Crisis Point: Extinction - Lewd Metroidvania (2019 Public Demo now available!)

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everybody! This week's update will be relatively short, I spent most of it talking to voice actresses to try and fill the role of the new NPC being added. I put out some casting calls, and the response has been enormous! I can't overstate how many talented actresses are out there in the NSFW scene; compared to our previous casting calls, it's taken much more time than I expected to talk to every one about CPE and the character, not to mention listening to demo reels and auditions, giving feedback, and more. I'd hire all of them if I could, the amount of talent on display is staggering, but I think we're narrowing down the options and I should be able to hire someone for the character pretty soon.

 

 

That's not all I did though, of course - I also spent some time on a few personal programming ideas I've been wanting to try (which went swimmingly, by the way, and once I get enough time I might be able to use them to upgrade Crisis Point's lighting engine a bit), and as you can see by the gif up above, I also started the process of adding mouse support to Crisis Point's menus! I've wanted to do this for a while, and after getting a comment recently from someone with a non-US keyboard, who had great difficulty rebinding their controls due to the different keyboard layout, I realized how much more important it was than I originally thought. Even though it wasn't in my original plans for v0.36, this update's development has been going well, and I wanted to see if I can squeeze it in - and at the very least, it's fully functional for the main menu, options base menu, and controls menu now! Note that this DOES NOT mean Crisis Point will be getting GAMEPLAY mouse support - I have no plans on adding mouse support to gameplay itself, ONLY menus, as many parts of the gameplay design of Crisis Point (8 directional aiming, no strafing, etc) would fall apart completely with mouse aiming. That being said, hopefully I can get all of the menus fully functional with mouse support by the time this update comes out. It feels pretty great to navigate them this way, not gonna lie!

 

Alright, that's all I have for you guys this week. Thanks for tuning in, and for continuing to support us! Ever since finishing The Great Rework™ it's really felt like we're picking up the pace, and I can't wait to see where we end up!

 

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everyone! Sooo, small apology out of the way first - I only did any major work on one thing this week. You remember how last week, I mentioned I was doing some tinkering with programming ideas I've had, and that one of the things I tried might be usable in Crisis Point to upgrade our lighting, which I would try doing when I had time? Yeah well, turns out that time is now. I got too excited about the idea of a lighting engine upgrade and decided to dive straight into it the day after making that post. The bad news is that there were some issues in my original implementation, and the way Crisis Point's rendering worked was incompatible with the system, which meant that I had a lot of bugfixing to do and I had to rework CPE's rendering quite a bit. The GOOD news is.. well, just look at the pictures.

 

I'm still tweaking values, so it might look a bit different once the update comes out than it does here, but hopefully the images speak for themselves; it's far from the most impressive or complex lighting engine ever made, but it's a tremendous upgrade from our old lighting if you ask me. Even in the more subtle areas like the Deep Soil, I feel it adds a lot more to the atmosphere, and I hope you agree!

If you're at all interested in how the lighting works: I'll avoid getting too technical, but the old system was about as simple as you can get. After the rest of the game was drawn, I overlaid a dark, partially-transparent, slightly tinted rectangle over the screen, and then any sources of light would "cut out" parts of that rectangle to prevent those areas being covered up by the dark layer. The system certainly worked for making an area darker, but because the entire overlay is one single color overlaid on top of the game, the overall effect is kind of drab and monotone. It doesn't care what color the original pixel was, everything is darkened towards the same color. NOW, we use a relatively similar concept, except instead of just overlaying a dark rectangle and cutting parts out, I use a shader to multiply the colors of each individual pixel based on the colors I want the area's darkness to have - so for example, in the Catacombs, it emphasizes the blue and red while reducing the green, to give everything a dark purple tint. This creates a MUCH wider variety of colors on screen, since it creates the new color based on what the old color was, making every scene more vibrant and interesting - especially darker scenes, like the Catacombs.

 

So like I said before, that's all I really worked on this week (outside of small things like continuing to find an actress for the new NPC). Sorry if you were hoping for a bigger update, I just got excited about the idea of a lighting engine update and I had to work on it :' ) It's not quite done yet, I have a lot of tinkering I need to do to make sure EVERY area looks good, but even though it took more work than I hoped it would, I'm really happy with the way it came out, and I hope you will be too!

 

That's it for me this week, everybody! Thanks so much for supporting us, and for letting me indulge in a not-strictly-necessary-but-exciting-(at-least-for-me) update like this one. I'll do my best to make sure there's more to report on next week, and hopefully this little detour won't push the update back at all - I'll keep you in the loop on that one as we get further in the month. See you in next week's update!

 

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!) 

 

Hey everybody! This week's update is gonna be on the small side, and there are no visuals. To be honest, we kinda blew our load in regards to showing stuff off for this update cycle; most of the stuff we have left to do won't really result in anything fun to show off. Sorry about that.

 

 

The majority of what I did this week involved continuing work on the things I've talked about in the past few weeks - implementing mouse support for the menus, fixing more issues with the new lighting engine, and continuing work on the new NPC and cutscenes. Since it's not particularly interesting, I won't get into detail on any of those except to say that they're going well.

 

Aside from that, I also went ahead and implemented recolor variants on the Warped Sentries, to go along with all the other enemy recolors. I think the majority of enemies have recolors now, so thankfully I'll be done with that before long.

 

Some of you may have noticed Orex hasn't been streaming lately and that's because he's been working on the NPC animations we need for this update, which are aaaaalmost done! I think I might have mentioned it before, but just to make sure everyone knows, there ARE NO H-SCENES with the new NPC this update. They'll get H-scenes eventually, but not in this update, so please don't expect any - we had our hands full animation-wise with the BE rework, cutscene animations, and finishing the Lurker BE climax scene.

 

Kuso has been working hard on the next CG rework, which will be for the Warped Soldier paizuri scene this time. I also wrote the outline for the Poison Alraune CG this week, so hopefully if Kuso's work goes smoothly, we should be able to include that CG in this update, too!

 

 

Alright, that's about all I have this week. Sorry if the update is disappointing at all, but right now we're mostly just heads down working on things that need to be done, even if they aren't exciting. The rest of this update cycle is likely going to be very similar, but I'll try to at least get you guys some CG previews or something to hopefully keep things a little more interesting. Either way, thank you very much for your patience and support, and I'll see you in next week's update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everyone. Like I said in the last weekly update, most of what I have left to work on isn't particularly exciting to show off - I'm mostly spending my time continuing work on the things I talked about in PREVIOUS weekly updates, like the new lighting system (which still has a few kinks to work out), the cutscenes and new NPC, and mouse support for the menus.

 

 

First off, here's the one fun thing I DO have to show off this week - the Warped Soldier CG rework Kuso finished up recently. This is the first image in the set, and the full thing will be available with v0.36 once it comes out.

 

Aside from that, here's a general status update on all of the things I'm still working on for this update.

-I have almost everything I need to get the cutscenes fully implemented (will likely only take a day once I have all the parts), so thanks to the efforts of our voice actors and Orexius on animation, those will definitely be in this time.

-Mouse support will be complete for the options menus specifically, but possibly not in the rest of the menu, as we're getting close to the deadline and I'm starting to prioritize what I really want to get done in time.

-The lighting engine should be in acceptable enough position before long. I haven't done extensive testing on performance, but I think the new lighting engine is a bit more demanding than the previous one, so I want to do a bit of optimization on it and possibly add in some menu options for lowering the complexity on particularly weak computers. I don't think I'll have menu options in this update, but I'll be able to do those optimizations at least, and I believe it will be enough that if your computer ran previous versions of the game well, it shouldn't be any different.

-I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but the BE rework is basically done at this point, there's just a few minor tweaks I have to make to the animation system to accomodate some of the BE animation variants that have extra frames for the sake of jiggle.

