CrossCode Update #47 Battle Stuff and a New Area news

Hi again!
Sorry for being slightly late with this update.

In the last two weeks we have been working on the new grinding area, more plot, the circuit menu, background music, graphic effects and the battle system. As you can see, we also changed the design of our website! Quite the mix, right?

Teleport Effects and Close Combat Finisher

So far, enemies have been appearing with a fairly simple animation based on an alpha transition and scaling. This looked ok-ish for small enemies, but didn't quite work so well for the larger sprites of our new boss enemies. Thus, Felix sat down and created a new effect. And here is the result:

We also applied the same effect when adding destructible boxes:

Additionally, we extended close-combat attacks to include a small finisher move at the end. Previously you could just continuously bash the enemy as long as you wanted with left and right swing attacks. With the finisher move, you have 3 regular swings following a more powerful circle attack that hits enemies all around the player:

Note, that the finisher attack animation is still work-in-progress and will most likely be improved.

Anyway, not only does the rhythm of this attack pattern feel better, it also adds a bit more depth to the combat system: enemies might actually be able to escape your combo after a finisher.
Here another demonstration in a more crowded area:

New graphics for the grinding area

We already mentioned in the last update, that we planned a new area where players can do a bit of grinding.
Now this area will be a lot more open compared to the places you have seen so far. It will also feature a strikingly different scenario.

Felix started working on the graphics for this new area. Here small sneak preview:

Yes, the grinding area will be out in the nature. Note, that this screen is from a very early stage so a lot of things will change. And of course, some content will be added to give it more of a Sci-Fi feeling... But it's a start!

In addition to creating graphics, we also started planning the kind of enemies you will encounter in this area.

More Plot, Circuit Menu and Music!

We made more progress with the plot, finally implementing proper dialogues for the combat tutorial.

I has worked towards finishing the circuit menu, implementing gamepad controls. Compared to other menus, implementing gamepad support is in fact quite challenging for the circuit menu, since we don't use regular button navigation. Instead, the player will be able to freely move the cursor with the control sticks (very much like the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X). Overall, the circuit menu is about to be completed.

Finally, Intero worked on a new background theme which is will be played during an exposition sequence.

Have a preview here:

Exposition Theme

New Website Design

Check out our Blog/Website here: www.radicalfishgames.com

As you can see, we finally redesigned our blog! Some of you might have noticed how we updated the blog with the new design over the past week. Here's an overview over the changes we did:

• The RadicalFish design is now more bluish instead of purplish and uses orange as a highlight color instead of red
• The whole page follows this design. Links have a light blue color. Hovering makes them use an orange color
• Added a quick access bar on the right. It scrolls with the page and moves to the bottom if the window is to small to fit it in
• Social buttons are now visible on the top of the page. We also added share buttons to the posts! So if you liked a post, share it with your friends!
• The page automatically loads the next page of posts if you scroll to the bottom.
• Posts now start with a overview and a picture. This reduces the page load dramatically. Now you can load the page without worrying about the big gifs!

The design is not fully done. We still want to add some features (like better visuals on mobile). But we think the page improved quite a lot. What do yo think?

And this concludes today's update!