ACT Patreon Active [Anon42] Crisis Point: Extinction

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

If you like what you see,

You must be registered to see the links

)

Hey everybody. Not gonna beat around the bush, I don't really have anything to show this week, so this update will be purely text. We still got work done, of course, but it's all been on stuff that I can't really show off. So instead of showing off individual things we worked on, I figured I'd go ahead and give a general status update to let you know what we've been doing, and what's left for this update.


Most of what I did this week was, surprise surprise, working on Area 5. Mostly, it boiled down to level design and script work; I mentioned before that I finished writing a bunch of scripts for this update, and this week I got the majority of the voice acting back from our actors, so I spent a lot of time going over audio and picking out takes. We've also hired new VAs for the new characters I mentioned in last week's update, so with any luck they'll make their debut as well. Since I have most of the voice acting I need, all that's left for the new cutscenes and conversations is to implement them; there are some unique cutscene animations that we won't have ready, so some of the cutscenes might seem a little odd/incomplete, but c'est la vie, such is the nature of game development.

Anyway, Orexius and Red are still working on their respective scenes, and Puffernutter continued working on Area 5 stuff (she's currently focused on the above-water portion; we have a lot more we want to do with the underwater spaces, but for now her attention is better spent on the sparse above-water space).

As far as what we have left for v0.39 - here's a quick rundown.
-More level design for Area 5
-As much environment detail as we can pack into Area 5 (this work will definitely continue into future updates)
-Implementing all the cutscenes and conversations I wrote (there's a lot of them)
-Adding an easier "Story" difficulty mode, which will dramatically reduce the difficulty if chosen
-New enemy still needs to be completed, is missing some intended functionality
-New sound effects needed for various things, like the new enemy
-More testing of new accessibility features, to ensure they all work as intended and the game can be completed with them active
-New enemy H-scene, and Torguis CG scene need to be finished

That's all the things I DEFINITELY want to get done for this update; I also want to possibly implement another upgrade, but it's very possible I won't have the time to do it. It may not seem like there's much left to do, but seeing as how we're already 1/3rd through this month, it's definitely getting down to the wire, and level design especially takes a LOT of time.


Anyway, that's all I have for this week. Sorry there's not really anything to show off, we're definitely at that point in the update cycle where all our exciting stuff has already been done and we're just plugging away at all the less interesting/more secretive stuff to get the update ready for release. As always, thank you all so very much for the support. See you in next week's update!

 

[Julia_ormand]

We are supporting you because we like your game Anon and want to see you succeed, for the love of god, stop apologizing lmao.

Also, would it be possible for you to include save games for the most recently added areas or do our saves carry over? i dont want to have to play through again and again to experience new content ya know?

 

[Anon42]

We are supporting you because we like your game Anon and want to see you succeed, for the love of god, stop apologizing lmao.

Also, would it be possible for you to include save games for the most recently added areas or do our saves carry over? i dont want to have to play through again and again to experience new content ya know?

Saves should carry over in the vast majority of cases, and they do so automatically. I can't guarantee every version will be compatible with every future version, and obviously there's no backwards save compatibility, but I don't think I've ever had an update where the previous update's saves were incompatible; I imagine there are some edge cases where skipping versions could cause your save to break, but I think they'd be few and far between. Of course, there will also be updates where more stuff is added to previous areas, like in the upcoming v0.39, and you'd be missing out on cutscenes/content by carrying over an old save, but there's not much I can do about that unfortunately

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

If you like what you see,

You must be registered to see the links

)

( nsfw trailer available here:

You must be registered to see the links

)

Hey everybody! As you may have astutely surmised by the trailer above, Crisis Point: Extinction v0.39 is now complete, and available for download! Told ya we'd release it in April, didn't I?
As always, this is just the information post - if you're at the $10+ tiers that get demos, check the post after this one for the download link! If you WERE pledged at $10+ during the development of v0.39, but are no longer pledged at that tier, keep an eye on your Patreon DMs, and you should be receiving a download link from me shortly!

v0.39 MAJOR FEATURES AND CHANGES
-Added a new explorable area, the Subaquatic Caverns, with a brand new tileset, background art, music, and several new enemy recolors
-Added a new enemy in that area
-Added a few new H-scenes - the normal Kertalus H-scene, the normal H-scene for the new enemy (currently just a loop, no orgasm scene), and a WIP H-scene loop for one of the new cutscenes
-Two new cutscenes, one in the Catacombs (shortly after ending the curse; if you carry over a finished save from v0.38, you'll have to backtrack to see this scene), and one at the beginning of the Subaquatic Caverns
-Added a new type of underwater hazard (with incomplete art)
-Added new Gameplay options menu which has a handful of toggles for various gameplay features, including an Accessibility menu, with 4 accessibility features to make the game easier to play for those with disabilities
-Added an easier difficulty mode called "Story", where enemies deal very little damage
-Added 2 new upgrade types, Power Orbs and Guard Orbs, which increase the damage you deal and decrease the damage you take, respectively (there's currently no UI for these, so you'll have to remember how many you collected, sorry!)
-Fixed more bugs and issues (detailed list at the end of the post)

