Darkness and a Crowd has undergone many iterations, some necessary, and some not so much. The recent changes of the game although not terribly important, do make a difference in the feeling and environment of the game. Let’s go over a few of those changes.
Recently we’ve added a new attacking animation. I forgot which video it was that I saw someone mention this, but I was asked, what exactly is the Character doing when he attacks an enemy. It now spawns a quick little animation I made of a dark entity being formed, whipping the enemy and disappearing. Along with this tiny change, we’ve also added some more environmental changes to the game to make it more obvious when an enemy is nearby.
Now you will hear slimy squishy jumping noises every time a Spickle jumps. Although not a big change, it’s something that makes me really happy. I spent a solid afternoon just squishing and throwing slime around to get the noise just right.
There are also sound effects for a few other things. Jumping through one way walls creates a sound effect of a higher pitched squishy noise repeated, and breaking objects creates a rather loud, satisfying crack.
Most if not all sound effects are easily controlled with the sound sliders in the settings menu, which was a process to include but extremely necessary for the easability of others recordings. Speaking of making unique recordings. If you find something cool in the game that you want a simple picture of, feel free to hit the back slash button on your keyboard to toggle the UI. “\”. This is how the trailer is being recorded, and it doesn’t remove too much from the experience strangely enough.
On top of all of this, there was also a new area added above where the bridges were spanning over the wave location. It leads to an empty room that is currently being used to test new objects and enemies before I get working on even more maps, It also loads in a nearly empty location and gives you a sneak peak on it’s name.
I hope these updates get you excited for what’s to come. If you haven’t tried out the game in some time, I do encourage you to do so. There have been many changes, most involving around the tutorial of the game, and I find myself getting lost in its gameplay. Please don’t hesitate to record the game to provide feedback for me, and post your recordings or screenshots for the community to view so I can watch it and make any necessary changes to improve the experience.
Thanks so much for reading this, and as always, keep playing Darkness and a Crowd.
- S
Update B0.11.0
So what's been going on?
Recently I've been working on some minor behind the scene tweaks and planning for the future. The most visible change would be the change in the camera movement, adding some more slack to it's movement and allowing it to not fall to far from the player by moving almost exponentially depending on how far away the center of the camera is from the player. I've also been working on another method of camera movement that allows you to see ahead of the player in the direction its moving but because this is so buggy, I'm deciding to go against this idea, but in the future I might allow it in the options along with other small tweaks to how the game runs.
The update its pretty minor but with added bug fixes that are hard to elaborate on, there's not much worth mentioning.
Any map changes?
Basically I added a wave system to a future spot on the map that allows you to fight waves of creatures that spawn in general areas. Once you defeat your enemies, the area opens up and a task is completed. This is basically planning for other methods of using this in the future as I'm still coming up with ideas of what I can do for upcoming missions and story progression.
And then?
Outside of all of this, I've invested on some music equipment to possible spice up a bit of the music to stop being my out of tune guitar strumming from the 7th grade. Hope you all enjoy!
- S
We Released in Early Access
Tell me what you think? There's not much more to say. The game is now released in early access so if you've been waiting for it, you can play it, and if you've been waiting to buy it, well its on a massive sale for Christmas so grab it while you still can! I want to make the game as community driven as possible, so if you encounter any issues, please feel free to send a message my way whether its in a comment or a discussion thread. I also have contact information everywhere, such as my email, seth@sethalbertus.com and a forum you can reach me at on my website sethalbertus.com. I want this to be as community driven as possible.
ALSO! New updates are coming soon to add some new graphical improvements and fix some bugs I'm already aware of.
Enjoy!
What are you getting for Christmas?
There's now a date!
So what's going on?
So, I sort of got my shit together and figured things out with the game, and after being so afraid of releasing the game the last time, I had a lot of time to think about the possible reaction from the game. Then after working on it a bit more, I decided I think I am proud enough of the project to let the world see it. Even if they hate it, I’m confident enough in myself to fix any and all issues they have immediately when presented with them. I also have been informed that releasing the game in early access doesn’t allow it to explode with popularity, the real media releases happen after the early access release meaning, the pros strongly outweigh the cons. There’s no reason I shouldn’t release it as Early Access is the same thing you all are asking for, but with the ability for other people interested enough to join the community. Also after reading the documentation and letting steam check over my Early Access questionnaire, I sort of feel confident that I’m using early access for the proper reasons. I’m just spending a lot more crunch time adding small bug fixes and cool graphics before the time comes. The release date for early access will be December 26’th the day after Christmas. The store page should have all of the necessary information needed to inform you on whether or not you feel as if you should buy the game.
