ACT Patreon Active [Anon42] Crisis Point: Extinction

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

I think it'd be cool to give the non-human enemy recolors different tactics. For example, the new Edovex wouldn't chase the player, but instead would wander around the stage and shoot a stinger if the player was in sight. Or the tentacle enemy recolor would swipe with a tentacle if the player gets too close. It's something to make it feel as if the further 'down' you go, the deadlier the environment is around you, thus the human recolors having more powerful guns and more health.

 

[Anon42]

I think it'd be cool to give the non-human enemy recolors different tactics. For example, the new Edovex wouldn't chase the player, but instead would wander around the stage and shoot a stinger if the player was in sight. Or the tentacle enemy recolor would swipe with a tentacle if the player gets too close. It's something to make it feel as if the further 'down' you go, the deadlier the environment is around you, thus the human recolors having more powerful guns and more health.

Yeah, in general, I definitely want to give recolored enemies some new/unique functionality, not just the non-humans either. Doing that means brand new assets, though, so we just haven't gotten around to it yet when there's already new enemies and other content that need assets more. I'm hoping we'll have time for it eventually

 

[Anon42]

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Hey everybody, gonna be a bit of a smaller update this week. Me and Puffernutter had a bit of a rough week for reasons I don't really want to get into (no it's not coronavirus, we're both still healthy and fine so far), so my productivity was down a bit. Apologies.

Anyway, first off is a shot of some of the new background assets I've been working on for Area 5, which you can see up above. Puffernutter's been too busy to work on tilesets much, so I've tried to step in and do some work on it where I can - the result is the screenshot up above, with a new background layer, a bunch of stalactite variations, and an alternate variation of the floor tiles with a more brick-like pattern, Some of them still need some touching up, especially the brick floors, but I'm really happy with it as a whole, especially the background walls.

The other thing I have to post is a preview of the regular Kertalus H-scene. Orexius finished up the animation this week, so here's the loop itself for your enjoyment.

For my part, aside from the background asset work, I also finished the layout of the biggest room Crisis Point has ever had this week - the detail work is still incomplete, but just laying out and tiling the room has taken me multiple streams worth of work. Here's a shot of the map itself, so you can see just how much bigger this room is than the surrounding rooms:

I also worked on some cutscene scripts, and hiring some new voice actors for new NPCs we'll be introducing soon. I'm hoping we can bring them in this update, but if not it'll be next one for sure. We have a lot of cutscenes lined up for the game right now and we just need assets to get them going, which is a bit rough to do when we're already working on assets for a brand new area.

Anyway, that's it for me this week. I'll see you guys next week with another (hopefully better) update!

 

[Anon42]

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Hey everyone, time for another CPE development update! This week I've got a few more visuals to show off from our work on Area 5, as well as some general information on accessibility features I want to add for v0.39.

First off, the gif you see above. Puffernutter worked on a parallax background for us to put below the surface of the water, in area 5 so it's not quite as plain as a flat color. We plan to do a bit more with the background than just this, but this is what we have for it so far. She's also been working on some more bits and pieces I can put in the environment, one of which is the large swaying plant you see in the background there.

As you can see, I also spent some time this week giving our new enemy some animations, including a completed idle animation and a WIP projectile attack animation. He's been surprisingly fun to animate so far! Orexius has also started on his first H-scene, so hopefully that will be ready in time for v0.39 as well.

Next up is a last-minute thing I wanted to start working on. I looked through our Patreon exit surveys recently, and found a survey from someone who was unable to play the game because of a disability they suffer from. This was kind of a wake up call for me; I don't want this to happen to anybody who wants to play the game, so in the hopes that I can improve somebody else's experience in the future, I'm going to officially start adding in some accessibility options. I've also wanted to add in a gameplay options menu for a while, to implement some options for people to turn on/off, and it's a great opportunity to add accessibility features as well.