For those of you who have been following development, v0.39 didn't turn out as big as I'd hoped. It was a very difficult update to develop, and a lot of things had to be unfortunately scrapped; developing a brand new area like the Subaquatic Caverns is an extremely heavy workload, and we went into v0.39 with very few assets prepared. Many aspects of the area are still incomplete, like the above-water segments, but the underwater spaces are easily the most visually dense and interesting areas in Crisis Point. I'm really proud of how they're turning out, and I fully expect it to look even better by the time v0.40 comes out. Speaking of v0.40..

v0.40 MAJOR GOALS
-Greatly expand the new area, Subaquatic Caverns
-Develop and implement a new mobility powerup
-Add several more sprite H-scenes
-Add new CGs
-Add several more cutscenes and environmental conversations, especially in the Subaquatic Caverns
-Begin preliminary work on the Boss 3 fight rework (almost definitely will not be done in v0.40)
-Fix more bugs and issues

v0.40 won't be anything too flashy; we still have our hands full with my plans for the Subaquatic Caverns, which will continue to be our major focus for this next update. Since we're not starting from scratch with them, I expect to be able to expand them quite a lot compared to what's available in v0.39.. though there's still a LOT of missing assets that need to be made, so it's very possible some stuff will still be unfinished by the time v0.40 is released in late June/early July.

Aside from the Subaquatic Caverns, there's also Boss 3, the boss of the Deep Soil. Since the game's story has officially passed the point where you fight her, I want to put some focus into her fight; I'm very unhappy with the way the fight currently is, as I don't think it reaches the difficulty or intensity it should for being the game's 3rd major boss battle. I plan to rework the fight entirely, from the ground up, similarly to Boss 2; you'll still be fighting the same enemy, but the fight itself will be completely different. That said, my plans for it are rather ambitious, and it's an "all or nothing" sort of change, so I don't expect the fight itself to change in v0.40.

Before I go, I'd like to take one moment to thank all of our patrons, but especially these fine people below! An extra special thanks goes out to:
LukBobTanbou
SeraphStarliege
Katsune Teku
Michael Powers
Kyle Adams
Sunset Fladar
Robert
Amak
Broderick Black

Anyway, that's enough from me for one update! This update cycle kicked my ass a fair bit, so I'm gonna take a nice break now. At least until someone brings up a game breaking bug that I can't believe I missed and I need to get a hotfix out yesterday. Ahh, game development. Hope you guys enjoy the update, and don't forget to wash your hands!
-A42






v0.39 MINOR CHANGES AND BUGFIXES
-Added ambient lighting to Flare Shot collectible
-Fixed a missing ramp tile in the Caves rooms leading up to the Deep Soil entrance
-Fixed bug that caused music to go back to full volume as soon as climax animation started during H-scene, rather than after the H-scene completely ends
-Fixed the Split Shot description incorrectly stating it pierces through enemies
-Increased visual detail on the blue Catacombs flames
-Fixed issue with Thornweeds where the damage they deal did not scale with your chosen difficulty
-Added "hurt" voice clips when you melee attack Warped Soldiers, Warped Scientists, Alraunes, Poison Alraunes, Lurkers, and the Female Warped Soldier boss
-Gave Poison Alraune's unique voice clips, rather than reusing the regular Alraune voice clips
-Poison Alraune's you've already defeated will no longer giggle when you enter a room near their original spawn point
-Implemented toggle to turn off blaster chips automatically switching when a new chip is picked up
-Change screen shake option to make it a full screen shake toggle, rather than only turning off specific screen shakes
-Increased the range Alicia has to be away from an Alraune before they will stop chasing her
-Fixed glitch that caused Edovex enemies to fly off into the distance after a sex scene
-Added new window shine special effect to interior Summit windows
-Fixed a handful of instances where masturbating in front of an enemy/object would cause Alicia to freeze
-Kertalus enemies can no longer float above the water, if an H-scene is triggered with them near the surface
-Game no longer crashes in the base Database menu if the player tries to scroll up when already at the top of the options

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

If you like what you see,

You must be registered to see the links

)

Hey everyone! We got a packed update this week, and I won't waste time with preamble. Make sure you stick around until the end, there's some big news to announce!



First off, this week we started working on the above-water Subaquatic Caverns background art. As you can see most of it is still flat color stuff right now; we're still tweaking colors and the final versions will be much more detailed, but I'm sure you'll agree it's already much more interesting to look at than the flat background of v0.39.



