Aug 1, 2022

August 2nd, 2022 Weekly Maintenance Schedule & Patch Notes

KurtzPel - GM OneShot

Attention Chasers!

Please check the weekly maintenance schedule below.

The following patch note pertains to contents that will be updated during the (UTC+0) August 2nd, 2022 Weekly Maintenance.
Maintenance will happen during the following times:

1. Karma Balance

Dance of Wind
[Aimed Attack - Command]
- Increased stamina cost by 60% on the left click
- Increased stamina cost per second by 60% on charging

[Spirit Arrow]
- Added a 0.3 second delay to shoot after aiming

Soul of Magus
[Unleash Spirit – Rage Skill]
- Decreased critical hit chance increase from 100% to 50%

Dancer of Prophecy
[Moving Attack/Aerial Moving Attack/Launch Attack]
- Increased damage by 50%

[Gale Tempest Kick]
- Increased PVP damage by 45%
- Reduced delay after failure on an attack by 0.63 seconds
- Increased range by 15%

[Wind Dance]
- Increased PVP damage by 30%
- Increased range by 20%

[Charge Attack - Command]
- Changed stage 1 charging time from 0 ~ 1.5 seconds to 0 ~ 1 second
- Changed stage 2 charging time from 1.5 ~ 3 seconds to 1 ~ 2 seconds
- Changed stage 3 charging time from 3 seconds to 2 seconds

Wild Spirit
[Dash Attack]
- Changed hitbox to occur according to the swing of the axe

[Giant’s Axe]
- Deleted the hitbox behind the caster
- Reduced the delay in creating the hitbox of the grab by 0.015 seconds
- Reduced the grab duration by 0.02 seconds
- Changed hitbox to occur according to the swing of the axe

2. PVP

The current PVP season in progress will be retained.

3. Korean Server Merge

- Players will be able to meet with other players from Korea in Eltheca and can be matched together under great network connection.
- Players will be able to trade items freely with Korean players.
- Players will be able to select ‘Korean’ as their text language.

[Character Names]
- Non-duplicate character names can be used as they are now.
- Character names that were non-duplicate in the previous merge but will be duplicated in the merge with Korean servers will have the global code (#GB) attached to the end of their names after the merge. (Ex: KurtzPel#GB)
- Names with the server code attached will require the server code when using whispers and custom missions.
- Duplicate character names will appear to have their server code attached until their character names are changed.

[Guild]
- Non-duplicate guild names can be used as they are now.
- Guild names that were non-duplicate in the previous merge but will be duplicated in the merge with Korean servers will have the global code (#GB) attached to the end of the guild names after the merge. (Ex: KurtzPel#GB)
- Guild names with the server code attached will have 1 chance to change their names.
- Guild names with the server code attached will require the server code when searching for guilds.

[Rank]
- After the merge, rank/ranking will be recalculated with the Korean players combined. Previous season ranks can be checked on ‘Stone of Honor’ by the server.

4. Korean Server Merge Event

Event Period: 2022-08-03 After Maintenance – 2022-08-17 05:00 (UTC+0)

1. Korean Server Merge
1) Login for 10 minutes to acquire ‘Korean Server Merge Celebration Cube’ during the event period!

2. All as One
1) Acquire [Eltheca] Random Dye Cube daily through daily quests during the event period!

2) Acquire Angel Heart (Accessory) and Heart Heart (Emote) through consecutive quests during the event period!

3. Merged Attendance
Login daily to acquire various rewards during the event period!

※ Below items will be removed during the UTC+0 2022 August 17th (Wed) 05:00 maintenance.

5. Added In-game Report System

- Players can now report griefing, use of unapproved third-party programs, cheating/bug abuse, fraud, inappropriate character names, etc. much easier than before.

Aug 1, 2022

Development Update #19

Crab Champions - Noisestorm

Another month zooms by in the blink of an eye! Here's what I worked on in July- really getting into improving the visuals now but there's still work being done tweaking design elements after each playtest, fixing bugs and adding plenty of quality of life features. This is a long one, let's get into it!