 

All in all, it's unlikely that I'll have time to add more areas to explore in the Catacombs (I'm really sorry that keeps getting pushed back further - it's my focus 100% in the next update if it doesn't happen this time), BUT I'm also pretty confident I can get the update done this month and not have to delay it majorly. Anyway, that's about all I have to say for this week - sorry again for the boring update, and you can probably expect another similar one next week, just with everything a lot closer to being finished. Game dev can't always be glamorous unfortunately :' ) Thank you very much for sticking with me everyone, and I'll see you in next week's update.

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our v0.36 update post! If you like what you see, you can pledge $10 or more to download v0.36 and play it right now!)

 

Hey everybody! Before I get started, I want to apologize for not posting much of anything here in the past few weeks. We ran out of exciting update stuff to talk about and just had to put our heads down and work to get the update out as soon as possible; I kept updating on Patreon every week, but they were just status updates without anything to show off. However, Crisis Point: Extinction v0.36 is now finally finished and ready for play.. mostly! I want to say first off that this is a somewhat early release - the Poison Alraune CG isn't quite done, but that and the new NPC's voice acting are the only assets we're missing now, and I simultaneously don't want to delay the update any further, and don't want to rush the art and compromise quality. Because of that, the Poison Alraune CG is absent from this initial release; once the Poison Alraune CG is done, I will be updating v0.36 using the same download link as the one I'm sending out right now, so keep that link handy! I'll post again notifying everyone as soon as the CG update is out, but I won't be sending out links again to avoid spamming people.

 

With that out of the way, let's get into it!

 

UPDATE v0.36 MAJOR CHANGES AND ADDITIONS

-Design and implement new NPC and cutscenes in the Summit (WARNING: The new NPC is currently missing voice acting)

-Completely reworked BE status effect to remove the movement-inhibiting debuff; now, Alicia has full movement and abilities during BE, but it now causes Alicia's libido to slowly rise over time. If she touches an enemy, an H-scene will begin immediately, and finishing any H-scene (or masturbating) will remove BE status.

-Updated lighting engine to use a new colour-shifting shader method instead of transparent flat color overlays, making the lighting effects much more varied as it now respects the original color of each pixel more

-Implemented mouse controls for main menu and all Options menus (no other menus have mouse support right now)

-Reworked the Flare Shot's first skill point upgrade completely, now it will not cause problems with starting H-scenes

-Implemented enemy recolors for Tentacles and Warped Sentries

-Add in reworked Warped Soldier CG by Kuso

-Added a few more environmental conversations

-Added proper climax animation for Lurker BE H-scene

-Fixed a small amount of bugs and minor issues

 

The big things this update are the BE rework, and the new NPC and cutscenes in the Summit. I won't spoiler the cutscenes themselves, but I will say that getting them in now was necessary for the game's level design going forward; the cutscenes change the way progression works, and now you can access the Catacombs as soon as you kill the boss of the Summit. This opens up a lot more freedom in what order the player chooses to explore; after you get the Dash, you can either go straight for Boss 2 or head for the Deep Soil. If you kill Boss 2, you can access the Catacombs before ever going to the Deep Soil, completely changing up the progression path. To put it simply, it's an attempt to inject some nonlinearity into the way the player progresses through the game, and I hope you guys enjoy it!

 

UPDATE v0.37 GOALS

-Add in new enemy, Torguis (the blue orc-like enemies from early in development)

-Create more areas to explore

-Finishing adding mouse support to other parts of the menu

-Rework save system to fix issue where you cannot transfer saves between computers (NOTE: this change will invalidate all previous saves and you'll have to start from scratch)

-Rework some level designs in the Catacombs to allow the player to explore it without Omnidash and Kilogrip abilities, then move Omnidash to further in the game (it's currently accessible earlier than I planned)

-Rework more outdated CGs

-Add more environmental conversations

-Fix more bugs and minor issues

 

So v0.37 will be primarily focused on finally adding new content and stuff to explore. As I mentioned above, the Catacombs is now accessible without getting the Kilogrip in the Deep Soil; because of that, some level design in the Catacombs needs to be changed. At the same time, I plan on moving the Omnidash further into the game so you can't access it quite as early; with the Catacombs accessible earlier, you can upgrade the Dash into the Omnidash very quickly, which devalues the base dash a bit too much imo. Along with that, we'll be adding the Torguis enemy, a long-awaited addition that some of you might remember; he's the first ever enemy I designed for Crisis Point, but he never got proper attacks or animations, only a pair of H-scenes. He'll be appearing in the Catacombs, which makes now the perfect time to reintroduce him!

 

As far as porn content for v0.37 goes, I'll probably do a poll later on to ask what CG we should rework next, but once Kuso is done with the Poison Alraune CG I plan on having him move right into the Torguis CG, to make sure it's ready for the update. I can't guarantee the Torguis sprite H-scenes will be ready in time, but we'll do our best to make sure they are. If we SOMEHOW get all of that done and still have time, I'll make a poll about what other porn content we should do next.

 

 

Alright, that's about enough out of me for today. Before I go, thank you so much to all of our wonderful Patrons for your endless support and patience! An extra special thanks goes out to our top patrons from this update cycle:

Keeg

HOELS

Wangarang

crisis

DevilMayCraft

LukBobTanbou

Thank you all so much for your generosity, and I hope you enjoy v0.36 of Crisis Point: Extinction!

 

 

 

 

 

v0.36 MINOR CHANGES AND BUGFIXES

 

-Fixed a bug that caused Alicia's sex voices to mute after BE vines grabbed her

-Fixed a bug that was causing difficulty level to affect Warped Sentry attacks more than it should

-Fixed the position of one of the Curled Vines in the Deep Soil being slightly away from the wall

-Fixed Warped Soldier death animation in camp repeating 3 times with different color palettes

-Gamejolt page link added to the end of demo screen

-Fixed a handful of spots on the map that were unreachable, even with debug

-Fixed bug where Skill Point pickups would list incorrect numbers if you spent skill points just before picking one up

[Anon_42]

(Sorry this is a few days late, I completely spaced out on posting it everywhere! The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everybody. Gonna be a small update this week, I don't want to get into my personal issues too much but I've been dealing with a lot of jaw pain this week that's been making it hard to focus. We did get some good stuff done this week, though.

 

For my part, the main thing I worked on this week was overhauleing the save system, as mentioned in the plans for v0.37. Not only does the new save system allow you to share your save files or move them between computers (which I never wanted to prevent, it was an unintended side effect of the encryption I used), but I mentioned in the v0.37 plans that the new save system would invalidate previous saves - however, I was able to work around that and allow you to still load your v0.36 saves, at which point it will create a new save using the new system. The new save system is already complete and was a resounding success all around.

 

I also worked on refactoring some code this week, something I've been wanting to do for some time now but haven't ever found the time to do. It's not all that exciting, but it just means that the code I'm refactoring will be laid out in a cleaner fashion and will be easier to work with in the future.

 

Aside from what I did, Orexius has been working hard on our next enemy - which some of you might recognize from way back in the early days of CPE, and others might recognize from the new NPC introduced in v0.36. Here's one of the animations he's worked on.

 

 

That's all for this week's update. Thanks so much for reading and supporting us, everybody, and we'll see you in next week's update.

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everybody. Sorry about not updating at all last week - the last few weeks have been absolutely brutal on me. The jaw issues I mentioned a few updates ago have only continued to get worse, I'm seeing a dentist about the issues now because they're clearly not going away on their own, but I have no idea when I'll be able to solve them and get some level of normalcy back in my life. That's not what the update is about though, so I won't talk about my personal issues much.

