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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsCrest - Indirect God Game
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Greipur
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« Reply #600 on: June 30, 2016, 07:25:45 AM »

We're spending our time to polish things, and Christoffer just gave the sea shader some extra love in the form of flow maps. Let me know what you think.









The shader is, as I've stated prior made in Shader Forge. We've one flow map for the sea and one for the foam, which you can see below.



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Greipur
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« Reply #601 on: July 01, 2016, 05:00:48 AM »

A long standing dream at our studio has been more interesting height variances in Crest, Christoffer tried an extreme today. Smiley






The problem with this lies not in the graphics but rather that some tiles needs to know they are steep, so we'd need to take it into account in the gameplay and programming what height variances would mean. Since we've other more important business to attend to we'll probably keep dreaming for a few months more. What is safe to say now however is that it won't be as crazy as this. Wink
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« Reply #602 on: July 13, 2016, 06:11:27 AM »

Evaluation of the Latest Press Push


Hello! Our producer, Madeleine and I sat down the other day to discuss the press push we had for the Faith module. This time we took a stab at using ads. We used to think that the only way to get attention would be organic growth through youtubers, press and the community since they are more "honest", but Crest is a niche game about something so esoteric as faith and religion. It's not an easy sell, we need all the exposure we can get. As such we've grown more pragmatic with the years. You can't have organic growth out of nothing, and there's not one correct way to spread the gospel.

When making this kind of evaluation you've to think about what the goals are, is it about selling copies or spreading your brand/image/whatever? Vince Weller who made Age of Decadence talks about exposure in this way:

Quote from: Vince Weller
"There’s a famous saying attributed to John Wanamaker who knew a thing or two about marketing: 'Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half.'"

I think this is a great quote of the struggles we face in the digital age, and I think it intuitively resonates with me, I seldom jump at something on the first time I see it mentioned, if it's not something exceptionally close to my interests. But, Vince later adds:

Quote from: Vince Weller
It’s all about effective frequency, which means that you have to have faith and keep throwing money at ads even when they give you no return whatsoever. Harvard thinks that the magic number is nine. Most people have to see your ad nine times before they start responding to it. Thomas Smith thought the magic number is twenty. Krugman was convinced there are three phases: curiosity, recognition, decision, but obviously each phase takes a number of ads.


As such I think you can't really decide if it was a success depending on sales alone. Anyhow, we spent around $2000 on Facebook and about the same for the press push (including dev costs for the trailer). The trailer took about 3 weeks to make, I was the only one involved full time, two others probably spent a week each (plus the paid spoken word talent). As a refresher here's the video again.







We participated in Steam's Summer Sale (and also had a discount on itch) and offered the game for -27% the usual asking price. We thought that we'd boost the sales if we did the launch of the module (Faith) on the same day as the sale went live. From the 16th to the 30th we had help from our pr agency to spread the message, they focused on lets players and traditional press. The Facebook ad came up around when the sale started and ended on the 4th July (when the summer sale ended). Here's some general statistics.


Statistics

  • Sold a few hundred copies on Steam (half from wishlist)
  • Facebook trailer reached 450 000 people (210 000 "saw")
  • YouTube trailer got 900 views
  • Around 20 new (and old) lets players making videos, people with 200 subscribers up to 60K
  • Most of the traffic to Steam store page came from Steam itself
  • Almost no one mentioned the Faith Module or trailer in traditional press


We had hoped that press would've appreciated the new trailer, since it carries its own story so to speak, but we had hardly any mentions. It's hard to understand why since we didn't get many replies back, but we speculate that it might be because just updating the Early Access doesn't carry the same weight as a Kickstarter launch, Early Access launch or full launch to 1.0. There's of course a few outliers there, Darkest Dungeon being one where every update had a few press articles written about it. But yeah, they had a very successful following even before that. We also had a very succesful run the last summer with this trailer, which was posted on Kotaku UK and PC Gamer the same day, which gave us quite a few trailer views and sales. We thought we could replicate that with this push, but that was not the case.

The takeaway of all this? Hard to say, we need to conduct more experiments, for example spend more on public events. So for the next push we'll have a smaller budget for press and ads and focus more on youtubers and representation at festivals, conventions and conferences.


---


Speaking of conferences, we've been accepted for GDC Europe’s Innovative Games Showcase! We're one of nine projects that will have a microtalk for five minutes. You can read the news here. We will have Emelie, our designer and Johannes, our lead programmer at the event.







