Cryamore (Created by a Black Game Developer)
- Thread starter Responsible Allen Iverson
- Start date
I discovered that there's another Black Man working on this game. He is an artist.
JC (@Overlord_JC) on Twitter
End of Time
JC (@Overlord_JC) on Twitter
End of Time
King Koopa
All Star
I'm not usually one to 
, but bruh
Still will keep an eye on this. Dude's obviously gonna add more characters in soon. The concept seems dope as well.
, but bruh Still will keep an eye on this. Dude's obviously gonna add more characters in soon. The concept seems dope as well.
Looks slick.
Happy Holiday Update!
Greetings Cryatists!
First of all, thanks to everyone that applied for the additional programmer position that we posted on October. We weren’t able to officially announce it then but so everyone else knows, we’ve gotten Nathan Lindley as one of our new programmers due to his experience in Unity and especially the NGUI toolkit.
This update will be a trimmed down version of the backer-only update on the Cryamore Kickstarter because some content in the full update may be considered spoilers for the game. For the full update, you’ll have to be a backer and check the update page on Kickstarter.
Many of you have been wondering how things are coming along with development on Cryamore as the playable build we wanted to release a few months back was delayed. Now, why has the playable build been delayed?
To put it plain and simple, at it’s current state, since we’re trying to get every single bit of the gameplay down pat, a lot of things in the game are pretty buggy. Some bosses don’t always work right, abilities still need to be tweaked, and monster AI needs to be strengthened to name a few things. We’re sure some of you wouldn’t mind playing in such a rough state but we want to make sure that what we let you, the backers, test out is as close as possible to what we envision the gameplay to be so you’ll all get a clearer idea of what Cryamore’s feel is. We still want to get a build out there for you all to finally test but we ask that you let us get as much of the playground set up before you take a swing at things.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s discuss the many changes so far that was shown in the video available for backers…
HUD REWORK
One of the more noticeable changes in the video is the new HUD. We’ve done this to be able to convey more information to the player. While it’s still being heavily polished, the CHARGE gauge will change depending on the weapon you have equipped, if you have the Butcherknife sword, you’ll see the charge gauge represented in the shape of its blade, while the Javelink spear will be slightly thinner with the nib-like spearhead at the end.
The HP and EP bars will also extend the more the maximum amount increases. Some of you may find this similar to Kingdom Hearts (or Brave Fencer Musashi).
There’s also four ability slots now. One of our biggest aims in gameplay is to make sure combat is fun, and there’s not much fun to be had when you have to constantly switch out between abilities. Before any of you say that X, Y and the trigger buttons are a horrible control setup, our programming trio are working on the function to remap controls.
The clock, and info hub still remains and will continue its purpose of showing the time, attacked enemy, HP and element along with the weather.
ROUGH SPRITES
The video also shows that we’ve started using “rougher” sprites for many of the animations. Cryamore being primarily a 2D game with 8 directions makes it so that most of our characters, NPCs, monsters and abilities need to be done in at least 3 directions: north, south and west, with east being a mirror, other times we’d need 5 directions since we include a northwest and southwest direction and the lowest we can go is an isometric 2 directions of northwest and southwest only. If you factor in the various states a character has, for example: monsters have an idle, walk, attack (sometimes two attacks) and hurt state, which all need to be animated in the required directions (either 2, 3 or 5), there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
There’s also the rare case where a monster also requires more than just 5 directions for a special state…
That’s to be used for when monster tracks Esmy’s location throughout the arena.
Still, we’ve got more than half the monster list done already (there were a lot not featured in the video, and more than half of Esmy’s abilities are in the game now also in varying states of completion, which brings us to…
ABILITY STREAMLINING
Throughout the development of Cryamore, we’ve debated on the usefulness of certain abilities, especially when you have 72 in total. While some of the abilities Esmy can obtain prove to be very useful like the trusty ol’ “Spitfyre” projectile, other abilities end up getting shelved later on like “Torchlight”, especially when you get abilities like the Light ability “Flashlight” which has a longer range beam of light; other abilities like the Shadow element, “Reveal” end up becoming too situational also which would leave a player to keep it shelved for the most part.