 

The good news is, despite my issues, the team has been working hard and absolutely KILLING it lately. As you all know, Orexius has been hard at work animating the Torguis enemy, who will be finally making his long-awaited debut in v0.37. Let's take a look at some of those animations in action now! None of his attacks have working hitboxes yet, so please excuse the lack of hit reactions on Alicia's part.

First up is their regular attack. Attack speeds and such are still being tweaked, but if you stay near the Torguis and give him the time, he'll reel back and deal a straight lunging punch. If you try to run away from the Torguis, however..

He doesn't take kindly to that. Trying to run away will send him into chase mode, where he'll dash after you incredibly quickly, faster than any other enemy in Crisis Point. Even with optimal movement, it's virtually impossible to escape from him, at least on flat ground. Once he catches up to you, he'll immediately go into an attack, much faster than normal, so be ready for it if you do choose to run.

Aside from his standard punch, he also has one other attack he'll bust out - if you try to be clever and jump over (or away from) him, he'll go into a quick uppercut animation. He can also do this uppercut during chase mode, as you can see, so don't think you're safe from him in the air. He does have a lot of hang time, though, so with some clever dodging you might be able to use it to your advantage.

 

 

Well, that's pretty much the Torguis in a nutshell. He's nearly functionally complete already, as you can see, I just need to add hitboxes and fix up a few issues with his AI. Aside from that, though, I also have another animation surprise to show off..
 

^Old animation

^New animation

 

Tada! The Alraune is getting some of her animations overhauled this update, too! (Don't worry, she's not losing her signature assets, these are just SFW versions of the animations because I can't post lewds publicly on Patreon.)

 

Some of you might remember Flannagan the Red, who was brought on to Crisis Point a while ago to help with some tilesets. He assisted in the Deep Soil tileset rework, but at the time he was very busy with freelancing and his personal life, so we weren't able to give him too much work. Now, though, his schedule has opened up a bit, and he's come back to the team with a vengeance - only this time, to help with animations! He just recently wrapped up the walk cycle rework you can see above, and is now moving on to the Alraune's attacks. We have a rough WIP of the Overhanded throw animation he's working on here.

^Old animation

^New animation WIP

 

Hopefully you'll agree with me that the Alraune, of all the enemies in the game, deserves the new animations the most, and that these new ones are shaping up to be absolutely spectacular. I'm especially a fan of the slow, sensual wind up to the new overhand throw, can't wait to see what it looks like when it's finished.

 

Red is trying to increase his productivity in the freelancing space, and as such, if you're a project creator in need of an animator or artist, or you just want to commission some high quality work, I highly recommend you get in contact with him! He has experience in lots of different mediums - pixel art is actually one he had little experience with before working on Crisis Point, but he picked up on it so quickly you would never have known.

Check him out at his Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/flannaganthered or you can follow his twitter: https://twitter.com/flannaganthered

 

Alright, that's it for this week's update. Sorry there's not much work from me personally - working has been difficult lately because of the jaw pain. Still, things are getting done, especially thanks to our absolutely amazing team. Thank you all so much for continuing to support Crisis Point, even when things are rocky - we wouldn't be here without all of you. See you next update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everyone! This is gonna be a pretty short weekly update; there's a lot going on from our team members right now, but not a lot ready to show off just yet.

 

Orex is finishing up the last few Torguis animations (I also finished implementing them this week), Puffernutter is starting on a rework for the Catacombs tileset, and Red is continuing his work on redoing the Alraune's animations.

 

https://soundcloud.com/anon-42-498945869/crisis-point-extinction-ost-track-preview

I've also got our musician working on more music for CPE - they've been working on some missing music variations for the existing areas, as well as another track which you can listen to a preview for up above! Personally it's become my favorite track in the game, and I hope you like it too.

 

The main thing I wanted to say this week, though, is that my productivity has been incredibly behind lately, which I'm sure you've noticed by now. First of all, I'm extremely sorry for this. Things have been really tough for me lately, but that's no excuse for falling so far behind on my responsibilities to Crisis Point. With the rest of our team kicking ass, we've thankfully still had good work being done, but I can't let myself keep falling behind like this, so I'm going to be starting up development streams for Crisis Point again, starting tomorrow, to try and get some kind of regular schedule going again. I'm going to aim for starting at 2 pm EST, and going until at least 6 pm EST, Monday-Friday, for now. This schedule might be adjusted as I get back into the swing of things and figure out what works best for me, and I'll keep you updated if it does change.

Because it's going to be a regular schedule, I'm going to try NOT doing update posts on Patreon for every stream I start - if you want to be notified when a steam starts, you can either Follow me on Picarto (https://picarto.tv/Anon42) which will notify you whenever a stream begins, join our Discord where I will notify people about streams (https://discord.gg/EH6tqqt), or Follow me on Twitter where I'll put out a tweet whenever I'm about to start streaming (https://twitter.com/Anon42_CPE). Or, of course, you can just show up at the scheduled times, since presumably I should be streaming then.

 

Alright, that's all I've got for this week. Thank you for your patience as I work through the things I've been struggling with lately. I won't let it keep me down, not when there's work to be done and so many exciting things in CPE's future. Hope to see you all at the streams!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everyone! Before I get started on the meat of the post, I just wanted to put out a reminder that we're doing regular dev streams again! We're streaming every day Monday-Friday, starting at 2 pm EST. Mostly it's just me, but sometimes Red and Orexius join in, and Puffernutter is going to be streaming development work with me too in the future. You can follow me on Picarto itself (https://picarto.tv/Anon42) to get notifications when I start streaming, but our schedule is consistent, unless I can't stream on that day for some reason, so you can also just come by at 2 pm Mon-Fri if you want to watch!

 

With that out of the way, here's this week's update!

 

I worked on a few things this week, including a new powerup that will probably be coming NEXT update in v0.38, a new mechanic I'm calling ramp sliding, and creating a bunch of new rooms to explore. First off, let's look at the new mechanic, ramp sliding.

 

(The lighting quality has been lowered for the sake of gif filesize; don't worry, the in-game lighting hasn't changed)

 

Particularly keen-eyed observers may have noticed that CPE only uses slight ramps in its level design. We used to have some steeper, 45 degree slopes, but they were only used in a handful of places, and I gradually replaced them and phased them out of level design completely. The reason for this is that I planned on turning steep ramps into an obstacle instead of just a regular part of the level design, by making Alicia slide down them automatically, as you can see in the gif above. Naturally, there will be an upgrade later on that gives you the ability to go up these slopes, but currently they're a one way trip.

 

 

The other thing I wanted to show today is the level design progress I've made so far. The gif above cycles between the map from v0.36, and the current map from v0.37, with all the new rooms I've added. As you can see there's a decent number of them, and there will certainly be more by the time the update is done. I spent time this week fully planning out the rest of the game's critical path, which is the essential areas the player will explore to find the upgrades that allow them to progress until the end of the game, so I have a much better idea of what to do with the level design going forward. We're a lot closer to introducing the 5th area than I expected, too - if all goes well I hope to introduce it in v0.38! There's a lot of work before I can make that happen though, so I don't want to get your hopes up too high.

 

Alright, that's all from me this week. Don't forget to stop by the streams, if that kind of thing interests you - and if you prefer to watch the VOD after, you can do that at my picarto too! My last handful of streams are automatically saved there. Progress is going great, streams are a huge boost for me mentally so I'm really happy I finally got over that anxiety. Thank you all so very much for your support, and I can't wait to show you what we've got in store in the future!

 

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

Hey everybody! This week in CPE news, I took a step back from creating new level layouts to focus on some detail things I've been wanting to do for a long time, liiiike reworking the dynamic water, for example!

