Here is my first digest of what has been going around the development of Crumble in the last weeks!

LAVA LEVEL

The lava level was redesigned a bit, I even made a new custom lava shader that reacts to the environment pretty well and a script that simulates physics over water or lava material. (This will be covered on the devlog)

Here is a sneak peek of what it would be like gameplay-wise:

ROCKET LEVEL TRANSITION

This one I’m pretty excited about, I took inspiration from how Spyro handles level transition and did my own with a rocket. So there is NO loading screen and it’s all smooth from level A to level B!

You can rotate the rocket with the joystick if you just want to fly among the clouds.

This was challenging to make with additives scene loaded in async inside Unity but I finally got it right. This will also be featured and explained later on how to load level in async while keeping important data such as the player or the score!

Here is a simple curvature shader that deforms geometry based on camera distance. It’s very common use in mobile endless runner games.

TONGUE HOOK REWORKED

It was a popular demand from demo players to have the hook mechanic reworked a bit and so I did 2 important changes.

First of all, I added a preview of where the feedback of the tongue might snap-on, to help the player navigate and react correctly. This may be hidden further on as you progress through levels.

And the second change was the mechanic itself. I added more raycast to be sure the player doesn’t miss one possible spot and made it more responsive to the player inputs as well as more permissive.

Here is a video of me testing the changes:

FARTING MUSHROOMS

No one asked for it, but you get it anyway. You now have the possibility to squish the mushrooms in Crumble to make them… fart!

It might sounds familiar because these are the same mushrooms as in Sheep It in the 44 LDJAM:

WHAT’S TO COME?

I am working on polishing everything I already have for a special Beta release of Crumble for very close people!

Right now I am polishing the start menu and I thought of something very original and immersive; you will have a menu in space with planets in the distance which will be the level selection and when you choose a level, the player will jump inside the rocket and prope himself to the selected planet! As you can see I’m taking this smooth gameplay very seriously, I want the player to feel immersed in my world and to find a deep connection with the arcade gameplay I’m offering inside a beautiful world.

I have a special mention to make for my Gamejolt page for Crumble: https://gamejolt.com/games/Crumble/413270

You can follow the development of my game there as well!

Don’t forget to wishlist the game, if you want to help me that’s the BEST WAY:…

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Second digest of Crumble, so what did happen the last couple of weeks uh?

Grass Shader Polished

Now the twitter embed is white, so cool!

So, the grass shader was polished to work on any surfaces and with any rotations so that means that I can put this on anything I want now!

I used a triplanar solution with 3 cameras following the player to get that effect in space.

You can see a more finished result here:

Trail Optimized

I realized 7 months later that the way I was doing decal and trail renderer was VERY badly optimized and I was actually instantiating a lot of particle emitters when the player is on the ground. I removed it and made my own particle emitter, and it only uses one emitter for the whole effect. It was a bit challenging to make it rotate depending on velocity and object initial rotation, but it now works like the old one but better!

I have 300FPS in the editor while playing and can play the game at 60FPS on my 12yo computer.

So the next demo is going to be smoother and playable with old computers I hope (not too old).

Mini planets

I’ve been working hard on making the hub world/Main menu and it’s getting there, not yet finished because I wanted to add so many new features.

I added custom gravity and some little planets to explore and roam around. Don’t get too far because you might not come back because of low gravity and infinite space and all that.

This is what the menu looks like right now, if you select “Level Selection” the rocket will launch and get to the planet in the background which is the new way of selecting levels!

Level Selection

So this is still a work in progress, but it’s getting there.

You can select different levels and the planet will rotate automatically, it will give you a nice visual representation of what the theme of the level is, if it’s in the jungle or in the lava, etc…

Here is some progress on it:

I made sure to be able to rotate it with either a click of a mouse or a move on the joystick.

Featured

I’m happy to say that Crumble got featured on the exploration page of Gamejolt!

I’ve gotten more than 2000 followers from it, so that’s very nice to welcome newcomers and to show them the world of Crumble and what the game is going to become! Visit the gamejolt page of Crumble if you have time, it’s a very nice community!

I also got my game featured on IndieDB, you can see the entry of my game here.

And we’re at more than 1.3K followers on Twitter which is amazing to me that the game got so much attention so fast! It really motivates me to keep working harder and better on the game and perhaps on a new game after this which would be a dream coming true, being independant and living off my games!

As always don’t forget to Wishlist Crumble and if you already have, please share it with your friends and family, it’s a game for everyone!…

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Another week another digest!

Crumble New Demo is out

Maybe you haven’t heard about it but the new demo is out and I’ve been receiving a lot of positive feedbacks on it!

You can try it out and wishlist the game on Steam!

So let’s list out all the new features that have changed or are new in this demo.

The player movement and camera

The player movement was tweaked a little to be more responsive and to fit the action style platformer I have going on. The camera was pulled back too and is wider so you can see more of the environment you’re supposed to jump on.

The character is almost always in the middle of the screen as opposed to how it was on the gif before.

The new Character look and the collectables

The Main character has changed skin and is cleaner, the shader will change a final time to include the new one I’ve been working on for the multiplayer unlockable skins etc…

I took an approach very similar to what’s been done in Slime Rancher on UE4.

For now those blobs are for collectable and weird turbine spinner thing only.

More Tongue Action

In the new demo there is a lot of tongue parkour in the second level.

