Crawle

[Sekaru]

Remember the good ole days when games used to be challenging? So do we. Crawle is essentially a survival dungeon crawler sandbox game. Crawle focuses on realistic survival using mechanics such as sanity, hunger, thirst, energy, diseases and permanent death. Your task is simple: survive.

(Note: Some of these images are pretty old)

• A randomly generated environment.
• There is no EXP in the game and therefore there are no levels - you are not restricted in any way.
• After a while your supplies will run out. Fortunately, you can visit a dungeon to grab some supplies and resources.
• Going without food will cause your character to become sick, diseases may also develop on your character from eating raw food or being around dead animals, increasing your death rate. They will also decrease certain stats.
• Dungeons can be found through holes in the ground, be careful though because sometimes you can end up in other worlds.
• There are bars for hunger, thirst, energy and sanity, if any (aside from energy) reach zero, you will die.
• Depending on the type of world you have you only have two or three chances in the world. Unforgiving mode however only gives you one chance.
• Sometimes a travelling Merchant will drop by to say hello. In the mean time, you can trade with villagers.
• Earthquakes can occur, causing new holes to appear, revealing new dungeons/caverns.
• There is no traditional health system, instead your health is based off your blood content and the damage to your body parts. You can also bleed out.
• Animals do not despawn, instead they can be skinned, picked up and taken to your house or just left to rot.
• Multi language!

http://www.sleepystudios.com (Main Site & Forums)
http://www.sleepystudios.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=45 (Crawle Board)
http://www.indiedb.com/games/crawle (IndieDB Page)

Crawle 0.5.0 PTV 3: http://sleepystudios.com/showthread.php?tid=495

 

[valkyriegames]

Hey Sekaru,

This game is a great idea and I think it'll be a a hit. I like games like this where the world is randomly generated (like minecraft or terraria), but you've added an rpg feel to it. I see in the game that your player can die of hunger, thirst, or insanity. Have you thought about playing with the insanity bit a bit more? Perhaps being completely insane won't kill you, but you'll start hallucinating monsters and dangerous pitfalls that could kill you. What do you think? It adds a bit more edge to trying to survive I think.... even if you become insane for a while.

I haven't had a shot at the game yet, but will be giving it a go shortly.

It's looking good!

 

[Sekaru]

Sanity makes more sense because being insane is derived from not being sane and it also makes more sense saying that you're sane instead of not insane. But yeah, sanity is something I could do a lot with and considering that I stole the mechanic from Amnesia in the first place I probably will do things such as hallucinations. Currently, it only deteriorates in dungeons but yeah thats definitely a possibility for the mechanic.

 

[Sekaru]

[Development] 4/3/12

Unfortunately, I haven't had much time today so I couldn't get a lot done aside from some tweaks and improvements.

The most major improvement I've done today is a hue-shift on the day-night cycle. This means that I've changed the colours to give an effect and in this case, I've created a sunset effect:

And here's a quick video to show it off in-game:
http://youtu.be/6KXNRvPGXlw

So yeah thats really all you need to know for today. I haven't done anything else game changing and I'd like to apologise for that. I definitely want to get multiplayer done very soon and after thats done its only Biomes left before 0.3.0 gets released. If Biomes take too long I'll save them for 0.4.0.

 

[Sekaru]

[Development] 5/3/12

... I've... almost... finished... multiplayer. Its so close I can almost see it. So close, in fact, that I can see it. I've managed to render players on the same map:

Unfortunately I haven't solved the issue of sending X's and Y's and rendering players on eachother's screen and sending maps over, etc. Hopefully I can finish that this week.

And the only thing aside from fixes I've removed the sunset during night:

And yeah thats about it. Hopefully I can get multiplayer done very soon. If I do finish multiplayer soon then 0.3.0 will be out a few days after.

 

[rosareven]

This is looking awesome. I've always wanted a multiplayer roguelike to play with my fiance.

 

[Sekaru]

This is looking awesome. I've always wanted a multiplayer roguelike to play with my fiance.

