Any and all Moonman delays can be blamed on me. I have been bugging Ben constantly since I got here. In all seriousness though, it's been really cool to get an inside look into Moonman. Oh and I guess Ben is cool too.

I want to like it and it does look nice but I feel like it doesn't truly capture moonman. Some of the recent screenshots you've shown would do a better job at selling the game in my opinion.

I'm sorry but if you show anything other than you staring into the camera for your entire KS video then I don't see how I could possibly support this project.

Here's what the new combat is looking like with sword, shield and dodge rolling.

Hey! I've been playing Crea a lot recently and I'd like to suggest adding some more interest on the surface. Nothing really generates up there, maybe some little building ore simply more interesting terrain. No complaints on crafting, although maybe another tier of mattock above Ivory? Maybe something that breaks multiple blocks at once? 

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the next update! 

That's great to hear! Yup, lots of new stuff coming and some of that is already in like the multiple blocks at once. :D

As always, loving this thread. Great stuff eigenbom! When you start putting together your Kickstarter hit me up and I'd be more than happy to help out. Cheers

Awesome. Duel wield shields please!

Sure thing!


...and here's another screenshot with another sword and shield in the backhand.

This last month has been quite intense! I semi-seriously injured from a bicycle crash, went to PAX Dev and PAX Prime, and then a friend came to visit for the last week. Despite all of this I've gotten some awesome work done on Crea.

This current update has grown to be just too big and I finally made the decision to push many features back that are mostly 90% done including: Steam Workshop support, the next boss, new spells and a UI rework. One of the huge features that is going into this update is the new combat system I've been talking about in my last few posts.

Here's what the new combat is looking like.


We're putting some final touches on shields and then I'll show those off!

As I have already said everywhere else, you have my full support! Best of luck with the Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns. I'm sure you'll blow through both of them!

[I also implemented one of the features I'm most proud.]

Interesting notes about spawning! I might have to do something similar :D

Feel free to hit me up if you want any more details.

The last few days I've begun working on Steam features. I implemented Steam Cloud, which was fairly straightforward. Next I worked on the "join game" feature which was actually challenging since there are several possible flows. Such as the player can already have the game open or not also the player could be anywhere in the game - main menu or in the middle of a session. All of these possibilities had to be handled nicely such as saving and exiting and then automatically connecting once back on the main menu. It took about a full day of work.

I also implemented one of the features I'm most proud. Modders can now magically replace core game logic without having to modify any of the core game files. Much of the game logic is written in Python and fully exposed to modders; however, editing these files directly is not very mod friendly and would make mod maintenance (enable/disable/delete) very tricky. The solution I came up with is super awesome. Any files in your mods "coremod" directory will automatically be imported when the corresponding core file is being imported and anything tagged to overload the core will do so. This is achieved by changing Python's import logic to change the imported module before it is even returned. Here's a quick example of what it looks like:

mymod/coremod/combat.py

Code:

from coremod import overload

@overload
def calculateDamage(strength, defense, attackerLevel, target, power, attackType):
    return 100

This will replace the core/combat.py:calculateDamage so every attack will deal 100 damage. There is more to this such as being able to preload or postload a function that will enable you to have your code called before or after a core function is called. Also it is possible to replace entire classes or global variables in modules.

Now with this feature done I am now moving onto adding Steam Workshop support in and already have a good start!

How will this compare to Starbound and Terraria? (I haven't read the whole thread, just wondering >_>)

Haha, as you'd expect, this is a common question and we have an answer on our Steam Community Hub. Here's a description of Crea that points out some of the differences.

Crea takes the Terraria-like genre, and takes it in a different direction, namely a fantasy RPG. Rather than just having gear based progression, Crea has your character leveling up, spending skill points, wielding magic, etc. You level skills such as tool speed, attack boost, defense boost, tool reach, and more. The crafting system takes its own direction as well, using research to learn new recipes. This is done by consuming small amounts of materials you find in the world, which are then revealed as ingredients to recipes. Of all of it’s genre-mates, Crea’s personality is the most laid back and whimsical, but don’t let that fool you, there are plenty of bad guys to kill. Cute ones! Combat can be done through magic spells, ranged, or melee. Under the conflict system, monsters will spread throughout the world, growing in strength and numbers if left alone.

After a slight lull in development spent visiting friends and wedding anniversary, we're back on track and working on finishing up this update. We finished getting all of the character wireframe animations in and will soon be working on replacing them all with actual character art. Here's what the character wireframes look like.



Lots of new stuff including attack combos that I'm especially excited about. I'll show off more of the animations once we have the final art.

One interesting thing I worked on recently is refining monster spawning. Throughout Crea's development I've slowly been learning what makes for good monster spawning. Monsters spawn offscreen because it is weird to have them appear out of nowhere. Keeping monsters around can be expensive though so we need to keep the number of active monsters low. This means we constantly need to be despawning faraway monsters and respawning them nearby the player. This is much more challenging than it sounds.

While players are on the move this means any monsters spawned behind the player will never be seen and make the world seem much more sparse. To combat this the game now tracks the player's movement over time and will more often spawn monsters in the direction the player is heading.