New Visuals

New FX / More Vibrant Colors
Visual Style + Level Design

Since there's so much going on and a lot of information to convey at any given time in the game, I've settled on a clean, lightly stylized visual style for the environment to give the player a clear read on enemies and projectiles. These images don't represent final assets but more the general feel I'm going for- spacious arenas with clear boundaries to keep all focus on the action. I designed many types of islands this month, some with fall hazards or traps but I kept coming back to simple open spaces, they just felt much better to play. When the game is all about high speed and intense action, having to navigate a complicated level is just not fun!
Early Lava Biome Visuals

Previous previews of the lava biome had tinted the whole scene red which made it a bit visually fatiguing to play in after a while. I went for a more striking look in this pass to try and make the lava pop while maintaining the clean and simple style mentioned above.
New Pickup Visuals
New distinct meshes for weapon mods, grenade mods and perks have been added to easily identify them at a glance.

New Enemies

I've added most of the enemy archetypes needed for the beta this month- plenty of crab variants that each bring something new to the table. Many of these enemies aren't too difficult to fight alone but when spawning in groups they can test the skill of even the best players!

Shotgun Crab
Deadly up close, these crabs fire a volley of shotgun shots your way.
Launcher Crab
These crabs wield triple shot rocket launchers and can leap high into the air. Luckily they knock themselves back when firing so it'll take a little while for them to catch up to you again after each shot!
Mage Crab
Specializing in mystical ranged attacks, these crabs fire dense formations of projectiles which can be tricky to dodge if backed into a corner.
Poison Crab
Inaccurate and with sporadic movement, these crabs can easily add some chaos to an otherwise manageable situation.
Sniper Crab
Excelling at long range, these crabs fire arcing sniper shots that soar over obstacles and meet their targets with devastating accuracy.
King Ant Boss
The visuals aren't final for the ant itself but I've made a full set of unique attack patterns worthy of a giant poisonous ant!

New Enemy Attacks

Here are a small selection of the dozens of new enemy attacks added this month. I've gone over every single enemy and improved each of their attacks while ensuring that they have a consistent response, allowing experienced players to masterfully outplay them. Enemy attack formations can also now expand outwards instead of always aiming at the player. This creates bullet hell situations that can play out very differently depending on the island layout.

Mage Crab Circular Attack
Elite Skull Line Strike Attack
Heavy Crab Weapon Attack
Elite Skull Homing Attack

Cooldowns

Something that was starting to become clear when playtesting was that the best strategy to succeed was to increase the fire rate of your weapon as much as possible as the vast majority of weapon mods were chance based, so more rolls of the dice naturally led to more success. This created an imbalance where very powerful mods such as Black Hole or Crystal Strike which would trigger much more frequently than intended on fast firing weapons and much less frequently on slower firing weapons like the pump shotgun.

To combat this, I've made the majority of these "low chance but powerful when triggered" mods cooldown based. This means that they are guaranteed to trigger every X seconds regardless of the fire rate of your weapon. In addition, it allows me to make each of them stronger with each level stacked (previously each additional level simply increased your chance for them to trigger which didn't scale well with the late game).

Finally I've made it so that damage based weapon mods no longer affect "secondary" mods such as Torpedo Shot (making already very damaging bonus projectiles deal broken amounts of damage) which crushes another meta that wreaked havoc in my playtests!

More Weapon Mods

Remember I added the "final" weapon mods a few updates ago? Well one thing led to another and a few more slipped in this month! I really wanted to add more elemental and critical hit build options as well as embrace the cooldown changes mentioned above with more powerful "one shot" (high damage but long cooldown) mods that help spice up builds so I've added a bunch of new mods and perks to further diversify build options.

Proximity Barrage: Shots that hit enemies spawn powerful missiles that seek out nearby enemies
Hot Shot: Increased critical hit chance and damage but incoming damage is also increased
Critical Blast: Critical shots that hit enemies create powerful explosions
Critical Link: Critical shots that hit enemies spawn 5 new shots that target nearby enemies
Critical Chain: 100% critical hit chance for a short time after landing a critical hit
Critical Blades: Critical shots that hit enemies spawn 3 deadly spinning blades that seek out nearby enemies
Spike Strike: Shots cause powerful spikes to erupt from the ground, damaging nearby enemies
Ice Strike: Shots bring down powerful ice strikes that damage and freeze nearby enemies
Fire Strike: Shots bring down powerful fire strikes that damage and burn nearby enemies
Lightning Strike: Shots bring down powerful lightning strikes that damage and shock nearby enemies
Poison Strike: Shots bring down powerful poison strikes that damage and poison nearby enemies
Random Shot: Shots apply random debuffs to enemies
Ice Storm: Shots create icy storms that deal damage over time
Fire Storm: Shots create fiery storms that deal damage over time
Lightning Storm: Shots create electric storms that deal damage over time
Poison Storm: Shots create poisonous storms that deal damage over time
Triple Shot: Chance to fire in a triple shot formation
Arc Shot: Chance to fire in an arc shot formation
X Shot: Chance to fire in an X shot formation
Square Shot: Chance to fire in a square shot formation

