I normally stay away from the hot stuff in the news and keep focusing on my work without bothering, but what Unity announced this week affects my work itself in too many ways for me to stay idle.
It not only insults the work of every single indie developer out there but it also adds a lot of incertitude for the developers that have chosen to focus their career path on Unity like I did.
I mainly write this article to put oil on the fire they started in hope that they get burned badly enough to cancel their new ridiculous policies. And if they don't, well we won't be able to safely put a price tag on Chaos Crown at all, so consider this my attempt to shake things up with what little voice I have.
I invite you to directly read their policy announcement here, but if you're ready to take my word for it here are the main key points that will affect us and the rest of the indie games ever made with Unity, take note that there are flaws and grey areas that they'll clarify with time :
A $0.02 to $0.20 per first install fee when a game sells for 200k or more (that threshold can change anytime). Includes already released games, so expect some games you like to be completely removed from the market before January if their owners are unable to pay them. Those fees are fixed and can change at any given time, which will drive up global game price inflation higher than ever before. Moreover, there is no telling as to how they'll manage to detect if a game has been pirated, which means that companies may get overcharged. We also have no access to the algorithm they'll use to calculate first installs so it might end up being fraudulent in nature.
This is a change in how we do business with Unity and no one was consulted, agreed to or had a warning about this sudden change. Should this policy last, we won't publish any game made with Unity to the Steam Store.
Dependency to WIFI to run any Unity versions or Unity games.
Anti competition policies with their micro transaction tools that will over time give them a monopoly over the market.
Fun fact, the Unity CEO is the one that introduced loot boxes at his time at EA. He's also famous for having suggested in a video call that players should pay real money to reload in-game ammo. He also sold 2k of his Unity company shares just before announcing this, which is what we call insider trading : a crime that will at the very least get him in the court room.
As of now Unity has received death threats and a major backlash from the development and gaming community. I can only hope things get worse for them.
You might have heard this from other games already.
I don't have a clear answer as to what can be done. I guess that if you feel as angry as I am about what they're about to do, our best bet is to give them the greatest backlash they've ever seen. Make your voice be heard. If this policy passes expect only more abuses from companies.
Hotfix
Potentially fixed the final boss room path. We found a missing reference in the system that was bound to cause an issue. Let us know if you find any more issues!
Special thanks to @ccfireball for reporting it!
Our 2023 Objectives and Maintenance Update
Due to the loss of our 3D artists, we have encountered difficulties in creating new scenes for the procedural path system while simultaneously working on new features, menu creation or rework, bug fixes, and other system updates such as enemy pools, reward pools, crafting system, and playable characters.
To address this issue and reduce the workload associated with 3D environment creation, we have taken inspiration from games like Risk of Rain 2 and decided to introduce medium-sized maps as a solution. Each map theme, such as Stravux, Fawynn, Flamoria, and Rotgrave, will now feature a small village home base. From these bases, players can visit the Guild of Adventurers to create their own quests by selecting contracts and then teleport to medium-sized hostile environments where they can complete the chosen objectives. This new gameplay loop will offer various rewards, including experience points, notoriety, specific items or loot boxes, gold, and data crystals.
Furthermore, we will be implementing a new level system. Up until now, only players had levels, but with this update, enemies will also have their own levels. Given that hostile maps will feature all available enemies, this addition will help players gauge whether they should engage or flee from specific encounters.
Players will have the ability to teleport between home bases in search of specific rewards for their builds until they have completed every map.
To officially complete a map, players simply need to defeat the big boss of the hostile environment. As a reward, players will receive a piece of a legendary Chaos Crown, which can be assembled in a special menu. Once the Crown is fully restored, players can challenge the Chaos Lords and make a wish for their champion. An intriguing twist will be revealed in due time.
Regarding the leveling system, we have decided that skill tree upgrades should be permanent for each champion. Upon leveling up, players will be offered a choice of three randomly selected skill upgrades from a pool. Additionally, some of the secondary skills on the champion's bar may be chosen from this pool, as players have expressed a desire to have more control over their non-basic skills, such as Fire Rain, Barrage, Arrow Spray, and others.