None of the accessibility options listed there are functional yet, but here's what they are and how they will function:

- Toggle Blaster. As stated in the screenshot above, when enabled, pressing the Shoot button will toggle the blaster on, and it will continue to automatically fire until the button is pressed again to toggle it off.
- Blaster Auto-Aim. When enabled, the player will still have to turn left/right to face enemies, but Alicia will automatically target the nearest enemy in her field of vision, simplifying aiming controls.
- Always Full Jumps. When enabled, Alicia will always jump to her full height, even when the Jump button is released early, allowing you to simply press the button to jump instead of holding it.
- Auto-Dash. When enabled, if the Jump button is held down while jumping, Alicia will automatically dash in the direction the player is holding once she reaches the peak of her jump, allowing you to cross larger gaps without extra button inputs.
- Gameplay Speed. Reduces the speed the game runs at, reducing the demand for reaction times and precise inputs. Now, unfortunately this option is going to take a MASSIVE amount of work to implement properly; Crisis Point's game logic is currently frame-dependant, which means if the game runs below 60 fps, everything runs slower. Changing game logic to be independent of framerate is an absurdly huge amount of work, and while I do want to try to make it happen, I don't think it'll happen until closer to the game's completion. That being said, I WILL still be implementing this feature, just in a simpler way, by lowering the game's framerate; it will make the visuals choppier, but hopefully for anyone who struggles with the speed of the game, it will still be able to improve their experience until I can do it right.

I have plenty of other ideas for accessibility features too, including an easier difficulty level I plan on adding in v0.39, but I'm definitely looking for any and all feedback on this! If you have a disability yourself, or just have ideas on accessibility features to implement, please don't hesitate to comment here or DM me! To anyone who does have a disability who has struggled to play the game because of it, I'm so very sorry that I hadn't considered your needs up until this point. Getting that exit survey made me realize how very real and important this is, and I'm determined to improve our accessibility so that everyone can play and enjoy CPE.

Alright, that's it for this week! I did a bunch of other things this week, including finalizing about 8 cutscene/dialogue scripts (some of which will not be in this update) and sending them off to our actors, so it's been an extremely productive week for us. Thank you very much for reading, and we'll see you in the next update!

 

[cell943]

Damn, how long has it been since actual new content was developed? This is fantastic news! Thanks for all the updates.

 

[Anon42]

Damn, how long has it been since actual new content was developed? This is fantastic news! Thanks for all the updates.

I'm glad you're happy, but uh.. we've been developing new content for over a year now..? The Great Rework™ ended in January 2019, and while we still have been reworking some stuff since then, our focus has shifted over to content creation with a side of reworking rather than fully focusing on reworks. Feel free to look back at the topic, we've been posting development updates almost every week and there's been plenty of new stuff

 

[Anon42]

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Hey everybody, time for another CPE development update! I don't have a ton to show off this week, since I spent a lot of my time working on the accessibility features I announced last update. The good news is, over the week, I managed to implement every single one of them - there's still some testing and tweaking to do, but they're all functional already, so any players in need of them will be able to use them once v0.39 comes out! I also plan on adding an easier difficulty level as well, which I'll probably work on during this next week. With all those options, I really hope anyone who struggled playing CPE before will have a much more enjoyable time going forward.

The gif you see up above contains some more of the Area 5 background work Puffernutter did this week. There's now a rock layer at the surface of the water (which you can see at the start of the gif) that will act as a transition point between the above and below water areas. The above-water section still hasn't received much love yet unfortunately, but we'll get working on that soon. Underwater, we also have some breaks in the rock wall pattern, through which you can see some more parallax layers, to add some nice depth to the scene. In general during this update I've learned some new techniques for handling parallax environment art, and it's really nice to bring it all together for a brand new area! I'm really happy with how it's turning out, and I expect this to be the nicest looking area in CPE by far.


Aside from accessibility features and the background art, I mostly worked on more Area 5 level design this week. I want there to be a decent amount of stuff to explore in Area 5, so a LOT of my work for the rest of this update will be focused on that, and future weekly updates might end up staying pretty small - sorry about that! Orexius is working on the new enemy's H-scene, Red is still plugging away at the Torguis CG in his limited spare time, and I'm also looking into hiring some new people to voice new characters! I can't guarantee they'll be introduced in this update, just because of the amount of work that's left to do, but I'm trying my best to get them prepared in time, so fingers crossed.


