Animation is by far my weakest area in game development so this overhaul was badly needed. The clunky placeholder animations that have been used for literally years now are finally gone!
New Grenade Throw Animation
New Slide Animation
New Melee Animation
More Fluid Jumping
Have a look at some comparisons of the old terrible animations compared to the new ones! Note that the new animations are not final yet but should be a big step up from the old ones. This animation pipeline is firmly in place now so I'm really excited to improve the enemy models and animations next.
Walk Comparison
Jump Comparison
Turn In Place Comparison
All animations were actually authored in Unreal Engine itself using the amazing new Control Rig toolset. This saves a lot of time as I don't have to go back and forth between external software and import files after each iteration.
New Grenade Mods
Grenade specific mods were introduced last month and are allowing me to create some much more powerful grenade buffs that can really synergize with your weapon to create interesting builds.
Here are some fun grenade mods added this month:
Crystal Barrage: Chance for grenades to explode into a crystal barrage
Fireworks: Chance for grenades to explode into fireworks that shoot in random directions
Clone Explosion: Grenades spawn more grenades when exploding
Spinning Blade: Chance for grenades to spawn a spinning blade when exploding, dealing damage to all nearby enemies for several seconds
Dagger Blast: Chance for grenades to explode into a cluster of daggers
Crit Grenade: Chance for grenades to crit when exploding
Black Hole: Chance for grenades to spawn a black hole when exploding
Chaotic Grenade: Grenades deal more damage but move in random patterns
Snake Grenade: Grenades deal more damage but move in snakelike patterns
New Weapon Mods
The final (for the beta) batch of weapon mods have been added this month! It's been really important to make sure that there are a nice wide range of mods to choose from even during the beta to allow for many different builds. Since you choose a specific weapon before starting a run, some mods are far better or worse depending on the weapon: for example the Uppercut mod deals bonus flat damage for every 5 shots fired: this synergizes nicely with fast firing rifles and is much less effective on slow firing shotguns and snipers.
Targeting Shot: Shots that hit enemies spawn new shots that target other nearby enemies
Zig Zag Shot: Shots deal more damage but fly in zig zag patterns
High Caliber: Damage increased but clip size reduced
Clip Shot: Damage increased for each bullet remaining in the clip
Leech Shot: Chance to heal when dealing damage
Sharp Shot: Shots deal additional flat damage
Wind Up: Damage increased for each shot fired until reloading
Long Shot: Shots have a longer range
Steady Shot: Damage increased when aiming but reduced when hipfiring
Trick Shot: Damage increased when hipfiring but reduced when aiming
Boomerang Shot: Shots fly back towards you after a short time and have a longer lifetime
Recoil Shot: Damage increased but firing knocks you back
Streak Shot: Crit chance increased for each shot that hits an enemy in a row without missing
Shrinking Shot: Shots initially deal more damage but shrink over time, dealing less damage
Uppercut: Every fifth shot deals increased damage
Precision: Damage increased for each shot you hit in a row without missing
Exploding Shot: Chance for shots to explode on impact
Juiced: Increased damage, fire rate and reload speed
Accelerating Shot: Shots deal more damage but start slow and accelerate over time
These new mods below are triggered when firing your weapon: they inherit the effects of almost all other equipped mods: you can get some busted combinations here! All of the FX shown below are placeholder but you'll get an idea of how these mods will work.
Fireworks: Small chance to fire fireworks with your shot
Crystal Blast: Chance to fire a close range AOE blast with your shot
Mace Balls: Small chance to fire mace balls along with your shot
Sharpened Axe: Chance to fire a spinning axe along with your shot
Fireball Cluster: Chance to fire a cluster of fireballs along with your shot
Dagger Arc: Chance to fire an arc of daggers along with your shot
Other Stuff
Survival Enemy Variants It's been fun creating tougher versions of enemies that scale all the way up to elite or even boss variants. More of these tougher variants will show up as you get further into a run. Shown above are the new Ice Slug variants that explode into a freezing damage area!