Here's a shot of how the dynamic water USED to be:

 

And here's a shot of what the NEW dynamic water looks like:

 

On top of the obvious visual and animation improvements, this new water is also a bit more optimized! Since the old water was moving constantly, it was always doing calculations - now, since the water is still when undisturbed, when the water isn't moving the code simply doesn't run, saving loads of processing time. The method I used for rendering the water has also improved, which further optimizes it. In a short test using my work PC, I went from about ~600 FPS to ~950 FPS with the game uncapped in this area. Hopefully this will improve any performance issues people have in areas with water!

Next up, with the progress of level design going faster than I expected, I realized that the long-awaited underwater sections of Crisis Point will be coming up far sooner than I expected. With that in mind, I worked on a new special effect involving - as stated in the title - bubbles! They were a lot of fun to add in, and so far have been used in two places: a passive effect on Alicia while she's underwater, and a replacement for the Flare Shot!

 

You can see both effects in the gif above. Naturally, the Flare Shot bubbles don't actually harm enemies. They're bubbles, after all. It also doesn't consume ammo to fire the Flare Shot underwater, though, so there's no harm in having some bubble fun.
 

Lastly, I don't have a gif of this one, but I finished adding full mouse support to the rest of the menus too! Now you can navigate the Status and Map screens using the mouse, though you still need the keyboard to leave map notes of course.

 

For streams this week, I plan on taking Wednesday off, and probably trying to stick to that schedule in general - streaming Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Friday, usually at 2 pm EST, though there are some days where if I wake up supremely early I might start the streams earlier, since I do my best work earlier in the day. 
 

Alright, that's all for me this week! I did other things too, like writing the Torguis CG script, but I won't be sharing details on that I can't guarantee the Torguis CG (or his H-scene) will be in this coming update though - because of the holiday season, the majority of the CPE dev team has less time to work than usual, and the scheduling kind of got away from me because of that. My apologies if they don't make it in, but we're doing our best to make it happen. Anyway, thank you all very much for your continued support! See you in next week's update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everyone. So I'm just going to skip over the pretense and get straight to the bad news: Kuso has decided to leave the Crisis Point team, which leaves us without a CG artist yet again. Well, sort of.

 

I spoke with Red, who recently returned to the team after a long hiatus and has been helping us with animations (the reworked Alraune animations are courtesy of him), and he's agreed to try taking over the role of CG art - he's an established artist already, and a very talented one, and he'll be attempting to mimic Kuso's artstyle to keep the game's CG art as consistent as possible. In the absolute worst case scenario, if he and any of the other artists I know can't replicate it, then I'm just going to move ahead and give up on trying to keep the CGs consistent across the game - basically what I'm saying is that I do NOT plan on reworking every CG yet again with another new artist, no matter how this turns out. I'd rather just accept that some CGs will have different artstyles so that we can start producing new content again instead of just reworking things over and over, so if you're worried about that happening, then don't be.

 

Unfortunately because of all this, there will not be any new CGs in this update. I'm sorry for the disappointment; I had two CGs lined up to be included (one reworked, one brand new), but neither of them got done and there's simply not enough time for Red to take over the reigns before the update needs to release. At the moment, it's likely that the only porn content in this update will be an update to the Alraune blowjob H-scene, which Orexius has been working on to bring the Alraune's anatomy up to date. I was going to have Red work on the Torguis H-scene, but because of all this, I need him to shift gears to the CGs so we can figure out asap if he's able to take over Kuso's place.

 

Alright.. with that huge bummer out of the way, I do have at least one little visual to show you. I spent the majority of my time this week doing bugfixes and working on tiling rooms - the Deep Soil tileset takes a really long time to work with, and normally puffernutter would be helping with it so I have more time to do other things, but she's been swamped with other freelance work and hasn't had time to help out on CPE. Anyway, the one thing I do have to show this week is some subtle animation for the large hanging vines in the Deep Soil - take a look below.

 

As you can see it's a very subtle animation; I don't want it to be distracting, but I've been wanting to add little animation details to Crisis Point's world for a long time, to make it seem more alive, so this is one step in that process. Not every area in the Deep Soil has them right now, just the later ones, but I'll try to get more of them included before the update goes out.

 

Alright, that's it for me this week. Sorry for the crappy update; I'm mostly just wrapping up development on v0.36 at this point, so the updates are naturally less exciting, but I wasn't expecting to have to drop bad news like this on top of it. Hopefully I'll be able to release the update very soon, since I'm no longer waiting on CGs before I can put it out. Thank you all very much for supporting, I hope to have some better news for you by this time next week.

 

[Anon_42]

Before I get into the weekly update here, let me apologize for not updating here in such a long time - the last update for Crisis Point, v0.37, came out a while ago, and I never got around to posting the update about it here, mostly due to heaping amounts of stress and burnout. If you want to read about what was in the update, you can check it out here: v0.37 release post (the post does NOT require a Patreon account or subscription, accessing it is completely free). In the meantime, I've since recovered and am feeling better, and v0.38 development is well under way; here's this week's post about it!

 

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everyone! Got a great update for you this week, so rather than beating around the bush, let's get right into it eh?

 

 

First off, the gif posted above! As you can see, I worked on a new, underwater enemy for Crisis Point this week. They're still missing animation work, but they're pretty much fully functional already. Their speedy, direct movement provides a unique challenge for Alicia when her movement is hampered by water; by default, Alicia can't dash or slide while underwater, so you'll have to be careful with these guys around to avoid being overwhelmed!

 

The observant among you might also notice another thing in the gif above, which is a little "dust/pollen particle" effect in the background of the Deep Soil. It's a small thing, but one that adds a nice amount of movement and life to the area in my opinion. I really want to add more little detail touches like this to every area in Crisis Point, since I think it's a great way to elevate the game's quality in more subtle ways.

 

 

Next up, if you didn't notice, we started streaming again this week! I've decided on a new streaming schedule - last update, turns out I was streaming too much for my mental health, and I ended up finishing v0.37 feeling pretty burnt out. I'm an introvert by nature, and streaming 4-5 days a week after not streaming for so long was just too much for me, which is why it's taken a while to get back to our regular work schedule. Sorry about that! For this update, I'm going to drop down to 3 days a week - Monday, Wednesday, Friday. My sleep schedule is also super off right now, so I'm going to be starting streams at 5 pm EST instead of 2 like before. This will probably change again if I get my sleep schedule back on track, but for now that's what we're goin' with.

TL;DR - Stream schedule is now Monday/Wednesday/Friday at 5 pm EST!

 

 

Next up, a few words on the progress of the game's writing! As I mentioned in the recent status update post, I spent time really finalizing the greater storyline of Crisis Point recently. Turns out, having the story written out instead of just floating around in my head is a phenomenal idea, as I've had the itch to write a bunch since then! I finished two new scripts this week, one for a cutscene (which will introduce more new NPCs), and one for a story-related HCG. I don't know if these will make it into this update, my guess would be probably not since Red and Orex have their hands full with all the other work I have for them, and we need a lot of animations for their introduction scene, but we'll certainly try our best!

 

 

Next, a small update on Red's status - since Kuso left and we decided to hire Red to do CGs, he's been working on the Slime CG rework, and is nearly done with it now! Once he's done, I'll post one of the images as a Patron-only post, so you can see what kind of art he'll be bringing to the table. Spoiler alert: it's fantastic! He has a lot of freelance work on his plate, so he can't devote all of his time to Crisis Point at the moment, but as soon as he's done with the Slime CG I'm going to have him get started on the Torguis CG to make sure there will definitely be some brand new H-content in this update. The Torguis CG is one I'm especially proud of (the script file is about twice as long as any previous CG!), so I can't wait to get it in your hands!

 

 

 

Lastly, another gif from the game! This update is all about getting you guys underwater, so naturally there's a lot of underwater mechanics being worked on. In some underwater areas, you'll find strong currents that push Alicia back if she tries to pass them. Even the bubbles from her underwater Flare Shot are rejected! Maybe there will be some kind of upgrade to let you bypass them eventually..?