Another challenge occurs with spawning monsters underground. It is all too easy to spawn monsters offscreen in a cave/hole that is completely disconnected from the player. This means the player can rarely see monsters which makes underground much less exciting. To remedy this spawning underground is now usually done by using a flood fill to a valid spawn location that is connected to the player. Having monsters spawn in far off holes disconnected from the player is not all bad since many monsters underground have light sources and can help pull the player to interesting areas. So they still will spawn like this occasionally. Monsters will also slowly gravitate towards players now - to keep them company of course.

Awesome! Glad to hear you two took down that nicely dressed beast. Getting it day one to play with my team.

Glad to see you guys show up here. With Nausicaa being tied for my favorite Ghibli film (other being Mononoke Hime), I am really looking forward to Aegis Defenders. I'm curious if you guys have anything planned for in-between levels (such as a village hub or worldmap) or is the plan to have the player go from level to level linearly? As I've said before, good luck with the Kickstarter!

The devlog is the game

Timmy knows the deal

Nice of you to make a F2P game with no IAP

So the last few days I've been working on a new magic system. Any players that attempted being a mage quickly discovered it was unmanageable due to the lack of toolbar space. Crea has elemental damage and each arcane spell type had all 4 element flavors of it. Players would just pick a few spells to focus on and ignore the elements completely.

To remedy this we decided to split spells into two categories: channels and forms. A channel spell will channel the powers of an Aer (god-type creatures from Crea's mythos). Forms are essentially spell types such as projectile, support, enchant, etc. The resulting spell of casting a form will change depending on what you're channeling. Channel Aegnix the Aer of fire and cast a enshroud form to create a Firestorm spell that envelopes your character dealing damage to nearby enemies.

In addition to this I'm going to play around with the idea of adding this concept of a channeling level. By using a channeling spell and some lower tier spells you can acquire additional channeling levels. Some higher tier spells will require and consume the channel level. With higher channel levels some spells will even be altered to gain additional effects. Such as casting a projectile spell with a high channel level would cause it to be slightly homing or possibly explode on impact dealing aoe damage. Changing what you're channeling always resets the level to 1. I like the idea of this because I can see it causing a nice ebb and flow of using magic in combat along with posing some potentially interesting strategizing on spell use. With that being said I am a little weary of the additional complexity that comes with it.

As you can see, this new system is much more scalable and will allow us to add new forms in with only requiring a single toolbar slot. We currently have 5 channel spells and 8~ forms planned which is 40 different possible spells but only takes up 13 toolbar slots if you wanted all of them. With the addition of a secondary toolbar players will now be able to fully focus on being a mage. Yay! I'll post some gifs once we get more visuals in.

Oh hey Jasson! This is looking really sweet. When i get the time I'm going to go back and read through all this log.


(i met you at GDC through lex and terrance)
~Murry

Hey Murry, yup I of course remember you. Although, I will admit I wouldn't have recognized you through your avatar

I think eigenbom purposefully starts Moonman over again every few months just to keep this devlog going on forever.

also cieling spikes and the wall spikes and retractable spike traps : P I'm kind of kidding. ..

Don't forget backwall spikes!

When I played through a bunch I died many times from the spikes but eventually I got to the point were I would never die from them. Like spelunky, you learn to watch for them and how best to avoid them. I'm not sure how badly you need to nuke them if at all.

Thanks guys!

Some of the changes being worked on in Crea right now is reworking the movement and combat system. For movement this means adding in things like dodge roll, edge grabbing and eventual access to a air jump. For combat we're adding in a simple attack combo (up to 3 consecutive attacks), much more visual feedback for attacks, shields and a few other small things. As mentioned previously, the overall goal here is to make minute-to-minute gameplay more enjoyable. For combat the goal is to make it more strategic and skill based. This mostly means adding in options to stop damage (shields and dodge roll).

Dodge roll WIP with silly placeholder animations


Currently the player has access to a heal spell which can easily heal any damage taken if given some time. This results in the player going all out and having a slugfest with monsters because they almost always win if at full health because they can just heal to full afterwards. Being hit needs some form of longer lasting penalty than temporarily losing some health. The solution I've come up with so far is a max hp reduction when the player is hit. Right now 10% of unblocked damage decreases your maximum HP down to 70% of your total maximum HP. In order to restore this you must either return to a Way Crystal or use a semi-expensive item.

*puts away his Rod of Necromancy +1*

I have been thinking about this devlog a lot recently. I love the community here but have mostly been lurking for awhile now. I am attempting to draw together my determination to be a larger part here and make meaningful contributions.

So Crea... A lot has happened in the last 1/2 year since I posted here. Crea was greenlit and is now available on Steam Early Access. For those interested I recently wrote this thing about the first month of Steam sales, "Sales in the Brave New Steam World". I have also been doing lots of livestreams recently and trying to be as active with Crea's community as dev-ly possible.

As for development on Crea, it is coming along nicely. Multiplayer is finally working nicely and there are lots of cool new features and content such as the first boss (second boss is currently being worked on). Speaking of stuff we're working on, right now we are making a massive overhaul to the game's minute-to-minute gameplay. Trying to speed it up some and add more juice to it. This includes lots of things that I will hopefully get into soon. Until then, I'll keep trying to remember to actually post here!

Saw the alpha mentioned on twitter and loved it. I played it about 20+ times. So much good stuff in it! I shared with several friends and even showed it off during one of my development livestreams. I am really looking forward to seeing this project progress.