This was a good opportunity for me to test the skills of new players to the difficulty of mastering the hook mechanic of crumble and I’m glad that a majority of the players who played it were able to use it properly.

Although there are still a too large number of people who feel that it’s too hard to use and a bit awkward. So being the last feature of Crumble that needs tweaking i’m going to spend a large amount of time trying to implement ways to ease it for the player.

The avion part

I was a bit anxious to see how players would react to it, since it’s way different from the original Crumble but it worked fine. The major problem for a lot of people including myself is that it’s too boring and dull, so I might need to add explosions and multiple planes to jump on 🙂

All the extra fluff and stuff

Of course there are some other useless stuffs you can toy with in the demo such as the rocket loading screen that you can rotate with your joystick, the planet level selection that you can rotate too, more options in the menu and best time saved!

Compared to the first demo it’s really a BIG change, and it’s available for mac linux and windows.

What’s the next milestone?

So I have one last demo to launch before the full game, it will include the local multiplayer and (maybe) a giant boss fight. So with that you will have the full unlockable skins system and the final hub world look.

Right now I’m working on something really exciting, a 2D crumble!

This will be part of the gameplay as a linear feature, you’ll have to hope in grass portals to turn into a grass ball. or a mole.

As for the timeline of things, I think I can spit out the new demo in 2 months, so early december. And the final release of the game will be after new year, I really want this project to be 1 year long, but I know I might overshoot it to make it “perfect”. Let’s hope I get really productive towards the end!

Conclusion

Thanks for sticking with my updates and giving me feedbacks on the new demo. A lot of new people got interested into the development of crumble with the new release of the demo so that’s nice to see. I’m finishing a lot of big features that took me ages to think about, and only started to have fun with all of them in various new levels.

Thanks for reading!…

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Long time since I made one, I bring you some crumbly news about the game! And if you don’t follow my twitter, you can read here some progress on Crumble.

2D Crumble Implemented

The big progress is the 2D mechanics that’s been completed and implemented in the first levels, here is a video showing the transition:

And here a more polished version of it:

I can tell you that making those special levels are a real-time sink but the effect and gameplay are worth the effort.

New Skins

The balls from Fling to the Finish join the battle!

It’s really heartwarming that some good game devs want to be a part of my game in some way and I find it very fun to do. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you want to have something related to game dev as a skin in Crumble, I would love to add new friends to the growing collection.

Vine System

I made a cool Vine system inside Unity to have some life in the level designs + it can be useful for the gameplay when you want to cross gape etc…

I made some dynamic platforms with it!

Coop Progress

The main features for the Party-game/Versus mode is done but it still needs to be refined before the last Crumble demo:

There are 2 types of games you can play as of now; Racing and Survival. Racing is self-explanatory and Survival means you are 1 Vs 1 or 1 Vs 3 and the guy with the cannon tries to explode the others while they try and survive the longest. The better time wins 🙂

New Music Progress

I never talked about it anywhere except Twitter but I’m finally making soundtracks for (each) level I was a bit skeptical at first when learning the best way to approach this but finally I’ve come around and made some samples:

These are just a few of many, and unrefined for now. I’m still trying to search for the best sound and theme for each group of level. But it’s definitely more enjoyable for me to work on levels and test them when they have that OST made specifically for them.

Also a big thanks to my followers on Twitter, we are now more than 3K which is very big for a small dev like me. So I made an announcement for the Nintendo Switch release of Crumble:

Don’t forget, 1 Wishlist gives you 1 Virtual nonredeemable Crumble…

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As I’m nearing the end of crumble development I can already give you the expected release date of the game: December 04, 2020!

Release Date

Crumble will release on December 4th.

There is a possibility that the date might change in the future, but I’m confident I can make it.

The price will be 15$/€ with a 15% discount for the week of release and the Switch port will come out a few months later.

The development of the crumble is not yet finished, some big chunks of levels are missing and I’m working hard on it every day and night to bring it closer to completion.

Overall Visuals

I am very pleased by the recent completion of all major visual aspects of Crumble. The demo only has a few levels of the 2nd world which I call the mountain/forest world and I’m eager to let everyone play the other worlds in the full version.

Completing all of these new levels will be the last thing I will need to do before finishing Crumble.

Boss Content

The last month I have worked on implementing a boss for each world with varying mechanics.

In order: World 2 with a bunch of flying snakes that you will have to ride to your rocket,

World 4 in a stormy level where winds can push you off platforms or help you cross large gaps,

World 5 on the lava surface which is so hot it can crumble under you if you stay too long.

These special levels will challenge the skill and patience of the player and are a treat for the most experienced.

I’ve worked on a new lava shader that can turn solid and liquid depending on the player’s movement, I’m sure a lot of game devs following me would be interested in me sharing this kind of shader but it will have to wait until the end of Crumble production before I can share some game dev insights.

I’ve skipped a lot of Crumble digests so if you’re not aware I have released a new demo a few months ago including 4 levels, a leaderboard system, an infinite runner level, and some general optimizations!

I received amazing feedback from the steam summer festival, a lot of people who played the early versions of the demo came back and enjoyed it a lot more this time around. There are still some features I need to tweak like adding a free mouse aiming for those on PC who would want to aim straight where they want to grapple.

Overall, I have a very good feeling about the release and the future reception of Crumble and I am looking ahead!

1 wishlist on Steam = 1 smile on my face…

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