Crab Model Improvements It's not a very noticeable change but the crab is now fully symmetrical with new claws and has had many subtle texture improvements!
Level Design Improvements While doing daily playtests, I'm constantly iterating on both how the levels look AND more importantly how they feel to play. Interestingly, wide open beaches seem to be much more fun to play compared to caves and other smaller islands.
Survival Difficulty Levels I've put a lot of thought into how to make Survival mode challenging but still allow it to be fun and accessible at the same time. While Normal and Nightmare difficulties can do that, I'd like for players to be able to continue to escalate the challenge after each completed run to give them a building sense of mastery rather than going from Normal (a moderate challenge) to Nightmare (extremely hard) in one jump.
To solve this, I'm testing a difficulty levels feature- each level adds a new rule that makes the game harder in some way: which of these rules are fun and also how many difficulty levels there will be is still to be decided (currently looking at about 10-20 difficulty levels). Ideally this system should give players a fun way to earn cosmetics and a reason to replay the game while increasing the challenge gradually rather than all at once. With this in mind, the potential level 20 difficulty is FAR harder than the original Nightmare difficulty was going to be.
Audio Overhaul Many placeholder sounds have been replaced this month (crunchy explosions, whooshes while dashing, calming ocean soundscapes and much more!) as well as lots of overall sound mix adjustments to further increase awareness during gameplay. These changes will be showcased in an unedited gameplay video of a Survival run that'll be posted nearer to the release of the game.
That's it for this month, thanks for reading!
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Development Update #14
At this point, the game is in great shape: the scope and gameplay loop are locked down and I'm playtesting daily to get it where it needs to be for release. The main things that I'll be focusing on moving forward are presentation and content: 3D assets, audio (including the soundtrack), animations, lighting, FX, levels and generally making the game feel polished (finally I'll be replacing these clunky movement animations!). As you'll see in this update, a lot of the changes come from frequent testing: I want any gameplay and balance issues to be solved BEFORE the game launches where possible and plan on using the early access period to add new content rather than to be reworking game mechanics. With that said, let's get into the new stuff added this month!
New Survival Challenge Island Modifiers
Many of the previous challenge island modifiers didn't feel all that challenging (like Low Gravity or Invisible Enemies) so they have been replaced with much more engaging challenge types.
Mirrored Projectiles: Enemies fire projectiles back at you when hit
Elemental Explosions: Enemies explode into a random elemental damage area when eliminated
Dividing Enemies: Enemies divide into multiple weaker versions of themselves when eliminated
Energy Rings: Enemies spawn energy rings when hit
OTT: All explosions have a 5x larger radius!
Careful Aim: Missing shots damages you!
One Shot: Enemies can be eliminated in one hit but so can you!
Shrapnel: Enemies explode into a burst of projectiles when eliminated
New Movement Feature: Dashing
Previously, the main way of gaining speed was by sliding which often led to a spam strategy of constantly sliding in circles around enemies, easily dodging most projectiles. I wanted to tune the movement system to be more skill based and require timing, so a dash mechanic has been added as well as removing the ability to infinitely slide (you now lose speed if you slide for too long). Combining these mechanics, you can gain speed but also dodge enemy projectiles if dashing at the right moment. I'm currently finding the sweet spot between dashing and sliding to ensure that you can still have fast and fluid movement without it making the game too easy.
This also opens up a new category of cosmetics: dash trails! More on these in a future update.
Dashing of course nicely integrates with Racing mode, allowing for the optimal strategy between jumping, sliding and dashing to be developed across each course. I'm really excited to see what the speedrunning community will do with it. There have also been new perks added that reduce dash cooldowns and increase the number of dashes, allowing for some overpowered movement options in a Survival mode run!
