Category: Patreon

It was exactly one year ago today that I released the 0.3.0 version of The Cursed Crown, marking the end of the tech demo phase and the beginning of the beta phase. Honestly, it’s been a rough journey filled with a lot of progress and just as many setbacks. Today, I’d like to present you with the 0.4.0 beta release. There are a lot of little updates here and there (the git commit was for 11,185 files), but here are the most important changes:

• General terrain updates. More decorations and foliage added. Specific note: El’Mi Ruins Vicinity with associated fast travel point.

• Fast travel points at general locations around the overworld island. All currently unlocked for beta testing.

• First major dungeon added: El’Mi Ruins. The initial blockout is complete. As development progresses, decoration, lighting, pickups, and enemies will be added to the ruins to flesh the dungeon out.

• Crafting system implemented. Initial crafting ingredients and recipes are added as well as the crafting table where the crafting can be done. Harvest points have been implemented for the first things that can be gathered in game. These are not currently spread around the world, but there is a temporary station near the initial overworld spawn point where you can test the functionality out. Look for the pink crystal! The art for the crafting “table” itself will be updated as development progresses.

• Updated Unreal to version 5.6.1 and ACFU to version 4.0. This is what took much of my time initially, as quite a few errors popped up and had to be dealt with.

• Behind the scenes things to keep documentation going smoothly and make sure proper design and planning is being done. As things progress further in development, there’s less and less room for sloppy, unplanned development.

Known Issues

• AI enemies have been removed due to issues with upgrading Unreal Engine and ACFU. They will be added back in when they can be fixed.

Hello everyone! Now that the holidays are over and everything is probably back into their normal rhythm, I wanted to give a new update for the new year. If you’re just looking for the roadmap, skip ahead a bit!

First, let me say that I’m sorry that the updates have been going slowly. That’s entirely my fault and it comes down to not making the progress that I was originally hoping to make. When I first started implementing things, I was adding them rapidly There wasn’t much in the game yet, so there wasn’t really anything that could break if created or changed other things. But now that the codebase is getting larger, I have to check a lot more to ensure that there are no unintended side effects when adding new things to the game. Also, I’ll just flatly admit that it’s a lot harder building levels in Unreal than it was “back in the day” with id Tech 2 or Build. I’m learning a lot about how to speed up the process as I go, but it’s still going slowly for now.

That being said, here’s what is currently working in the game: character and movement, bonfire-like save spots, fast travel teleportation, crafting, in-world ingredient harvesting (farming system planned for later, but not confirmed), NPCs, and a mostly-empty world map. There are obviously the othe basics like multiple types of doors, keys for locked versions of the same, item pickups, weapons, etc., but most of them don’t warrant their own mention since they are features that need to be there and aren’t anything special. I’m also around 50% through the base (read: undecorated at this point) level building of the El’Mi Ruins, an old Elven magic research area underground. There may be something worthwhile to find there and additional discoveries for the observant.

Now, what you’ve really come here for: the roadmap for the next minor version, 0.4.0.

• Finish El’Mi Ruins blockout. (It’ll be discoverable and explorable, but may not be entirely decorated in its final form.)

• Update Unreal Engine to 5.7 and ACFU to 4.2. (Final updates. This will lock in the final version of the tools that will be used for the game’s development and release.)

• Finish implementing the base harvestable crops and add some throughout the overworld. (I won’t just randomly place these. They’ll be hand-placed to ensure there arn’t too many of them and they’re in reasonable places. Different materials will be found in different areas.)

The biggest variable will be the updates to Unreal Engine and ACFU. I can’t predict how much will break in the update and require fixing. Honestly, that’s my logic behind not updating any more after this set of patches. I only want to grab these in particular for a couple really interesting features. (Specifically, the voxel LODs for foliage. It should do some amazing things for long-distance rendering. Good job, Epic. 😘) Unfortunately, there is a significant chance that the updates to the Unreal Engine and ACFU will come with a lot of breakage in existing blueprints and code, forcing me to expend time and energy just getting back to where we are right now.

All things considered, I promise that I’m still making progress and I will do my best to make more regular updates for everyone here and on the Discord server. If you’ve got any thoughts, questions, or suggestions on the development of The Cursed Crown, stop by and chat with us. Thank you to everyone for sticking with me on this long road. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone, and I hope this is the start of a glorious and fruitful year for all of you!

