It has been a long time coming and I am extremely pleased to announced that @eldrone (Jonatan) is joining Siege Games fulltime. For those not familiar with Jonatan's work, he is a very talented developer who has been working at this small company Mojang up until now.
Jonatan has been a long time supporter of Crea dating all the way back to Crea's Kickstarter in July 2012. I originally attempted to recruit Jonatan back in September 2013 and it has only taken 3 years to convince him! Worth it!
Over the past few month's Jonatan has been working a day a week on Crea's 1.2 update. He has reworked many of the core graphics, helped refine the combat and many other polishing touches. So with 1.2 you will already get a taste for his work and what is to come.
Moving forward, Jonatan will continue to touch up the graphics while we also make a push on the content front. Expect some amazing updates to Crea in 2017!
Ready for Testing: 1.2 Update
Hello everyone! It has been awhile since the last update and I thank everyone for their patience. The wait is nearly over and for those brave souls you can jump into the new update by switching over to the unstable branch.
I have done limited internal testing and already caught and fixed several smaller issues. Now I need your help testing everything more thoroughly. We were initially going to do a closed test first but in hopes to expedite things I've decided to move it into unstable now. Thank you to those that did reply to our survey!
Please let us know if you do play on unstable. This will help give us an idea of the stability of the update.
While testing if you run into any problems please take to the Issues Forums and provide as much detail as you can. Please prefix posts with "[unstable]" to help us out. Also be sure to check out this post for further information such as how to include files (this helps a great deal!).
A full list of changes will be released when the update officially lands.
Version 1.2.0 Testing Coming Soon!
Hey everyone!
We're nearing the time to release our next big patch, and we decided to do a big multiplayer playtest in order to iron out the bugs!
As such, we're aiming to do a huge multiplayer test or two before the stable release of Version 1.2.0 in addition to our normal testing.
Features
We have a couple new features for this patch that people should hopefully enjoy.
Death Penalty
This has long been one of our most requested features, and we're finally implementing it. Now when you die in normal mode, you'll drop all your unequipped items in a bag. This bag will float around and remain there until you can reclaim your items.
Combat Tweaking
We've tweaked the combat in an attempt to make it more dynamic, fun, and fair. We feel that these changes make combat feel significantly better, and hope you guys agree!
Anomalies
This feature has been in development for a while, but we're finally ready to release it. Anomalies are a system through which you'll be faced with randomized events that will appear within your world. Whether you're tasked with battling a giant swarm of monsters, or with battling the entropic chaos present within the world, these events should make the game more interesting and offer challenge to those who've beaten the game.
Polish!
We've modified a lot of smaller aspects of the game that aren't quite immediately evident as problems, but were annoying all the same. The most noticable changes are the new minimap, and procedurally generated sky, but there are many more!
That's definitely not an exhaustive list and Jasson will be around closer to the tests to give a full changelist, but that should give you a taste of what we're bringing with the new update.
We're looking for testers for this patch but we need to know when the best time for the multiplayer playtest is. As such, if you plan to test our newest patch please fill out this form to tell us: https://quill.typeform.com/to/lO1Upj
We'll use the information you fill out to choose the date and time for the multiplayer playtests, and to let you into the beta
See you guys soon!
Small 1.1.4 Patch
Hello! Just throwing up the changelog for this small 1.1.4 patch. Potentially will release more patches leading up to the huge update in December. Have a great weekend!
Changelog
Potentially resolved issue preventing players with older versions of Windows from playing Crea 1.1.
Resolved issue with the "!" (new item) showing up when it should and causing some UI havoc.
Fixed the name of Condensed Chaos (previously was incorrectly named "Contained Chaos") that should clear up progression
Crea's Future
Hello everyone! It has been a few months since Crea's launch and I thought it was time to share what is planned for Crea's future. It is an exciting time for Crea as we change up some of the team and plan for many amazing changes and new content.
Inventory will soon be expandable to show all items
Immediate
Since the last update there are a few larger issues that have come up that are begging for a patch. I am working on putting that out soon!
Short Term
We have been focusing on polishing up Crea since it launched. The 1.1 update saw a reworked researching system and many bug fixes. We are now working on the next huge update that will contain a plethora of changes to nearly every aspect of the game. We've introduced a death penalty, implemented a new event system, incorporated tons of feedback, and much much more. We're planning to release this update early-mid December!