We value your feedback on these upcoming changes! Please let us know your thoughts.
Patch Notes:
This update focuses on bringing the demo version up to date with our most recent changes in the base game.
Numerous improvements have been made to enhance stability and overall quality of life.
Additions:
The AI now utilizes a new logic for selecting and using skills. While this change may not be noticeable for simple minions, it has greatly improved the behavior of complex enemies like bosses.
We have introduced a new Ogre Shaman, which will serve as the final boss for Stravux in the new map system we are developing, it is not in the demo, but will be once the new system is fully implemented.
You can now open the map menu at any time by pressing "M". Please note that this feature may not be very useful in the current demo.
We have implemented a new music system that independently detects combat in each room. It will play new tracks that we have purchased from Vindsvept on YouTube. These tracks should provide a more immersive medieval fantasy experience.
The Treasure Hunter achievement now has an increased chance of being completed. It will also count every type of chest in the room, including treasure chests, reward chests, and mimics. To obtain this achievement, we recommend combining the luck passive of the archer with the Treasure Map item or forging an item with Treasure Map as the second component. This way, you can spawn treasures at will by spamming a proc condition.
Please let us know if you encounter any bugs. With these major structural changes, there is a possibility that something may have been unintentionally broken during our playtesting that we did not notice.
Dash Skills cooldown adjusted to lower values, enabling spamming again.
Improved the way we detect icons in skill descriptions, fixing the issue that was most noticeable in the French translation.
The tutorial text that appears when taking Data Crystals for the first time has been made more noticeable for better clarity.
Companions Update
Hello champions! Today we're excited to announce the latest update to Chaos Crown, which includes a number of exciting new features, quality of life improvements, and bug fixes. Read on for all the details!
Additions:
Sprint: You can now sprint in the game using the shift key, increasing your movement speed. To balance this increase in mobility, dashes skills are now less spammy.
Jump scaling: The jump scales with the sprint velocity for a more immersive experience.
Field of view: A new field of view system has been added to enhance the sprint experience.
Harvest system: You can harvest items from 3D models.
Data Crystals: A new resource, Data Crystals, has been added to the game and can be found in the hard rooms and introduction rooms. You can trade them in the new companion system.
Companion system: You can trade Data Crystals to create your own guild members with three races and three job classes, each with a focus on utility rather than combat.
Dynamic tutorial: A dynamic tutorial system has been added to help guide you through the new features in the game.
FMOD sound: More sound references have been added to FMOD in the background, improving the sound quality of the game. We noticed that some debug sounds have been introduced in this update. You may not notice them, but if you do we're sorry (we'll try to update soon).
Quality of life improvements:
Player physics: Player physics scripts have been updated to prevent players from falling through the ground as often.
Snowball damage: The snowball active now deals more damage and uses physics to simulate a more accurate explosion on hit.
Terrain tool: A tool to dig into the terrain and create bridge-like structures is now supported. This will increase the potential of our maps.
Dash cooldown: The dash cooldown gets reset when you are hit by immobilizing effects, allowing you to break free from any situation.
Bug fixes:
Voice system: Fixed issues with the voice system that caused enemies to emit more than one sound at a time.
We hope you enjoy these updates and we look forward to bringing you more exciting features in the future! Thanks for playing Chaos Crown!
More Loot, Chilled Status & Fixes
This update brings new rewards and bug fixes.
Additions :
5 new items compatible with the crafting system for the Stravux map.
Added the Mysterious Cube and the Snowball rewards to the crafting system.
A new status effect called chilled has been added to the game. To break from it you simply have to dash in any direction.
The snowball boss will wait a few seconds before making another snowball. Your projectiles will no longer be deflected by snowballs so you can hurt him at any point in time.
In order to let players get the Greedy Champion achievement on any map, the Cup of Greed has been categorized as a generic chaos reward.
Fixes :
Fixed the Gotta go Fast! achievement. To get it you must max out the movement speed passives of the Archer and either gain enough speed stacks or to get the Boots item reward.
Fixed the Archer's Quick Shot upgrades (IV, V, VI).
Fixed the Challenge Boss Room's lightning.