Download the 0.3.3 beta test build here: https://www.6fpsnetwork.com/download/cursed-crown-beta-0-3-3-20250719-patreon-download/

Password: 8Ey^utTtL@oQwSFI

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay this week, but I had a bunch of things that I wanted to get into the new build.

When you start the test build this week, you will find that the fast travel system from last time was updated. There is now a more fantasy-style interaction to start it instead of the placeholder robotic mannequin that existed last time.

I’ve also further expanded on the structures around the starting area. Honestly, this is what took the longest to do. I’m not going to pretend that I’m the best level designer out there. I have a lot to learn and trying to put together what I have here was a slow process. I’m getting better, and I’ll continue to do so. Please stick with me as I grow here.

I have some things that I need to do in the background, so there might not be a new build with the next update, but I’ll try to post something about what’s going on so nobody is left in the dark. That being said, my full time job has been picking up a bit and causing some new and unusual stress on me. That’s causing me to feel like the constant development work on The Cursed Crown is more than I can handle. Don’t worry, I’m not stopping! But for my mental health, I’ll be taking it a bit slow for a couple weeks and perhaps not keeping so many large tasks in front of me at a time. As the work gets completed, though, you can be sure that I’ll be updating all of you. Look forward to it.

In the meantime, I hope you can all have a wonderful weekend. Until next time, everyone, keep on gaming!

Download the 0.3.2 beta test build here: https://www.6fpsnetwork.com/download/cursed-crown-beta-0-3-2-20250316-patreon-download/

Password: PJYvJ@^!vSgBNv5l

Download the 0.3.1 beta test build here: https://www.6fpsnetwork.com/download/cursed-crown-beta-0-3-1-20250302-patreon-download/

Password: cgMP2RafQ#B$nL$4

Hello everyone! While there’s no new build this time, I wanted to update everyone on the current progress.

I’ve added some signposts into the game. It might not seem like much, but they provide a way for me to add lore and information to the game when you read them. I had a bit of a rough time configuring some aspects of them, but I’ve gotten them working. There are two types of signs: standard and developer commentary. At the moment, they look identical, but I’ll work on differentiating them some as I progress and see just how much they’ll be used. Currently, the developer commentary signs won’t show up by default, but will display if you activate them. You can activate them by toggling the developer commentary cheat.

Yes, that’s right, there is a system for adding cheats into the game now. This one was also a bit of a rough implementation. But now that the system is working, there are two cheats available: the previously-mentioned developer commentary activation and a player invulnerability mode. If you toggle this one, enemies will pose no threat to you as you explore the beta of the game. Don’t necessarily expect these to be present in the final builds of the game, but they currently exist in the beta and you’ll be able to play with them when I publish the next build.

I also added some of the region announcement volumes I created to the level. I don’t have many yet, but I also don’t have many locations that need naming and announcing yet.

It doesn’t sound like much, but I assure you that it was probably more work than you’re imagining to get it working. I’m going to keep moving forward, even if the going is slow. Thanks for sticking around while I get the base of my world set up so I can proceed faster as everything gets closer and closer to completion. Until next time, everyone: keep on gaming!

Password for download: #0fSAcBNBdT&KLU*

Hello everyone! Today I wanted to just put out a quick update on the state of the game’s development. I know it’s been a little while, but with the holidays and dealing with issues that arose from the updates I tried to make to the development software, this update took a bit longer than I wanted it to.

Please see the separate post for the link to the new beta build.

What you, as a player, can expect to see in this update is the brand new overworld map for the game. It’s desolate at the moment, but it can be loaded (via ‘New Game’ on the main menu) and explored at your leisure.

On the backend of development, I updated Unreal Engine (to 5.5.1), ACF (to ACFU 1.1), and the ACF code samples. These updates caused a lot of headache trying to get working and necessitated nearly a full rewrite of all the work I’ve done so far, hence the delays.

But we’re back on track and I’ve put together a new build for everyone to try out. Please let me know what you think and report any issues that show up. For a full list of work, see the development log for this week on 6fpsnetwork.com.

Thanks everyone, and keep on gaming!