Simplifying And Refining
After a bunch of great playtests, I noticed that when explaining the whole weapon mod / weapon leveling system to new players, it was more confusing than it needed to be. Especially when playing on controller, it felt a bit clunky and slow paced to have to manage your inventory and swap mod slots by hand (It's hard to even realize that you could put weapon mods on grenades for example) so I've settled on a few improvements that make the much game easier to understand and also stop you having to slow down in an otherwise fast paced game.
1: Grenade Mods
Since weapon mods used to be interchangeable with grenades, I was a bit limited with the mod design and many weapon specific mods (like having a larger clip size) didn't make sense on grenades. On the flip side, many powerful mods more suited for infrequent grenades like black holes didn't make sense on fast firing weapons like the minigun. To solve this, I took the best weapon mods that make sense on grenades and added a bunch of grenade specific mods to form a new inventory category: Grenade Mods.
This means that there are 3 distinct "upgrade" pickup types in the game:
Weapon Mods: Mods that influence each shot your weapon fires
Grenade Mods: Mods that influence each grenade you throw
Perks: Bonuses that don't directly affect each shot you fire but have an overall passive effect (like more movement speed) or are event based (like gaining more damage after finishing each island)
To further clear up any confusion between the different pickup types, a chest for a specific type of pickup will drop after each island rather than a chest containing a random mix of pickup types. For example Island 1 may drop a weapon mod chest, Island 2 a perk chest and so on.
Some examples of Grenade Mods:
Ice Explosion: Chance for grenades to explode into an ice damage area, freezing all nearby enemies
Glue Grenade: Grenades stick to enemies and have a delayed explosion
Cluster Grenade: Throw a cluster of weaker grenades instead of a single grenade
Energy Ring: Chance for grenades to explode into a damaging energy ring
Chaotic Grenade: Grenades deal much higher damage but fly in random patterns
Clone Grenade: Grenades that hit enemies spawn more grenades from the impact point
Deja Vu: Grenades explode multiple times (this scales per level of the mod)
Black Hole: Chance for grenades to spawn a black hole when exploding
Spinning Blade: Chance for grenades to spawn a spinning blade when exploding
These mods essentially turn your grenade into a powerful tool to set up synergies with your primary weapon, which brings me to my next improvement!
2: No More Secondary Weapons
In 100% of my playtests, the secondary weapon was ignored as players tend to want to stack all of their mods on one weapon for maximum effectiveness. This means that there's no real reason to have a secondary weapon at all! Since you can throw your grenade and also melee while shooting, you can make use of all of your inventory at once: this feels efficient and fun!
3: Weapon Selection
While many games have lots of different weapons that can drop with fixed behaviors, the focus here is on letting you choose a base weapon and then use the countless combos of weapon mods to turn it into something new. By choosing and sticking with a specific weapon at the start of a Survival run, this functions like a class or loadout, allowing you to spend the run making a build around that weapon rather than constantly finding completely different weapons and pivoting.
Finding weapons mid run would make sense if there were many weapons in the game but since mods give weapons most of their interest, I thought that it was better to focus on a limited selection of core archetype weapons, each with their own set of mastery challenges and skins to unlock! The aim is for players to start coming up with builds for specific weapons as their knowledge deepens playing the game.
4: Progression
With each weapon now offering mastery challenges, the progression system has been updated to help give players more reasons to play Survival runs.
When you first start the game, only 2 weapons will be unlocked: the Bamboo Rifle and the Claw Shotgun. Other weapons as well as mods and perks will be available to unlock with keys: the persistent currency that persists between runs. Keys are earned by completing weapon mastery challenges, as well as by defeating bosses. There'll be more info on the improvements to the progression system soon!
Debuffs
As part of my original plan to support more than just the four elemental damage types previously mentioned (ice, fire, lightning and poison), a new debuff system has been implemented. The full list of debuffs and their effects can be found below.
Charm (Pink): If enemies are charmed, they heal you with their attacks (but if you are charmed, you also heal enemies!)
Confusion (Multicolor): Movement directions are randomized and spread is heavily increased!