Heh, awesome. Unfortunately you might have to wait a little longer since I've managed to break multiplayer xD.

-----

[Super-Development] 7/4/12

Finally got a load of things done. Been playing around with a few things such as:

Earthquakes! One of the random events we said we were going to do was an earthquake event where more holes appear creating brand new dungeons. It isn't a huge addition but it gives a bit more content for when you're bored (you can never have enough dungeons).

Here's my world after an earthquake struck it:

Another new edition is about 15 new NPC names. All with their own, special reference.

But, the biggest thing I've done today is a Biomes system. Ohyes. Taken me way longer than it should have but I've started the basics of a Biome system. I say basics, but I have done quite a bit of work. Now all I have to do is put the final details on each of the biomes (i.e. give deserts cactus' and give plains tall grass, etc) and of course add in as many as possible. Unfortunately I'm not the person who decides how quickly the graphics come in :P.

Here's an early screenshot for the forest biome (at this point I hadn't made any other biomes):

And an early version of the sand biome (I'm on a super-sized world to see the biome on its own. I'm thinking of making a mode for having plain worlds like this):

Expect a load more updates for this very soon.

And apart from that, I've basically done a few things that are basically conveniences such as proper item picking up (and dropping), action messages fixes, when teleporting out of a dungeon you are returned to the last position you were in, etc.

I'm sure some of you might be wondering about multiplayer and the truth is I broke it. BUT! Since biomes seem to be working perfectly find so far I think 0.3.0 will go out with Biomes and 0.4.0 will have Multiplayer instead. I wanted to do a lot of things in this patch and I never had a main priority, therefore concentrating on the bigger features (i.e. Multiplayer) was very difficult but I promise 0.4.0 will be entirely Multiplayer-focused.

Oh and PTV2 coming soon!

 

[Sekaru]

[Deveopment] 8/4/12

Just a few more updates on seed types and biomes today. Such as:

Deserts now have cacti that spawn. Normally these Cacti would be stumps or trees but when something generates on top of sand it will be formed into its sand-biome equivalent:

I've also added desert plants (like stumps and trees, flowers will turn into desert plants if they spawn in sand):

Tall Grass has also been added to the game as well. This is a seed type on its own and will spawn in the plains and forest biomes:

And that's pretty much it. Just working on biomes and seeds, hopefully I can get a few more graphics and add a few new biomes fairly soon.

You can suggest biomes that you'd like to see here:
http://sleepystudios.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=48

 

[Sekaru]

Okay so lets start off with something I've said before: delays. A while ago I said I'd be taking a short hiatus. Unfortunately that's not possible for me since this game wouldn't even get worked on if I left it. So, I'm trying my best to work on it from time to time, getting a few things added here and there, making little tweaks. Therefore, 0.3.0 will be delayed. 0.3.0 will also be a bit different the next time you see it but we'll save that for later.

Alright so a few of the things I've done are balance related. Animals' damage is now based off their type (e.g. a bear hits harder than a chicken) and like before their health.

Earthquakes have been reduced to a 1 in 1000 chance (down from 1 in a million) because frankly, content restrictions are plain silly. Also, the Merchant spawn rate has been bumped down (a lot) and diseases have been bumped up again.

I've added another "dimension" as it were, houses (which I've mentioned before). There houses are mainly to shelter you from the night but we do have zombie invasion plans (so that they break in and murder you while you hide ;]).

The game is a lot more optimised now: worlds render and generate faster and use up a lot less memory as does the game in general. Currently I'm working on fixing a leak coming from the text rendering system that takes your FPS down by about 10.

A big thing for me to finish for 0.3.0 is world generation. Currently, I'm working on my biome system and now I've finally got round to reducing the chance of things spawning in awkward places (not quite there yet, but I have yet another idea) and having empty land. In the screenshot below you'll see that most of the world is covered up by things:

And finally here's a changelog of all the changes from this week:

# FIXES
- Fixed tree collision.
- World loading should now be much faster.

# CHANGES
- Faster intro sequence.
- Balanced out the animal's damage (and based it off what type of animal they are).
- NPC AI tweaks.

