Author: TrueKam

Hello again everyone! Welcome back! I’ve got another week of updates that I’m pretty excited for. I set a few tasks out for myself this week and I accomplished them, for the most part, though I’m not totally satisfied with my progress on one of them.

Cursed Crown

• Design a Cheat System
  • I put together a design for a cheat system in the game. The intention is a system whereby testers can activate useful functionality to make their jobs easier. It’s tough to test how the level’s geometry works and flows if enemies keep getting in the way. So, turn on invulnerability! I don’t know what final cheats will make it into the system, but invulnerability is a pretty basic and easy-to-implement one.
  • This task was simply to design the system, so I have a document that I will work from to implement the system; there is no system currently functional in the build.
• Update the Main Menu: Credits Dialog
  • One of the things that was lost in the big update fiasco at the end of 2024 was the set of updates I made to the main menu. In particular, I lost the very basic credits dialog that I had put in. I restored that set of credits. Again, it’s very basic, but it will expand as more info is required to be added to it.
• Add Fast Travel to the Overworld
• Add Save Points to the Overworld
  • These are the updates that I’m most excited for. I’ve added a series of “camps” around the overworld. There are currently seven of them. Each camp consists of a save point, a fast travel destination, and an NPC you can talk to and warp to another site.
  • Further updates are slated for these points:
    • Remove the requirement for an NPC to initiate fast travel. I’m not sure how I want to set up the final system yet, but I’m thinking about a system where you can fast travel to and from certain points but also possess a consumable similar to the homeward bones from the Dark Souls series. If you’re unfamiliar, this is a single-use item that allows you to travel back to the most recent camp/bonfire you were at. This would likely necessitate a change to the travel destinations to make them valid for fast travel vs a “checkpoint” that you would travel to with a consumable. More work is required here.
    • Update the art assets. The save point is currently a large rock that isn’t very well differentiated from the surrounding architecture.
• Begin Tutorial Dungeon Implementation
  • This is the update that I’m least happy with. I spent time trying to build the dungeon that looms over you when you first spawn on the beach. I wasn’t able to really get anything that I was happy with, so I ended up with only the most basic of structures and an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. I’ve obviously got a lot more work to do on this one over the coming weeks.
  • This task was solely to start the building. It was never going to be finalized in this build anyway, so I’m not really behind in development or anything. Not that I can ever really be behind schedule when I’m the one writing the schedule, but you know what I mean.

This coming week, I’ve tentatively scheduled the following:

• Door Prototype Enhancements
  • I want to update some of the prototype doors that I created for the tech demo so they’re more useful.
• Continue Tutorial Dungeon Development
  • While I don’t have as much done today as I was hoping to, I’ll continue trying to build a technique that will let me build dungeons more efficiently.

I know it’s not as much as I often do, but I expect that building the dungeon is going to take most of my time, so I want to make sure I don’t try to stretch myself too thin. I would probably have just scheduled only the dungeon building, but for what I want to do, the door updates will be useful.

You can probably imagine that with the updates to the overworld to allow easier exploration, a new build is due. And you’d be correct! Head over to the downloads section to grab it if you’re a member of the dev or test team. If you’re visiting from Patreon, you can find the Patreon download password in the announcement post over there! I hope you have a great time exploring the island. I know it’s pretty barren right now, but that will change as we progress through the beta phase and push toward a full release.

Thanks for sticking with me, everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and coming week! Until next time, keep on gaming!

Hello everyone and thanks for stopping in! I know it’s been a while since I last updated, but I promise that I wasn’t just sitting idle. Well, for a little while I was; it was Christmas after all. I hope you all had the opportunity to spend some time with family and friends during the holiday season.

When we last left off, I had been trying to update Unreal Engine, ACF tools, and the ACF sample project. The ACF update was from three separate engine plugins to ACF Ultimate, the single plugin that encompassed the entire set of tools. The Unreal Engine update was from version 5.4 to 5.5, which is a pretty big jump in terms of functionality. And the sample project code update included changes to the core setup with how the project was built as in introduced things like GASP and motion matching blueprints. Needless to say, this process didn’t really go well. By the time I got all the software updated, just trying to open the project in the engine editor caused the editor to throw a segfault and crash to desktop. I couldn’t even load things to try to correct problems. I wanted to revert, but as far as I’ve been able to find, I can’t downgrade plugins or packages from the Unreal Marketplace (now Fab.com) and I was stuck with the updated ACF tools, whether I tried to use the ACFU single package or the older ACF separate plugins. In the end, I was forced to basically update all the packages and tools and, well, start the project over. And, while it took me a while to get things back up and running, I was able to get back to essentially where I started and make some further progress.

Cursed Crown Updates

• Updated Unreal Engine to 5.5.1, ACF to ACFU 1.1, and ACFU Sample Project.
• Re-implemented most functionality from the tech demo build. (Exception: Enemy AI has not been re-implemented yet.)
• Set up main overworld map. It’s pretty barren for now, but it can be explored as it exists at this time.
• Known issue: There is a graphical issue when aiming a bow. The character holds it in a funky way that doesn’t look like it lines up, but the arrow fires correctly and it doesn’t affect gameplay.

It might not seem like a lot of progress has been done, but it sure felt like a lot from this side of the keyboard. I hope you enjoy the new level and come back to see it as it grows. If you have access to the build, be sure to check the downloads page to grab it and let me know what you think. My task list is filling up with new things that need to get done and the fact is that some of the updates I’ll have to work on won’t have forward-facing functionality at first. In these cases, I may not bother to put out a new build, but when I have updates that you can test and see, I’ll make sure a new build is published. So be sure to check back here and on the Patreon page. Until next time, everyone, thank you so much for stopping in and keep on gaming!