Weak (Red): If weakened, outgoing damage is reduced
Slow (Yellow): Movement speed is slowed
Stun (White): Interrupts and prevents future attacks
Ice (Blue): Prevents movement and attacks until thawed
Fire (Orange): Damage over time is dealt when on fire. Can be extinguished with water
Lightning (Purple): A percentage of damage taken is dealt to nearby enemies
Poison (Green): Increases incoming damage and prevents all healing. Can be washed off with water
Survival Mode Updates
New Destructible Rocks As part of my effort to add more variety to each island, there are a few more potential destructible rocks that can appear including challenge crystals (breaking them drops a good amount of crystals but summons high level enemies), black hole rocks, healing rocks, enemy spawners and more (in addition to the standard ice, fire, lightning and poison rocks that could show up before).
Price Tags, Discounts and New Perks A random pickup in shops will be 30% off in each shop, with new UI added to show any discounts. In addition to this, a new discount based perk has been added called "Bargain Hunter" which gives a small chance for goods in the shop to be heavily (-90%) discounted.
Faster Loading Times A lot of work has gone in behind the scenes this month to make sure that restarting (important to be zippy in a game where you die a lot) and moving from island to island is as fast and seamless as possible. I've been able to hugely cut down on loading times and completely remove loading screens during a Survival mode run. The clip above shows the expected loading time for almost any island, even when playing multiplayer!
New Island Type: Rush This is a fast paced island type where the only goal is to eliminate as many enemies as possible before a timer runs out! It features a dynamic reward system that gives you the opportunity to score legendary loot if you are quick enough!
New Island Type: Treasure If you choose the Random portal which occasionally appears between islands, there is a small chance that you'll be taken to a Treasure island which contains 2 free chests of a random rarity. If choosing a Random portal there is of course still a chance that you'll be thrown into a fight with an elite enemy, so come prepared!
New Enemy Attack Types Enemies now have more attack patterns in their arsenal, from huge circular formations of projectiles to chaotic clusters!
Flawless No Hit Bonus: Completing an island without taking any damage now grants a crystal bonus! This bonus increases with each island and is a nice reward for those skilled enough to pull it off.
Temple Island Rework Temple islands show up near the end of each biome and are a true test of skill before the boss. They feature several areas separated by locked doors and contain enemy spawners that must be destroyed before moving to the next chamber. As mentioned in previous updates, temples are a great source of high quality loot so are well worth the added challenge!
Hidden Loot! There is now a chance for bonus loot to spawn on each island, though it's usually somewhere hidden, requiring some platforming to find. Some bonus loot won't even be accessible without having several mobility perks (such as on top of cliffs).
Soundtrack Update I've been chipping away at the soundtrack as usual, 3 more songs have been mastered and completed since the last update: very excited to share them with you!
New Portal FX
Bug Fixes + Balance Tweaks As always, countless bug fixes and balance tweaks have been made after playtesting to improve underperforming gameplay elements. Bouncing Shots for example has gotten a nice buff: as well as giving shots the ability to bounce, damage is now also doubled after each bounce!
Thanks for reading and for being patient with the development of the game.
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Development Update #13
This month a lot of work has gone into increasing the replay value and variation of each Survival mode run. It's really important in any game with roguelike elements to have the potential for wildly different builds with a lot of difficult decisions to be made on each run. I felt that the game was lacking some of this depth so a big portion of the month was spent adding content and mechanics to give players more options. There'll be more on this next month with a look at the finalized weapon levelling system.
King Skull: Bullet Hell Boss
I've always wanted boss fights in Survival mode to be a lot more exciting than just facing a bullet sponge enemy doing basic attacks. After a few experiments and a lot of optimization, this bullet hell style encounter ended up working really well with the high mobility that you have as a player. It really increases the intensity compared to normal islands. The visuals and animations are still quite rough here (the boss itself will be fully redesigned, it's here mainly to test out the new mechanics) but the gameplay feels great and many of the other bosses will now feature more hectic, bullet hell attacks.
