Enjoy Crystalline

Thank you to everyone involved in helping make Crystalline a successful Capstone project and to all the players who showed interest in the game.  We have completed our degree program and have no plans at this time to continue on with Crystalline, instead focusing on the future and finding work in the industry.  But because there was so much interest in the game, we’ve agreed to make it available to everyone for free.

You can download it as a zipped file here: https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=AD1A6CB6EEF90886!637251&authkey=!AKDFZmtiXGahRfs&ithint=file%2czip.

A gameplay video is available at https://vimeo.com/128751201#at=0.

It’s easy to play singleplayer with bots or LAN with friends by telling them the local IP address of the host computer.  To play with people online the host will also have to forward port 7777 on their router and provide external players with your external IP address. Please keep in mind that depending on your network configuration, your external IP address may differ from the one shown in game and you may need to search ‘what is my ip’ online to get your actual external address.

Thanks again and I hope you enjoy the game!

 

LAN test

We just did a LAN test for the 4 computers we are bringing to RPI gamefest. Everything is looking good!

Crystalline’s Networked Lobby System

So our pre-game lobby is close to completion here in the Crystalline pipeline. A lot of the networking framework has been completed, and we now have a functioning lobby where people can ready up to start a game, and the server can change the game type and map to play on. In addition, the data on who is ready, what game is going to be played, and what map is going to be played is synced up across all clients.

Above you can see the game lobby screen in its current state. In addition, we have a “post-game lobby” which players go into automatically after a game, where players can see how the last game went.
The networking in the menu system is definitely shaping up. Though there is still some rearranging and bug fixes to do, the system is definitely nearing completion!

Weapon Tree

What do you think of the weapon tree for Crystalline?

ENLIST TODAY!

“The crystals belong to those who harvest them!”
The Orange Suns
ENLIST TODAY!

Controls!

 

 

New for the loading screen!

HUD Design: Inventory Display

The Weapon Element/Inventory Display is one of the most crucial elements in the design of the Crystalline HUD. Due to the weapon sandbox having a single type of ammunition it is tasked with providing the player with a litany of vital information.

First, the player must know what weapons are available to them. To achieve this goal I created silhouette sprites for each gun and massaged the actual outlines to produce several visually coherent yet unique identifiers for the different weapon types. While the player already has this information in the form of the first person gun mesh, it is important to reinforce this information to the player and follows in the tradition of first person shooters established all the way back with Wolfenstein 3D. Additionally, the sprites are designed to face the edge of the screen rather than the center in effort to accentuate the ammo readouts with the eye leading nature of the weapon barrels.

HUD sprite sheet for weapon icons.

Weapon Design: The Beam Gun

Crystalline features five guns prominently: the pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, marksman rifle and beam gun. While each gun does deserve a moment in the limelight and a discussion of its overall role in the game, my recent work with the beam gun makes it prime for discussion.

Born by an offhand comment from Nick and a need for a gun that felt unique in the sandbox, the beam gun serves as a sort of twin to the assault rifle. The beam gun is best described as a marriage of the link gun from Unreal Tournament and a Tesla Coil. When the player shoots a beam of raw green crystal energy bursts from the tip of the gun. When it makes contact with a player or damageable object it concentrates into a golden beam signifying a connection, making it evident that you have a connection to another player. Mechanically, it is classified as a variation on the assault rifle: sacrificing range and damage for ease of use.

For the most part the beam gun’s core mechanic has been retained throughout its iterations. When a player wielding the beam gun successfully lands a “hit” on an opponent or damage accepting actor in the world they acquire a “lock” on that player and apply damage so long as the player keeps the beam gun within a certain angle to the “locked” target. Naturally, this mechanic makes the beam gun extremely potent at the extent of its range, as maintaining this angle at 25 meters is far simpler than at 1 meter. Early in the lifespan of the beam gun it had a reputation for being the “Swiss Army Gun” in our weapon sandbox for this very reason (coupled with a bad first guess at balancing numbers).

Recently I’ve begun to add several enhancements to the gun to make it feel more unique and explain the mechanic to an outsider rapidly. The color/shape changing beam is intended to draw attention to a change in the state of the gun (unfocused chaos to focused), changing color as the player obtains a stronger or weaker link. Additionally, there is a first attempt at distance based damage which rewards players who are good at using the gun where it’s intended to be used, however this is experimental and requires iteration and design time that may not be feasible.

Beam Gun in action, bot with no target(left) and a target lock(right)

Map Iteration

So I know I said that the map was greenlight and good to go, but we had a play testing event the other day and noticed that there were some balance issues with the King of the Hill game mode on the map.  As of today, the only hill zone in our map is directly in the center on the platform with the gold rotating drill. The hill had a bit too much cover for players who were already inside. To try to fix this, I placed some subtractive geometry on some of the walls around the hill to open the hill up a bit more.

Originally this map was designed for another game mode in mind, but we cut that game mode from the game. And now that our game only supports Deathmatch and King of the Hill, tweaks to the map need to happen to ensure that the two game modes that we offer are fun to play in our environment. Luckily the grey box Maya version of the map isn’t to far along and those assets for the middle area aren’t made yet.  So this design tweak doesn’t impact production flow at all.

Playtesting Reports

We now have more formal playtesting reports. We have both a pre-playtest survey and a post-playtest survey. This will help us get more data for iterating on our game over the next month.