 

 

Alright, that's all the major stuff for this week! Thanks so much for reading, everybody, and for supporting Crisis Point! Hope to see you at the streams!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everybody! This week's update is gonna be smaller than last week; most of the stuff I worked on is related to writing and level design and such, so not particularly interesting to show off.

 

I've been doing a LOT of writing lately - since fully laying out the plans for CPE's story, rather than just keeping it all in my head, I've gotten a much clearer idea of where the game's story and progression is headed and what I need to write to get us there. It's honestly been a blast! Some of what I'm writing won't even be in this update, mostly due to not having the assets I need to make certain events happen, but in general I'm trying to frontload a lot of the writing work in this update. Since every script needs to be voice acted, I need to give our actors and actresses plenty of time to get their lines recorded, so I'm trying to get as much writing done as I can early in the update cycle so they have time to record.

 

Aside from the writing, I also did a chunk of level design this week. The 3rd boss now has a (mostly) permanent location; the fight itself is still going to undergo a complete rework later on, and that might include slightly altering her location, but her general location is here to stay. Defeating her also gets you access to a real upgrade now - the Weighted Boots! As you can imagine, the Weighted Boots allow Alicia to sink in water rather than floating, allowing for underwater exploration at long last. It comes at the cost of reduced mobility though; while underwater, Alicia can't dash or slide, and she moves slightly slower, so you'll have to be careful when traversing underwater areas. There's no breath meter to worry about though, so you can take your time and explore freely.

 

Lastly, I have two NSFW things to show off, a teaser for the Slime CG rework Red is doing, and a comparison shot of the Alraune BE H-scene Orexius just finished reworking.

 

 

The CG isn't finished just yet, there's still some work to be done on it (the original colors were too desaturated, and Red is out of town right now so I had to up the saturation values myself - the final colors won't be the exact same as this), but it's nearly done and hopefully you'll agree with me that it looks absolutely fantastic.

 

Aside from that, here's the H-scene comparison:

 

 

I'm sure you'll agree with me that it's one HELL of a glow up; Orexius really outdid himself with this scene.

 

Before I go, I do want to mention that I'm making a slight update to stream schedules - my sleeping schedule is still all sorts of whack, I'm not waking up at consistent times at all. I'm most productive early in the day, so naturally when I wake up earlier, streaming at 5 pm EST is very difficult for me; because of that, I'm going to scrap the idea of having specific times for the streams. We'll still be streaming Monday/Wednesday/Friday, but the time will change depending on the day. I'd like to fix my sleeping schedule and get some consistency, but for the time being I just gotta make due with what I've got, super sorry for any inconvenience this causes!

 

Alright, that's all I have for this week. Thanks so much for the support, everyone! v0.38 is shaping up nicely and I'm having a great time working on it, can't wait to get it in your hands!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

Hey everybody, welcome to the weekly update! This week is going to be fairly non-visual, as Red is still finishing up the Slime CG, Orex is still in the early stages of a new H-scene, and I've moved on to working on stuff like level design. That said, I did add a new obstacle this week that I want to show off!


 

These are aquatic mines that activate when Alicia gets within range of them. Once active, they'll accelerate towards her in an attempt to collide. They move slightly faster than Alicia does underwater, but as you can see in the gif, their acceleration is rather low, so you can avoid them more easily by jumping and such. You'll want to be extra careful they don't hit you, though, as they do a MASSIVE amount of damage (99 points on normal, which is a full bar of health). They're also invulnerable to standard blaster fire, but once they're armed, they only have enough energy to chase Alicia for about 15 seconds, after which they'll explode without dealing any damage.
 

-------------------- 
 

Now that I have multiple underwater obstacles, I've been working on level design for underwater areas. For those of you not interested in programming, you can probably skip over this entire section - I'll be talking about an optimization issue I faced, and how I got to solving it."
 

The biggest room I worked on this week was one that has a lot of the underwater currents I talked about last update - creating a larger room using them lead me to realizing that the bubbles representing the current were extremely unoptimized. When the room was complete, those bubbles were taking up about 50% of the game's total processing time in every frame - it still ran fine on my computer, but performance was low enough that it was definitely a problem.
 

The first and most obvious change was culling bubbles that were outside of the player's view. Naturally, having tons of bubbles outside of the player's camera is unnecessary and wasteful, but I wouldn't be writing a section about this if it were that simple. The biggest problem with culling bubbles outside of the view is that when the current is too large for the player's camera, the bubbles for the current will spawn outside of the camera (since they spawn at the furthest extreme of the current), and then be immediately erased. The current itself will still be active, but the bubbles that visually represent it are gone, which makes it appear as if Alicia is being pushed by nothing. So, a simple camera cull isn't a good enough solution, as it kills the visual representation of the current, so I turned that system off for now.
 

Next up, I decided to look more thoroughly into what exactly was taking up most of the processing time. The most costly part of the bubbles was checking for wall collisions, which simply causes them to pop when they hit a wall. Running that collision check every frame for every bubble can be naturally intensive; because bubbles are a visual detail and not an actual gameplay mechanic, I was able to dramatically lessen their processing cost by adding a delay to the collision check, so that they would only check for wall collisions once every 5 frames instead, reducing the overall cost of the collision check to 20%. This does have an impact on their visual appearance, of course - they no longer pop the moment they hit a wall, and can instead be delayed by a few frames - but personally, after implementing a fix, I actually like the way it looks better. It makes their collisions appear less homogeneous, and almost gives it a sort of pseudo-3d effect, as if the bubbles are colliding with other parts of the wall instead of only the outermost edge. Perhaps that only works because of the bumpy, uneven nature of the Deep Soil's vines, but whatever the case, it's a nice side effect of optimization.
 

So after limiting the collision check frequency and doing a number of other, smaller tweaks to their code, the performance was looking noticeably better - but still not good enough yet. Culling the bubbles was absolutely necessary, but it had to be done in a more intelligent way rather than just checking if they were outside of the camera boundaries. The solution I came up with after messing with it for a while was this: when a bubble is created, the bubble first checks its position compared to the camera boundaries, but this time, it also factors in the direction it's going to move. If the bubble is outside of the camera and moving away from the camera boundaries, it deletes itself immediately to not take up any more processing time. If the bubble is moving towards the camera, though, it runs through another collision check - this time, it checks for walls in a line between its current position and the edge of the camera closest to it. If there are any walls between it and the camera, it deletes itself - the wall would prevent it from reaching the camera after all, so it's not needed. However, if there are no walls, then it continues on its merry way, safe in the confidence that it is a necessary bubble. The biggest negative with this solution is that, when a current is exceptionally long and has lots of geometry between the start and end points, there's a point where there are no current bubbles left, just because there are too many walls in the way. I tried a few higher-tech solutions to this, but all of them had issues; at the end of the day, the simplest solution won out, and I simply create manually-positioned bubble spawners behind walls to create more bubbles and continue the current, as you can see in this screenshot.


 

These are obviously not visible in game, and to avoid bubbles being too concentrated from smaller spawners, the frequency they create bubbles at is scaled based on the total size of the spawner. Altogether, the system ended up being significantly more optimized than before, and hardly any more effort to work with - I'm very happy with how it turned out! Now, instead of taking up 50% of each frame's processing power, the bubbles average out to a mere 13%. Still a little higher than I'd like, if I'm honest, and I do have plenty of ideas for optimizing them further - however, their performance is well within acceptable ranges, and spending too much time on unnecessary optimization would mean no progress on the rest of the game. As long as it runs well for everybody, that's all I can ask for.
 

By the way, let me know if you enjoy reading deeper dives into my programming work like this; I'm happy to share it more, if it's something people are interested in!
 