Next up, here's a quick shot of another mechanic coming in v0.40. Much like the underwater currents, these geysers will push Alicia in the direction they're facing if she steps into them while they're active; unlike the currents, these are on a timer, and it's possible that riding their waves won't always be advantageous.



That's all the visual stuff for this week, but I also want to touch on one big thing from v0.39, and that's the performance of the Subaquatic Caverns. The new area is mostly fine, but there's one extremely large room in the middle of the area, far bigger than any other room in Crisis Point, and the performance in that room is.. not the best. Decently powerful computers aren't struggling with it, but weaker machines have been getting some lag. For starters, I want to apologize for letting the update ship with that issue; a large amount of my work this week has been spent optimizing that area, and the results have been pretty good so far. On my machine, I've been able to roughly double the framerate, so hopefully the results will be similar on weaker hardware.

I still have some ideas for further optimizations, so I expect it to be even better by the time v0.40 comes out. If you've had performance issues in v0.39, please get in touch with me - I'd like to know what kind of hardware is having issues, and how bad the performance issues really are.



Alright, with all that out of the way, time for the most exciting part of this update!

As you may have noticed, our Patreon has been blowing up lately. We were stuck around the $4000s mark for the better part of 4 years, but recently our development has picked up speed considerably, and we're nearing $7000 now. I made a post two months ago acknowledging the increase in funding, but explaining that because of the state of the world and COVID-19, we would be temporarily holding off on hiring Orexius full-time. Well.. things have changed since then. Due to a combination of real life events, and the continued growth of our funding, we decided to switch gears a little sooner. Orexius recently handed in his resignation letter at his dayjob, and as of June 1st, he will be officially starting work on Crisis Point: Extinction full time!

This info does come with one caveat, though; one of the "real life events" I mentioned that changed our plans is that I'm going to be moving aaaaall the way across the country in July, and Orexius will be coming with me, so we can continue to work together in person. Even though he's going full time very soon, I don't expect our development pace to pick up much yet, because we're going to be extremely busy with the move. There's a lot to take care of, and with the extra travel complications due to COVID, it's going to be a really busy and stressful time for us. I want to inform you all of this now, before it starts affecting our output, so you can know what to expect; v0.40 and v0.41 may end up being a bit smaller than we'd like them to be due to the timing and overlap, but once we're done with the move, we'll be all set up with two full time team members and shit should start getting crazy real quick!

Alright, that's it for me for today. Thank you all for reading, and I hope you're as excited for the future of CPE as I am! See ya next week!

 

[Inspector_Whatsup]

Sounds like you've got this all pretty well organized. And it's really cool of you to inform people beforehand that your personal life is getting busy for a bit. That's more than most developers generally do when a community is basically part of the development process, so kudos to ya.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

If you like what you see,

You must be registered to see the links

)

Hey everyone! Sorry for skipping last week's update; we posted on Patreon, but there wasn't much worth talking about or showing off, it was a bit of a weird week. This week, though, we've got a great update, so let's get into it without preamble!

First off, in the gif above, you can see the work we've done on the Subaquatic Caverns above-water background. I'm a huge fan of it personally, and I think it looks even better with the lighting engine enabled - unfortunately I can't record quality .gifs with the lighting on, since .gifs have very limited colors, but I did take a screenshot of the area with lighting on which you can see here:

I really like the way the lighting works off of the background pillars, especially. We still have a bit of work to do with this above-water background, but it's getting close to complete now!

Next up, here's a shot of the new upgrade we're adding in v0.40 - the hoverjets! With the hoverjets upgrade, you can hold Jump in midair to majorly slow your descent and allow you to jump much farther than before. You can also hold the Action button to continue dashing indefinitely, but that only works when you start a dash from the ground - air dashes are still a limited distance only. You'll have to pay attention to the environment and find clever ways to cross large gaps using this upgrade, but proper usage will give you tremendous exploration potential!

Lastly, the Poison Alraune H-scene preview! It's still a work in progress, so parts of it are incomplete and/or will be improved, but I hope you enjoy the preview nonetheless!


That's it for visual stuff this week! I did a lot of other work too; the level design for v0.40 is nearly complete already, the Torguis CG is basically done (just has some final artwork tweaks left to do) and is fully implemented in the game, I started implementing a handful more cutscenes and environment conversations in the Subaquatic Caverns, I'm still working on that secret tileset I mentioned last time, I fixed up some bugs, planned out a bunch of enemy H-scenes that weren't planned yet.. it's been a very busy and productive week for CPE! And starting tomorrow, Orexius will finally be done at his dayjob, and will be starting full time work on Crisis Point! Like I said before, don't expect things to change dramatically right away; there will definitely be an adjustment period and we have a lot of real-life stuff to prepare for, but even despite that, I fully expect our productivity to be much higher than it was before even while we're in the process of moving. Our full-time team is about to literally double, after all. Hope you're looking forward to it as much as I am!