We wanted to make each ability be useful and also cut down on the chaff so we decided to rework the ability list one last time.
There are now 24 abilities in total. Three for each element, split into categories of ATTACK, DEFENSE and UTILITY and along with that are 8 summons, one for each element.
While many of you may be upset at the drastic decrease in abilities, there is one caveat to this. Each of the 24 abilities now have three levels which you can unlock, increasing their effectiveness in both power and/or utility. If you consider this into the numbers, those 24 abilities end up becoming 72 with all the variations.
You can see it in action with Spitfyre now starting off with the single fireball and then changing to the triple-spread and a rapid fire. Other abilities got changed out too with Torchlight becoming Ignite and acting more as a short-ranged flame eruption and once upgraded, can be charged to release a series of eruptions and if charged further can release a larger and more powerful blast.
Abilities like Cubic Ice have been tweaked too for more combat use so it’s not just a tool to solve puzzles. Besides blocking projectiles and certain attacks, Cubic Ice once upgraded can not only be more durable and withstand more hits but also shatters into ice shards that can damage the enemy, and when fully charged becomes a cluster of cubes that shatter into ice shards.
(We go into a bit more detail on the implemented abilities and previews of them in the backer-only version on the Kickstarter page)
There are only 7 abilities left to work in and then the summons.
WEAPONS
There’s also glimpses of the new weapons in the backer-only video. So far we’ve got only two weapons left to implement but the current ones still are subject to tweaking for balance and just making sure they look as they should.
Joining the Butcherknife (Sword) is the Pizzaxe (Axe), Javelink (Spear), Matchglocks (Pistols), Megadart (Crossbow), and the Brasskickers (Knuckles).
You’ll only be able to bring one weapon with you to the field (Esmy doesn’t have a magic backpack that can store all her weapons) but you’ll be able to change them up anytime by visiting Areen the Blacksmith in Ghilcrest. Areen can also improve the capabilities of each weapon (for a price), ranging from faster meter refill, extra hits, more ammo, faster reload time, and increased knockback to name a few.
ENVIRONMENTS
Through all the videos we’ve shown, you should have noticed that we’re moving further away from the dark and gloomy Northern Caverns and showing more of Noka Island. Featured in the video were small sections of Rime Rapids, Molten Mountain, Terrestrial Woods and the Northern Overworld.
These environments are another part of what’s taking long for Cryamore to finish as the process for creating each environment has and still is quite painstaking.
Rob and Alan have gone through three iterations of the Progression spreadsheet which is, to put it in the simplest of terms, the walkthrough for Cryamore. Each ability is taken into consideration for the puzzles and with that, the order of catalysts to get to unlock each ability and making sure each catalyst can actually be obtained with the current abilities you have at that point in the game. They also have to make sure that each puzzle isn’t too difficult or too easy. Once the progression is set for a dungeon (which includes written descriptions of the area), they proceed to do a rough layout of it.
(If you have access to the spoiler-ish backer-only update in Kickstarter, we showcase a downsized version of one of the dungeon maps in the game to show how large a dungeon can be.)
After a map is laid out and considered final, Rob proceeds to do a cleaner pass at each map, doing the lines of each object and backdrop element and once this is done, it’s passed onto Fred, our background painter who proceeds to make the parts of each environment look pretty. After all that’s done, it’s then off to Unity to piece together each object and backdrop into playable form, and then colliders are applied and various other doodads like portals to link maps together, mob placement and triggers for events if needed.
These are done for all the maps and each dungeon (there are eight in total) is pretty much similar in scale to Mechanika, give or take a few areas. Then there’s the Northern and Southern Overworld areas too which are a huge set of linked maps too.
We really want to make a big enough playground for everyone and make sure that said playground looks good and feels good to play in.
With all that being said, let’s do a review of the current state of development…
Greetings Cryatists!