# ADDITIONS
- GUI scaling for the world info.
- Language support for the new strings.
- Added hit and impact sounds.

P.S. I think I did mention that we're on Twitter now, I'll be posting links to news there so it's a pretty damn good way to keep up to date. Also people who would like to 'beta test' new releases (not public ones) can still PM me.

 

[Sekaru]

It isn't really how I wanted to release this patch but unfortunately over the next two months I won't have time to even work on Crawle, so I've released this to try and get something out to make up for my absence. Enjoy!

Changelog below:

0.2.5 --> 0.3.0
# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- New bars.
- Improved the day-night cycle so it's more realistic.
- NPC names turn red when they become hostile (i.e. at night).
- Added a item description box.
- Added a death menu.
- Added information boxes for world modes.

# FIXES
- Fixed sound and music.
- Fixed sound and music options.
- Fixed the camera system!
- Fixed the merchant not changing to his zombie sprite at night.
- Fixed NPC names not centering.
- Fixed the save button in the options menu not working.
- Fixed inputs not being recognized.
- Fixed action messages (e.g. "Level Up!").
- Fixed pressing esc in menus opening the options window.
- Fixed chests being able to give you multiple portions of EXP.
- Fixed diseases not properly generating.
- Fixed diseases not properly clearing.
- Fixed chests blocking.
- Fixed world border collision.
- Fixed spawning outside dungeons after logging out.
- Fixed tree collision.
- World loading should now be much faster.
- Fixed resizing in fullscreen mode.
- Fixed music in the options menu.
- Fixed action message positioning and fading.
- Fixed item drops jumping about.

# CHANGES
- New random generation.
- Reduced Merchant spawn rate.
- Increased disease rate.
- Going below 50% hunger or thirst will drain your health.
- Dungeons are no longer saved in the world file.
- All worlds except Unforgiving worlds are now based on 'death chances':
- Die once: sent back to respawn point.
- Die twice: lose items, exp, etc.
- Die three times: like Unforgiving mode, your world is deleted.
- Hard mode only has two chances: lose items, exp, etc and permadeath.
- Reverted dungeons back to old maze format, temporarily.
- Even more code cleaning!
- NPCs now respawn every 30 seconds.
- Improved NPC AI to comply with the new collision system.
- Folder cleaning.
- Added more NPCs to dungeons.
- Time is now saved in the world data folder.
- Removed F to unlock FPS.
- Randomised the spawn point.
- Added a border around the world.
- Increased the energy regen rate.
- Sound engine no longer loads if music or sound isn't enabled.
- Chests now open (visually) after being used.
- Attacking is now based off energy and health.
- Balanced disease rate a bit more.
- Randomised the Merchant spawn point.
- The Merchant will now leave if you enter a dungeon.
- You can now delete multiple worlds.
- NPCs now drop loot. Stays on the ground for 30 seconds.
- NPCs' attack hits are now based off their health.
- All inventory items are now dropped on your 2nd death.
- Attached the inventory to the player files.
- Items now drop to the ground (and are pickup-able).
- Earthquakes!
- Changed the position of returning from a dungeon to stop holes bugging out.
- Rewrote the village system.
- Made the amount of villagers dependent on the amount of houses.
- Changed baskets to follow chest logic.
- Dungeons are now saved in the world file.
- Dungeons now have a randomised spawn area.
- Animals no longer become 'evil' animals at night. Realism, etc.
- Bunnies now have a 70% chance to run away from you.
- Faster intro sequence.
- Balanced out the animal's damage.
- Animals' damage are now based on the type of animal they are.
- NPC AI tweaks.
- The intro can now be skipped using Space.
- Folder structure and name changes.
- Chests, baskets and pots now give you items instead of EXP.
- You now need at least 14 energy to run now.
- You lose 10 energy for not sleeping at night.
- Villagers now spawn outside their specific houses.
- Villagers now spawn with a random direction.
- Villagers' names are now saved.
- Combat is now click-to-attack instead of walk-into-to-attack.
- Easy mode no longer has permadeath.

