakes in the code. I'm now back at focusing on improving the island generation, to make the islands more varied and interesting. Johannes W This week I fixed some minor bugs with the camera movement. There was some old code that kind of worked against the new camera movement which caused the camera to sometimes behave weirdly. I've also been working with the story builder for the new end screen. For example, a new feature for the purpose of development is the ability write sentences that refers to methods in the script that is responsible for the story generation. So the string "Your era came to an end when {FollowerName} died of old age." results in a sentence that has replaced "{FollowerName}" with the follower's name. For randomization, "{Random(proud, noble, grand, glorious)}" results in a randomized word from the arguments "proud", "noble" etc. The purpose for this is to enable us to create dynamic and interesting stories for our players! If you are a programmer reading this, the library Reflection in C# was used to accomplish this. Tomas I have finished the new Follower word discovery speech/thinking bubble I talked about last week. I am almost done with making it so that followers with high faith never do actions that the player tells them to not do. I was almost done but after some code reviews I have chosen to re-do the feature a bit. I also looked into a major change to how Followers choose targets when they build their orders. When I am done, this should make Cannibals, Killing Warriors and Hunters behave as expected. Previously there was a possibility that they performed the actions on unwanted targets. Like for example if the player had written the commandment "... eat old followers." and there were no old followers, they would still eat people... just not their favored target.
Jens This week I implemented the playback for all the new sound effects. This means that we can start testing them during play, seeing if they work or what potential adjustments need to be made. For example, the notifications will now play different sounds depending on the severity of the message. Monuments and expertise buildings now play rewarding sounds when built or upgraded. All in all, more than 20 sound effects have been added with this batch. Otherwise I've been working through some issues we have had with the disposition system (relationships between cities). Currently the trading is getting a makeover as the cities trade too often, with too many resources, essentially making them bounce resources between each other. We want to balance the pacing of the game from the point of the second city being founded. Right now all the different aspects of the disposition system, trading, diplomacy, alliances, and war kicks in with the second city, which can be overwhelming in its current state.
Design
Emelie This week we had a workshop where we went through things that we want to fix with the game, it was very beneficial and added to my work as a designer. When we start implementing these things I hope that you will notice the difference and get a nicer time playing our game. Other than that I tested a part of the storybuilder, now that it's testable in a scene that Johannes W has made, I noticed some things that needed changing but it's coming along nicely.
Production
Marcus Work on the Community Module is getting completed at a steady pace and most of the art assets are done, which means that we can have one of our artists, Emma, begin working on the updates and features we have scheduled for our next big update. These updates are based on community feedback and internal playtesting, which have identified the biggest issues with Crest, and I have begun scoping and planning these iterations. _____________________________________________________________ Have a nice weekend!
[ 2017-10-27 13:36:20 CET ] [ Original post ]
Crest
Eat Create Sleep
Developer
Eat Create Sleep
Publisher
2018-03-08
Release
Game News Posts:
168
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
Mixed
(302 reviews)
The Game includes VR Support
Public Linux Depots:
- Crest Linux [307.61 M]
Available DLCs:
- Crest - Art Book
Pitch
Welcome to Crest, a god game where you are as a parent to your children. Your only way of communication with your subjects is commandments you write for them. How these commandments are interpreted and remembered are not set in stone. What you write and what experiences they have with the environment is the basis for their religion. You might find that your people will change on their own accord over time and use your commandments for their own devices.You have an indirect control of your people with your commandments; consequences of your actions may not always be clear and you will need to be aware of the ever-changing environment and your people's disposition, amongst others their disposition towards you. Expressing yourself is the key of Crest; you will do so through your people and the world they shape.
Key Features
- Write rules for your subjects which will have interesting consequences.
- Many different ways to express your divinity which will be reflected in your followers.
- Immersive feedback which will show you the progress of your people and create a rich history.
- Procedurally generated game world which changes over time and shows wear and tear.
- An expressive game without end-goal where you can focus on building your legacy.
- Your people have free will, focus on leading them rather than controlling their every move.
- Emergent world where weather, vegetation, mineral deposits, drought and animal behavior will create surprises.
Progression and Losing
Every new world you start is unique; you can't have multiple saves of it so you will have to think carefully of what you want to do. If your people die off that world is gone forever as a playable save file. However, you will be able to view the legacy of your old worlds. As long as your people live you can continue playing, and as you progress create your own history.Setting
Crest is an Afrofuturist game that reimagines how humanity arose in the cradle of humankind on the African continent. It's a historical themed game that tries to emulate an advanced iron age civilization that could have existed a few thousand years ago. The setting for the game world, its flora and fauna is based on African biomes, with rainfall determining the tug-of-war between desert, savanna and jungle.MINIMAL SETUP
- OS: Ubuntu 12.04 or newer
- Processor: 3 GHzMemory: 8 GB RAM
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1 GB VRAM and shader model 4.0 compatible
- Storage: 1 GB available space
- OS: Ubuntu 12.04 or newer
- Processor: 3 GHzMemory: 16 GB RAM
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 1060 or equivalent
- Storage: 1 GB available space
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