--------------------
 

Anyway, aside from all that, I worked on a few things this week. The new underwater enemy from last week now has proper animations rather than still frames, and I implemented some much-needed special effects for the destroyable blocks and crumble blocks that you can find in various places within the game. Mostly, though, it's been level design and optimizations, since I've also been working on optimizing the way the game's backgrounds are drawn.

 

Anyway, that's it for me this week! I haven't been focusing on finalizing my writing as much as I should have, so I haven't sent off scripts to our voice actors yet; that'll be a major focus next week, hopefully everyone will have enough time to get recordings done so the update can come out this month. I don't think I'll have to cancel any streams so I can focus on writing, but if I do have to, now you know why. Hope to see you next week for another round of updates!

[ivoryhammer]

Cool game, but to be honest I think it would be better without the voice acting, it's honestly not that great quality acting and it really slows the game down when you can't skip it

[Anon_42]

14 hours ago, ivoryhammer said:

Cool game, but to be honest I think it would be better without the voice acting, it's honestly not that great quality acting and it really slows the game down when you can't skip it

Sorry to hear you feel that way. There's a volume slider for the voices so you're welcome to turn them off if you dislike them. We plan to allow you to skip textboxes during cutscenes eventually, but there are bugs regarding that that need to be sorted out first.

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everyone, very small update this week; I spent most of it doing basic stuff like working on level design, fixing bugs, and stuff like that. In general, development of v0.38 is winding down, so there probably won't be much in the way of exciting stuff to show off between now and the release. At this point I'm mostly just waiting for CGs, H-scenes, and voice acting to be done so I can implement them all, and until that point I'm expanding level designs, tweaking balance, and updating various things around the game.

 

 

Up above you can listen to the underwater variant of the Deep Soil theme; like other areas in the game, this variant track will play instead of the normal theme in certain areas (specifically while you're underwater, who would've thought). I honestly can't remember if I've shared this track before, but if not, there you go - you'll be able to hear it ingame in v0.38, since underwater exploration will finally open up.

 

I'm also starting to mess around with a tileset for the 5th area, the one I shared a music preview of a while back; Puffernutter still hasn't had time to work on the tileset, and since my personal workload for v0.38 is getting pretty low, I decided to try it out myself. It's still lacking details and polish (and a proper background), but here's a small preview of what I've got for it so far.

 

 

I'm happy with the direction it's taking, so at the very least, I'm hoping I can get it to a good concept stage and have Puffernutter come in and add the finer details later.

 

Alright, that's it from me for this week. Sorry it's a smaller update, but there's just not much to share from my work, and I expect it to be similar in the following weeks until v0.38 comes out. As always, though, if you want to see what kind of stuff I'm working on, you can check out my streams on Monday/Wednesday/Friday at https://picarto.tv/Anon42 - the last 12 streams are automatically uploaded as VODs, so you can also watch them after the stream is over if you can't make it to see them live.

 

Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope to see you at the streams!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

Hey everyone. Like I said last week, we won't have a huge amount of stuff to talk about between now and the release of v0.38, so this will be a relatively small update. That said, I do have one thing I want to show off this week!

 

Before I get started, I want to clarify that Area 5 is NOT going to be in v0.38 - I'm working on aspects of it now to get ahead of the game, but it's not going to be officially introduced until v0.39. With that out of the way, I dunno if anyone will be as excited about this as I am, but here you go, another preview of the Area 5 tileset:



As you can see, this tileset has had some pretty significant work put into it! Puffernutter has finally had some free time to devote to the game, and as she worked on it, I had an idea to give it some extra flair. After many hours of trial, error, and reworking the rendering pipeline, the effort resulted in what you see in the gif above - auto-animated background tiles, with VERY low performance impact, and no extra effort required when creating the tileset or tiling rooms!



This is what the tileset pieces look like normally. The effect works by using a shader to search for those bright pink pixels, and then removing them from the final image completely, essentially cutting out those pixels so you can see what's behind them. Behind the main game render, there's a scrolling, multi-colored texture, so when the shader cuts out those pink pixels, you can see that scrolling texture through those pixels. If you could see the texture as a whole it would look rather ugly indeed, but since only small amounts of it are visible through the tileset, it results in giving the tiles a rather unique and interesting animated border. I'm personally super excited about the way this looks; I'm not very artistically inclined, as far as actually drawing art goes, but I love finding ways to use programming to enhance the visuals of the game, it comes a lot more naturally to me.

 

Anyway, aside from that I don't really have anything to show off this week. Orex is still working on the Torguis H-scene, Red is still finishing the slime CG, and I spent the rest of my time this week on making more level designs and implementing conversations/voice acting.
 

Because of the animation and CG pipelines being so backed up, I'm afraid that there's not going to be anywhere near as much H-content as I wanted in this update - at best, we'll have the reworked Slime CG, the new Torguis H-scene, and the reworked Alraune BE H-scene. I'm looking into my options for increasing our animation speed output, and I'm hoping next update will be an improvement in that regard. I'm very sorry that this keeps happening; believe me when I say that I'm just as frustrated as you are that our porn content is falling so far behind the rest of the game's development, and I'm going to do my best to improve the situation, even if it means picking up animation work myself again. For this moment, though, all I can do right now though is ask for your patience, and give you my sincere thanks for sticking with us despite the setbacks; it truly means the world to us.

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our major playable update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Pour the wine and cut the cheese, Crisis Point: Extinction v0.38 is now complete and ready for our $10+ patrons to play!

 

 

(Click here for an NSFW version of the trailer: https://redgifs.com/watch/quarrelsomeglumhoneyeater )

 

You can watch the video above for a run down of some of the biggest additions, but here's a list with a bit more details as well. There's a lot of other, smaller changes and additions too, as well as bug fixes, and all of that will be listed at the very bottom of the post.

 

    v0.38 NEW CONTENT AND MAJOR CHANGES

-New enemy was added (Kertalus, in underwater areas)

-2 new H-scenes added (Regular Torguis scene, BE (Breast Expansion) Kertalus scene)

-Slime CG has been redrawn

-Both Alraune H-scenes have been updated with improved visuals and animations

-New upgrade added (Weighted Boots, allows you to explore underwater areas)

-Underwater Deep Soil variant music added

-New areas added to explore in the Deep Soil

-Bestiary entries for Torguis and Kertalus added

-A handful of new gameplay conversations were added (Flare Shot, Weighted Boots, Going Underwater)

-New obstacles were added for underwater areas (underwater currents & chaser mines)

 

One thing I'm very happy with is the Kertalus BE H-scene. Originally, the Kertalus was not going to have any H-scenes in this update - it's been a really long time since I animated anything major for CPE, but after realizing how little new H-content this update was going to have, I decided to step in and try animating an H-scene during this last week. The result was the Kertalus BE H-scene, and I am super happy with the result - hopefully you enjoy it too! Since the Kertalus doesn't have a regular, non-BE H-scene, you can also access the scene without BE status for now. Once he has a regular scene it'll be back to normal, of course.

 

In general, v0.38 turned out extremely well. On top of all the new stuff added to the game, we did loads of planning for future content, and I can't wait to show some of it off! On that note, here are our plans for v0.39:

 

    v0.39 PLANNED CONTENT

-Add the 5th major area

-Add a new enemy in the new area

-Add more sprite H-scenes

-Implement Torguis (and MAYBE Kertalus) CGs

-Implement new story-related CG sequence

-Add more to explore, in new area and existing areas

-Implement new NPCs, along with a cutscene involving them

-Implement more gameplay conversations

 

v0.39 will be largely focused on adding the game's 5th major area. No, I'm still not sharing the name yet; due to the nature of the area, it'd be a spoiler  Unfortunately, the game's development is outpacing our assets quite a bit; there's multiple story cutscenes that need to be added between the Catacombs and when you enter the 5th area, despite the fact that v0.38's final room will lead directly into that area, so we're kind of trying to play an awkward game of catch up right now while still delivering a good amount of new content to explore. I'm hoping we can sort that out sooner rather than later, now that I'm helping with animation again.