Here's how the microtalks looked like last year:





So if you're at GDC Europe in August you should come and meet us! We'll be there during the whole event. Smiley
« Last Edit: July 13, 2016, 06:54:39 AM by Greipur » Logged

Greipur
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« Reply #603 on: July 14, 2016, 06:09:09 AM »

Alright, I think it's time to catch up with what we've been doing lately apart from press, that is.


Christoffer has been tweaking the sea shader, the latest addition being random colour variation taken from a noise texture. I think this emulates the feeling of a sea much better, with shallow and deep portions. Later we might do something more fancy so that the shallow colour portions are mapped to the islands (we're adding more hospitable islands in the future).






One of the things we wanted to improve upon since the Faith module launch is to communicate how people react to each commandment, in the world. Emelie suggested we took a cue from Zoo Tycoon.



Zoo Tycoon


In the game you get immediate feedback from the animals in the form of smilies, we went with a similar approach in Crest.





We've also revised the Doctrine interface, since it didn't really communicate what we wanted before. Now you see the general needs they prefer and dislike and also how close they are to transition into one of the other doctrines.






These fixes together with some other stuff will go live in a patch on Steam and itch tomorrow.



---


Since there's not much left to do on the Faith module graphic-wise I've begun doing concept art for the next module called Ancestor Worship. In many traditional African religions ancestors are a big thing, and have even survived in the places where Christianity and Islam are now the main religions.

Ancestors often work as a go-between a supreme god (or gods) and normal humans. We will use this as inspiration for a sort of advisor system, which I will delve into more soon. In the meantime you can see some early art for the First Ancestor or Ancestor Administrator or whatever. Their role is to make the player's stay in the underworld manageable. The character will be interacted with similar to the diplomacy menu in Civilization 5 or Beyond Earth.




Civ 5


Beyond Earth



Personally I found this feature highly enjoyable in Civ 5, it gave the different leaders a lot of humanity, just with the help of some graphics and sound. But enough of that for now, here's some concept art.




I guess I intentionally went a little too creepy with this one, at least most of the team said they'd never interact with this apparition. That's fair, back to the drawing board. Will have to come up with a design that is approachable, but still "reeks of death", hehe.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2016, 06:38:10 AM by Greipur » Logged

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« Reply #604 on: July 14, 2016, 07:09:29 AM »

You just did that on purpose so they won't complain about the creepyness in v2, right?  Evil
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« Reply #605 on: July 15, 2016, 07:14:59 AM »

You just did that on purpose so they won't complain about the creepyness in v2, right?  Evil

Haha, not consciously at least. I think that I sometimes indulge in my more macabre side, so it's good that the rest of the team has different tastes. We're not making a horror game after all. Wink


---


The new patch for the Faith Module is live, next week we will spend our time to plan the upcoming Ancestor Worship module!
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« Reply #606 on: July 21, 2016, 12:00:26 PM »

I'm finally catching up with a few things. Smiley

The Faith Trailer is interesting. Wink  One one hand,  the frozen-moment images and the spoken words are great! Smiley   Based on your description, I had a very similar trailer in mind.  Those two things combined actually fixed the issues that I had just by looking at the images themselves.
On the other hand, based on what I read before, I was mainly expecting scenes with the frozen-moment images only (could've missed something though) and no gameplay.  In general, I agree with the approach that it's better not to show GUI or GUI based action in a trailer.  At least, not in one that is intended for new players because showing all those options can be both distracting and confusing as to what is going on.  Also, the large letter text flashing on the screen made it more difficult to pay attention to what is going on, but even then I wasn't really sure what the GUI action did or how you are a God.

In a way, my impression (could be wrong) is that while the Faith module is introducing a new mechanic, it is still "just" a feature that has finally been implemented rather than something that significantly changes the game (such as DLC update content) and maybe that's why it wasn't mentioned much in articles.  So, it might have been better to keep the trailer as a teaser type trailer with the the frozen-moment scenes that could get people interested and check out the game and then direct them to the other trailer that explains more?

But, I agree that there are lots of things you can't predict and won't know for sure and there are times when you have to be really persistent and keep trying different things to get the results you're after. Smiley
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« Reply #607 on: July 26, 2016, 07:07:24 AM »

Thanks for the feedback, io3! A lot of interesting stuff here, I'll take it to heart for the next round. Maybe we'll have a teaser and a gamplay trailer alongside each other in the future.


---


We've now established the direction for the Ancestor Worship module, I'll quote the text we wrote for our fans the other day.


Quote
Ancestor Worship Module - October, 2016
We’ve looked at much of the feedback from the last months and the biggest takeaways we’ve seen is that most of you want more feedback, a bigger sense of progression and that the commandment and faith system can be frustrating. We’re trying to adress some of that with these five new features:


Ancestors
In the underworld you will be able to consult with your chronicler about the former lives of your followers. Apart from that you will be able to consult with dead followers who will work as advisors.