Please please please help me in this process by giving me constant feedback as to what you’d like to see changed, fixed or added. I’ll be sure to do what I need to in order to make this the best game you’ve ever played. Everything should be described within the Early Access questions asked below the store page.
What’s their left for me to do?
I personally need to make a new trailer as soon as possible. This way people have a better idea as to what the game is being displayed. I’m hoping that’ll be done at some point tomorrow evening. The release should be some time in the afternoon, or closer to the night, Easter Standard Time, I won’t have a better idea on that until the day comes. I want to be home to release it. I can’t wait to show off what I’ve spent too much time of my life working on, and I can’t wait to get some constructive criticism from you guys! What you guys can do to make sure you stay on top of things is to wishlist the game and wait for the release.
I’ll see you in one more day?
The Game is Coming? Tomorrow?
I'm trying to be as unfiltered here as I possibly can, and to help myself gain some insight on what I should do.
Early Access
So, I’m going to be honest here. The game isn’t close to being finished. But since I have so many people that already have keys and have waited so long, I’m heavily contemplating early access. The only thing with that is, I know for a fact that the entire community is going to be disappointed with how unfinished the game is. What is there, is mostly polished, but what isn’t, just simply isn’t. If I did release it under early access, I know I’m going to receive a bunch of backlash for the lack of content. All I can really give out is the shell of a game with its systems in place. With that, since I’d feel like trash for releasing such an early, unfinished version of a game, I’d try to give those that buy the game beforehand as much of an advantage as I can. I’d try to give them some sort of incentive, but what that is yet, I don’t quite know. Clearly, I want to lower the price because when you buy a game, you want to get what you paid for. There might be 30 minutes of gameplay in there and that’s definitely not worth what I was originally hoping to ask for. If we want an actual number here, trying to be as transparent as possible, I’m thinking $5.00. For an unreleased game that’s still being developed, I think that’s a reasonable price, and obviously the people who have already bought the game wouldn’t be spending anything. The idea of the early access is to allow people who want to invest money into the game and watch it evolve, will be able to. I want to say it’s also to help support me but I honestly don’t care for the money until it’s done. I don’t feel comfortable getting money for an incomplete project but I also can’t give it away for free because that’d just sort of ruin all of my work. Because it’s early access, the game will still be developed over time. It’ll just be constantly being updated and at a cheaper, more accessible point, to prevent people for not being able to play the game.
I still really hate the idea of releasing a game in early access. It feels like it’ll just come off as wrong. Like a money grab, like a lazy way out. But with so much life in the way and the amount of people upset that they still can’t play the game, I’m sort of stuck at a crossroads. I wanted to lay out my ideas on a piece of paper and let the community decide in the comments.
It can go one of three ways,
no one comments, and I release it, and we’ll see what happens.
People commenting that they just want to play it, and I’ll follow out with this plan.
People comment saying its a bad idea, and I won’t do it.
Regardless, I’m not going to get it the way I originally intended, and that blows, but the more people I can make happy out of this, the better. I work most days of the week, my schedule is beyond full and I never thought that would be possible. Senior year in highschool really sucks, but I at least want this project to succeed before I graduate and head off to college. So maybe we should just go for it, and see where this journey takes us? The games not dead, but my sleep schedule is. So give me your advice and I’ll listen like I always try my best to do.
Thanks in advance, Seth Albertus
What's it like to play Darkness and a Crowd Right Now? What's to come?
So what's going on?
Part of this announcement is to showcase a video I quickly made, not so much for visibility or anything, I just wanted to show you what this game will be like when it's released. There is a lot going on in my life at the moment so work on the game has kind of came to a halt. But with that, when I do work on the game, there's a lot of progress that gets made, whether it be in the background or the foreground. I'm extremely proud of my work in the new save system. I just added an autosave feature that works flawlessly. All that's left is to allow these features to be used in game. I'm working on a new main menu. That's not finished but it looks really really nice. I have a really cool idea coming up for the choosing of the saves and I'm really excited to implement it, I just haven't yet. I'm working on hiding the UI unless it's necessary. So checking if the EXP changes or if you're health goes up or down before it displays these items on screen. With this, it means these things will need to be visible somewhere else, that place will be in your stats menu. I need to implement that. I also need to perfect the tutorial still. With that, I need to make more changes in the level design to make room for that. Everything is just complicated and easy. It's polishing the items from the beginning of the game, and working on new features that'll in the long run make the player experience better. All of these changes wouldn't be happening if it weren't for the amazing beta testing you guys have been doing and the support I've been getting from you guys to keep working on the game.