# ADDITIONS
- Health bar.
- Holes now teleport you to dungeons.
- Collisions.
- EXP bar.
- You now gain 15 EXP per day and 30 EXP per week.
- Very minimal and temporary combat system.
- NPC health bars.
- Dungeon portals to teleport you back home.
- Escape to exit to the main menu whilst not in-game.
- F to hide/show the GUI.
- M to hide/show world info.
- Added action messages.
- Proper inventory system.
- More NPC names.
- Biomes.
- New seed type: long grass.
- New seed type: cactus.
- New seed type: dead weed.
- New seed type: sandstone.
- Improved the world generator to be more realistic.
- Cut down on world generation time significantly.
- Dungeon themes.
- Chickens!
- Dungeon pots.
- Added back running.
- You can now enter houses!
- GUI scaling for the world info.
- Language support for the new strings.
- Hit and impact sounds.
- 'Miss', 'Dodge' and 'Parry' luck rates.
- N to return to the menu (while in-game).
- Right-clicking the 'world mode' button will not cycle it backwards.

Download:
http://www.downloads.sleepystudios.com/ ... taller.rar

 

[Sekaru]

First of all let me just apologize for the lack of updates. I've already mentioned that this is the time of the year where I have exams and can't really spend much time on any of my hobbies (i.e. programming) and since no one else on the team is able to program I've been doing small things bit by bit.

The first major change is the much cleaner and generally better looking world gen. This came about from doing a speed-programming session (however I found the bug that caused worlds to look ugly after the session). Things will no longer (or shouldn't) spawn in places where they shouldn't be, such as trees in water and flowers on stone. Here are a few screenshots of this 'new' world generation:

In addition to this new world generation, I've also added a new Swamp biome. The graphics for the plantlife and other things in the swamp are still in development, but here's a screenshot of it in it's current state:

On top of that, our new pixel artist, Gol3m, has created a brand new dungeon theme including a brand new monster: scorpions!

Although these were implemented in 0.3.0, they never really looked good or served a purpose. House interiors have been revamped with a whole new set a graphics, here's an early mockup (a few things have been added but it's still very much in development):

Our plan at the moment is to create a handful of interior styles and apply a random one to each house.

Now let's move on to something that has been asked for time and time again, the ability to name your worlds. It's finally here! To be honest, this took me two minutes despite me dismissing it as impossible almost 3 months ago.

As you can see my three worlds are named. And yes, there will be easter egg worlds for worlds with "special" names.

So finally, I've added a very basic NPC interaction system, you simply click an NPC to talk to him (like you would if you were attacking an animal). This will bring up this very culturally-aware written interaction box:

That's it for all the visual stuff, here's the changelog, it's got a load of fixes and changes. Oh and I'd like your opinions on whether or not world deletion should have a password system or simply a confirmation box:

0.3.1a --> 0.4.0
# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- Updated the disease graphic.
- Fixed up the item description box.
- Completely new and revamped house interior graphics.
- New sandstone edges.
- New tree types: willows and dead trees.

# FIXES
- Hitting no in the esc menu in fullscreen mode should no longer quit the game.
- You can no longer create new worlds if you already have 3 worlds.
- World data folders should now properly be cleared.
- Various optmisations.
- Fixed random teleportation to dungeons (non-existant holes).
- Fixed the random tree leaves without stumps.
- The enter key should no longer break textboxes.
- Fixed some NPCs not having names.

# CHANGES
- You can no longer press the delete button if you have no worlds to delete.
- You can now only press the play button if you're in "delete mode".

# ADDITIONS
- The ability to name your world!
- Worlds can now be password-locked.
- House exits.
- New dungeon theme.
- Varied tree heights.
- Cleaner and generally better looking world generation.
- 20 new NPC names!
- Olaf the Farmer.
- NPC interaction (click to talk).

