This looks great! I too am a huge fan of Lufia 2 and those early Zelda games. Then again, I'm sure anyone has who has played them are. I also see some Secret of Mana in there.

Keep up the good work!

[Character Progression]

Yesterday I wrote up a blog post about character progression in Crea since I have had people ask about it. It doesn't seem like people chat here much about design but I thought I'd still share it.

Character Progression
Want some details on the “RPG elements” that will be included in Crea? You got it!

One of our major focuses for Crea is adding in character progression and a sense of personal attachment to characters. There are several aspects to character progression – this post is about character leveling.

Characters will have a set of the usual stats: HP, AP (Action Points), Attack, Defense, Magic Attack, Magic Defense, Agility and Dexterity.

Additionally, characters have “proficiencies.” These are skill levels in four different areas: fighting, crafting, exploring, and gathering. Each proficiency has its own experience level and experience points. So, craft items to gain proficiency in crafting. Pick mushrooms and other plants to gain proficiency in gathering, and so on.

As a proficiency levels up the character will unlock new skills. Once a skill is unlocked the character is able to allocate experience from that proficiency to their new skill. Some skills are passive, and always in effect. Subsequent levels in a skill will raise its efficacy.

As usual, all of this is going to be easily moddable. Want to add a “cooking” proficiency? New “Triple Jump” skill for the exploration proficiency? Not a problem! Are there any proficiencies you’d like to see us add to Crea?

Be sure to subscribe to the blog to get the latest updates and details on Crea!

We had a great first two days for our Kickstarter. Thanks to anyone that backed the project! If you haven't gotten a chance to check out our Kickstarter yet be sure to do so. :D

Onto the meat of the post, our UI technician is playing around with a few different ideas for the style of the UI. I was hoping to get your guys' honest opinions on his latest version. Here is a mockup of it. Oh and don't mind the misspelling of "Flaming"

Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks!

Nice lighting. What was the reason for simplifying the shadows? It looks like there are less steps to pure darkness. Lighting is definitely a tricky beast. Good luck with it!

Awesome news! Our Kickstarter is now live.

Any support is greatly appreciated. Beyond backing the project, we could really use the help in spreading the word about Crea.

Thanks for the support everyone. Definitely a huge motivator! :D

If the lama doesnt feature Im not playing

Looks interesting! Llamas are great.  

Don't worry about there being any shortage of llamas in Crea.

I'm following while waiting to see the kickstarter page.

Awesome. Coming soon.

Quick Development Update:
I have been cleaning up so many bugs and trying to get things presentable for the gameplay that will be in our Kickstarter video.

One thing I did was optimized the tile rendering and while at it I added in tile blending. It is pretty cool because it automatically blends with any other tile and works off of tile priorities that are set in the tile scripts. Here is a cropped screenshot of it in action with dirt having a higher priority than stone.

Meme will describe my thoughts of this game.





Really cool, though, why not LUA? 
It seems to be easier to embed (?).

I did consider Lua at the start of the project but I decided to go with Python for several reasons.

• I was familiar with it.
• Two of the libraries I was using had python bindings for them already.
• I was already using the Boost library so using Boost.Python to help create bindings.
• Python is more widely used and consequently has better documentation.
• Python has a much larger library.

I am probably forgetting one or two reasons but that's what I can remember off the top of my head. Still, Lua is a completely viable language to use. Python just made more sense to me.

More visual goodness!

The mockup has been improved a decent amount. You can see it in the OP. The house is now much more interesting and there is an awesome looking samurai fighting a Tigerfly.

Additionally, I thought I would share some concept art that was done for our Kickstarter that will be launching soon. Enjoy!

Haha nice, eddietree the great indie scientist.

Got some exciting news! Robot Science is going to be doing the soundtrack for Crea. If you have never listened to Robot Science before then start now. http://robotscience.bandcamp.com/

Awesome music to listen to while doing game dev.

Thanks guys. Our artist is quite pleased with the response Crea's visuals are getting. Only if my code could be as seductive...

Haha, that is what I employed him for.

Good site and good post. I think a lot of us can relate to your post in one way or another. Even though I just recently joined the community, I am still glad to be apart of such a supportive one. Don't forget that.

Keep up the hard work and we'll help you though the rough patches as best we can. You will finish this game! :D

The demo is looking great. Monster select can be a little tricky sometimes. Might want to enlarge the hitbox for them. Or maybe I just need to play it more and get used to it.

Are you planning on adding terrain height? That can definitely add a lot of strategy to tactical games. Keep up the good work! I've been a huge fan of the genre since Final Fantasy Tactics - such a good game.

I know it has been said several times already, but I think it needs to be done at least once more. Beautiful graphics.

Thee clouds are a nice addition; however, I think they look a little odd with the sky's sharp gradient (I think that is what it is called). One possible solution is to make the clouds semi-transparent. If you do that then they will blend into the sky more.

Keep up the good work. One thing I really like are the tree roots going through the dirt. So often the trees just stop at the surface - including my game. It is a nice visual.

We are putting together a Kickstarter campaign right now. In order to build some momentum before launch and decided to try launchrock.

Visit this site to sign up and help spread the word.

We have some cool incentives going on - such as being able to get into early beta or have our artist draw an crea-style avatar for you. Such as this...




@Gabriel Thanks! As we wrap up functionality we are going to focus on bring more atmosphere into the worlds.

@seagaia Haha, you haven't commented before. Thanks for taking the time to.

@Conker Thanks!

Showing off parallaxing background in this newest video.



Also got a new mockup of the game which is actually almost all implemented. Just no monsters and lighting yet.

Click for high resolution.


Crea Devlog

That's quite sad. Have you tried booting off of another harddrive? However, if you really want to recover this data I suggest not running with the harddrive anymore as that will just destroy it even more and look online for a data recovery service. They are not cheap but it may be worth it?

Good luck. Be sure to save backups in the future. Dropbox and Google Drive are both free services that making backing up data to a remote server extremely easy.

Yeah, this looks great. Glad to see you picked it back up after so much downtime.