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[Greipur]

And here's Christoffer's feedback for faith  levels in the city. We're not quite sure if having several meshes is a good thing, if the faith level changes too rapidly that would mean that the meshes would blink. We'll have to test it, an alternative would be to have particle effects.

Couldn't you have them rise up from the ground or sink if the faith gets too low?

EDIT: Also, bit of fuzzy logic might help here.

https://www.youtube.com/Xwatch?v=r804UF8Ia4c


Or a simpler approach: set the treshold for reaching the next stage at a higher level than the treshold for losing it again. That way there's a buffer between both points, reducing blinking. If you keep the maximum speed at which faith can fluctuate in check, that would fix things.

So, for example:

- have 100 faith to reach stage 2
- go below 80 faith to lose stage two

Provided fluctuations do not have an amplitude of 20, you're good to go now!

Job, Fuzzy logic doesn't necessarily provide easier feedback delivery systems, since what it does is create more states to exist between, instead of just on or off. But you must be aware of that. The classic example being a shower, that it can be lukewarm (hot and cold), instead of just hot or cold. If I'm making a shower scene it would only create more work for myself if I'd have to show the lukewarm state, apart from hot and cold. It could be solved if I'd make a procedural shader or something, but then the problem lies with the feedback and not the mechanics.

Since Faith is a sort of currency every point of 100 (or whatever we use, but let's say percentage) counts, and the three tiers is only meant to show what way the player can expect it to go. Currently we have no idea how fast this will change since it's a matter of the amount of cities the player has. So I approach it as a placeholder currently, and we'll see if we can get another delivery method in the future. As far as I'm concerned it's something we have to try out and get the feel for. But thanks for the suggestions!


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We're currently working hard to get a stable MomoCon build so I don't have too much to show right now, but Jesper just got gems and gem mines into the game. Gems is a luxury resource that can create prosperity, which in turn can help them to get certain perks, or rather expertise.

[JobLeonard]

So are the effects of faith binary, as in: go from 99 to 100 and things drastically change? Because if not the stage-based feedback system is flawed too.

Also, you are discussing the feedback as if the underlying system is fixed, but if anything those two should be co-designed I think.

For example, regarding my second suggestion: would it really be that crazy to model reality as if going up from 0 to 50 faith has different effects than going down from 100 to 50 faith?

[Greipur]

Ok, so Faith can transition from 100 to 0: 99, 98, 97 etc. And it's both a resource and a sort of health meter (the lesser you have the less they listen), that's why it's gradual.

The more cities you have the more it can fluctuate, and if you speed up time that also provides a stronger fluctuation. The problem I have with the current system is that it would either be shown too many times or too few, since it's not gradual (three states). If we show the feedback seldom a player won't notice, and if we show it too often they will probably become stressed or annoyed.

Since there's only three states that the mesh can exist in (compared to the meter in the Faith GUI which is gradual). Having more numbers or more states doesn't solve the feedback problem of having too few visual states. As such we have to make the in-world feedback more gradual or subtle, without having it pop constantly, and without having to spend too many work hours (this was a compromise after all). My hunch now tells me that if we keep the overall silhouette it might work with fewer states, we'll have to experiment.

And sure, if things would fluctuate too wildly that is most certainly a design issue and not feedback. But in this instance I think the delivery method is more wonky than the numbers.

[JobLeonard]

Well, another issue I have is that in real life buildings are pretty... unchanging. They take a lot of work to create and are then static, enduring monuments. That characteristic of buildings means they don't lend themselves well to something that fluctuates.

Besides, it makes more sense to me if building size represents wealth levels.

However, the stuff that goes on inside a building can be pretty dynamic. Perhaps you could make that reflect faith levels? For example, how about a sacrificial flame or similar ritual going on inside a temple? With the scale representing the faith level.

You could even combine it with other characteristics to show different "sacrifices". Decadent cities with lush incense, war-like ones with more bloody stuff. I don't know what scores you keep track of of course

[TheWanderingBen]

...and without having to spend too many work hours (this was a compromise after all).

This.

This is the hardest thing about game design. Infinite monkeys with infinite time could make the next Minecraft, but unfortunately none of us have either. JobLeonard has some well-intentioned and honestly good-sounding suggestions. But only you guys can know what works for your game and what's within your budget. Good luck, I'm interested to see the final solution! (this is why I love dev logs!)

[Greipur]

Yep, I'll get back to you when we've found a solution that is feasible for our team. Thanks for the input, Job and Ben.


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Here's the prosperity feedback base, and next week I can probably show you how the different visual states will look like.

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And I'm finished with the Maintainers' sculpture. A nod to the old Atlas figure, but this one is more self-assured and less troubled.