Recently I had one of my favorite youtubers try out the game and it really made me smile. Check out his video here. It really goes in depth with all the flaws people experience with my game.
I can't wait to release this game fully. It's just so much really has to go into this. Once I get a little bit further, I'll try my hardest to put it up extremely cheap on early access so you CAN play the game if you've already bought it. I strive for that to be in the coming month or two.
In the meantime, I'd love for you guys to watch my video and give me some feedback on anything you saw, anything you want fixed, and anything I did well. Even if you hated everything about it, tell me why and I'll be sure to fix it. If you just want the game released already, try out the Demo, it's practically the same game, just cut a tad bit short. You're saves will easily be able to carry over in the final product. There might be some messing around with the data names but for the most part it'll work. [previewyoutube="iDkHJcGcnMk;full"]
Talk with the Developer
I know I haven't been active in a long while, but truthfully, I have the same excuse as always, life has been pretty insane. But I am constantly working on the game regardless. I just don't ever have time to post. The idea of posting a long lasting post is sort of nerve wracking. I always feel like I need to throw in a ton of content in my updates so people know what's getting done. If you want me to be honest here, I spent about 2 weeks trying to get the saves in a designated folder that can be uploaded onto steams cloud saving system so you can maintain progress across devices. It took me wayyy too long but I had a stupid mistake in my work. I can't wait to talk to some of you! I'll be there from 11:00 PM to 11:30 PM (GMT-4) tomorrow (October 10'th) Can't wait to hear from all of you! Just join the group and hop into the group chat, and meet me at the Home Text Channel!
Working on a brand new Main Menu atm, Old:
New:
Updates with Menu Chaos and New Abilities B.0.9.5
Big Changes for a Big Update
There's been a lot of requested changes I've been holding back on making for a long time. Although not entirely done, here's what I've been working on.
Menu Chaos Fixes?
What's been going on with the Menu Chaos? Well according to a large portion of the community, including those who tried out the beta not long after it was re-uploaded, had a common theme. The menu system seemed a bit too complicated and a bit broken at times. With that, I took the time to re-write much of the menu code to combine it all in one. Now buying abilities, equipping certain abilities, and so on are all in one menu. The greenlighting system when you talk to a switch and wish to lets say, raise a bridge, has since been changed to just automatically appear after you talk to the switch, and disappear on the escape button.
The new Element Buying Menu
Equipping other abilities example
I have plans to further simplify it with an on screen button to say hey, were done greenlighting (whether that be you finished it or gave up) and allows you to walk away or whatever you choose to do. But since that's not in the current edition, just re-talk to the switch when your ready to test out the
New Abilities?
We made activatable abilities (by clicking the Q button) in which you can use a special move to add to your fighting techniques. Things like smashing into the ground, summoning a rock creature to smash into your enemies, shooting out a fire bolt, or simply gaining an advantage on your first jump. These appear as regular abilities in the elements tab but are specified when you click on it. You must click on an ability and read it before you buy it with the buy button so hopefully that works for you all, but if not, please PLEASE tell me how to further explain cause its getting annoying coming up with new ways to make a tutorial UNLESS I just force you all to follow it step by step without any free will, but personally I hate those tutorials.
Using a fire ball (a fire ability)
Using ground slam (an earth ability)
New Sound Effects?
I bought a sound effect for the buy button cause I was sleep deprived and had nothing better to do in my dorm room, so appreciate it every-time you hit that buy button. I also made my own sound effects for clicking literally any button whatsoever in game. The bigger buttons get a clicking of the tongue noise cause we are on a budget (lol), and the smaller buttons get half of my mouse click but toned down....
Again, sound effects on a budget lmao....
Fixing bugs and making new ones?
So I'm well aware the load game button doesn't quite work rn from the main menu, and returning to the main menu causes issues as-well. There are work around for that by simply closing the game to restart it, and if you wanna load, just walk up to the save points (heads on a stick with fog around them) and load whatever save you want to. The save feature itself works reeeeeeally really well. I just need to re-write the main menu portion of it since its the only other scene you experience. With that, I want to make the main menu look prettier. I might take a page out of Ori and the Blind Forest and play around with animations to new scenes on button clicks and make it feel like it's part of the game as well. I'm really excited to see how I get to play around with this.
