May 1, 2021

AegisM - AegisM

Overview
This update has been the largest update to the base engine since the game began roughly 7 years ago. We have also spent weeks making improvements to bring the best performance increase we've ever had in an update! We have confirmed with many beta testers and they have seen FPS increase by a minimum of 50%.

Important Notes
You will need to set your options again (volume, crosshair and any scaling you may have set).

We have improved the way that the Golem smash ability works. You no longer need to guess where it will spawn as it will always spawn where you aim the mouse cursor, so be careful if you're used to the previous unintuitive way it worked.

We have also buffed evolved air considerably (they now cause air units to drop bombs twice as often). They were never a consideration before as they didn't have enough effect for their cost and we wanted to bring it in line with all of the other towers and actually have a use and be a consideration. Therefore you may want to consider adding these into your strategy (or not - you decide).

Patch Notes

Huge engine and performance upgrade

Evolved Air towers now function correctly

Evolved Air towers cause air units to drop bombs ever 2 seconds (down from 4)

Lightning beam effect should now draw more accurately

Fixed tank health bars not showing

Golem smash improved - the golem now spawns where you aim with the mouse

Correct Interact key bind is now displayed in level messages

Updated all level preview images

Drone collector now displays the total value of coins collected

Air tower information window now displays correct fire rate

Player death timer now counts down correctly

Reduced default music volume for new players

You can no longer build on the rail tracks on Forest 8

Enjoy! :)

May 1, 2021

Development Update #7

Crab Champions - Noisestorm

Sand Biome Visuals

You may have noticed inconsistent visual styles in the previous updates: I've been focusing this month on a final visual style for the game and am in the process of creating polished art, starting with the Sand biome. It's been tricky to lock down a visual style that keeps the game looking clean while still having some elements of realism mixed in.

A growing issue that I've noticed in many games is that with improved graphics, the gameplay can suffer as things get harder to see and the screen is packed with dense noisy shapes and super dark shadows. I want to make sure that the graphics look nice but also don't take away from the gameplay. It's not quite there yet but the current results are promising. Once a few more key assets are finalized, the biome will be finished and I'll be moving on to the Snow and Lava biomes which will take significantly less time to produce with this visual standard in place.

Steam Beta

The response to the closed beta signup has been amazing, already outdoing the previous Discord signup count. Because of this, additional players will be selected via the awesome new Steam Playtest feature. Simply go to the Crab Champions Steam store page while logged in and hit the "Request Access" button! Users will be randomly chosen when the beta drops later this year. These users will be chosen in addition to the random selection from the mailing list.
While the beta will start small, I will be expanding to more users over time until the game is ready to release in Early Access.

Aiming is back!

Aiming was originally removed to simplify the control scheme and to keep the focus on moving around while shooting rather than standing still, but after many playtests I have decided that the satisfaction of lining up shots while aiming was noticeably absent from the game. Because of this I've implemented Aiming 2.0!

Other than the brand new weapon recoil, spread and crosshair systems, a major change is that while aiming in the air, your movement slows by 50% (everything else moves at full speed), giving you the hangtime to accurately aim your shots. This fixes the issue of the old system where you'd be moving too fast in the air and couldn't properly aim which was frustrating in many cases.

This also means that sniper scopes will be added to the game (there'll still be snipers that don't use scopes for those that prefer aiming with the crosshair) which gives me the opportunity to reward aim skill with weapons like the shotgun below that becomes extremely accurate when aiming.

FX Improvements

Explosions

Vibrant Loot

Underwater FX

Portal FX

Water Impacts (the gif quality here doesn't do it justice)

Movement Improvements

There has been a big focus on the movement system this month with countless changes made while playtesting: lots of subtle camera tweaks depending on your speed / action / state that increases the fluidity of motion. Combined with the upcoming crab model and animation revamp, movement will soon be in a very good place.

Animations are currently the weakest part of how the movement looks and feels so I can't wait to make new ones! Even without movement FX and decent animations, the general feeling of flow throughout maps is really starting to show.

Also working on making movement over cliffs and steep slopes possible.

Biome Roadmap

Above you can see the current planned biomes (not including secret biomes) with their anticipated release periods.

Beta: The beta will launch with these core biomes
Early Access: Early Access will launch on Steam when these biomes are finished
1.0: These biomes will be added via updates throughout the Early Access period. When they are finalized, the game will be considered complete in terms of content and will transition to a fully released state, no longer in Early Access. Please note that I plan on adding multiple secret biomes and many more levels for each biome as time goes on to further flesh them out.

Each new biome added will in turn bring many new things to the game such as new Survival / Racing and Duel maps. In Survival mode, each biome will have at least one unique final boss as well as many biome specific enemy variants.