First of all, thanks to everyone that applied for the additional programmer position that we posted on October. We weren’t able to officially announce it then but so everyone else knows, we’ve gotten Nathan Lindley as one of our new programmers due to his experience in Unity and especially the NGUI toolkit.
This update will be a trimmed down version of the backer-only update on the Cryamore Kickstarter because some content in the full update may be considered spoilers for the game. For the full update, you’ll have to be a backer and check the update page on Kickstarter.
Many of you have been wondering how things are coming along with development on Cryamore as the playable build we wanted to release a few months back was delayed. Now, why has the playable build been delayed?
To put it plain and simple, at it’s current state, since we’re trying to get every single bit of the gameplay down pat, a lot of things in the game are pretty buggy. Some bosses don’t always work right, abilities still need to be tweaked, and monster AI needs to be strengthened to name a few things. We’re sure some of you wouldn’t mind playing in such a rough state but we want to make sure that what we let you, the backers, test out is as close as possible to what we envision the gameplay to be so you’ll all get a clearer idea of what Cryamore’s feel is. We still want to get a build out there for you all to finally test but we ask that you let us get as much of the playground set up before you take a swing at things.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s discuss the many changes so far that was shown in the video available for backers…
HUD REWORK
One of the more noticeable changes in the video is the new HUD. We’ve done this to be able to convey more information to the player. While it’s still being heavily polished, the CHARGE gauge will change depending on the weapon you have equipped, if you have the Butcherknife sword, you’ll see the charge gauge represented in the shape of its blade, while the Javelink spear will be slightly thinner with the nib-like spearhead at the end.
The HP and EP bars will also extend the more the maximum amount increases. Some of you may find this similar to Kingdom Hearts (or Brave Fencer Musashi).
There’s also four ability slots now. One of our biggest aims in gameplay is to make sure combat is fun, and there’s not much fun to be had when you have to constantly switch out between abilities. Before any of you say that X, Y and the trigger buttons are a horrible control setup, our programming trio are working on the function to remap controls.
The clock, and info hub still remains and will continue its purpose of showing the time, attacked enemy, HP and element along with the weather.
ROUGH SPRITES
The video also shows that we’ve started using “rougher” sprites for many of the animations. Cryamore being primarily a 2D game with 8 directions makes it so that most of our characters, NPCs, monsters and abilities need to be done in at least 3 directions: north, south and west, with east being a mirror, other times we’d need 5 directions since we include a northwest and southwest direction and the lowest we can go is an isometric 2 directions of northwest and southwest only. If you factor in the various states a character has, for example: monsters have an idle, walk, attack (sometimes two attacks) and hurt state, which all need to be animated in the required directions (either 2, 3 or 5), there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.
There’s also the rare case where a monster also requires more than just 5 directions for a special state…
That’s to be used for when monster tracks Esmy’s location throughout the arena.
Still, we’ve got more than half the monster list done already (there were a lot not featured in the video, and more than half of Esmy’s abilities are in the game now also in varying states of completion, which brings us to…
ABILITY STREAMLINING
Throughout the development of Cryamore, we’ve debated on the usefulness of certain abilities, especially when you have 72 in total. While some of the abilities Esmy can obtain prove to be very useful like the trusty ol’ “Spitfyre” projectile, other abilities end up getting shelved later on like “Torchlight”, especially when you get abilities like the Light ability “Flashlight” which has a longer range beam of light; other abilities like the Shadow element, “Reveal” end up becoming too situational also which would leave a player to keep it shelved for the most part.
We wanted to make each ability be useful and also cut down on the chaff so we decided to rework the ability list one last time.
There are now 24 abilities in total. Three for each element, split into categories of ATTACK, DEFENSE and UTILITY and along with that are 8 summons, one for each element.
While many of you may be upset at the drastic decrease in abilities, there is one caveat to this. Each of the 24 abilities now have three levels which you can unlock, increasing their effectiveness in both power and/or utility. If you consider this into the numbers, those 24 abilities end up becoming 72 with all the variations.