Darkness and a Crowd’s B0.9.0 Major Update
Updates
The past couple months have been very busy, admittedly I hadn’t worked on the game in a long time. Most recently however, I’ve swung back into gear and gotten a lot done. With this, It’d be easier to simply list what's been completed. Then go into depth as to what’s going to be worked on.
Scarler’s first major area update, including 4 new zones, blocked off until the game is released
Multiple Saves: Up to 3 at the moment, although buggy, allows you to try different routes and plan out your path.
A new multi quest system that allows you to unlock alternate quests threw conversations.
And much more, but since the majority of this is for the closed beta, released to those I have testing the game for me, I’ll mention it later in the update.
Issues with Otaku?
If you recently bought the game via a GoGo bundle, you’ll notice one of your games were temporarily removed from your steam library, and if you looked further into it, you would have receive a new key later in the month.
The people behind GoGo and Otaku Bundle, had recently refused to pay us (those signed with their bundle) for months at a time. Because of this, one of us that had signed with them, quickly got out of the bundle and removed their keys from those who had bought the game through their services. Him and I were in close communication throughout the process unlike the communication we were receiving from Otaku…. I was very close in removing my keys as well, waiting a day after he removed his before I did so. I received a response the day after, like I expected, having them apologize for their lack-luster responses. Inevitably they were just ignoring us, which was proven as we attempted numerous types of communication outside of our usual response, even having customers attempt to get their attention.
Step number one when selling a developers product, would be not to ignore the developer… That wasn’t everything however. The adventure continued, as we got ignored for another couple of weeks, we waited for our possible payment. Don’t get me wrong, we got paid… but we got paid 1/10’th of what we were expected, as they took it into their own liberty to sell our games at their own discounted price without telling us, completely voiding the agreement all together. The agreement they had us sign gave us the specific prices they’d be selling it at, but just so conveniently left out their own personal discounts. I don’t want to keep this up as just talking about it I’m getting fairly upset, reasonably so. But long story short, we decided to just let it be and only attempt to spread awareness as to how shit this company is. Please stop buying from them even though a good 90% of my following is from them or the fall-off of their sales… and if you know of any developers considering signing with them, do tell them about this lovely experience I had. I can say, with reason that they are a scam company, no backing out on that claim.
Anymore Tea?
I’m fairly passive aggressive when I’m annoyed, to say the least, but I do think my point got across nicely there. My statements although bold, are honest… Outside of issues with past bundling experiences, I would love to tell you what's coming in the future. Thank goodness this project isn’t reliant on money! Although this is more of a passion project, or a hobby if you will, I do feel like I need to communicate more often. As I said to a previous comment not too long ago, I’m still trying to figure out how this whole developer communication thing works. How often I should post if at all. I noticed many early access, or non-released games don’t really post anything at all, but then there’s me… 10 posts in and no game released…. I absolutely love the community I’m working with and that’s what makes it all the more worth it. I think it’s obvious that I’m very new to this whole developing commercially thing, and I think it’s wonderful how well the community I’ve gathered has responded to this. I really want to just say thank you to everyone still patiently waiting for me to finish this game and move on to the next fun adventure.
I’m probably going to start looking on Reddit for free game testers, to get an understanding of how long this game is and what bugs people come across when playing the game so I can fix what needs to be fixed. I really just need someone who will let me watch them play the game without giving them any hints, to see how far they can get, which is where English Teacher Plays really helped on his first run of the game. Special thanks to him by the way! With all the bugs he encountered being fixed, I’m sure there’s at least 10,000 more waiting to be discovered. I don’t quite do a good job with discovering bugs, giving I know the way the game should be played, but I don’t know how other people are going to play the game, which is when we receive bug errors.
What’s being worked on?
I have two new enemies in the work, one is fairly close, as its my first time making a 2D sprite sheet without using a special program. The other one, I was attempting to use a free program, but it required more ram than I have and as some of us know, ram can be expensive. The flying creature I’ve fantasized about for years, is going to be a no go until I find a new way to make him look majestic O.O. The slimey guy I attempted to make in the first place, I’m making a more animated and polished version of him where he’ll hopefully be able to climb walls and drop down on your face while you wonder around the environment. It’s going to be a beauty! He’s looking very clean atm but kind of jumpy when enlarged. We’ll figure out something better for a long term solution but until then…
Outside of this, I also got my hands on some sweet 3D modeling software, so on the bright side, I can 3D model anything I want, once I learn it… on the not so bright side… we aren’t using much 3D modeling in our 2D game over here, so blender is probably going to remain my goto software for now.