 

[Sekaru]

I thought I'd work on Holes and the whole dungeon system a bit more today. For one thing, Holes that spawn in sand will always teleport you to Sand-Themed Dungeons.

Also, in order to prevent yourself from falling through the universe, you now need to put down Ladders by clicking a Hole, and it'll look like this:

If you want the explanation why you don't die if Ladders exist then read this Official explanation:

Portals in Crawle are made of Sekaruium. Sekaruium only creates Sekaruium solution (which is the portal-entering substance in the middle) when it reacts with wood that is in a ladder-like shape. Because of this you can go through portals and not go through the universe and that's why not having a ladder will kill you.

You'll get this lovely message if you forget to place down a ladder:

Now, keeping up our reputation of making what most would consider as one of the most dickest games out there, there is a 1 in 50 chance that you will slip off the ladder and die before the ladder has reacted with the Sekaruium. You'll get this message:

That's about it. Good news though! Exams are starting to spread out more now and so I should have a load more free time ;].

 

[Sekaru]

I tried to do quite a lot today, ended up adding quite a few new things but not as much as I wanted (but those things will be added very, very soon).

First of all, I've added Carpets, Fireplaces and Beds as well as fixed the house generation significantly (things should no longer spawn outside the house interior, etc):

I've also made houses slightly smaller:

Finally I've completely revamped the tutorial, it is now in pages and is more clean and informative:

Apart from that there's only been a few fixes and changes but here's the changelog for the patch so far:

0.3.1a --> 0.4.0
# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- Updated the disease graphic.
- Fixed up the item description box.
- Completely new and revamped house interior graphics.
- New sandstone edges.
- New tree types: willows and dead trees.

# FIXES
- Hitting no in the esc menu in fullscreen mode should no longer quit the game.
- You can no longer create new worlds if you already have 3 worlds.
- World data folders should now properly be cleared.
- Various optmisations.
- Fixed random teleportation to dungeons (non-existant holes).
- Fixed the random tree leaves without stumps.
- The enter key should no longer break textboxes.
- Fixed some NPCs not having names.
- Fixed the wrong amount of chairs and tables spawning in houses.
- Fixed and improved house generation.
- Fixed combat sounds being cut off.
- Fixed chests giving EXP instead of items.
- Hitting 'N' to go back to the menu should now properly save the world.

# CHANGES
- You can no longer press the delete button if you have no worlds to delete.
- You can now only press the play button if you're in "delete mode".
- Holes now need Ladders in order for you to not die.
- You have a 1 in 50 chance of dieing whilst going down a Hole with a Ladder.
- Removed the binary language.

# ADDITIONS
- The ability to name your world!
- Worlds can now be password-locked.
- House exits.
- New dungeon theme.
- Varied tree heights.
- Cleaner and generally better looking world generation.
- 20 new NPC names!
- NPC interaction (click to talk).
- Ladders can now be added to Holes.
- Carpets.
- Fireplaces.
- Beds.

In other news, I've also made a little portal-like thing for Crawle!
http://www.sleepystudios.com/crawle

 

[Toams]

this is slowly becoming a pretty cool dev blog, keep it up!

 

[Vivisector 9999]

This looks potentially interesting, but when I try to run it (after installing 0.3.0), I get this error message: "Component 'msinet.ocx' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid". I have a Windows 7 system...

 

[Sekaru]

this is slowly becoming a pretty cool dev blog, keep it up!

Thanks!

This looks potentially interesting, but when I try to run it (after installing 0.3.0), I get this error message: "Component 'msinet.ocx' or one of its dependencies not correctly registered: a file is missing or invalid". I have a Windows 7 system...

sleepystudios.com/showthread.php?tid=285 That should fix it.

Though I'm pretty sure MSINET came with the client, I'll fix it for the next patch.

-----

Just a fairly few necessary things that should've been in the game a while ago have been added today.

You can finally click items to use them! Currently the only things you can use are consumables.

Secondly I've expanded on the tutorial a bit more, here are all the different stages and tutorials:

That's about it, I got a few more things to add, balance and fix before this patch is released.