Fixed an issue that caused the snowball boss to flee constantly.
Note : We found a subtle bug with the animation canceling system when heavily spamming attacks (usually your primary attack will be stuck and the animations will behave strangely). We're currently trying to find a way to reproduce it easily. Let us know if you find it.
The next update will either add enemy variety or more rewards. Let us know what should be focused next!
Have a spooky week! -The team.
Hotfix : Elemental Bar, Chaos Lord Curses
A few bugfixes from the feedback we received last patch!
Bugfixes :
Prevented animation canceling across skill bars to fix an issue with the Lava Elemental's charged skills.
Fixed an issue that bugged the chaos lord menu.
Let us know if we missed something.
Have a nice weekend! -The team.
Combat Fluidity & Legend for Statistics Icons
This update improves the combat fluidity and brings improvements to the stat icons. Tiny bugfixes included!
Quality of Life Improvements :
The combat system's fluidity was greatly improved by allowing animation canceling. Whenever you use an skill, you can use another to cancel its animation and immediately cast it!
You can thank ccFireball for this great suggestion that will allow players to do any combat action at any time. Let us know if you find any issue due to this change!
@NelsieOo on Instagram reworked most of the icons. We find them way easier to read, but that's not all!
A new legend system will now show the keywords behind each icon displayed on screen. This currently does not support gold or the cooldown symbol of crafted items (for now).
Bugfixes :
Fixed an issue that made the rays of light used for dialogues not show after ending a fight with a Mimic or a final boss.
The placement of area effects did not use the same logic as the skill preview system, now it should be more coherent, although the placement logic itself has quite a large error margin that will need to be reworked soon.
Team update :
Two new members may join us soon to work on both UI, item rewards and enemy additions. Nothing is definite yet but we're optimistic!
More Settings & Some Tweaks!
Hello! Here's a small patch that focuses on quality of life improvements.
Additions :
Sliders inside the Options Menu show a value. This should help us know the exact value of the settings when someone sends us a screenshot.
Added a setting to control camera sensitivity.
Added a setting to control the tooltip font size. It was requested by a player some time ago :)
Increased the base movement speed, lets see if that was enough to smooth the gameplay.
Added a merchant zone near the spawn point of the final boss room in Stravux.
The stat icons have been reverted to their older raw texts while we keep working on a new version.
The next update should focus on improving the fluidity of combat.
Have a nice weekend!
Welcome to Stravux
Your feedback is gold to us, that's why today we are rotating the demo map to Stravux, The Forzen Sea.
You brought nice improvements to the Forgotten Woods and we know you'll do the same for this area.
In its first weeks, Stravux will be missing enemies and items. We'll periodically add new content as we collect more feedback and finish the planned features. Keep in mind nothing here is final.
Additions :
Stravux the Frozen Sea :
This location is themed around frost and magic. The Chaos Lord lurking in its white cloak is a hungry Wendigo. A special stun mechanic will soon be added to this area, more details to come on that part.
We have not found the time to add unique items or sound to this map (yet). The rewards will pretty much only contain generic items until the next update.
You'll notice that the scenes load much faster than on the previous map. This confirms that the destructible trees where causing the loading issues.
Fixes :
Fixed a bug that made the wandering enemies try to get to the world origin instead of circling around the player, this was only happening when getting the second or the third wave of enemies.
Fixed an issue that spawned the enemies at invalid locations.
Team update : Loïc Bouchard is leaving our team to pursue other projects. He greatly contributed to Chaos Crown's maps and he'll be missed. We are currently looking for a new 3D Level Designer to continue the room production. As much as I would like to spend time on new room visuals I have to focus item rewards and monsters for now. The level production will be slowed until we find a new team member.
Discord : We decided to add a private Discord Channel for the members of the community who would like to chat directly with the devs without notifying everyone in the Discord Server. Communication should be more fluent with invested players. To join this channel just ask for it (preferably inside Discord) or let us know what is your Discord username so we can add you correctly.
This is an exciting phase of the development. Your ideas will have a great impact since this map is still very young and no items have been yet decided. Let us know what you would adjust and what you want to see added!