Thank you all so much for supporting us, and getting us to the point where this is a reality. It's a literal dream come true for both me and Orexius, and I can't wait to see where we go from here. We'll see you in next week's update!

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

If you like what you see,

You must be registered to see the links

)

Hey everybody! This is going to be a small update; most of our work this week has been on the secret tileset stuff I mentioned recently. Before we get into that, though, the gif up above!

In v0.39 there were small floating orbs that hurt Alicia if she got too close to them; I didn't have the time to give them a proper visual last update, but I worked on 'em this week, and this is what came out of it. I'm still tweaking and improving the visuals a bit (there have already been improvements even since this gif was recorded), but they look much less WIP now!

That's the only visual thing this week I'm afraid, since the rest of the visuals we worked on are from the secret stuff. You can see some of that in our devstreams, but I'd rather not post about it outside of that, as it relates to a pretty major plot point in the game.

Orexius has officially gone full time on Crisis Point now, and he's been spending his week working on the Crystal Dragon H-scene climax. The Crystal Dragon (man I really need a final name for that enemy) is the largest sprite in the game, so it's a rather complex animation; he's nearly done with it now, though, and he'll be finishing up the Poison Alraune H-scene I started once he's done with that.

Visuals aren't the only thing being worked on, of course! A lot of my major work for this update has already been finished, so I've been running through our list of bugs/minor improvements and getting some of them done, as well as helping out with other parts of development that I normally don't do, like animation and tilesets. I'll be needing to slow down and start focusing on real life more soon, to prepare for the move, but v0.40 development is coming along extremely well, and I'm looking forward to getting it in your hands.


Alright, that's it for me this week. Sorry it's on the smaller side; we should have something good to share with y'all next week, though, so I hope you're looking forward to that! Thank you so much for supporting the development of Crisis Point: Extinction, we'll see you again next week!

 

[Inspector_Whatsup]

Congrats to Orexius for being the full-power force behind the animations! It's getting really exciting now!
If I may be so bold, I'd suggest Leviathanite (hinting at the crystals) or [Young] Leviathan (hinting at potential bigger ones) as a name for the Crystal Dragon. Just throwin' it out there.

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

If you like what you see,

You must be registered to see the links

)

Hey everybody! I'm really sorry this "sunday update" is so late, but hopefully you'll forgive me when you realize the reason for it is because I was crunching away at this post: Crisis Point v0.40 is now complete and available to play, a whole two weeks earlier than scheduled! As always, the download link will be DM'ed to those who have pledged during v0.40's development, and I'll also be posting the link in the post after this one.
I won't waste your time with any more preamble, so let's get into it!

v0.40 MAJOR FEATURES AND CHANGES
-Implemented a new mobility powerup, Hoverjets
-New H-scene added with Poison Alraune (also finished Crystal Dragon H-scene climax animation)
-Added new CG scene with the Torguis
-Added more areas to explore in the Subaquatic Caverns
-Upgraded above-water background art in Subaquatic Caverns
-Optimized Subaquatic Caverns somewhat, so weaker computers hopefully won't encounter performance issues anymore
-Added several new cutscenes and environmental dialogues
-Fixed more bugs and minor issues (detailed list at the end of the post)

In general, v0.40 was relatively low-ambition, because of all the real life stuff going on with me right now. v0.41 will be similarly simple, and also might take longer than usual - now that v0.40 is out, I'm going to be sort of taking some time off CPE work to focus on my cross-country move. I'll still be doing some light work on CPE, but there will be no streams, and weekly updates will be small. Our move is a really big one, so unfortunately it's gonna consume a LOT of our time, but we'll still try and make sure we have some progress to show every week.

v0.41 PLANS
-Update and improve the functionality of a certain older upgrade
-Add more areas to explore and secrets to find around the game world
-Add more background assets for the new area in Subaquatic Caverns
-Add/update more sprite H-scenes
-Add at least 1 more CG scene
-Continue planning and reworking Boss 3 fight (still won't be done this update)
-Fix more bugs and issues

v0.41 isn't a very focused update, we're going to mostly be filling in content in various places that are missing it, like missing H-scenes, filling in the somewhat barren new area in the Subaquatic Caverns, and adding in all those rooms in the Caves that are blocked off by barriers stating "you can't access that area in this demo". As such, there won't be any major story progress or anything in v0.41, and it's kind of hard to say how big it will be in general, it just depends on how much we can get done while also focusing on our IRL move. I am very excited about the older upgrade we're improving, though - can't wait to share more about that in the future!