Target Dummy
One of the most important parts of the shop in Survival mode is being able to experiment with weapon mods to create new builds. Without a target that has a damage per second indicator, there was a lot of guesswork in terms of the range and damage output of your build. Now there are multiple target dummies in the shop area, allowing you to clearly see how well your build is performing.
Greed Revamp
Being greedy and biting off more than you can chew, resulting in the end of a Survival run is always something that is really interesting to me. I've spent a good portion of the month revamping the old greed perk system in a way that offers a LOT of power to players but with some heavy drawbacks which can make for difficult decisions on each run.
The greed mechanics have been split into two sections: perks and totems.
Greed Perks: These offer a huge benefit but also come with a guaranteed downside. When you pick one up, it cannot be removed but has a lasting passive effect. They can be stacked for stronger effects as normal perks can.
Leap Of Faith: Max health greatly increased, but fall damage is enabled
Bribe: Max health greatly increased but lose crystals when taking damage
Double Trouble: Max health greatly increased but so is enemy health
Cracked Helmet: Block damage in front of you but take double damage from behind
Heavy Armor: Gain immunity to a random elemental damage type but movement speed is reduced by 50%
Glass Cannon: Damage massively increased but you lose most of your max health
Playing With Power: Damage massively increased but you can hurt yourself
Brute Force: Both outgoing and incoming damage heavily increased
Beginner's Luck: All damage dealt has a chance to be greatly higher or greatly lower than usual
Think Fast: Damage greatly increased at the start of each island, but decreases over time
Metal Claw: Damage heavily increased but no more chests spawn for the next 10 islands
Up The Ante: Damage greatly increased but easy portals no longer appear and more enemies spawn
Untouchable: Damage is greatly reduced but is increased every time you eliminate an enemy. If you get hit, the damage boost is reset
Slippery Slope: Gain crystals over time but also lose health over time
Double Edged Sword: Gain crystals when dealing damage but lose crystals when taking damage
Workaholic: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but you lose most of your max health
High Stakes: Far more crystals drop when eliminating enemies but elite and armored enemies have a chance to spawn instead of normal enemies
Gambler: Chance for more crystals to drop when eliminating enemies but also a chance for no crystals to drop at all
Cursed Lottery: Gain a gigantic amount of crystals but lose most of your max health
High Roller: 50% chance for double chests to spawn but a 50% chance for no chests to spawn
Hoarder: Double the chests spawn after each island but double the enemies also spawn
Cursed Loot: Chance for shop loot to be free but also a chance for it to be empty
False Confidence: Normal enemy health is reduced but boss health is greatly increased
Greed Totems: These have instant one-off effects (for example gain crystals but lose max HP) and can be repeatedly purchased (with the price exponentially increasing).
Feeling Lucky: 50% chance to double max health, 50% chance to halve max health
Last Resort: 33% chance to fully heal, 66% chance to take a small amount of damage
Blood Money: Gain crystals but lose 33% of your health
Instant Gratification: Instantly spawn a chest of a random rarity but lose 33% health
Insurance: Gain 200 max health but lose all of your crystals
Impatience: Upgrade a random perk tier but lose 25% health
Focused Power: Lose a random 50% of your perks but gain +4 tiers on perks that remain
Claw For A Claw: Lose 3 random perks but get a legendary perk
Bill Pay: Gain 3 random perks or mods but increase future shop prices
Scrap Metal: 50% chance to increase your weapon level, 50% chance to do nothing
No Pain No Gain: Instantly get a level 10 weapon but lose 75% max HP
Greed Heart: Gain a short term +500% boost in health, but it is reduced every second down to 50% of your original health
Together Forever: Your currently equipped weapon gains 10 weapon levels but cannot be swapped for a new weapon later
Inseparable: Your currently equipped weapon gains random (Rare+) mods in all empty slots but cannot be dropped or swapped for a new weapon later
Both greed perks and totems can be found occasionally in shops and temples, maybe saving a run... or dooming it?