Faith and Association Rework
After the feedback from the community, critics and from internal discussion we’ve decided to make a slight rework on the faith system for commandments. Instead of downvoting or upvoting your commandments they will create associations underneath each commandment, which they will then try to push on each other.


Demographics
We’re going to make each follower a little more individualistic, so to balance the needs of the city and the follower. This can lead to that they can have more actions towards each other in each city state, hopefully creating more flavourful citizens. We’ll also create consequences for overpopulation, the more children the followers have the more resources the city needs.

Apart from that we will improve several interface and feedback portions of followers, making it easier to select individuals and see what they are doing and what they crave. Cities will also get generated made-up names.


Word Progression
The followers will only start with a few basic words such as food and savannah, most of the words are undiscovered, this means that they will only do actions for what they know. You can teach them new words by sending them out in the world to see different things. Apart from that we’ll add some new words and make the current ones easier to understand and use.


Social Aspects
Instead of just working your followers will interact with each other more, such as socialising and holding festivals in your honour!


So we've our work cut out for us for the next three months! And I'm taking some well-earned vacation, I'll be back in a week.  Smiley
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« Reply #608 on: August 12, 2016, 06:01:54 AM »

Hello again, been a hectic few weeks to prepare for GDC Europe, Gamescom and also Megabooth at PAX West. We've been printing t-shirts, business cards, buttons etc. As such we haven't had that much to show. The programmers have been focusing on reworking the Faith Association system as well as building the foundation for the ancestors.


In the new association system the followers can no longer downvote or upvote commandments, but they can choose to follow different associations. The player can also brand certain associations as heretical. We hope that these fixes will keep throwing interesting surprises at the player, but not frustrate them as much as the current system in the public build. Tomas sent me this picture.





Jesper has been building the foundation for the advisor feature and there's not much more to talk about that now. And Johannes has been dealing with some pesky save bugs that have haunted the current build.


Apart from all of the assets for the conferences I've finally found the time to do one of the things I love the most; doing concept art. Here's some initial sketches for The Chronicler, your helpful hand in the underworld. I'm trying hard, as I've said prior to  make the figure reek of death, but in a gentle way, if that's even possible, haha.











Let me know what you think. And please come to the European Innovative Games Showcase at GDCE next week, Emelie and Johannes will be there giving a microtalk about Crest! Smiley
« Last Edit: August 12, 2016, 10:41:20 AM by Greipur » Logged

oldblood
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« Reply #609 on: August 12, 2016, 06:13:37 AM »

Really digging the concept of the Chronicler. Definitely striking that balance between hints of underworld without necessarily appearing evil... Nicely done.
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« Reply #610 on: August 12, 2016, 06:49:34 AM »

Really digging the concept of the Chronicler. Definitely striking that balance between hints of underworld without necessarily appearing evil... Nicely done.

Thanks Jon! I'm glad you say that, I'm more of a macabre kind of person so it's hard to stay on the right side of nice, especially after just finishing the gothic tale of The Witcher 3 DLC Hearts of Stone. Wink

Will make more renditions of it in the near future, but I'm pretty satisfied with the general outline.
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« Reply #611 on: August 12, 2016, 07:13:58 AM »

I agree with oldblood, it's nice to have a neutral "this is just part of life" type characterisation.
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Greipur
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« Reply #612 on: August 12, 2016, 07:27:16 AM »

I agree with oldblood, it's nice to have a neutral "this is just part of life" type characterisation.

Definitely, I agree that it's nice to have. I've been enjoying reading up on different burial rituals and beliefs of the afterlife on the African continent and found that ancestors and dead people are just like people are most, both spiteful and noble, depending on how they lead their lives. Here's one of the more interesting tidbits I found, something called Famadihana conducted on Madagascar.

---

Well, I'm off again. Taking my second week of vacation, I promise to be back soon though with more sweet stuff. Hopefully a lot of fun news after our GDC/Gamescom trip. Take care! Smiley
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« Reply #613 on: August 25, 2016, 07:35:36 AM »

Back again, get ready!



Emelie and Johannes had a good time at GDCE and Gamescom, met a lot of fellow friendly indies, such as Abbey Games. They also held their microtalk, which you can watch it here (it starts at 15:30).





----


The new Faith Association rework is more or less done. You can see Tomas' gif here below.