 

Anyway, that's enough out of me. I'd like to take a moment to thank our top patrons for this update cycle:

 

LukBobTanbou

dreaden

SeraphStarliege

Katsune Teku

Dylan Wright

Michael Powers

Erick Allison

 

Thank you very much to these fine individuals for giving us so much support! And another hearty thank you to the rest of our patrons as well; we wouldn't be here making this game without you! Here's to another update, I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

 

 

    v0.38 MINOR CHANGES AND BUG FIXES

-Updated player's melee attack; it now has a quicker startup animation, and the last half of the animation can be canceled early by dashing or sliding, allowing for much quicker recovery.

-Added urns to interior Summit areas, for extra visual detail; they can also be destroyed to generate Force Shot charges

-Massively optimized multiple parts of the Deep Soil, which should eliminate any performance issues weaker hardware experiences in that area

-Changed slime AI so they no longer activate when the player enters the room, and instead when they enter the player's camera range, leading to more consistent locations and behavior of slimes

-Reduced damage output of Rapid Trigger to 55% (down from 66%), and reduced damage output of Heavy Trigger to 140% (down from 150%)

-Gave bouncy platforms in the Deep Soil a proper visual

-Added a handful of sound effects to various things across the game

-Added an input prompt to the intro text to inform the player they must press a button for the game to continue

-Added special effects when destroying breakable blocks or when crumbling floors break beneath you

-Implemented new "hit" special effect when some bullet types hit an enemy

-Made informational text in the upper right of the screen last longer for easier reading

-Fixed bug that caused Alicia to get stuck in the Wire Hang animation if she releases a wire hang while just underneath a jump-through platform

-Fixed minor bug that would make doors ignore a bullet meant to open them if the player had just entered a new room and immediately shot behind them

-Fixed bug where, if the player leaves the room containing the door to the Torguis Encampment after the cutscene where the door opens has already played, when the player returns, the door will be closed again, and cannot be opened in any way, resulting in a progression softlock

-Fixed an issue where the player could reach the second Poison Alraune before acquiring the Kilogrip

-Fixed issue where the mouse would overwrite keyboard/gamepad movement in the map screen, even if the mouse wasn't moving

-Fixed issue where opening the warp menu in the first session of a new game would cause a crash

-Fixed issue where the player could force the Torguis camp door open by pausing and unpausing the game while standing near it

-Fixed issue where the player could sometimes warp to warp points they had not unlocked yet

-Fixed a handful of very minor collision errors that probably nobody but me would've noticed anyway

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everybody! As usual after a big update release, I took a short break to relax and recover from the inevitable stress of pushing out a big update. As of this week, Crisis Point v0.39 has officially begun development, and we've got a few things to show ya already!

 

 

First up, as you can see above, I added some new wrinkles to our water. The observant among you might notice that this effect was sort of shown off in a previous weekly update, but the camera didn't move or anything - that's because the effect was still extremely WIP and didn't function properly. Now, though, it's all done! The 5th area is going to be heavily water focused, and unlike the Deep Soil where water is contained to individual sections, the water here spans the entire place, so I decided to use some of the new programming tricks I've picked up over the years to give the place a nice parallax effect. It'll be even better once we have a proper parallax background to go with it, but hopefully you can already get a feel for how it's gonna look! I'm stupid excited for it, personally.

 

 

Next up is a quick shot of the first enemy being introduced in this area! The sprite's not completely done yet, and I'll probably do some touch ups to certain things like the shape of some crystals, but the general concept is there and I really like the way it came out.

 

Alright, that's all I plan on showing off this week. I also did some writing and planning for this update, and Orex is hard at work on the Kertalus normal H-scene (he's already made a lot of progress on it, but I don't plan on showing it off just yet), so this update is already off to a great start.

 

Friendly reminder that we do a lot of this work on stream throughout the week! You can watch us on Picarto (https://picarto.tv/Anon42 and https://picarto.tv/TheOrexius); Orex streams when he's able, but I try to stream consistently every Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Naturally, you'll get to see some of this weekly update stuff early at the streams while I'm working on it, so if that interests you at all then try to come by some time! Thanks for reading, see you next update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everybody! Time for another CPE development update. This week (and honestly probably for most of this update), I focused mostly on area 5. Designing the levels, planning out progression, creating the art/visual effects, etc. We had a lot of plans but very few assets created before this update's development started, so there's a lot to be done if we want it to be in tip top shape by the time the update comes out next month! Anyway, enough rambling, let's look at some of the goodies.

 

First off, here's a nice short clip running through the area, showing off some of the new parallax background assets. Most parallax backgrounds in Crisis Point are handled as a global, looping background for each area, so aside from setting the initial parameters, I don't get much control over what each area's background looks like; the big mushroom-like structure in the background here, however, is a hand-placed object, so I'll be able to use it more sparingly and more carefully. This is a pretty small change from a user perspective, but it gives me more control over the visual design of areas. It also has some really nice visual effects that I'm super happy with to make it look more dynamic.

 

Second, another shot of the same background objects, but this time showing the interactivity of the smaller plants! They're not solid objects, so you can run through them as seen in the first gif, but you can also land on top of them and they'll shift under Alicia's weight. Really proud of this one, I love adding small details like this.

 

Next, a few screenshots showing off a recolored variant of the Edovex (along with their nest), and the WIP above-water parallax background. Just flat colors and simple shapes right now, but we wanted to figure out a general feeling and color scheme to go for, along with lining up everything with the parallax water, before designing any details. Let us know what you think of it! Also, regarding the Edovex, since I haven't mentioned it in a while, I want to state again that recolored enemies DO NOT get new H-scenes. They still have the original H-scenes but with their new colors, but they do not get unique scenes and they never will. The Poison Alraune is sort of an exception to this, as she will get unique scenes, but that's because she's considered a different enemy entirely and will eventually have unique attacks that the original Alraune doesn't have, once we can find the development time for it.

 

Anyway, that's it for the Area 5 work this week. Aside from that, I also worked on some writing for a few cutscenes that happen before Area 5, chronologically-speaking, and I'm also trying to hire some voice actors for a couple new NPCs I hope to introduce soon. Red is working on the Torguis CG, and Orexius is just about finished up with the regular Kertalus scene! After that, he'll probably get started on some H-scenes involving the new enemy. Things are going very well with v0.39 so far, and I'm super excited to see Area 5 in its finished state! Thank you all very much for reading, see you in next week's update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

 

Hey everybody, gonna be a bit of a smaller update this week. Me and Puffernutter had a bit of a rough week for reasons I don't really want to get into (no it's not coronavirus, we're both still healthy and fine so far), so my productivity was down a bit. Apologies.

 

 

Anyway, first off is a shot of some of the new background assets I've been working on for Area 5, which you can see up above. Puffernutter's been too busy to work on tilesets much, so I've tried to step in and do some work on it where I can - the result is the screenshot up above, with a new background layer, a bunch of stalactite variations, and an alternate variation of the floor tiles with a more brick-like pattern, Some of them still need some touching up, especially the brick floors, but I'm really happy with it as a whole, especially the background walls.

 

The other thing I have to post is a preview of the regular Kertalus H-scene. Orexius finished up the animation this week, so here's the loop itself for your enjoyment.
 

 

 

For my part, aside from the background asset work, I also finished the layout of the biggest room Crisis Point has ever had this week - the detail work is still incomplete, but just laying out and tiling the room has taken me multiple streams worth of work. Here's a shot of the map itself, so you can see just how much bigger this room is than the surrounding rooms:

 

 

I also worked on some cutscene scripts, and hiring some new voice actors for new NPCs we'll be introducing soon. I'm hoping we can bring them in this update, but if not it'll be next one for sure. We have a lot of cutscenes lined up for the game right now and we just need assets to get them going, which is a bit rough to do when we're already working on assets for a brand new area.
 

