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!

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.

Final UE4 Greybox

Layout has been set. Play-tested approved. Time to move from the UE4 (fast paced iteration / layout focused) greybox to the maya (environment art / visually appealing) greybox. Goodbye UE4 bsp cubes. Hello maya custom geometry and modular component prefabs.

Steam Network Integration!

Hey guys,
So today I got Steam wired into our game, so we can play over the Steam network. One caveat is that you need a Steam account to play, but that’s a small price to pay for the things it adds.

For example, it will automatically add the Steam names in as our names, so we can finally tell who is winning and who is losing. In addition, these additions were a byproduct of trying to get searching for games to work, which is now functional.

Overall, our game is shaping up a lot in terms of networking functionality. It is still lacking in aspects such as a pregame lobby, but at the same time our game is playable from a networking standpoint, and we are making good time for the end of the semester.