----


I've been finishing up The Chronicler design, I went for a more spindly character. I've not decided if the chronicler ancestor is also sexless like Crest's god avatar so I left it's sex very much ambiguous. But, when you're just a pile of ghostly bones I'm guessing sex doesn't matter that much. Wink









---




Christoffer took that and used it for his GUI mockup for the so called "time map" where they tell you what has happened since the dawn of time.








The time map idea actually hearkens back to at least 2014, one of our older ideas, and finally it's coming to fruition. Here's an example of our inspiration - "The Geologic Time Spiral". We needed a map over time that could continue "forever", a spiral made perfect sense.




Old mockup 3d version I did in 2014:







---


Apart from that he had to design how the GUI on the main screen would look, you can see the two purple icons in the right uppermost corner.





Also, here's the mockup for the advisors GUI, making fancy concept art for that comes up next.






---

Puh, that was one image heavy update. Hopefully I'll keep a more steady flow now after our summer is over. Though, still a lot of stuff happening in September, for example we'll participate in several investor meetups and workshops, and even a dragon den, let's see how that turns out. Smiley
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« Reply #614 on: August 25, 2016, 08:28:47 AM »

 Coffee

Question: the multiple advisors represent what? Like, do you have one per city or is it just a council like in the old Civ games?





EDIT: I seriously dig that time map
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Greipur
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« Reply #615 on: August 26, 2016, 12:49:40 AM »

It's a council representing the top 3 doctrines, which gives their skewed advice. In Crest it will work as a sort of election, when a cycle ends all the people who died during that cycle will go to the underworld. The game will look at the three most popular doctrines which the departed believed in and "elect" appropriate representatives. As such each cycle might have different advisors giving you different advice.

The advisors talk about the global events, or rather, the most important tabloid happenings currently.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2016, 01:08:43 AM by Greipur » Logged

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« Reply #616 on: August 26, 2016, 01:26:02 AM »

I love the sound of that, good flavour and mechanically interesting. You're literally haunted by the ghosts of the past!

Maybe you want to look at various election systems and their biases to determine what kind of (simplified) system would work best for your gameplay. CGP Grey has a great series about that:

http://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom/
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« Reply #617 on: August 26, 2016, 06:21:55 AM »

Haha, yeah. Wink

The election process is super simple, since it's not really a real election, more like statistics. There's only six candidates, will never be fewer or more, and half of them will always be represented. It's also likely that a few of them will at times not exist at all in the world. Since the doctrines can be shaped by the player that always leaves room for other doctrines to rise to the top, which in turn changes the advisors. As such we didn't think that the system needed any nuance, interesting videos though.


---


Here's the first concept art for an advisor, I imagine that they look like as when they died, covered in a shroud and this person also having the arrows that killed her. She's the warlike kind.


« Last Edit: August 26, 2016, 06:30:45 AM by Greipur » Logged

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« Reply #618 on: August 26, 2016, 08:08:44 AM »

Ah, ok. Well you can still do fun stuff by using a median or mode instead of an average.

Also, have you thought out the strange feedback cycles that you can get depending on how people die?

If a war breaks out a people are killed off, compared to people dying of old age, compared to starvation. Those things can greatly skew the representatives (and to be clear: I think that is a very interesting mechanic).

What if you also keep other statistics on how people die (lions, hunger, war, old age) and subtly change the looks of the advisors based on it? Skinny if most followers of a doctrine starved to death, or fat if they believed in overeating, the age depending on average (although here median or mode would definitely make more sense), etc?
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« Reply #619 on: August 29, 2016, 11:55:57 PM »

Ah, ok. Well you can still do fun stuff by using a median or mode instead of an average.

We haven't discussed the details, our design documents for each module are probably 75% decided, the last 25% are divine inspiration, or something.  Wink As such I trust the programmers to come to a mathematically sound decision, thanks for the link though.

Also, have you thought out the strange feedback cycles that you can get depending on how people die?

If a war breaks out a people are killed off, compared to people dying of old age, compared to starvation. Those things can greatly skew the representatives (and to be clear: I think that is a very interesting mechanic).

What if you also keep other statistics on how people die (lions, hunger, war, old age) and subtly change the looks of the advisors based on it? Skinny if most followers of a doctrine starved to death, or fat if they believed in overeating, the age depending on average (although here median or mode would definitely make more sense), etc?

It's possible that it can be skewed, some doctrines might be more suited for certain prerequisites, we'll have to see.

It's an interesting idea, but takes a lot of work, and we already show what kills people in a sort of obituary symbol in the cities, as well we plan to provide statistics in the time map. My plan is to just make each doctrine advisor look like they died in a "stereotypical death", for example Hegemony probably most often die in war.
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