Challenge Runs
Challenge runs (not to be confused with regular challenges) are Survival runs with a specific condition, loadout or world modifier applied to make the run difficult or unusual. The goal is always to simply complete the base Survival loop (3 biomes) with the challenge active. Completing each challenge run rewards the player with cosmetic unlocks and are a fun way to jump into a Survival run with a specific goal in mind.
Some examples of challenge runs currently added:
Complete a run while keeping a friendly wandering penguin safe throughout
Complete a run where ALL mods and perks you find are chaos themed (leading to an increasingly unstable run as most chaos related loot increases damage but makes projectiles wildly fly around)
Complete a run with ALL greed perks active at once
Complete a run where the instagib world modifier (enemies die in one hit but so do you) is always active
Complete a run where enemies have less health but 4x as many spawn
Complete a run in 30 minutes but time moves faster after each completed island
Complete a run facing enemies from all biomes who are using random weapons
Complete a run where only greed loot spawns
There will be many more challenge runs added to the game over time and they will also feature bronze, silver, gold and diamond medals for completing them with a certain score (score is calculated from damage dealt, damage taken, time taken and crystals remaining when finishing the run).
Other Changes
Movement Speed Changes: Movement speed has been lowered for Survival mode and increased for Racing mode (though it's still possible to get incredibly fast with perks when on a Survival run)
Grenade Weapon Mod Compatibility: Any weapon mods can now be placed in grenade slots, allowing them to synergize with your current build! In this example, the grenade has a Split Shot mod which splits a single projectile into multiple smaller ones shortly after being spawned.
Enemies Using Mods: As mentioned previously, enemies will begin getting weapon mods after the first loop in Survival. This means that existing encounters constantly get spiced up.
Weapon Choice: Because of the new weapon leveling system, players will no longer always start with a basic pistol and will instead get a choice of 3 random level 1 weapons when starting each run.
Multiplayer Improvements: I've made some huge changes to ensure that players with high latency still have an experience as close as possible to playing offline (big improvements to movement, hit detection and more).
Thanks for reading!
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Development Update #12
Triangle Biome Sneak Peek
In Survival mode, when players choose to continue past the "final" boss, they enter the end game loop where they will return to old biomes with stronger enemies and also encounter new, exotic biomes. The triangle biome is the first of these to be added: a mysterious place where triangles are sacred!
Unique themed loot drops in every exotic biome including weapons and weapon mods!
As with all new biomes, triangle biome themed Racing and Duel maps will be added to the lineup of maps in the game.
New Projectile System + Weapon Mods Revamp
Previously, weapons were either hitscan based (shots instantly hit targets in a straight line when fired) or projectile based (shots have a lifetime and can move with various forces like gravity). This led to a confusing split in weapon mods: some were hitscan only, some were projectile only.
Since I wanted a unified weapon mod system (where any mod could be placed on any kind of weapon, including grenades), all weapons were converted to be projectile based. With a bunch of tweaks and a completely rewritten projectile movement system, this approach actually ended up working nicely, and I was able to add a lot of new weapon mods that directly affect the movement characteristics of projectiles. This new system coupled with matching FX for each mod (projectile trails, sparks and more to help distinguish which mods are active) turned out to create some interesting results.
Since there are thousands of meaningful combinations of weapon mods and projectile types, I stumbled onto interesting and powerful synergies that had previously been unseen. This is exactly what I was hoping for when creating the weapon mod system: to let players mix and match different mods to create unique, surprising and overpowered versions of the core weapon archetypes.
Over 50 new weapon mods have been added this month, some reworked from older versions and others from the long list of ideas to add. Some examples:
Glue Shot: Shots stick to enemies with a delayed explosion
Chaotic Shot: Shots fly in a chaotic pattern but deal increased damage
Homing Shot: Shots home towards nearby enemies
Piercing Shot: Shots can pierce through (and damage) enemies multiple times without exploding
Growing Shot: Shots get larger and deal more damage over time
Wide Shot: Shots are wider horizontally
Damage Aura: Shots have an AOE damage bubble around them
You can probably imagine some combinations that'd work well together from those examples already. The fun part is that the same combination of mods will look very different on each base weapon type (like the Claw Shotgun or the Coconut Launcher) so there's some strategy to work out what mix of mods will best suit your currently equipped weapon.