More Perks

Driller: Destroying destructible rocks has a greater chance to spawn loot
Finishing Move: Enemies eliminated with critical hits drop more crystals
Ice Aura: Freeze and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
Fire Aura: Burn and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
Lighting Aura: Shock and damage nearby enemies every few seconds
Poison Aura: Poison and damage nearby enemies every few seconds

Biome Structure Changes

The structure of each biome has changed multiple times over the last few updates, it's of course something that is very important to get right as it determines the pace, loot and general fun of each run. I made these changes at the start of the month and they are just as fun now as they were then so it looks like this is the last major gameplay loop iteration (at least until people play the beta).

The main issues with the previous structure that gave random portal choices to players after each island were:
A: Players would always pick weapon mod portals over every other type as those are the most instantly useful rewards especially in the early game.
B: It slowed down the pace of multiplayer runs too much to have to discuss which of the 3 random portal choices to go for after every single island.
C: Not having set island types meant that players sometimes faced 3 elites in a row which limited variation and broke the balance of the early game (as most players weren't equipped well enough to be able to take on 1 let alone 3 elites at that point).
D: Since players were opting mainly for weapon mod portals, they found it hard to heal and would often frustratingly die before finishing the first biome.

To fix A, reward chests now contain a random mix of weapon mods, grenade mods and perks. You might get 3 perks in one chest and no perks in the next- this unpredictability actually ended up being far more fun than choosing a perk portal and knowing that you were guaranteed to get perks- where's the suspense in that?

To fix B, C and D, I moved back to a set list of island types per biome with peaks and valleys in the difficulty curve, more opportunities to find heals and rewards corresponding to the difficulty of each island.

Island 1:

Island 2:

Island 3:

Island 4:

Island 5:

Island 6:

Island 7:

Island 8:

Island 9:

Island 10:

In addition to these changes, flawless chests now have an 75% chance to be a consumable chest and a 25% chance to be a rare chest, allowing for both bonus heals or (if you are lucky) bonus mods and perks if clearing an island flawlessly.

Greed totems now also have a small chance to appear on any island, further adding variation.

One thing that I'll be keeping an eye on is how speedrunners handle Defense islands since you are forced to defend an area for 45 seconds to complete them with no real way to optimize or skip them. I may add a guaranteed portal choice after clearing island 6 to allow speedrunners to opt for a different route.

Other Stuff

Improved Inventory UI

When hovering over individual inventory slots, you'll now see much more specific information than before: raw damage numbers along with a percentage increase. This makes it much easier to see which mods are doing the most damage without having to calculate it yourself based on percentages which was confusing especially if you didn't know the base damage that the percentages were based on! In addition, any mods that spawn damage areas (like the elemental Strike and Storm mods mentioned earlier) will now show the amount of damage + elemental damage stacks dealt over their lifetimes, making it much easier to understand their effectiveness. Many other mods have been updated to have better descriptions (like Splash Damage detailing the radius in addition to the damage dealt) because who likes playing games where you are forced to tab out and read a wiki every few minutes?
Movement Improvements
I've removed the dash, slide and land camera shakes, repositioned the camera and tightened up the movement heavily to make a much more focused movement experience- less bells and whistles actually keeps things feeling more grounded and responsive!
Loot Balancing
Generally Rare loot should be a "boring" stat up (often with downsides), Epic loot should be a "fun" stat up and Legendary loot should have much more unique and exciting effects. Because of this I've made a few adjustments to allow for Legendary loot to stand more clearly apart from the other rarities.

Ice, fire, lightning and poison shot mods have been moved from Legendary to Epic rarity as the newly added elemental Strike and Storm mods take their place: the most powerful elemental mods in the game. Similarly with all the new more interesting critical hit based mods added this month, Sharpshooter (greater chance to critical hit) and Power Punch (increased critical hit damage) have been moved down to the Rare rarity.