Alright, that's it for me for today. I've been cramming for the past several days to get this update out, so I'm gonna go relax for a bit - at least until I get reports of gamebreaking bugs and need to release a hotfix asap

Thank you so much to all of our patrons for your support, and an extra special thanks to our top patrons for this update cycle:
SeraphStarliege
KatsuneTeku
Amak
HURTZ
Alex00712
Barthos Wolvkin
Trevor Mills
NobodyXV
Your generosity is astounding and I adore you all <3

See you in the next update!
-A42




v0.40 MINOR CHANGES AND BUGFIXES
-Fixed screen drag highlight and end-of-demo fade not scaling properly with window scaling size
-Certain ambient noise loops will now stop playing when the player pauses in that area, instead of continuing to play in the pause menu, then resume when you unpause
-Fixed issue where Guard Orbs and Power Orbs would always respawn after being collected, allowing the player to obtain an infinite amount of them
-Fixed inconsistencies with the text that appears when holding key to skip cutscene
-Added ability to cancel map note typing with gamepad, and removed ability to start map note typing with gamepad (since the player cannot type by using the gamepad anyway)
-Improved some aspects of the Map Notes UI to make it more obvious when you're typing a map note, and explain how to end typing, to hopefully prevent players from getting stuck in that UI
-Added extra dialogue after picking up your first skill point to explain that you spend skill points in the Status menu
-Destructible environment rocks are no longer also burnable
-Fixed a bug that caused Alicia to get pushed while ledge grabbing if she was inside of a water current
-Fixed a bug that caused the normal Deep Soil theme to play when entering an underwater area in some cases, instead of the underwater variant theme
-Getting hit by a Cumshooter while in an H-scene no longer plays the splat sound effect rapidly while the projectile passes through you
-Fixed a bug where grabbing certain ledges would result in Alicia getting sent upward and ending up stuck in the ceiling
-Added a function where, if the player is crouching underneath a block that can be destroyed, trying to stand up will now break the block above instead of preventing you from standing up, which should prevent softlocking in rare situations involving those blocks
-Slightly updated level design early in the Summit to hopefully prevent the player from accidentally backtracking down a ledge they can't return from
-Increased damage of Summit arrow traps from 2 to 10
-Kertalus damage scaling has been changed; it was previously bugged, causing them to do far more damage than intended in Hard mode, and far less damage than intended in easier modes
-Added "splat" special effect animation for various things around the game
-Fixed issue where Crystal Dragon enemy could be pulled by using the Wire Shot
-Improved player's ability to control how fast or slow they move while being pushed by underwater currents

 

[Anon42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

If you like what you see,

You must be registered to see the links

)

Hey everybody! As you can see above, it's time to show off the thing I was talking about recently - the Wire Shot rework! I mentioned recently that I had thought up a rework for an older powerup that I was never fully happy with, and well, here it is! Part of it, at least. For comparison's sake, I also recorded the old Wire Shot which you can see below, just so you can see how different it is:

Pretty big difference, huh?

The rework focused on two things: making the process of using the Wire Shot much quicker, and bringing its functionality more in line with Crisis Point's design fundamentals. CPE as a game is designed heavily around mobility; the old Wire Shot was slow, and kept you rooted in place while you used it, opening you up to attacks - especially if you missed your shot and had to wait for it to fully extend before returning. Even if you used it successfully, it wasn't fun. It was tedious to wait for the platform you pulled down to start moving upward again, and on top of all that you could only use it on the ground, and only in the cardinal directions. Now, using the Wire Shot is as simple as can be - the game auto-targets any Wire Shot target that's nearby and above you, and hitting the Wire Shot button will immediately zip you over to it, no need for aiming or awkward fumbling. You don't even have to be on the ground to use it anymore!

Hopefully you're as excited about this change as I am - I have some ideas to further incorporate the Wire Shot into platforming across the game, now that it's much more satisfying to use, and I can't wait to implement them! The functionality isn't 100% complete yet, I still have numerous bugs I need to fix, and I want to add in some changes to horizontal pull-blocks as well, but it's functional enough that I'm happy to show it off!



Aside from the Wire Shot rework, Orexius has started work on the BE H-scene for the Crystal Dragon, and our musician is working on pumping out some new tracks for the game as well!

That's all I have for this week's update, though. As I've stated before, our weekly updates are going to be pretty small for a while - we're still working on CPE, but we're spending a lot of our time preparing for the move. The good news is that we have a house lined up at the new place now, so all that's left is to actually get there! Easier said than done, right? Anyway, thanks for reading, and for continuing to support us! We'll see you next week with another development update!

 

[super_slicer]

Small changes (from the player's POV, I doubt it was a small amount of work) like that make a big difference. Honestly I was rather displeased with the old wire-shot as well, but didn't realize it until now. Like, I would never use it while there was still an enemy nearby.

 

[Inspector_Whatsup]

Interesting idea. Using a grapple beam mechanic for pulling things towards you instead of pulling yourself to the target sounds like it has massive potential for puzzles.

Also, good luck on your move, dude!