Alright, that's it for this week's update! Thank you all very much for reading, and for continuing to follow us! We'll see you in the next update!

 

[Inspector_Whatsup]

@Anon42 Oh snap, I love layered parallax!

In general, there was a lot to catch up on for me (PC broke, I'm broke, guess what happens), and I'm really glad to see it still coming together nicely!

That said, something's bothering me about the parallax - it looks nice, and the scrolling offset in the gif works well in my opinion, but it still looks... flat? So what I'd like to know is wether you or your engine have any interest in "shine layers", for lack of a better word.
What I mean is a shimmer effect that gives the further layers a bit of animation without requiring a full-on animated background layer. Especially in underwater environments, backgrounds become a real focus since mobility is often restricted or slowed down while also expanding the traversable space, which results in big open rooms where the background tends to stand out. Which is why a lot of games populate the background with subtle eye-catchers that make the area look a bit less empty and also provide visual feedback to the players' progression across the room(s) without becoming a distraction.

 

[Anon42]

@Anon42 Oh snap, I love layered parallax!

In general, there was a lot to catch up on for me (PC broke, I'm broke, guess what happens), and I'm really glad to see it still coming together nicely!

That said, something's bothering me about the parallax - it looks nice, and the scrolling offset in the gif works well in my opinion, but it still looks... flat? So what I'd like to know is wether you or your engine have any interest in "shine layers", for lack of a better word.
What I mean is a shimmer effect that gives the further layers a bit of animation without requiring a full-on animated background layer. Especially in underwater environments, backgrounds become a real focus since mobility is often restricted or slowed down while also expanding the traversable space, which results in big open rooms where the background tends to stand out. Which is why a lot of games populate the background with subtle eye-catchers that make the area look a bit less empty and also provide visual feedback to the players' progression across the room(s) without becoming a distraction.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "shine layers", honestly. If you just mean more environment bits to break up the repetition more, then yeah, what you see in the gif is definitely not all we have planned for the area - an example being the tall kelp-like plant we showed off in the previous weekly update. Or did you mean that sort of "waving" effect a lot of games use for underwater environments? I plan on experimenting with something like that for the background, but haven't gotten around to it yet. If you meant something else entirely, then I gotta ask for more clarification, I'm coming up blank :' )

 

[Inspector_Whatsup]

@Anon42 Well, to put it simple, I was referring to a background layer that shifts back and forth in brightness. It can be used to visualize faint illumination in the background.

An example of this effect would be in Super Ghouls and Ghosts,

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. When you look at the background (nevermind the fact that this video is a bit on the crunchy side), you'll see various background elements "flicker" as if being illuminated. Sorry if that's a stupid way of explaining it.

 

[Anon42]

@Anon42 Well, to put it simple, I was referring to a background layer that shifts back and forth in brightness. It can be used to visualize faint illumination in the background.

An example of this effect would be in Super Ghouls and Ghosts,

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. When you look at the background (nevermind the fact that this video is a bit on the crunchy side), you'll see various background elements "flicker" as if being illuminated. Sorry if that's a stupid way of explaining it.

Gotcha, that makes sense. Obviously that kind of background only really works when there's a reason for the illumination, but I'm not against doing it where appropriate - we do pretty much use that concept already, just with the game's lighting engine rather than only flickering specific background elements. The gifs I share have the lighting engine turned off though, because it adds TONS of slightly-different colors to the screen, and since gifs have a color limit, it absolutely wrecks the image quality; here's a screenshot showcasing more of what it looks like ingame with the lighting turned on, hopefully that helps with the overall visual interest of the scene

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

Sorry for cutting in a little late on this point, but I hope that isn't the final color choice for the background. It makes the level feel a lot brighter than an underwater segment should, even with the heavy blue tone on everything.

 

[Anon42]

Sorry for cutting in a little late on this point, but I hope that isn't the final color choice for the background. It makes the level feel a lot brighter than an underwater segment should, even with the heavy blue tone on everything.