Some mods now have cooldowns as they are too powerful to be triggered every time a shot is fired. Cooldowns are most often seen on mods that are triggered when a shot "explodes" after hitting a surface or enemy as they usually have very powerful effects.
Some examples of mods with cooldowns:
Spinning Blade: Shots spawn spinning blades that damage nearby enemies
Shockwave: Shots spawn shockwaves that knock back nearby enemies
Black Hole: Shots spawn black holes that suck nearby enemies in
Scatter Shot: Shots multiply in the air and scatter into smaller shots
Spikes: Shots spawn spikes when hitting surfaces
Bombs: Shots spawn a bunch of rolling bombs when hitting surfaces
In addition to this, a bunch of new firing patterns have been added for weapons to fire in more interesting ways rather than just straight forward. Weapons can now fire groups of projectiles in many shapes such as arcs, circles, lines, triangles etc.
New Elimination FX
Enemies now explode into tiny crystal shards when eliminated. These examples are a bit over the top but it's fun to push the explosiveness of the effect to the max!
Duel Mode Revamp
I had never been fully happy with the gameplay loop in Duel mode: it felt a bit too basic and standard, a typical round based duel with no real interesting mechanics other than "you are a crab!".
With all of the weapon mod changes mentioned above (and the huge chunk of time it takes to properly implement and test each mod), a big change was made to the codebase to allow for weapon mods in Duel mode. With that, the rules have been changed to make the mode much more unique.
At the start of the first round, all players pick a weapon out of a random selection of 3 (all players get the same random selection).
At the start of all future rounds, players are offered a weapon mod out of a random selection of 3. This means that as the match goes on, players will become more and more powerful with a growing list of mods affecting each shot that they fire.
The losing players of each round will have their health doubled.
The players that reach the score limit first win the match!
In my early tests, this has created a much more dynamic and varied Duel experience, with no two matches turning out the same way. Players might make similar choices leading to a close fight, or completely different choices leading to chaotic battles being won or lost in sometimes unbelievable ways!
Other Changes
Tony's Evil Brother: Word has it that Tony's evil brother has stolen some of his goods and is selling them at discounted rates!
Survival Enemies Using Weapons With Mods: Thanks to the codebase changes mentioned above, Survival enemies can now make use of weapon mods: this is the perfect way to spice up late game enemies with unpredictable combinations of mods on weapons that they usually fire (stay clear of enemies firing chaotic shotguns!).
Movement Speed And Scale Tweaks The world has been scaled down with enemy size and speed also tweaked to match: teammates are now much more visible and this also makes Duel matches more fair as it's much easier to target enemies.
Hazards: Hazards now have a small chance to spawn on any Survival map, adding chaos for both you and enemies!
Resolution Quality Setting Added: This allows players to improve performance issues by lowering the quality of the game resolution. It also can be raised up to 200% for those that want it.
Target Dummies: Target dummies have been added to all shops in Survival mode for players to easily test out new build options.
Modular Weapons Idea
As the weapon mod system is probably the biggest part of the game in terms of replay value and fun, I explored many different ideas before locking down the current system for the beta release. One of these ideas was a completely modular weapon system which allowed players to mix and match various parts to build unique and interesting weapons. Players would always start with the same basic pistol but build up to a much more powerful modular weapon as the run went on. While this idea sounded great on paper, when I implemented the prototype it ended up with a few shortcomings that ended up feeling worse than what I had before, mainly that it's not fun to find weapon parts that all look similar and then have to (sometimes tediously) put them together in a game that is mainly about fast paced action. There are some things I'd love to explore more from this idea but it's more important to get this beta out, so that takes priority for now.
Thanks for reading!
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