 

[Anon42]

Small changes (from the player's POV, I doubt it was a small amount of work) like that make a big difference. Honestly I was rather displeased with the old wire-shot as well, but didn't realize it until now. Like, I would never use it while there was still an enemy nearby.

I felt much the same about it. It's why the level design almost never uses the Wire Shot after it's introduced, it was never really satisfying to use (and honestly it didn't even give you THAT much more height). Now it's fast and easy to use, and since you can use it in midair, it will allow me to use it for much higher ledges - example being in that gif, I could easily get rid of the bottom pull platform entirely, and just require the player to jump then Wire Shot instead. Needless to say I'll be incorporating it into the level design much more now!

Interesting idea. Using a grapple beam mechanic for pulling things towards you instead of pulling yourself to the target sounds like it has massive potential for puzzles.

Also, good luck on your move, dude!

Thanks man! We only snagged a place a few days ago, so we'll be kicking it into high gear now that we have that figured out. The goal is to be moved before August, if we can

 

[Anon42]

(The following is a copy-paste from our

You must be registered to see the links

; sorry this post is late, and that there haven't been development update posts recently! We're in the middle of an extremely large move, from the southeast coast of the USA all the way to Alaska, so we've had barely any time to work on CPE for some time as our daily lives are too busy with the move. Things should be back to normal at some point early August.)


Hey everybody! This is gonna be another "updateless update"; we're deep into the move to Alaska now, and our computer setups have all been dismantled, so nobody on the core team has a way to work on CPE right now. Since there's nothing to share in regards to game development, I'd like to share a quick update on the move itself, along with a lengthy writeup about the Flare Shot's original incarnation, what my intentions for it were, where I believe I went wrong, and how I intend to improve it (and the game's combat as a whole) going forward.

So first up, the move. I won't get into anything too specific, but it's going smoothly; we've shipped something like half our stuff, and all our big furniture is already gone, so we're just sleeping on air mattresses for the rest of our time here. All that's really left is to ship out the rest of what we're keeping, donate the rest, and do some deep cleaning before we leave. It's been an extremely busy move and I'm so ready to be done with it. Our flight is scheduled for the 27th, and I'm extremely anxious to get back to working on CPE, so expect streams to start up again very early August; as soon as my computer arrives and I have everything set up again I'll be doing those regularly again.



Now, the Flare Shot. As our patrons know by now, from the recent polls, the Flare Shot is getting a rework. I decided to take another look at it while reworking the Wire Shot, and decided that, while the Flare Shot isn't nearly as underwhelming as the Wire Shot was, it's also not very interesting or useful outside of a few niche cases, mostly involving the Orbital Flare skill you can purchase. I want to examine why I think it turned out that way, from my perspective as the game's designer.

The starting point to this is actually not related to the Flare Shot, at least not directly; the thing that got me thinking about this was some comments I received recently on a forum. Essentially, the comments boiled down to criticism about the game's enemies being too tanky, and taking too many shots to die, which made playing the game cumbersome; my initial reaction was that I didn't really agree, but rather than brushing it aside, I wanted to think about it more thoroughly, and I think I've discovered a few key reasons why I believe some players feel this way, as well as how I plan to resolve it.

Spoiler: Spoiler tagging this because it's loooong

First off, Crisis Point is a Metroidvania, strongly modeled after Metroid, which gives any player going into it expectations of similar gameplay. In Metroid, for most of the game you have two real forms of attacking; your beam weapon, and missiles. Missiles have limited ammo, but ammo is extremely plentiful and meant to be spammed, while your beam has infinite ammo and is constantly upgraded to be more powerful throughout the game.

Now the first question I asked myself was, is it fair for people to judge Crisis Point's combat next to Metroid's? They are different games, after all. Regardless of what your opinion to that is, the reality is that it will undoubtedly happen for many players, and as a designer, I have to be ready to deal with those expectations - whether it's by meeting them, or by dispelling them. Crisis Point's combat is undoubtedly different, but it's in minor ways; you still have an infinite blaster, but you customize upgrades instead of getting one upgrade path. You still have a limited ammo explosive, but it's an area blast with very limited ammo, rather than a higher-damage projectile with nearly limitless ammo. The similarities are TOO similar, which is a failure on my part to bring the player to a place where they can experience the game's combat as its own thing, rather than comparing it to other similar games. I believe that to dispel that initial impression of "Metroid-like" would require a heavy rework of the game's combat design, and that's far outside of a realistic scope at this point, so I'll be focus on minor tweaks to bring the game more in line with the average player's expectations.