A sight you will soon be all too familiar with
Long Term
After the next big update we will continue to enhance the existing features and content. Additionally we will begin to create new content. We will first be focusing on filling Crea with more monsters and animals. Beyond that anything is a possibility. We will continue to make awesome updates as long as we have the community's support! Speaking of which, thank you for your continued support! <3
Crea 1.1 Hotfix
Out of nowhere a new issue has popped up which is teleporting players up into the sky and dropping them to their death. FUN! I spent a good chunk of yesterday and today trying to track this down. I have pushed an update with a temporary solution as well as some additional debug logging.
Instead of being teleported into the air you will now simply pass through the block. This should only happen on single slope blocks. Here is what it should look like while passing through a single slope block. If your character doesn't move vertically while going over the block then please take to this forum thread and post your logs.
Crea 1.1 Update Released
After substantial work the 1.1 update has finally graduated from the unstable branch to public! The rest of this post is mostly a repeat from the previous one.
The 1.1 update focuses on reworking the progression in Crea. The researching system has completely been reworked and is now the backbone of progression in Crea. Researching will send you on sort of mini-quests to go find new materials so that you can learn new recipes. Bosses are tied to researching too to help make discovering them easier.
The way you access several of the bosses has changed. Additionally bosses now have set levels and a set order that you fight them in. The bosses themselves have not really changed since I'm holding off on that for a later update. You can read about what we have planned by checking out the Crea Roadmap.
Next up, which is already underway, is the 1.2 update that is focusing on polishing the interface, enhancing play experience, and incorporating player feedback. You can watch the progress of it here!
1.1 Changelog
Features
Completely reworked research system to be simpler, clearer and provide more direct progression
Bosses now have fixed levels and a set order
Added experience bar to toolbar UI
Added in tracking new items for travel, research, and craft systems and highlight them (!) on the UI
Implemented potential performance boost for longer play sessions related to UI
Reduced number of UI Views which decreases CPU and memory usage
UI is now only rendered when it is fully initialized
Upgraded engine compiler resulting in a 5-10% performance boost
Changes
Reorganized the craft categories and subcategories
Added item grouping in craft UI to better organize items within subcategories
Weapons and equipment are now ordered by level in Craft UI
Genus items can no longer be downgraded when crafting (Lumber cannot be used instead of Refined Lumber but Premium Lumber can)
Remna items upgradable to the next tier by combining 3 through crafting
It is now possible to bulk chaos craft
It is no longer possible to bulk craft unique items such as equipment
Tweaked craft TP yield, craft level, equipment level, recipe ingredients and ingredients' quantity for most items
Crafting station icon is now tinted red when it is unavailable and has a help tooltip
Equipment will no longer use persistent attributes when determining the name which makes the names more interesting
Negative stat modifiers now have their own special prefixes
Renamed Researcher NPC to "Scholar"
Scholar now only provides translating scrolls service
Removed scraps
Removed Innovate, Scrap Master, and Scavenge skills
Scrapper now only scraps equipment and yields materials based off of the provided item
Executing a keyboard shortcut involving tab and one or more modifier keys (such as alt+tab) will no longer change the players loadout
Paragons now only appear after defeating the first boss
Give some feedback to the player when unlocking the first boss
Changed how some of the bosses are unlocked and reached
Bosses are now immune to damage over time effects such as Burn and Poison
Reworked TP gain algorithm making it still possible to gain small amounts of TP when performing lower level actions
Slightly increased ore frequency and greatly increased clay frequency in worlds
Significantly increased amount of experience required to level at higher levels
Bug Fixes
Resolved crash that would occur infrequently when picking up unique items
Resolved crash that would occur when attempting to load items that are no longer valid items (typically caused by mods)
Resolved crash that could occur when attempting to render the ground
Potentially resolved crash when joining a multiplayer game due to the merchant wares not being synced properly
Resolved crash caused by the grabbed item getting into a bad state
Resolved crash due to dropped item physics not being cleaned up properly
Resolved crash that could occur when joining a multiplayer game due to incorrectly reading other player's gear loadout
Resolved crash due to client destroying a realm before it should have
Potentially resolved crash caused by an entity attempting to move in a realm after the realm has been destroyed
Resolved crash when attempting to get the next lore book page beyond the last page
Resolved issue with characters being replaced when a character with the same name is created
Resolved issue with tutorials not working on client
Resolved issue with monsters jumping extremely high
Resolved issue with Beam spells not damaging bosses
Potentially fixed a rare issue where Baritus would become stuck in his current empowered form
Resolved issue with Quaridin's sometimes getting in a stuck state
Resolved issue where breath spells would not deal damage to spawners or foliage
Resolved issue where a spell could sometimes be cast multiple times before going on cooldown
Resolved issue with Lobber arrows not exploding
Resolved issue with the Blood Rain bow not applying the blood rain effect
Resolved issue with Aersword not granting stat bonuses
Resolved issue with Tutela Virge's shield not working properly
Resolved issue where magic bows could not use ranged skills
Resolved issue where the Ensnare skill could be cast using any weapon, but only worked properly when using a bow
Resolved issue where you could begin another action while casting a spell, thus removing the movement constraints from the second action
Fixed Zweihander graphics
Resolved issue with stamina still draining when jumping into water while sprinting
Resolved issue with sound effects continuing to play while the game is paused
Fixed typo with lore book notification being incorrect for Lanteed
Added missing dungeoneer outfit flavor text
Resolved issue where crystals would sometimes not display their renamed name on the map
Resolved issue where trees could be planted on non soil tiles
Huge 1.1 Crea Update on Unstable
After much work the next Crea update is now on unstable and it is a big one. Initially I was planning to release a 1.0.16 but I grew bored of working on bugs for 1.0.16 and took a day off to work on new stuff for 1.1. Next thing I knew 1.1 was almost done and it no longer made sense to release a 1.0.16 update. Whoops!