You can see it in action with Spitfyre now starting off with the single fireball and then changing to the triple-spread and a rapid fire. Other abilities got changed out too with Torchlight becoming Ignite and acting more as a short-ranged flame eruption and once upgraded, can be charged to release a series of eruptions and if charged further can release a larger and more powerful blast.
Abilities like Cubic Ice have been tweaked too for more combat use so it’s not just a tool to solve puzzles. Besides blocking projectiles and certain attacks, Cubic Ice once upgraded can not only be more durable and withstand more hits but also shatters into ice shards that can damage the enemy, and when fully charged becomes a cluster of cubes that shatter into ice shards.
(We go into a bit more detail on the implemented abilities and previews of them in the backer-only version on the Kickstarter page)
There are only 7 abilities left to work in and then the summons.
WEAPONS
There’s also glimpses of the new weapons in the backer-only video. So far we’ve got only two weapons left to implement but the current ones still are subject to tweaking for balance and just making sure they look as they should.
Joining the Butcherknife (Sword) is the Pizzaxe (Axe), Javelink (Spear), Matchglocks (Pistols), Megadart (Crossbow), and the Brasskickers (Knuckles).
You’ll only be able to bring one weapon with you to the field (Esmy doesn’t have a magic backpack that can store all her weapons) but you’ll be able to change them up anytime by visiting Areen the Blacksmith in Ghilcrest. Areen can also improve the capabilities of each weapon (for a price), ranging from faster meter refill, extra hits, more ammo, faster reload time, and increased knockback to name a few.
ENVIRONMENTS
Through all the videos we’ve shown, you should have noticed that we’re moving further away from the dark and gloomy Northern Caverns and showing more of Noka Island. Featured in the video were small sections of Rime Rapids, Molten Mountain, Terrestrial Woods and the Northern Overworld.
These environments are another part of what’s taking long for Cryamore to finish as the process for creating each environment has and still is quite painstaking.
Rob and Alan have gone through three iterations of the Progression spreadsheet which is, to put it in the simplest of terms, the walkthrough for Cryamore. Each ability is taken into consideration for the puzzles and with that, the order of catalysts to get to unlock each ability and making sure each catalyst can actually be obtained with the current abilities you have at that point in the game. They also have to make sure that each puzzle isn’t too difficult or too easy. Once the progression is set for a dungeon (which includes written descriptions of the area), they proceed to do a rough layout of it.
(If you have access to the spoiler-ish backer-only update in Kickstarter, we showcase a downsized version of one of the dungeon maps in the game to show how large a dungeon can be.)
After a map is laid out and considered final, Rob proceeds to do a cleaner pass at each map, doing the lines of each object and backdrop element and once this is done, it’s passed onto Fred, our background painter who proceeds to make the parts of each environment look pretty. After all that’s done, it’s then off to Unity to piece together each object and backdrop into playable form, and then colliders are applied and various other doodads like portals to link maps together, mob placement and triggers for events if needed.
These are done for all the maps and each dungeon (there are eight in total) is pretty much similar in scale to Mechanika, give or take a few areas. Then there’s the Northern and Southern Overworld areas too which are a huge set of linked maps too.
We really want to make a big enough playground for everyone and make sure that said playground looks good and feels good to play in.
With all that being said, let’s do a review of the current state of development…
OVERALL STATUS
So how are things looking overall on the development front? Let’s update the meters from many updates ago…
PROGRAMMING
Has gone up one point. This is because the majority of the first few points has been setting up the core of the game. Everything from movement and controls to databases and setting up tools for the non-coder members of the team to work with. The new point was for finally setting up a framework for the boss AI (which is FAR different from enemy AI), adding in the base functions for the other abilities (registering code-based elevation for things you lob, special functions that don’t fall into the likes of projectile or melee attack) and working in more of the other UI elements that require some back end like discovering new abilities using the catalysts in the Cryatisium and the selections in the options menu along. The final point in programming will pretty much be left for final debugging and optimizations. Mike, Brandon and our new coder, Nathan have the programming front covered.