Survival Improvements

You can now sell unwanted perks back to Tony in the shop which is a great way to get some crystals towards the perk or weapon that you really wanted!
New level type: Defense. You must defend a point for 60 seconds without getting overwhelmed. Leaving the defense area will pause the timer and enemies will continue to spawn
There are now far more slow moving but high volume types of enemies in Horde and Defense level types which make AOE weapons and abilities much more viable
Elemental grenades have all been buffed to deal flat damage over time in the damage radius as well as applying elemental damage stacks to enemies. This makes it much more effective to lead enemies into damage areas so timing and positioning your grenades is a lot more valuable
Collecting or spending crystals now plays a UI animation to better communicate when it is happening and to show how much was gained or spent
Many more close quarters maps have been added with cave corridors and narrow cliff walls, both allowing you to utilize bouncing projectiles and for encounters with enemies to feel more dangerous (it's very different to fight certain enemies in a narrow space than it is out in the open where their attacks can be easily dodged)
Keys are now used to gain access to secret locked areas (with various random rewards inside such as chests, mini shops, slot machines and more!)

Survival Weapon Modifiers / Perks 2.0

This month a lot of exciting things have entered the design stage but aren't quite ready to show. I'd like to still touch on my favorite upcoming feature as it'll really improve the gameplay loop and further add to the replay value.

Previously, all perks in Survival mode stacked infinitely and were in many cases invisible to the player. This eventually lead to a point in a run where you have countless passive effects triggering constantly which felt unclear and messy.

My proposed revamp to perks and weapon is to replace certain perks with a weapon modifier system that allows you to create powerful deliberate synergies. An example: a regular coconut launcher fires coconuts that explode on impact. With an ice modifier (freezes enemies when exploding), a metal modifier (more affected by gravity but deals more damage) and a exploding enemies modifier (makes enemies explode when eliminated), the weapon then behaves differently and is a lot more powerful.

There are limited modifier slots per weapon which allows me to be able to make the effect of each modifier extremely strong and noticeable. Currently I can't make perks too strong as the game would become too easy, but with these limited modifier slots, it actually results in a more strategic gameplay experience as you have to choose what kind of build you are going for. There are no stacking limits other than the slot capacity of your weapon (which can be leveled up to gain more slots), so a huge part of the fun will be searching for overpowered modifier combos.

You can equip a balanced mix of modifiers OR if you happen to find 3 Fire Bullet modifiers for example, there's nothing stopping you from stacking them all on one weapon, getting 3x the strength by doing so. This change hugely increases the amount of build possibilities in a run as before if you didn't like a weapon, you'd probably have no reason to pick it up again, with weapons feeling samey each run. Now with the right modifiers, all weapons are viable. Modifiers can be dropped, mixed and matched as well as bought / sold in shops.

You might be wondering: if these modifiers are doing so much, what will happen to perks that had a lot of these effects? Passive perks (for example Time Is Money which gives you crystals over time), will stay in their perk form and can still be stacked infinitely. If this sounds confusing, there'll be plenty of images and gifs in the future to show it off: it's a very clean and simple UI and it is quick and easy to try different combinations of modifiers out. Survival will then be all about Crystals (money), Perks (passive upgrades), Modifiers (weapon upgrades) and Keys (gives access to secret areas + can be used to unlock things after each run).

Anyway enough rambling for now, super excited for all the stuff that is currently planned. Thanks for reading this month's update!

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May 1, 2021

New Update Arrives! The Sage and his elemental ways

Terra Randoma - Deniz_K

Hi everyone,
We are ready with another update introducing a new elemental power: Lightning. It inflicts damage to the enemy and enemies adjacent to it. Its damage increases with rain. We also made some changes to the intelligence attribute. There is a new character background too, The Sage, which is a good starting background for an intelligence based character.

Up until now, the game favored figthers, rangers and thiefs but a mage-like character who relied more on talent stones than sword or bow was very hard to build. We wanted to give intelligence attribute more importance and tied it to elemental damage. The more intelligence a character has, the more elemental damage (fire, ice, lightning) he will inflict with a talent stone.

Also meditation skill had some changes. It now increases elemental damage too. It has also some perks which reduces the stamina consumption of talent stones and later on, the cooldown time.

Intelligence also affects search and speechcraft. So with these changes, intelligence based characters have become significantly more powerful. Though it might still be harder to play than a tank character.

In this update, dexterity attribute gained some new features too. It now affects bleed and poison damage in addition to defense, ranged attack, critical hit etc.

There is another change which is about startsigns at the begining of the game. Starsigns were giving characters skill points for two different skills. We recognized this was kind of limiting what to choose. For example, you want to choose Athletics Skill but it comes with two handed weapon skill or some armor skill you don’t need. So we changed that. Now Starsigns give a skill point for one skill and a bonus starting item to go along with that. Like Minotaur Starsign gives athletic skill and a Copper Ring of Strength.

See below the full list of additions and changes.

ADDITIONS

Sage character added.
Lightning Strike talent stone added.
Lightning Arrow talent stone added.
4 new hats added: Apprentice’s hat, Scholar’s Hat, Sage’s hat, Elder Owl’s hat. They have elemental resistance and defense default on them. They can have other powers with prefix and suffixes as well.

CHANGES

F key closes ranged attack if targeted enemy is out of sight.
Starsign benefits changed.
Intelligence now affects elemental damage.
Dexterity now affects bleed and poison damage.
Meditation skill now gives elemental damage and reduces stamina cost for talent stones.
Changed attribute points and talent stones of some starting backgrounds.

FIXES

Fixed an issue about reputation gained from intimidation doesn't show correctly.
Fixed an issue about using numpads when selecting menu items at alchemist's tower.
Fixed a bug where escaped enemies were not saving properly.