As I've said before, 1.1 focuses on reworking the progression in Crea. In order to achieve this I decided to simplify the researching system and make it the backbone of progression. Researching will send you on miniquests to go find new materials so that you can learn new recipes. Bosses are tied to researching too to help make discovering them easier.
The way you access several of the bosses has changed. Additionally bosses now have set levels and a set order that you fight them in. The bosses themselves have not really changed since I'm holding off on that for a later update. You can read about what we have planned by checking out the Crea Roadmap.
Keep in mind this update is on Unstable for now. Please let me know if you are playing it so I can get an idea of how many people are helping test it. If you run into any issues be sure to report them. There are some significant changes and while I did my best to test them and do backwards compatibility tests I likely missed a few. If you world or character saves get messed up be sure to restore them with the automatic backups.
1.1 Changelog
Features
Completely reworked research system to be simpler, clearer and provide more direct progression
Bosses now have fixed levels and a set order
Added experience bar to toolbar UI
Added in tracking new items for travel, research, and craft systems and highlight them (!) on the UI
Implemented potential performance boost for longer play sessions related to UI
Reduced number of UI Views which decreases CPU and memory usage
UI is now only rendered when it is fully initialized
Upgraded engine compiler resulting in a 5-10% performance boost
Changes
Reorganized the craft categories and subcategories
Added item grouping in craft UI to better organize items within subcategories
Weapons and equipment are now ordered by level in Craft UI
Genus items can no longer be downgraded when crafting (Lumber cannot be used instead of Refined Lumber but Premium Lumber can)
Remna items upgradable to the next tier by combining 3 through crafting
It is now possible to bulk chaos craft
It is no longer possible to bulk craft unique items such as equipment
Tweaked craft TP yield, craft level, equipment level, recipe ingredients and ingredients' quantity for most items
Crafting station icon is now tinted red when it is unavailable and has a help tooltip
Equipment will no longer use persistent attributes when determining the name which makes the names more interesting
Negative stat modifiers now have their own special prefixes
Renamed Researcher NPC to "Scholar"
Scholar now only provides translating scrolls service
Removed scraps
Removed Innovate, Scrap Master, and Scavenge skills
Scrapper now only scraps equipment and yields materials based off of the provided item
Executing a keyboard shortcut involving tab and one or more modifier keys (such as alt+tab) will no longer change the players loadout
Paragons now only appear after defeating the first boss
Give some feedback to the player when unlocking the first boss
Changed how some of the bosses are unlocked and reached
Bosses are now immune to damage over time effects such as Burn and Poison
Reworked TP gain algorithm making it still possible to gain small amounts of TP when performing lower level actions
Slightly increased ore frequency and greatly increased clay frequency in worlds
Significantly increased amount of experience required to level at higher levels
Bug Fixes
Resolved crash that would occur infrequently when picking up unique items
Resolved crash that would occur when attempting to load items that are no longer valid items (typically caused by mods)
Resolved crash that could occur when attempting to render the ground
Potentially resolved crash when joining a multiplayer game due to the merchant wares not being synced properly
Resolved crash caused by the grabbed item getting into a bad state
Resolved crash due to dropped item physics not being cleaned up properly
Resolved crash that could occur when joining a multiplayer game due to incorrectly reading other player's gear loadout
Resolved crash due to client destroying a realm before it should have
Potentially resolved crash caused by an entity attempting to move in a realm after the realm has been destroyed
Resolved crash when attempting to get the next lore book page beyond the last page
Resolved issue with characters being replaced when a character with the same name is created
Resolved issue with tutorials not working on client
Resolved issue with monsters jumping extremely high
Resolved issue with Beam spells not damaging bosses
Potentially fixed a rare issue where Baritus would become stuck in his current empowered form
Resolved issue with Quaridin's sometimes getting in a stuck state
Resolved issue where breath spells would not deal damage to spawners or foliage
Resolved issue where a spell could sometimes be cast multiple times before going on cooldown
Resolved issue with Lobber arrows not exploding
Resolved issue with the Blood Rain bow not applying the blood rain effect
Resolved issue with Aersword not granting stat bonuses
Resolved issue with Tutela Virge's shield not working properly
Resolved issue where magic bows could not use ranged skills
