concept art Archives - Crystal Companies

Welcome to the first “monthly” update of the New Year! The first big announcement of the year: April 9, 2019, is the date we have chosen to launch our Kickstarter campaign. 🤘

Now, let’s take a look at what we’ve been up to over the past month (and a couple weeks…).

Procedural Environment v2

The “random” battlefield generation that debuted awhile back immediately improved the way Crystal Companies is played. In the past few weeks, however, battlefields have only gotten more dynamic and “flavorful.” Not only is our lead dev a savvy coder, he also brings an interest/knowledge in eco-regions/biomes/geomorphology, which help to inform the procedures used to generate battlefields that look and feel “right.” Day/night cycles, weather, and more refined terrain generation are some of the big areas that were introduced this month.

Today I began reworking map generation so that world ecoregions inform the actual structure of a map (landforms, obstacles, enemies), instead of just its aesthetic. A long way to go yet, but here are some early test runs. #indiedev #indiegame #crystalcompanies #procedural #maps pic.twitter.com/uDp01wBHqy
— Bradley Shepherd (@bradSh3p) January 22, 2019

Added a simple day/night cycle to generated battlefields today. Pretty generic right now, but I'm excited to expand light generation to consider a region's biome, season, and current weather conditions. 🤘#indiedev #crystalcompanies #indiegame #procedural pic.twitter.com/memW67XqiM
— Bradley Shepherd (@bradSh3p) January 25, 2019

Environment 2.1

Since we drafted this post, we started to tweak aspects of how environments are generated—and folks noticed! Here are some of the highlights from the past week.

☁️ Welp, there are now weather systems sweeping across the crystal frontier. Come rain, snow, or high winds, there's crystal to be gathered and battles to be won! #indiedevhour #indiedev #gamedev #madewithunity pic.twitter.com/OtEycxEnEw
— Boreal Games (@boreal_games) February 6, 2019

Thanks for the retweet Unity!

The team behind @cryscogame showed their custom #Unity tool for generating maps that mixes both procedural & hand-made approaches. Looks kinda cool, right? https://t.co/SPu3SiDGZO #gamedev #indiedev #3dart #madewithunity #gamedesign #unity3d @madewithunity @unity3d pic.twitter.com/wvhayPwur8
— 80 LEVEL (@EightyLevel) February 10, 2019

Thanks for the feature 80 LEVEL!

Getting in the Spirit: New Promo Art

Marta Nael’s latest commission for Boreal Games and *Crystal Companies* pictures the blue captain, Traist, Prince of Hochraun, responding to a unseen foe (a Roc? an ambush?) while patrolling the interior of a canyon with his royal guard.

Gameplay Experience Back on Track

In addition to having way too much fun improving the ways environments are generated, we also have streamlined gameplay and user experience in myriad ways, including a simplification of the resource system! Now only notes and crystal gathered from the environment factor into card costs.

That’s all for now. Stick around our social accounts for the next month or two—it should be a pretty active time!

If you haven’t already, follow us on Twitter, join our Discord server, and or like our Facebook page <3