The next issue I think CPE's combat has is where the Flare Shot, and its original design goal, comes in: some elements of CPE are designed as if combat is a complex affair, and the main focus of the game. The reality is that combat is mostly just an obstacle in a Metroidvania, not the main focus of the game; it serves to make areas more memorable and interesting to traverse, rather than being the core focus of the experience, with the occasional boss fight as an exception. The Flare Shot (and more extensively, the subweapon system as a whole) is the largest example of where I've so far failed to meet this.
The intention behind the Flare Shot's combat was to make it a support weapon, capable of lighting enemies on fire to make them more susceptible to other forms of damage. After examining this thoroughly, I believe there are three main problems with this:

• The Flare Shot only made enemies more vulnerable after a late Skill Point upgrade, which most players wouldn't even get to as they had little reason to invest in the Flare Shot. Up until that point, it served almost no purpose.
• Switching subweapons is extremely cumbersome, especially because the Wire Shot was included in that set of weapons despite not being a real weapon, and using the Flare Shot meant switching off of the more-immediately-effective Force Shot.
• Lastly, sort of an extension of point 2, enemies just aren't tanky enough for its function to be valuable. The only enemies in the game that have very high HP are the enemies in the Subaquatic Caverns, where you can't use the Flare Shot anyway, so there's never a fight that justifies the effort required to switch subweapons so you can light an enemy on fire and deal more damage.

In an action game where combat is the main focus, of course it makes sense for the player to have complex options in combat - maximizing your ability to fight is the main intention, and having more tools to do that in interesting ways is important. But CPE is a Metroidvania, exploration is the core of the genre, so making exploration smooth and fun should be the goal. Enemies really don't take long to kill in CPE, especially if you utilize all your options in combat - the problem is that many of them take longer than you would expect for the genre, creating a disconnect. To rectify this awkward half-combat-half-exploration focus the game currently has, I believe that Crisis Point's combat shortcomings can all be fixed by making changes to these three key things:

• The control scheme
• How much HP enemies have
• How much damage enemies deal

For the controls, I will be entirely removing subweapon switching as a function; each subweapon will be given its own dedicated button, and the Flare Shot is going to be integrated with the melee attack, along with some improvements to melee in general to make it more responsive. By doing this, all of the game's subweapons will be able to fit much more nicely together with the player's core toolkit, as it won't require much effort at all to use any of them in any given moment.

For enemy HP, I will be lowering the health many enemies have across the board, while keeping the HP of a few key enemy types higher (such as the Crystal Dragon and Alraune), to sort of bring those enemies up to "miniboss" status, while reducing the time you spend fighting other, weaker foes. I won't be changing HP values too dramatically, however, because in the latest demos you can already see an example of how I plan on improving this: Power Orbs, a new collectible that increases the amount of damage you do with ALL of your weapons, permanently. Most of Crisis Point's upgrades subscribe to the design concept of "horizontal progression" rather than "vertical progression"; essentially "more/new options" instead of directly giving the player more power. Horizontal progression is often more difficult to design, but more interesting; in a Metroidvania, I believe there's room for both. Vertical progression gives more incentive to explore for upgrades even once you've found a set of tools you like fighting with, as well as giving you that satisfying feeling of returning to earlier areas and being able to completely stomp weaker enemies. I also plan on adding visible damage numbers to the game, so you can more clearly see the damage you're doing to foes, and what kind of impact your blaster chip choices are having on your damage output.

For the damage enemies deal, I will likely be raising it across the board. Reducing enemy HP will naturally make enemies less threatening since you can off them quicker; however, I really like where Crisis Point's difficulty is at right now, so I want to counter the reduced HP by making each enemy more threatening. The main way you heal in Crisis Point is by killing enemies; running from them is always an option, but unless you're great at dodging while running, you'll need to fight to heal eventually, which I think makes the choice to fight or flee much more interesting if enemies pose a serious threat.

My general intention with this balancing act is to keep the general difficulty about the same as it is now, while making combat quicker, more varied, and less cumbersome. Some enemies should pose a larger threat than before (creating those miniboss-like encounters I mentioned), but the average enemy should be easier to put down than before, without removing their ability to be a threat if you get complacent.

Wew.. that was a long one, but I hope you enjoyed reading it! The planned changes are mostly simple/numerical things, so I don't expect it to take long to implement, but there will naturally be a lot of tweaking to get things feeling just right. In a future post I'll detail my exact plans for the Flare Shot + Melee integration, but in the meantime, feel free to leave any ideas if you have them. Feedback is king in game development, and I want to make sure these changes are done right. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read, and thank you so much to our patrons for being so patient with the lack of development work - this move is taking a lot out of me, but I'm excited to get back to work on CPE as soon as I possibly can!

 

[super_slicer]

Oh yeah, I almost never used the sub-weapon. Maybe a few times for the AOE on slimes ( seriously, outside of the dog replacement in the catacombs the most damage I took was from slimes, I just can't deal with 'em ) . I also happen to be a fan of "fight smart, not hard" so I often find ways of denying enemies the opportunity to damage me while I kill them, ledge camping ftw XD , kinda thought it was more because of that but not having to fumble to get to the appropriate sub-weapon for the job would certainly increase it's usability.

