What’s going on with Crawl?
Aside from our two-week break to make a stupid free mech basketball game, we’ve been full-steam-ahead on Crawl.
This update, we’re focusing on some core stuff to do with Menus, HUD information, and simplifying our currencies to make for better communication. Definitely not as fun as making more monsters, but we’ve been putting it off for ages so it became very important to do another pass on it all finally.
I’ve been doing a lot of mockups- here are some of the more interesting ones:
This is my basic design for what it will look/feel like when you’re actually evolving monsters- I wanted the hands to bring a little flavor, to imply that it is the god choosing and upgrading the monsters. You can see I haven’t animated the smoke effect, as that will be done with particles in game. I’ll hold off til I’ve got the real deal particle system to work with, but I’ve figured out the basic size and color/value stuff here. it’s probably a lot more saturated and purple than the final will end up, but all the ground work has been done, and that kind of minor stuff will be tweaked at the implementation stage.
You can see I’ve developed the layout/design a lot further here than I had in the evolve mockup. I’ve added some space to facilitate extra buttons here- one to look at your hero gear, one to upgrade your blobs, and one to see gameplay tips.
This is a redo for the screen that shows your hero progress for each floor- the skulls will show your kills, and the podium height will show your relative progress towards level 10. Once again the smoke hasn’t been animated, to be done properly on implementation.
Here is my mockup for the screen transitions from the end of level game screen, to the results/evolve stuff, then back to the game screen and the start of the next level.
And last we have a mockup for better showing what gear/stats your hero has when you go into the store. This one was a real headache, but it should give players an easy reminder of all the important info when they go in to buy some more stuff. Along with this HUD change, we’re reworking how the stats work in general, to make them much more easily communicated/understood.
We’ve been doing a whole lot more as well, to do with streamlining the blood/gold currencies and better communicating the Vitae (now called “Wrath”) but there isn’t much by way of interesting art to look at for that stuff, so you’ll just have to wait and see 🙂
Love those new menus! I had someone new to the game join us last weekend, and she had a bit of a problem understanding the vitae mechanics. I think the way you’ve set it up now clearly shows now whats going on, and what you need to do to play competitively. She did eventually get it though, we were just so caught up in the game that it took a bit for us to explain it to her:P
On an unrelated note, it is AWESOME that you guys support playing the game with only a mouse. Everyone forgot their controllers, so we had used my two remotes, my keyboard, and for giggles tried using the mouse to have a fourth in.. And we were extremely surprised to see it worked, and worked well!
Cheers 🙂 yeah the Vitae is not nearly as obvious as I’d like for new players- we have some more stuff planned for it, but it’s all half-baked at the moment, so I’ll update again when I have something to show for it!
Barry, as usual, this looks absolutely stunning. You guys are making awesome progress with each update. Crawl continues to be one of my all-time favorite games. I’m so glad that I got to hang out last PAX and play the shit out of this game with you. Keep the awesome updates coming!
Also, thanks for the hilarious basketball game! I love games like Super Pole Riders, so this really made me smile.
cheers Jan (haha jokes!) thanks for the support, maybe we’ll get to catch up again at the next PAX Aus! 🙂
Looks cool. Does the engine resize the monsters to fit on the god’s hands or do you have to redraw every monster standing on the hand?
Have you already asked Gabe to act as hand model, in case someone plays as “HL3”?
haha nah it’s carefully designed to work with monsters at their regular size so I don’t have to redraw them 🙂 just means the little guys will be all small on the hand which is gonna be kind of funny I think haha
All good ideas; being able to keep track of intrinsics is quite helpful.
Out of curiosity, will you be doing anything different with the “evolve” screen for a player who chose to taunt a god instead?
probably not dude- I have on my wishlist to actually draw a unique set of hands for each god (which could involve a special angry set for each taunted god) but it’s a lot of work just for a visual detail, so it’s pretty low down on the priorities list compared to more bosses and monsters I’m sorry to say- so many things I want to do, not enough time!!
Sorry, but what is a “taunt god”
in the most recent update we put in the ability to “taunt” gods- you have to play a bunch of games in to unlock them, it’s basically a different choice in the god select menu which allows you to raise the challenge for yourself by taunting a god triggering him to give you various curses to make your time harder 🙂
Could you make it so that if every human player chooses to taunt, any bots would also taunt?
Have you considered different types of shops/shopkeepers?
I’d love to do more with the shopkeeper absolutely, but it’s not super high priority, so cool extra things like that are more likely to make it into a post launch expansion if we’re successful, or into Crawl 2 if we make a sequel!