Finally both Growing Shot and Shrinking Shot have been removed as they were very hard to notice, generally weren't all too interesting and often resulted in confusing reductions in damage for players that had picked them up earlier in a run.
General Balance Changes
- Grenades now deal 50% more damage making Grenade Mods a more viable choice- previously Weapon Mods and Perks were by far the most popular when choosing loot.
- Enemies have had their health increased across the board: it was easy to 2-3 shot most enemies which led to some islands being cleared very quickly. While I want to avoid bullet sponge enemies, this change allows more time for your mods to trigger and noticeably contribute to taking those beefier enemies down!
- Shop prices have been adjusted so that Legendary loot now costs roughly 3x the price of Epic loot making boss fights the primary way to get Legendary drops.
New Circular Lobby
The lobby has been improved to have all interactable totems in an easy to reach circular layout: quickly change things between runs without having to spend time traveling.
Fail Of The Month: Huge Slug Elimination FX
I got a bit carried away with some of the early tests improving the FX that play when slugs are eliminated...
Protected Chest Pickups
Last month, protected chests were added (meaning each player is assigned a chest after clearing each island and only they can open it). To further this, the loot choices that each chest spawns are now also protected so other players can't grab your loot while you are deciding what to take. Players can still share loot by dropping mods and perks from their inventory.
Improved UI Text Readability

Shadows have been added to most important text UI elements for easier reading in bright lighting conditions.
Ice Changes
Enemies no longer instantly thaw from ice when taking damage, allowing you to keep enemies frozen while dealing damage. The only exceptions to this are if enemies slide into water while frozen or if they take burn damage.
Removed Radial Damage Falloff
It just felt better (and easier to gauge DPS) in playtests to deal full damage to enemies regardless of their position within an explosion radius!

Community Spotlight: TheeCRAB

TheeCrab has been making some amazing Crab Champions videos: if interested I highly recommend checking his stuff out here

Thanks for sticking around and reading this update, it turned out to be much longer than expected!

Join the Crab Champions Discord server: https://discord.gg/crabchampions
Follow Crab Champions on Twitter: https://twitter.com/crabchampions
Join the Crab Champions subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CrabChampions/

Aug 1, 2022

Solace Crafting 1.0 - Now Live!

Solace Crafting - Malkere

After some bumps in the system, Solace Crafting version 1.0 is now Live!

Come and see the many experiences within an infinite procedural fantasy world!

It's been six years since I first started programming the core of Solace Crafting, yet here we are! There's always more to add, but full of things to do as we are, I can safely say that Solace Crafting is now well worth the $15 price tag and I am happy to take it out of Early Access.

I have to make most clear of all, version 1.0 is not the end of development. I'm not quitting my full-time job as a developer and moving to the Bahamas. This is my full-time job, and development of Solace Crafting continues today and tomorrow and beyond. I've updated the roadmap, the bug tracker is live, and thanks to players in Discord and here on Steam I've already got a list of new things to look into.

Lots of stuff to do

Solace Crafting doesn't often hold your hand and tell you what you should be doing. For some that's awesome, but for some players it leaves them feeling like there's nothing to do. Well, here are some in-game stats to alleviate those with such concerns:

Adventuring skill points to spend: 1200
Crafting skill points to spend: 1479
Harvesting skill points to spend: 320
In-game achievements: 514
Steam achievements: 62
Craftable armor pieces: 63
Craftable weapons: 64
Building pieces: 108
Furniture pieces: 29
Possible schematic recipes: 18,684
Furthest (known) distance traveled: 1,000,000+ kilometers
Highest (known) player level reached: 22,617
Most (known) hours played: 5,000+
People enjoying the game you made: priceless!

I'm a huge fan of procedural content, big mountains, islands, lakes, crafting, and the freedom to go and do what you want to do, and I've tried very purposefully to get all of those things in Solace Crafting. No artificial barriers, no artificial sky box mountains, no off-limits. If you can see it, it might be really really far away, but you can 100% get there.