That should be it by now. The major updates revolve around what's being added to the closed beta, with much more area being added, many more tasks, puzzles and creatures! It truly is a lot of fun! I can’t wait to see you all in the next update!
B0.7.0 More Health, Bug fixes and a Main Menu Overhaul!
Returning
It's been awhile since I've posted but in return, I've also fixed more issues with the game than I ever thought I could. The coming rest of the month should be very update packed as I continue to work on the finishing touches of the Beta and finish up the game. I'm now finally free of my responsibilities with only my weekends being taken up by Drivers Ed; meaning I can put aside much much MUCH more time to work on Darkness and a Crowd. I have a new idea of how I want the story driven aspects of the game to be done in order to get it finished on time. It’s definitely not going to be the game I wanted it to be. But since I’d have to rewrite the game to make it my way, I’m just going to save that for a later project. I’m only 16, I have plenty of time to test out different projects. The game now, will be much more linear with fewer side-quests to complete and no real home-base. It’s primarily going to be one map that just un-loads and loads different segments of the game as you continue, taking on bosses and fighting creatures. This way I can just continue to work on the map without dealing with algorithms for separate segments of levels and I can control lag between different areas much more conveniently. I’m still very proud with how everythings turned out and I think playing the game in its current state will kind of help show how the rest of the game will be. It’s quite satisfying to play with all of the bugs practically fixed. It’s all just sort of going to be repetitive now with missions and figuring out your purpose in this strange world. I feel like my next update should be the boss Hands if I get that far and a lot more lore as to what the world around you really is and what brought you here.
But that’s going to be probably a week from now. I’ll be playing around with how Hands should work, whether I want him to actually try and attack you or keep a pattern/animation in place. He won’t be a strong or powerful boss but It’ll still be fun. I also want to work on actually putting in place the levels system I was talking about previously, making certain places load and unload as you leave areas. Maybe even a pop up like when you defeat an enemy that goes “Location Discovered” and the name of the location below.
I ALSO want to get in a new enemy but that might be thinking a little too far ahead. We’ll see how much of this actually gets done but I think I have a decent track record for getting the things done that I originally plan on. It just normally takes 10 times longer than originally planned. However with all of that out of the way. I think we should get onto what HAS been added to the game!
What's Up?
The main menu has been FINALLY overhauled with many new options and setups ready to be tested including some resolution leniency, full screen options and in the near future some audio settings. I have the audio setup done and ready to be implemented but at the current moment I think it's just simply muted to prevent any complications. I also really need to start working on a pause menu fairly soon but since that is not implemented in quite yet there’s not much I can say. It should really just use what the main menu uses for a script and just pop up over the screen. Nothing difficult or impossible. At the current moment however, you will need to alt tab out of the game but this should be the last update you’ll have to do that in. If there are enough complaints however, I’ll update that sooner rather than later.
When it comes to updates towards bug fixes, I honestly can’t name all of them. It should be nearly impossible to get stuck in the ground or break the level itself. There are a ton of collectables to follow in-order to make sure you never get lost or too terribly confused and the missions themselves should have a lot of fixes with grammatical errors.
Enemies were also made a lot easier since I’ve been attempting to keep into account that this is still the very beginning of the game. I might weaken them even further in future updates but at the very least, Health has been fixed quite a bit giving you nearly double the amount of health as before.
The updates pop up is now optional and only in the main menu itself so you don’t have to deal with it every time you open up the game. I remember when that got annoying! IE: every time I wanted to test a tiny part of the game and had to close out of the pop-up…
What was this Update?
This Update primarily was just to fix up the main menu and polish any and all bugs there were prior, along with another chance to tell people “HEY! I’m still here!” I’m really excited to show off what there is to come and I know I say that a lot but this honestly has been a surreal experience and i do want to show the world what I’m capable of. I have thousands of other games ready to be published to the steam store as well, so many that I’m going to have free just to give back to the community a bit more for those loyally following my progress. ColorBust is more than likely going to be my next game up here, which although rage inducing, I think is fairly well polished. But again, this update was just to get back out there and warn you all of the continuation of updates that are to come and the end of this project is within sight!
Thank you so so much in advance for making it this far and sticking with me.
Yours truly,
- Seth Albertus