Oh. My. God. This is by far the most excited I’ve been about menus EVER. I almost creamed myself – smashing work, guys! 😀
haha cheers 🙂 it’s a bit of work exporting and putting these together into a blog post, so it’s great to see people getting something out of it! I almost didn’t bother as it’s just boring menu stuff, but the feedback is great so I’ll try to keep it up!
Every time I went to export my mockups for a post I realized the names were POO DIK and ASS and thought I’d have to change them before I export and then gave up because I couldn’t be bothered haha. Finally mustered up the effort to change DIK and ASS at least- not really sure who would be offended but it seemed like the thing to do 🙂
Powerhoof, you guys really know your shit. This is feeling really polished already, and I totally get that classic console trashtalking comradery vibe when playing it with my friends. We all love it, and we all love you!
Its so beautiful *-*
:)!
As an animation guy, I really appreciate the attention to detail and focus you guys have on making everything feel alive and polished. Crawl is always a staple on our multiplayer nights so can’t wait to see more as it comes!
cheers, it’s fun finally getting to put some animation and some juiciness into these menus which have been pretty boring just debug text for so long!
Oh balls! Looks bad ass!!! I like everything i see on this page.
cheers dude!
I would like to see optional hero/ghost cycles, like forcing every other player to play as a hero once before its your turn again, or just for fun a random cycle.
Also, to prevent someone from buying all the weapons in a store, or accidentally buying and losing your current weapon, why not have the weapon you had be placed on the store counter, instead of ot just dissappearing
interesting thought Sakke- we have discussed some different play options/modes and may still toss around more ideas for that stuff but it’s not as high priority right now as getting all the core stuff up to scratch.
As for the weapons going onto the bench, we are actually working on a system related to that right now, so you might well get your wish 🙂
Just have to wait and see what plays best for the time being
I see that dummy in the shop, does that mean you are able to test out items before you buy them? I hope so.
In the future itd be cool to see a practice mode where a player could pick mock monsters to get used to the attacks (against those dummies) and spawn a cpu in case they want tougher practice.
This all looks incrediblob!! Reaaaally lovin those hands in the monster evolve screen!
The new monster-upgrade-screen reminds me the character selection of the original “Golden Axe”. Nice touch on the new HUD I really enjoy looking at those animations. I couldn’t imagine a better looking one for Crawl until you made this post. It seems such an obvious direction now when I look at it. Awesome job!
Are there any new ways of spending gold/blood planned beside blob upgrades? I feel like there are not enough currency sinks in the game at the moment.
Barney, what do you think about introducing more build oriented dieties like Gor? I know that Crawl is an arcade game but would there be also be place for strategies like picking specific monster upgrades to have better chances against certain hero equipment sets and vice versa?
Have you considered making a totally random god? Like you get a random monster every pentagram, and to get better monsters you have to level up each set from Tier 1 monsters to Tier 2 and so on. And maybe get a different starting weapon and spell each time? I dunno, maybe just a pipe dream, but I think it would be a nice challenge and be super awesome!
The menu polish makes everything look a lot more slick. Being myself I also really like the ability to see the names of character gear at all times. Will we be seeing any armor or character customization at any point? Other than that though, keep up the great work. This is the most fun I’ve ever had with friends locally in recent memory.
This will be much anticipated! 🙂
damn I didn’t know the guys who did crawl also did Regular Human Basketball
I just kind of stumbled about RHB by accident and thought it was rad
I specifically came here looking for other games by y’all and it turns out I’ve already played it and forced my friends to play it with me
the dummy seems kinda evil, because if it is made for training, it might cause you to buy a item…that could end badly.
Cool
Release date ?
STILL NO GOLDEN HAT?? I WANT MY GOLDEN HAT BARNEY.
hahahahaha one day!
I love this game, and these screens looks amazing, but the updates seem to be so far apart. It would be cool even just to see more of the videos showing how you do the work. Anyways, I cant wait to be able to try out these cool new screens!
The hands weighing up the dudes and throwing power down looks great. Can’t wait to upgrade some blobs
(Not sure about the wall gap though) haha
yeah it’s a little off tone but not quite sure what else to try- I’ve changed the colours a bit since posting this to make it a bit more murkey greenish that fits in a little better, but it’s still not 100% on tone with the rest of the world… it needs to be more sharp/vicious/gothic in general design- it came out more flowery patterns than was intended haha
the detail in the middle of the bar/poles has come out looking like a flower too which i really don’t like haha
Are you ever going to make an expansion pack? Also this game is the best local multi player game out there great work! I am the person with steampunk expansion idea.:)
Also I was wondering could you make the level you have to be to challenge ether boss changeable and things like that. :]
Faster to recognise store items *without* box outline. Also remove *text* strength / vitality.
Confused at HUD, need more flow