Looking forward

Creating, managing, and prioritizing the items of a development roadmap is one of many skills that an indie developer has to spend time and effort to improve. There is always more that can be added to a game, but more is not always better. Fun has always been the main goal for features added into Solace Crafting, and I've tried to keep the community well informed and make sure that everyone has a chance to have their voice heard. Following that tradition I've setup a new survey specifically for the release of version 1.0 and how players would like to see the game improve from here on:

Click here to take the 2 minute survey at Survey Monkey

This survey will remain accessible for 30 days, so if you are new here please feel free to explore the game and respond to the survey once you've been able to experience it first hand. I will post an announcement several days before I close the survey in case anyone has forgotten that they were putting it off for later.

Of course I'm always in Discord and less so here on the Steam discussion boards as well, so if anyone needs anything please don't be afraid to get in touch with me, but do please understand that this is a solo operation and things can take time.

The following items are a broad overview of the features and improvements I plan to implement from here on. Smaller things like new recipes, bug fixes, and general performance improvements are not listed.

Quality of life
- Improved multi-lingual support
- Full controller support
- Map & compass way-point system

New features
- Fishing
- Improved cooking & nutrition system

Combat & enemies
- Monster attributes
- More monster abilities & effects
- More combat animations & effects

Players
- Sub-attributes
- Class skill trees (currently we have Archetype and Job skill trees)
- Special infinite skills (for players pushing beyond level 100)

Towns
- Revamped money & trading systems
- More town features
- Villager equipment
- Villager AI
- Procedural Villages (WIP)

Crafting & harvesting
- Crafting equipment & harvesting clothing
- Improved compass & tracking skills
- Facility equipment
- Runes

Multiplayer
- Shared XP
- Healing & buffing others

Audio
- Monster & world sound effects in general

Other
- Modding support

A bit of retrospect

In 2012 two different people that I graduated from high school with did two different things that I was very impressed by. One of them became a successful stand-up comedian and went on to play roles in movies and TV. The other released a small indie game on Steam. That was the first time I realized I wasn't doing what I wanted to do, and all that was missing was motivation and effort.

I spent almost every night after my day job over the next 5 years playing with Unity. I was totally hooked, but boy there is a lot to learn. I made a lot of Minecraft clones for practice, and enjoyed most of all creating procedural dungeons. In early 2016 I finally started piecing together the different systems that I wanted to all come together into my grand vision of Solace Crafting.

(Terrain generation back in 2016)

Once I had a vertical slice to show off some basic gameplay, I ran a Kickstarter campaign with the hopes of securing some savings to help feed myself during development, but it fell short of its goal. I put a few more months work in and decided it was time, and on January 16, 2018 I released into Early Access. At the time I didn't understand just how poor quality of a prototype I had presented to the public. Still, the generosity and support of those early players earned me what I thought was more than enough to quit my day job so that I could focus on developing Solace Crafting full-time, and on the very next day I handed in my request for resignation.

(Farming, first implemented in 2018)

Little did I know, the amount of money you might make in month one does not at all relate to how much money you might make in month two, and the next 4 and half years ended up being a constant financial struggle. Working at home certainly has it's benefits, and I live in a relatively inexpensive part of the world, the Japanese countryside, but my annual income throughout this journey has been the lowest it's ever been in my life, though the experience has certainly been invaluable.

(The first procedural towers in 2019)

As we all do, I wish I could go back to 2016, hand myself a proper game design document, and say "stick to the plan kid, you'll do fine," but back then I still had so much to learn about programming and Unity, that proper scheduling and project scope were just not yet on my plate. Some things we never needed we added in, some things that were never possible I said I'd think about. But you have to grow somehow, and throwing myself into the fire certainly proved one way to go about it.

Looking forward

There's work to be done, and preferably some of it would be done by contractors, so it's hard to tell how much can get done in what kind of a time frame after release as I honestly have now idea how this is going to go. Best case scenario, we get noticed by a large content creator and the exposure brings in a hoard of new players, awarding me the finances to do just that, hire on some freelancers to improve the parts of the game that need it most. Worst case, things continue on slow and steady as they have in the past, as we work towards and richer and smoother experience with modding capabilities and improved server management tools.

In any scenario the journey has certainly been a huge reward in and of itself. Our community has been beyond supportive and I could not have done half as much as I've been able to without the ongoing support of our player base. I can't say thank you enough to everyone that helped me make it through Early Access, but thank you thank you thank you. I am many steps closer to my dream of running a financially secure, modern and moral game studio, and I wouldn't be here without all of you.

I hope you and many more may find joy and excitement through my efforts!

Kyle Postlewait
AKA Malkere
Big Kitty Games

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