1: Outline to Alpha! news

Outline to Alpha!

So where have we been? It’s been a while since the first post we made, but we are back and this time we have a roadmap to follow and lots of cool stuff to show! The first phase of testing (pre alpha) for Crystal Kin should fall somewhere around June, with fortnightly updates from now onwards! Each post will contain a written section about the intended game play of Crystal Kin as well as art, engine, sound etc updates and so forth.

NPC system expanded:

“Procedurally generated maps, which include bosses; NPC factions, random monsters and scripted events that are triggered throughout the game.”

As mentioned above each update will include a write-up dedicated to game play features of Crystal Kin, so here is this week’s! One of the main things we wanted to do with this game was to make the world feel alive and part of that will come with the persistent online sever map mode (very different from the competitive mode, but we will go over these another time). The other way of doing this was to have the maps feel dangerous and random, requiring the player to react to their surroundings. Exploring and surviving the map is going to be just as difficult as surviving the enemy players. Today we will be going over the ‘random monster’ elements of the map, which are different from map bosses, NPC factions and scripted events (these will all have their own dedicated articles in future updates).

The monsters will interact with the player and map in different ways depending on the type of monster, they will all drop loot in the form of resources and have a low chance of dropping blacksmith and magic spell patterns. All the random monsters fit into one of three categories; hostile, meaning they will attack you on sight, as well as possibly try to attack your base, neutral-aggressive, these will defend their territory but aren’t likely to chase you very far and neutral -passive, these monsters won’t attack unless provoked by you first and can even be persuaded to help you.

The Boar

This majestic creature roams the map striking fear into the hearts of humans and rock men alike! Ok, so there isn’t boar currently, but there will be plenty of different animals and creatures roaming the map or living in dens. The animals and creatures will mainly be neutral-aggressive with some of the larger creatures being hostile.

Bandits

The most aggressive types of monsters and work in groups. Driven by greed they will attempt to invade your supply lines and steal resources… before running away like cowards. They will attempt to distract you by attacking towers and walls, while sneaking around the back to steal resources. We expect everyone to dislike bandits, but in the real world you wouldn’t just be able to build your town in peace.

Nomads

Different from the NPC factions, will be groups of characters who will defend their territory and move around the map setting up small camps as they go. Nomads are groups of breakaways from the three main factions in the game and because of this they will act differently depending on what faction you are. This group will have similar rules to the NPC factions, which will be discussed in a later post.

The Mercenary

Whether he is on his own or in a small group you can count on him to extort significant amounts of gold out of you for minimal labour! Mercenaries are generally passive to players unless paid to act otherwise, and will roam around the map in small groups seeking work. Challenging mercenaries in combat will allow the player to beat them into submission, forcing them to work for the player temporarily (they will try to desert you, so keep a close eye… and a large force near them).

Engine preview:

The engine has had quite a lot of updates recently, support for multi lighting, different variation of particle effects and more! The video below briefly (briefly being five minutes…it’s a pretty large engine) goes over some of the things the game engine can currently do.

That's it now! The next update will be in two weeks from now, but until then you can follow us on Twitter @Crystal_Kin or at Facebook, as well as our Devlog at TGIforums. Thanks for reading!