 

[Inspector_Whatsup]

Interesting take on the Flare Shot. I personally feel like new weapons are always a bit difficult to introduce unless they have some sort of utility towards exploration. Many players have differing preferences when it comes to weapons that compliment their playstyle (I'm very resource-conservative, for example), and it's basically impossible to satisfy all of them, unless you redesign the whole game into a non-linear run-and-gun.
What I think is important with additional weapons is something Super Metroid and Metroid Prime demonstrated extremely well: balancing utility and firepower without forcing either onto the player. For example, the Ice Beam in Prime was fairly cumbersome to use due to having no homing and being very slow. You had to get up close to many enemies to make use of it, and even then, its slow firing rate made it a raw deal. But using a charged shot froze almost every enemy that didn't die from the damage alone, so it was a good "fuck off" tool to support your momentum as well as a setup tool to reach weak points more easily.

To get back to CPE's Flare Shot: I think what it lacked was the right utility right out of the box. Something like slowing down or stunning enemies, maybe even lower their defense or disable shields for a moment to open them up to other weapons. Either way, it's bound to stay interesting!

 

[ThatWeirdGuyWithaWeirdHat]

While you're on the topic of improving sub-weapons, I believe the Force Shot upgrade tree needs to have the Kinetic Booster upgrade replaced with an upgrade that allows it to actually travel like a missile. While more damage is nice, having an upgrade that actually improves the usability of the weapon is a lot more preferred.

 

[Anon42]

Interesting take on the Flare Shot. I personally feel like new weapons are always a bit difficult to introduce unless they have some sort of utility towards exploration. Many players have differing preferences when it comes to weapons that compliment their playstyle (I'm very resource-conservative, for example), and it's basically impossible to satisfy all of them, unless you redesign the whole game into a non-linear run-and-gun.
What I think is important with additional weapons is something Super Metroid and Metroid Prime demonstrated extremely well: balancing utility and firepower without forcing either onto the player. For example, the Ice Beam in Prime was fairly cumbersome to use due to having no homing and being very slow. You had to get up close to many enemies to make use of it, and even then, its slow firing rate made it a raw deal. But using a charged shot froze almost every enemy that didn't die from the damage alone, so it was a good "fuck off" tool to support your momentum as well as a setup tool to reach weak points more easily.

To get back to CPE's Flare Shot: I think what it lacked was the right utility right out of the box. Something like slowing down or stunning enemies, maybe even lower their defense or disable shields for a moment to open them up to other weapons. Either way, it's bound to stay interesting!

You're definitely right that I can't satisfy every player, I learned that was impossible back when I first designed the Force Shot Even after making it incredibly strong, with ammo that recharges quickly and automatically by fighting, loads of players still don't use it because it's a resource. If I want to make sure players use weapons the only way to do it is to make it absolutely required to kill an enemy, like an enemy with a barrier that can only be removed with the Force Shot.

As far as the utility goes, that was one of the core problems for sure. That's why the Orbital Flare was so good; it essentially was the Flare Shot's utility, in the form of dealing autonomous damage, allowing you to focus on dodging instead of fighting. I want to keep that element of it, since I think it was a really nice way of dealing with certain enemies (like the Edovex, you'd lay an Orbital Flare down as you ran and they'd fly straight into it while chasing you and kill themselves), but I'll need to tone it down a bit - it was just too powerful for too low of a cost, and it would be even more so once Flare has its own button. I already have an idea of how I want it to work, but I'll need to play with it and make sure it feels right.

While you're on the topic of improving sub-weapons, I believe the Force Shot upgrade tree needs to have the Kinetic Booster upgrade replaced with an upgrade that allows it to actually travel like a missile. While more damage is nice, having an upgrade that actually improves the usability of the weapon is a lot more preferred.

I'll consider the possibility of replacing that upgrade with something more utility-based, but it won't be making it travel like a missile - the short range burst style of the Force Shot is very much intentional to its design, and I believe giving it more travel range while keeping its current power would make it absurdly OP, especially once you have 12 shots in a row from full ammo + overcharges. At that point the only limiting factor would be ammo, and that's not particularly hard to recharge, so it would just be the best weapon in the game bar none

 

[super_slicer]

I'll consider the possibility of replacing that upgrade with something more utility-based, but it won't be making it travel like a missile - the short range burst style of the Force Shot is very much intentional to its design, and I believe giving it more travel range while keeping its current power would make it absurdly OP, especially once you have 12 shots in a row from full ammo + overcharges. At that point the only limiting factor would be ammo, and that's not particularly hard to recharge, so it would just be the best weapon in the game bar none

Yup, people like me would never take damage outside of a boss room again XD