Anyway, that's it for me this week. I'll see you guys next week with another (hopefully better) update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

Hey everyone, time for another CPE development update! This week I've got a few more visuals to show off from our work on Area 5, as well as some general information on accessibility features I want to add for v0.39.


First off, the gif you see above. Puffernutter worked on a parallax background for us to put below the surface of the water, in area 5 so it's not quite as plain as a flat color. We plan to do a bit more with the background than just this, but this is what we have for it so far. She's also been working on some more bits and pieces I can put in the environment, one of which is the large swaying plant you see in the background there.


As you can see, I also spent some time this week giving our new enemy some animations, including a completed idle animation and a WIP projectile attack animation. He's been surprisingly fun to animate so far! Orexius has also started on his first H-scene, so hopefully that will be ready in time for v0.39 as well.


Next up is a last-minute thing I wanted to start working on. I looked through our Patreon exit surveys recently, and found a survey from someone who was unable to play the game because of a disability they suffer from. This was kind of a wake up call for me; I don't want this to happen to anybody who wants to play the game, so in the hopes that I can improve somebody else's experience in the future, I'm going to officially start adding in some accessibility options. I've also wanted to add in a gameplay options menu for a while, to implement some options for people to turn on/off, and it's a great opportunity to add accessibility features as well.
 

None of the accessibility options listed there are functional yet, but here's what they are and how they will function:
 

- Toggle Blaster. As stated in the screenshot above, when enabled, pressing the Shoot button will toggle the blaster on, and it will continue to automatically fire until the button is pressed again to toggle it off.
- Blaster Auto-Aim. When enabled, the player will still have to turn left/right to face enemies, but Alicia will automatically target the nearest enemy in her field of vision, simplifying aiming controls.
- Always Full Jumps. When enabled, Alicia will always jump to her full height, even when the Jump button is released early, allowing you to simply press the button to jump instead of holding it.
- Auto-Dash. When enabled, if the Jump button is held down while jumping, Alicia will automatically dash in the direction the player is holding once she reaches the peak of her jump, allowing you to cross larger gaps without extra button inputs.
- Gameplay Speed. Reduces the speed the game runs at, reducing the demand for reaction times and precise inputs. Now, unfortunately this option is going to take a MASSIVE amount of work to implement properly; Crisis Point's game logic is currently frame-dependant, which means if the game runs below 60 fps, everything runs slower. Changing game logic to be independent of framerate is an absurdly huge amount of work, and while I do want to try to make it happen, I don't think it'll happen until closer to the game's completion. That being said, I WILL still be implementing this feature, just in a simpler way, by lowering the game's framerate; it will make the visuals choppier, but hopefully for anyone who struggles with the speed of the game, it will still be able to improve their experience until I can do it right.
 

I have plenty of other ideas for accessibility features too, including an easier difficulty level I plan on adding in v0.39, but I'm definitely looking for any and all feedback on this! If you have a disability yourself, or just have ideas on accessibility features to implement, please don't hesitate to comment here or DM me! To anyone who does have a disability who has struggled to play the game because of it, I'm so very sorry that I hadn't considered your needs up until this point. Getting that exit survey made me realize how very real and important this is, and I'm determined to improve our accessibility so that everyone can play and enjoy CPE.

 

Alright, that's it for this week! I did a bunch of other things this week, including finalizing about 8 cutscene/dialogue scripts (some of which will not be in this update) and sending them off to our actors, so it's been an extremely productive week for us. Thank you very much for reading, and we'll see you in the next update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

Hey everybody, time for another CPE development update! I don't have a ton to show off this week, since I spent a lot of my time working on the accessibility features I announced last update. The good news is, over the week, I managed to implement every single one of them - there's still some testing and tweaking to do, but they're all functional already, so any players in need of them will be able to use them once v0.39 comes out! I also plan on adding an easier difficulty level as well, which I'll probably work on during this next week. With all those options, I really hope anyone who struggled playing CPE before will have a much more enjoyable time going forward.




The gif you see up above contains some more of the Area 5 background work Puffernutter did this week. There's now a rock layer at the surface of the water (which you can see at the start of the gif) that will act as a transition point between the above and below water areas. The above-water section still hasn't received much love yet unfortunately, but we'll get working on that soon. Underwater, we also have some breaks in the rock wall pattern, through which you can see some more parallax layers, to add some nice depth to the scene. In general during this update I've learned some new techniques for handling parallax environment art, and it's really nice to bring it all together for a brand new area! I'm really happy with how it's turning out, and I expect this to be the nicest looking area in CPE by far.

 

Aside from accessibility features and the background art, I mostly worked on more Area 5 level design this week. I want there to be a decent amount of stuff to explore in Area 5, so a LOT of my work for the rest of this update will be focused on that, and future weekly updates might end up staying pretty small - sorry about that! Orexius is working on the new enemy's H-scene, Red is still plugging away at the Torguis CG in his limited spare time, and I'm also looking into hiring some new people to voice new characters! I can't guarantee they'll be introduced in this update, just because of the amount of work that's left to do, but I'm trying my best to get them prepared in time, so fingers crossed.

Alright, that's it for this week's update! Thank you all very much for reading, and for continuing to follow us! We'll see you in the next update!

[Anon_42]

(The following is (mostly) a copy-paste from our weekly public update post on Patreon! If you like what you see, consider supporting us!)

Hey everybody. Not gonna beat around the bush, I don't really have anything to show this week, so this update will be purely text. We still got work done, of course, but it's all been on stuff that I can't really show off. So instead of showing off individual things we worked on, I figured I'd go ahead and give a general status update to let you know what we've been doing, and what's left for this update.

 

Most of what I did this week was, surprise surprise, working on Area 5. Mostly, it boiled down to level design and script work; I mentioned before that I finished writing a bunch of scripts for this update, and this week I got the majority of the voice acting back from our actors, so I spent a lot of time going over audio and picking out takes. We've also hired new VAs for the new characters I mentioned in last week's update, so with any luck they'll make their debut as well. Since I have most of the voice acting I need, all that's left for the new cutscenes and conversations is to implement them; there are some unique cutscene animations that we won't have ready, so some of the cutscenes might seem a little odd/incomplete, but c'est la vie, such is the nature of game development.
 

Anyway, Orexius and Red are still working on their respective scenes, and Puffernutter continued working on Area 5 stuff (she's currently focused on the above-water portion; we have a lot more we want to do with the underwater spaces, but for now her attention is better spent on the sparse above-water space).

 

As far as what we have left for v0.39 - here's a quick rundown.
-More level design for Area 5
-As much environment detail as we can pack into Area 5 (this work will definitely continue into future updates)
-Implementing all the cutscenes and conversations I wrote (there's a lot of them)
-Adding an easier "Story" difficulty mode, which will dramatically reduce the difficulty if chosen
-New enemy still needs to be completed, is missing some intended functionality
-New sound effects needed for various things, like the new enemy
-More testing of new accessibility features, to ensure they all work as intended and the game can be completed with them active
-New enemy H-scene, and Torguis CG scene need to be finished

That's all the things I DEFINITELY want to get done for this update; I also want to possibly implement another upgrade, but it's very possible I won't have the time to do it. It may not seem like there's much left to do, but seeing as how we're already 1/3rd through this month, it's definitely getting down to the wire, and level design especially takes a LOT of time.

 

Anyway, that's all I have for this week. Sorry there's not really anything to show off, we're definitely at that point in the update cycle where all our exciting stuff has already been done and we're just plugging away at all the less interesting/more secretive stuff to get the update ready for release. As always, thank you all so very much for the support. See you in next week's update!