[JobLeonard]

@Ben: of course, but it's not my job to worry about feasibility

[Greipur]

Early Access Advice


I was having a conversation with my fellow members in the Playful Oasis collective today and talked about Early Access for a bit. It became a small list of things, so I thought I'd share it here for general consumption! You can probably find some of these advice in the jungle of posts before this one, but not in a short list.


* Don't launch too early. This will really hurt your PR-effort. In our case we did it since our funds were running dry, but we should've approached investors and THEN done EA.

* Make weekly dev blogs on Steam. I see a lot of Steam games where the developers keep the community in the dark, and in EA that's a very dangerous thing. Even though the autumn of 2015 was catastrophic for ECS (lead designer and producer left, team went unpaid for 5 months) we went out of it unharmed, PR-wise at least. We kept the community up to date what we were going through, they were sympathetic (if anyone from the community is reading this I must say that I lurv you).

* Filter feedback, keep your vision and calmly explain it to the community. In our case people have expressed wishes that we'd make Crest more into Godus (god powers etc.) and I've explained that it goes against the core of the game to do so, and people seem to understand that now.

* If you are launching a non-linear experience plan "modules" or expansions with themed content every so often. Look at Darkest Dungeon, Armello or Crest. In the beginning we were updating each week on Steam, but it led to meaningless updates. We can't add five new weapons each week to keep it fresh such as The Forest. It makes more sense to plan out huge milestones, easier to market, easier for the community to understand, and easier to make a road map of.

[oldblood]

Think this is great advice. Early Access is something that I may have to explore with the new game at some point so been recently reviewing games I've played (or followed) that have successfully moved through the waters of EA. Both Armello and Darkest Dungeon were backed on KS so I got to follow both and they definitely appear to be strong case studies. I think despite your challenges, you guys seem to have been able to wade through the stormy waters as well!

[Greipur]

Think this is great advice. Early Access is something that I may have to explore with the new game at some point so been recently reviewing games I've played (or followed) that have successfully moved through the waters of EA. Both Armello and Darkest Dungeon were backed on KS so I got to follow both and they definitely appear to be strong case studies. I think despite your challenges, you guys seem to have been able to wade through the stormy waters as well!

Thank you, Jon!

My thoughts comes partly from experience but this blog post by Jeff Vogel has also inspired my thinking, well worth a read. It also delves into some things that didn't go so well with Darkest Dungeon (even though they did many things right).

I can also recommend Armello's post mortem from this year's GDC.

[io3 creations]

Thanks for the advice and links.  I was thinking along some of the same lines for Early Access but it's good to read about actual experiences.

[Greipur]

Thanks for the advice and links.  I was thinking along some of the same lines for Early Access but it's good to read about actual experiences.

I'm glad that you found it useful!




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Right now Christoffer is working on some of the feedback for prosperity, what does butterflies have to do with it? I'll tell you more later this week, it involves animated sprites as particles though.

[Greipur]

Currently Johannes is working on implementing the Russian localisation. We're using a plugin called Smart Localization (which is free). Each paragraph is tied to a key that can be tied to a translation.

We're using the plugin basically out of the box, though Johannes had to add the support for tooltips.


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Here's the video about us which Rumblewood did (another local studio specialised in video production, this was commissioned by the local incubator to market Visby/Gotland as a startup haven). It's in Swedish but there's English subtitles available.

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Oh, and Crest is currently at MomoCon! If anyone of you pass by you can try a preview build of the Faith module. Look for the "Indie Bros." corner.

[Greipur]

Here's how we've tried to solve the different levels of feedback for Prosperity which I've hinted about before. As you can see the overall silhouette is similar, but we've given them some distinguishing features. I hope you can guess what garden belongs to the most prosperous.

If you've any feedback let me know, we're still trying this stuff out.




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I'm finally finished with the last Doctrine sculpture, I've spent a lot of time on other stuff as of late so that's why it has taken such a long time.

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One of our fans asked us to implement city names so they could make After Action Reports (a famous example in this context would be Boatmurdered for Dwarf Fortress), since this is a long-time goal with later updates I wanted to oblige them. But, it's hard to make sensible names that aren't Western or taken from a certain African country (we want the game to stay fictional). Do you have any recommendations? Something a little more fancy than say, Ostrich City.

The fan also suggested we made them procedural and used the Markov algorithm, and that sounds interesting, sure. But we still have to come up with a naming convention that doesn't sound tacky or primitive.

[io3 creations]

It's easy to compare them side by side but over time some of the changes may not be as apparent.  I like the aspect of increasing the number of vegetation to make the garden lush and might even prefer if even less of the ground and rocks were visible (e.g. larger leaves).   Interestingly, the soil color change seems to indicate the opposite effect as moist soil tends to look darker than dry soil.  It seems like the more fertile soil is becoming similar to the color of the desert.Of course, these are just subjective preferences.