MUSIC & SOUND
Music has gone up a point as Aivi has come up with more compositions for the continuously growing soundtrack of which there are almost 30 tracks so far. A number of these are still WIPs as Aivi and Surasshu experiment with things and await how exactly areas will look and feel during in-game tests and how cutscenes play out.
Sound hasn’t gone up any yet though as many of the abilities, monsters and characters are bound to be tweaked so there won’t be much going on there until many of the assets are deemed final.
DESIGNS
Having gone up one point, there are still a couple of minor NPC designs left on the drawing board including a few of the backer NPCs which will be handled by Juby, JC and Rob with Alan offering assist when needed. There’s also a few monsters that still need to be finalized which Alan will be taking care of with JC on assist.
BACKGROUNDS
Up two points. Rob and Alan have had all the “dungeons” reworked to fit with the new abilities. With the new method we have for setting up environments (modular objects) the background layout process should be pretty simple too so. Fred handles the painting of background assets so all the extra visual polish is up to him while the environment setup for dungeons and other interiors in Unity will be up to Rob and Alan. Other members of the team will be pitching in for overworld setup. So far Ghilcrest exteriors have been laid out and some of the building interiors are in. Northern Overworld sections are being filled in along with Northern Caverns, Rime Rapids, Molten Mountain, Terrestrial Woods and Gale Valley.
ANIMATIONS
Gone up four points. Since we resized the sprites and also started not pixeling in every single animation until later on during the polish stage, animation has been moving at a better pace. Alan has only about a quarter of Esmy’s abilities left that need to be animated. He’s also got 26 animated monsters already along with 2 midbosses and 2 bosses with another boss on the way. Once all the “rough” animations are done, Alan will be pixeling in all the animations with Micah and Temmie providing assistance when needed. JC also provides VFX animation support when needed.
SCRIPT
Thanks to Chris who got assigned the executive writing spot and through constant back and forth with Rob and Alan, the script has gone up four points and is near complete with only the day-to-day dialogue needing to be taken care of which Jim will be helping us with. We have spreadsheets to fill out for each period within each day of the week per chapter. There may be some slight adjustments here and there but so far, the story is deemed 99% complete.
VOICE ACTING
No progress yet on voice acting as this is something generally done late in development when cutscenes and lines are all fully set so everyone gets an idea of what tone to go for and there won’t be any re-recordings which can cost if you’re renting out a studio. Some characters also need to be assigned voice actors but we pretty much have our pool of voice talent set thanks to Chris who will also be directing them according to the outlines laid out by Rob.
REWARDS
As some of the backer NPCs have been finalized along with a few wallpapers and backer monster designs are being worked on, rewards have gone up by two points.
We’ve stated to people that asked about reward status and we’ll say it once more, please take note that we won’t be giving out rewards until near the completion of the game as designs of characters and monsters that will be featured on wallpapers may change, the soundtrack is still being added to, art and designs for the artbook are increasing the further development goes and the shipping the figures and all of the other physical rewards separately isn’t very cost-effective.
We will be setting a period for everyone to update their addresses during the nearing of that point but if you feel the need to update us beforehand in case you’re a busy person that doesn’t always get the notifications, you can always message us on Cryamore Kickstarter about your current address change and we’ll put a note on your backer info as we have for many others that notified us of their many address changes.
WRAPPING UP
We hope you liked this VERY lenghty update and we made sure to fill it with lots of visuals to not overwhelm the eye with nothing but text.
Development continues as always and as stated in recent updates, NostalgiCO and Atlus have set their sights on a Q3 2016 release date. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it and enjoy the rest of the holidays.
Here’s to the coming year of 2016!
So how are things looking overall on the development front? Let’s update the meters from many updates ago…
PROGRAMMING
Has gone up one point. This is because the majority of the first few points has been setting up the core of the game. Everything from movement and controls to databases and setting up tools for the non-coder members of the team to work with. The new point was for finally setting up a framework for the boss AI (which is FAR different from enemy AI), adding in the base functions for the other abilities (registering code-based elevation for things you lob, special functions that don’t fall into the likes of projectile or melee attack) and working in more of the other UI elements that require some back end like discovering new abilities using the catalysts in the Cryatisium and the selections in the options menu along. The final point in programming will pretty much be left for final debugging and optimizations. Mike, Brandon and our new coder, Nathan have the programming front covered.