 

[Sekaru]

Woohoo! 0.4.0 is out! Simply open up your updater and let it patch!

So some of the thing's I've in the past... while include a brand new options screen:

I've yet to do an actual volume slider (stop begging, it's coming. gosh.) but everything else is pretty much done there. Tell me what you think (anyone who says the old one is better will die a slow and painful death).

You can also see in the screenshot that there are new buttons for Languages and Resolution. These new buttons also have right-click support.

That's really about it for visual stuff. I've done a load of fixes, changes and literally rewrote all of the major systems in Crawle over the past 2 days so the game should hopefully be waaaay more optimised.

Here's the changelog!
0.3.1a --> 0.4.0
# KNOWN BUGS
- NPC names are not functioning well, they've been turned off.

# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- Updated the disease graphic.
- Fixed up the item description box.
- Completely new and revamped house interior graphics.
- New sandstone edges.
- New tree types: willows and dead trees.
- Revamped the options menu buttons.
- Revamped the mode buttons.
- Revamped the options menu.
- Language options are now in their specific language.

# FIXES
- Hitting no in the esc menu in fullscreen mode should no longer quit the game.
- You can no longer create new worlds if you already have 3 worlds.
- World data folders should now properly be cleared.
- Various optmisations.
- Fixed random teleportation to dungeons (non-existant holes).
- Fixed the random tree leaves without stumps.
- The enter key should no longer break textboxes.
- Fixed some NPCs not having names.
- Fixed the wrong amount of chairs and tables spawning in houses.
- Fixed and improved house generation.
- Fixed combat sounds being cut off.
- Fixed chests giving EXP instead of items.
- Hitting 'N' to go back to the menu should now properly save the world.
- Fixed sprite walking.
- You can no longer gain sanity whilst having a sanity-based disease.

# CHANGES
- You can no longer press the delete button if you have no worlds to delete.
- You can now only press the play button if you're in "delete mode".
- Holes now need Ladders in order for you to not die.
- You have a 1 in 50 chance of dieing whilst going down a Hole with a Ladder.
- Removed the binary language.
- You no longer drop all your items in easy mode on death.
- You only lose a third of your exp in easy mode and half on normal mode when you die.
- You now only drop 3 random items in normal mode.
- Shortened disease rates in normal and easy mode.
- Lengthened disease rates in hard and unforgiving mode.
- Tree's no longer have a randomised height (variations coming soon).
- NPCs are now saved into the world file.
- NPC locations in dungeons are now saved.
- Rewrote the item system, works a lot better now.

# ADDITIONS
- The ability to name your world!
- Worlds can now be password-locked.
- House exits.
- New dungeon theme.
- Varied tree heights.
- Cleaner and generally better looking world generation.
- 20 new NPC names!
- NPC interaction (click to talk).
- Ladders can now be added to Holes.
- Carpets.
- Fireplaces.
- Beds.
- New tutorials! (+ Revamped the old one).
- Consumable items (fully functional this time).
- Crit system (20% chance).
- Right-click support to screen resolution options and language options.
- 10 new items.
- 2 new item types: material and misc.

 

[Sekaru]

We're not dead! We're working on some... stuff. Anyway as I did promise that there would be a load of big things in 0.5.0 here's the building system that I've finally got around to implementing. There is a lot of work left to do on it and there're a plethora of ideas and thoughts going into this system - it won't be your average click to place block system.

Here's a video of the basic building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdkO1GQMn28

And an image:

Apart from that I'm sorry but I really haven't had enough time to do anything immensely fascinating apart from very minor bugs and tweaks to world generation and the game in general. However! You can expect more in the coming days (weeks... months... this is gonna be a big one) and trust me, with what I've got planned in this patch it will be worth it.

While I'm at it and creating some amazing system and game-changing mechanics I'd like to hear your thoughts - what would YOU like in 0.5.0? Bear in mind realism though. No space unicorns. Never. Again.

 

[LaDestitute]

Totally dig the graphics.

 

[Sekaru]

Thanks :D.