Naming cities may also depend on what kind of lore you want to create, whether you want to use easily recognizable names or completely made up ones.  One middle ground might be combine words in ways that aren't actually used.  If the majority of your target audience is English, then you can use English words.  However, if you plan on adding different languages, another benefit of this approach is that it can be applied in any language by simply translating the words.  That way you can have at least one of them relate to the city or locale and the other could be something very different to give it a fictional aspect.  For example, Ratwind city.

[Greipur]

It's easy to compare them side by side but over time some of the changes may not be as apparent.  I like the aspect of increasing the number of vegetation to make the garden lush and might even prefer if even less of the ground and rocks were visible (e.g. larger leaves).   Interestingly, the soil color change seems to indicate the opposite effect as moist soil tends to look darker than dry soil.  It seems like the more fertile soil is becoming similar to the color of the desert.Of course, these are just subjective preferences.

Thanks for the feedback, we made the leaves bigger on the third model (which is max prosperity). Christoffer tells me that the colour change was due to different kinds of clay (our architecture is very similar to older buildings in Mali, the Great Mosque of Djenné being one of the influences, Dogon buildings being another). But I can see where you're coming from.

Naming cities may also depend on what kind of lore you want to create, whether you want to use easily recognizable names or completely made up ones.  One middle ground might be combine words in ways that aren't actually used.  If the majority of your target audience is English, then you can use English words.  However, if you plan on adding different languages, another benefit of this approach is that it can be applied in any language by simply translating the words.  That way you can have at least one of them relate to the city or locale and the other could be something very different to give it a fictional aspect.  For example, Ratwind city.

English is our primary language, but we're adding other languages soon (Russian is almost completely implemented now). Crest is meant to be a very realistic game when it comes to the setting, maybe magical realism is the closest genre I can think of, since this is a fictional setting, where a player does unusual things (playing god). Calling Crest a fantasy game would mock those who believe in gods or a god. So yeah, having names that makes sense for a modern person would be best.

But naming conventions to a magical realist game in a historical setting could be tricky, for example your example "Ratwind City" feels great for say, Dishonored or another fantasy flavoured game inspired by Victorian cities or old slums from the 17th-19th century. We need something that doesn't feel too Western, but I can't come up with anything better at the moment, and I'm not saying that yours is a bad example, just not fitting for Crest, but I'm sure you're aware of that. I think it also needs to be procedural, so you don't get the same twenty cities each session.

I've tried finding sources on the origin of city names throughout history without finding anything substantial (links please!). I think the luxury you have when making a real historical game is that you have all these fancy names that have become abstract in themselves through repetition, modern corporate examples would be Apple or Valve, which I personally don't view as objects anymore, with capital letters. Our problem with having say, Rat + Wind + City would mean that the person would probably look at it more closely, than say, Hong Kong which apparently means "Fragrant Harbour".

Maybe I'm overthinking this, but I enjoy our discussion!




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New developments, Jesper is finished with the feedback for which cities likes your commandments. When you click on a symbol the local faith interface pops up.

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I'm preparing for a new trailer we're making. It's a bit wacky but I'm thinking of having a sort of spoken word approach where we animate the subtitles, similar to Fonko's trailer. If anyone of you know any spoken word artists let me know, we need one in June!

[JobLeonard]

Now I want to watch Fonko.

[nnyei]

I'm preparing for a new trailer we're making. It's a bit wacky but I'm thinking of having a sort of spoken word approach where we animate the subtitles, similar to Fonko's trailer. If anyone of you know any spoken word artists let me know, we need one in June!

That word effect can be very easily done within After Effects. I've done similar animation like that before. You just set your font layer to mask off the animated clip, and that's basically it. Of course, you still have to fiddle with the timing a lot, but achieving this effect is not difficult on a technical level.

[Greipur]

Now I want to watch Fonko.

You should! It had its feature film premiere here in Sweden just a month ago in cinemas, I hope it will get an international release soon. More info here.

I'm preparing for a new trailer we're making. It's a bit wacky but I'm thinking of having a sort of spoken word approach where we animate the subtitles, similar to Fonko's trailer. If anyone of you know any spoken word artists let me know, we need one in June!

That word effect can be very easily done within After Effects. I've done similar animation like that before. You just set your font layer to mask off the animated clip, and that's basically it. Of course, you still have to fiddle with the timing a lot, but achieving this effect is not difficult on a technical level.

Thanks for the tip. I'm not sure if I'll use masked clips inside of the text or not, the timing to the spoken words is more of importance here for me. Can't afford After Effects either, we use Blender for all of our editing needs, it can be clunky, but for the price of free it gets the job done pretty nicely. I've done masking effects in there too. Though, I've thought about incorporating Natron inside of the workflow, we'll see.

[JobLeonard]

Luckily I just moved to Stockholm in April! :D