Crystal Caverns | Patreon Weekly #224

Hey Patrons, in this weekly I’m going to share some early implementation progress on the crystal region for the new caves quest!

Firstly though, there’s a new Shattered Secrets this week! In it I share some early ideas for a possible demon halls quest!

Also, next week’s weekly will have an audio Q&A segment! Feel free to ask questions either here or on the Patreon discord.

And finally, here are the results from Patreon Poll #45:
Crystal Caves:               59%
Unstable Encampment: 44%
Mushroom Forest:         41%
There’s a clear preference for the Crystal environment here, but I am happy that none of the environments did too poorly compared to the others. In particular I’m glad to see the unstable encampment doing well here, considering that the older ‘gnoll encampment’ concept did poorly on a previous poll.

Content Crystalizing

So, with the poll results locked in, I’ve spent a bit of time on some early crystal caves work and have some early progress to share! (keep in mind that crystal visuals are still a WIP, I’m aware they look too regular and bright atm)

In addition to the crystals scattered around, you should be able to make out four distinct crystal circles as well. The three smaller ones will each contain a crystal guardian, that will slumber until you either open a path to it or attack the crystal spire. The larger circular area will contain the spire itself. Crystal wisps will be peppered around the level as normal and will respawn randomly as well.

I don’t have any sprites to show for them yet, but I have gotten some implementation work done on the regular crystal enemies.

Wisps are a flying enemy with a ranged attack that can move through crystals but can’t shoot through them. Crystals are solid terrain for everyone else, so I was worried that implementing logic for them to be able to move through crystals might be tricky, but it was actually surprisingly straightforward. Their basic behaviour seems to be working quite well, where their ability to move through crystals can often be used to your advantage to bait them into melee range, but also means that they can move around much more freely than you can.

Crystal guardians are also fully working, with logic to both stay asleep if they can’t reach you, but also to selectively break crystals if they are aggroed. Normally they’ll become aggressive if you attack the spire, but things like a scroll of rage will also cause them to wake up and start moving toward you. While they aren’t quite a large enemy, they do have trouble moving through enclosed spaces, so kiting them around those is a great way to keep them off your tail. I haven’t decided yet, but I am mulling over making them invincible in a similar way to ghouls, which might both really hammer home that they’re not to be fought, while also giving some incentive for doing it anyway, as disabled guardians will stay out of your way for a little while.

I’m planning to get a bunch more work done here over the next week, if all goes well an alpha for this region might not be too far off.