That seems like a pretty subjective thing, and I don't know that I agree. We have a lot of dark areas already, the Catacombs and Caves especially, and comparing the colors we're using to real life underwater photography, it's really not much different in terms of brightness. I'm not saying "no, there's no chance we'll tweak things at all", but I don't really agree that it looks bad currently, or that an underwater area "should" be darker

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

That seems like a pretty subjective thing, and I don't know that I agree. We have a lot of dark areas already, the Catacombs and Caves especially, and comparing the colors we're using to real life underwater photography, it's really not much different in terms of brightness. I'm not saying "no, there's no chance we'll tweak things at all", but I don't really agree that it looks bad currently, or that an underwater area "should" be darker

Well before I try to explain myself, is this more of an ocean or an underwater cave?

 

[Anon42]

Well before I try to explain myself, is this more of an ocean or an underwater cave?

The latter, it's a subaquatic cave system

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

The latter, it's a subaquatic cave system

Ah yes I see my problem now. All of the pictures I can find do seem have that bright blue look. However, that's only produced by a combination of either direct sunlight or flashlights and over-saturation of the blue. As someone who's been to one of these, that's not how it looks irl. The water is still bright blue, but sub-aquatic rocks don't have that blue sheen. They're just a natural grey or brown color.

Plus if there's no direct sunlight going into the cave, sub-aquatic caves are dark as FUCK. Water is no good at carrying light. Solution? Try making the background above water more... open looking, I guess? Like open it up to the outside to where you can see the open sky through the background somehow.

 

[Sblade]

will we have drown time like example Sonic games?

 

[Anon42]

Ah yes I see my problem now. All of the pictures I can find do seem have that bright blue look. However, that's only produced by a combination of either direct sunlight or flashlights and over-saturation of the blue. As someone who's been to one of these, that's not how it looks irl. The water is still bright blue, but sub-aquatic rocks don't have that blue sheen. They're just a natural grey or brown color.

Plus if there's no direct sunlight going into the cave, sub-aquatic caves are dark as FUCK. Water is no good at carrying light. Solution? Try making the background above water more... open looking, I guess? Like open it up to the outside to where you can see the open sky through the background somehow.

You do have a good point if I were mimicking real life as closely as possible - and it probably wasn't a great idea for me to reference real life underwater shots in general because of that, but do consider that the game is on an alien planet, not Earth. The walls in the area that make up the level geometry are pretty much shining, as you can see in the gifs, not to mention the multitude of glowing plants, so it's not out of the question to imagine that the flora and/or fauna in the area are bioluminescent in some way, or that the rock walls have peculiar properties, or even that the water somehow reacts to light differently. Of course, there's an argument to be had that handwaving it as "it's an alien planet" can make design seem lazy or unrelateable, and that's valid; I think it's a give and take between the player and developer, where the player needs to set aside some preconceptions when it comes to things that aren't trying to be hyperrealistic, as long as the developer makes an honest effort to try and make it seem believable. Translation: we need more glowy bits.

As far as making the above-water areas open, though, that wouldn't work; Area 5 is about as deep into the planet as the Catacombs are, so it couldn't possibly open up to the sky

will we have drown time like example Sonic games?

Nah, you can stay underwater indefinitely. The logic behind it is explained with a short conversation ingame.

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

So instead of having the background be flat cyan color rocks, it'll be crystals? That's actually really cool.

 

[Anon42]

So instead of having the background be flat cyan color rocks, it'll be crystals? That's actually really cool.

Not necessarily the entire background, I think that'd be a bit too much personally, but between crystals, bioluminescent flora and fauna, and anything else we think of, I imagine we can make the brighter environment seem more fitting. I did try tinkering with making the background darker as well, just to see if it'd look nice, but it shifted the look too far away from what we were aiming for, so we're gonna go the route of making the brighter colors more justified. I imagine we'll probably be making tweaks to the environment in this area for a while, too; we only just started creating assets for it during development of this update, so there's still a lot left to do, and a lot of details to fill in. I'm really hoping we can eventually get around to filling the rest of the game's environments with this level of care, too