Resolved issue where the Ensnare skill could be cast using any weapon, but only worked properly when using a bow
Resolved issue where you could begin another action while casting a spell, thus removing the movement constraints from the second action
Fixed Zweihander graphics
Resolved issue with stamina still draining when jumping into water while sprinting
Resolved issue with sound effects continuing to play while the game is paused
Fixed typo with lore book notification being incorrect for Lanteed
Added missing dungeoneer outfit flavor text
Resolved issue where crystals would sometimes not display their renamed name on the map
Resolved issue where trees could be planted on non soil tiles
Crea Status Update 8/31
Greeting! Apologies for such a long delay between updates. Have no fear though for I have been hard at work on the 1.1 update and have some great changes coming soon.
I will write in full detail about everything going into 1.1 when it lands. For now I will tease that 1.1 focuses on reworking Crea's progression mainly focusing on redesigning the researching system and how you progress through the bosses. There are also tons of bug fixes that will be included.
In other news, Crea officially has two new developers working on it part-time. Jonatan is working one day a week and is focusing on smoothing out the combat and movement as well as polishing various things. Josh is working 20 hours a week while going to college and is spending his time on fixing bugs and soon other parts of the updates. Both are extremely talented and passionate about game development. Crea is lucky to have them on the team!
Design on Research
Introduction
While taking a break from bug fixing I have been focusing on redesigning the research system. I have been revisiting the underlying design for the research system and wanted to share my thoughts and plans with the community.
Initial Research System
The original motivation for the research system was simple: provide the player with a means to learn new item recipes without having to look them up on a wiki. With many of the games In the crafting sandbox genre it is almost a necessity to use a wiki. Recipe discovery alone is hard enough and then on top of that there are hundreds of items to memorize. I was never a fan of this so I wanted to avoid it in Crea.
The idea for researching was to allow players to discover new items and then from those items learn what they are capable of making. In the beginning the initial design worked out reasonably well. There were few items and it was rewarding to come back to your base and learn what you could now make. However, this was definitely not without fault.
Too many materials were being consumed - especially your more coveted ones. There was also the problem with the growing number of items in the game it was a grind to learn all the recipes. To combat these problems new features were added on top of the researching: item sets, researching multiple items per material, and scraps to name a few. With these changes though some underlying fundamental issues were revealed.
Feedback on Researching
Thanks to everyone's feedback I compiled a list of issues with researching which I used for the redesign:
Too many items consumed for no clear reward
Seemingly random - a blackbox
Unclear when an item can be researched. Sometimes it can and other times it can’t
Players don’t learn what they can actually craft which defeats original design purpose
No clear progression
Too many items hidden behind researching
After much deliberation I realized that two design goals were at odds with each other. I wanted players to be able to discover new items and discover new recipes that they can craft and I also wanted a sense of progression with direction. Since there is already a great deal of discovery in Crea I decided to sacrifice the extremely open discovery aspect in exchange for more consistent direction and progression.
Redesigned Researching
There are now more basic recipes that player's will start with. Besides those and recipes learned from scrolls, all items are now split up into item sets. Each item set contains a list of recipes that will be learned and the materials required to research it. The required materials will be consumed when researching and only requires a single button click. At the beginning, only a few item sets are available to research. New item sets become unlocked by researching sets and defeating bosses.
This means researching will be much faster, consume less materials, each recipe is learned all at once, and you will know exactly what you need (materials) and will be getting (recipes). This also means no need to display partially learned recipes or material research progress. The best part is you wont have to keep checking to see if old materials can be researched again.
Conclusion
I'm overly excited about this redesign because I believe it will fix many issues that Crea. Additionally, it gives me good reason to re-evaluate many other aspects of Crea's progression such as the boss leveling, equipment level requirements, materials in item recipe, and crafting station progression. I am going to try to group all of these changes together but before I can get too deep into that I will be returning to bug fixing mode soon.