MUSIC & SOUND
Music has gone up a point as Aivi has come up with more compositions for the continuously growing soundtrack of which there are almost 30 tracks so far. A number of these are still WIPs as Aivi and Surasshu experiment with things and await how exactly areas will look and feel during in-game tests and how cutscenes play out.
Sound hasn’t gone up any yet though as many of the abilities, monsters and characters are bound to be tweaked so there won’t be much going on there until many of the assets are deemed final.
DESIGNS
Having gone up one point, there are still a couple of minor NPC designs left on the drawing board including a few of the backer NPCs which will be handled by Juby, JC and Rob with Alan offering assist when needed. There’s also a few monsters that still need to be finalized which Alan will be taking care of with JC on assist.
BACKGROUNDS
Up two points. Rob and Alan have had all the “dungeons” reworked to fit with the new abilities. With the new method we have for setting up environments (modular objects) the background layout process should be pretty simple too so. Fred handles the painting of background assets so all the extra visual polish is up to him while the environment setup for dungeons and other interiors in Unity will be up to Rob and Alan. Other members of the team will be pitching in for overworld setup. So far Ghilcrest exteriors have been laid out and some of the building interiors are in. Northern Overworld sections are being filled in along with Northern Caverns, Rime Rapids, Molten Mountain, Terrestrial Woods and Gale Valley.
ANIMATIONS
Gone up four points. Since we resized the sprites and also started not pixeling in every single animation until later on during the polish stage, animation has been moving at a better pace. Alan has only about a quarter of Esmy’s abilities left that need to be animated. He’s also got 26 animated monsters already along with 2 midbosses and 2 bosses with another boss on the way. Once all the “rough” animations are done, Alan will be pixeling in all the animations with Micah and Temmie providing assistance when needed. JC also provides VFX animation support when needed.
SCRIPT
Thanks to Chris who got assigned the executive writing spot and through constant back and forth with Rob and Alan, the script has gone up four points and is near complete with only the day-to-day dialogue needing to be taken care of which Jim will be helping us with. We have spreadsheets to fill out for each period within each day of the week per chapter. There may be some slight adjustments here and there but so far, the story is deemed 99% complete.
VOICE ACTING
No progress yet on voice acting as this is something generally done late in development when cutscenes and lines are all fully set so everyone gets an idea of what tone to go for and there won’t be any re-recordings which can cost if you’re renting out a studio. Some characters also need to be assigned voice actors but we pretty much have our pool of voice talent set thanks to Chris who will also be directing them according to the outlines laid out by Rob.
REWARDS
As some of the backer NPCs have been finalized along with a few wallpapers and backer monster designs are being worked on, rewards have gone up by two points.
We’ve stated to people that asked about reward status and we’ll say it once more, please take note that we won’t be giving out rewards until near the completion of the game as designs of characters and monsters that will be featured on wallpapers may change, the soundtrack is still being added to, art and designs for the artbook are increasing the further development goes and the shipping the figures and all of the other physical rewards separately isn’t very cost-effective.
We will be setting a period for everyone to update their addresses during the nearing of that point but if you feel the need to update us beforehand in case you’re a busy person that doesn’t always get the notifications, you can always message us on Cryamore Kickstarter about your current address change and we’ll put a note on your backer info as we have for many others that notified us of their many address changes.
WRAPPING UP
We hope you liked this VERY lenghty update and we made sure to fill it with lots of visuals to not overwhelm the eye with nothing but text.
Development continues as always and as stated in recent updates, NostalgiCO and Atlus have set their sights on a Q3 2016 release date. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it and enjoy the rest of the holidays.
Here’s to the coming year of 2016!
KravenMorehead™
Barrel Brothers.®
Awesome.
Hope this is on steam.
feelosofer
#ninergang
aside the artwork is gorgeous, and right in line with what fans of those games like. I hope it's a hit.
Looks nice
