Work continues on every aspect of the game this month: I'm playtesting daily and making thousands of small changes that are adding up to create a satisfying game loop.
Epic MegaGrant
I'm very pleased to announce that Crab Champions has received a MegaGrant from the amazing folks at Epic Games (creators of Unreal Engine which I use to make this game). Huge thanks to them for their generosity, I'm beyond grateful for the support! Their MegaGrant initiative is helping devs finish their projects everywhere: if you are making a project in Unreal Engine it's definitely worth checking out.
Weapon Heat Mechanic
Since ammo is unlimited in Crab Champions, having a reload mechanic was a bit redundant and uses up a keybind for very little value in return. I've decided to move to a new heat based mechanic to replace traditional reloading. Before you raise your pitchforks: this will not result in your weapon doing a frustrating overheat or jammed animation where you can't fire for several seconds. Instead this heat mechanic factors deeply into the mod system as mentioned below, making it so that stacking high cost mods will mean your weapon heats quickly and will require special cooling mods or perks to circumvent, adding a new layer of strategy to builds.
This prevents any one weapon from creating a meta (this would have been the minigun in previous versions of the game as it had a huge clip, fast fire rate and no penalty for stacking the most powerful mods). Anyone not using the minigun was at a disadvantage. Now, each weapon has a different cooling speed and max heat stat, allowing for much more balance across the weapon types in this regard.
Survival Mode Weapon Mods
In Development Update #9, I shared the list of perks that were added to the game and mentioned that they would compliment the new weapon mod system. I'm happy to say that a huge amount of progress has been made on this system and it's feeling great. There was a lot of hidden complexity in getting this stable as some of the combinations can produce crazy results!
As a quick recap: weapon mods are a core focus for Survival mode, allowing players to stack powerful upgrades on stock weapons with a near infinite number of combinations. Mods can be placed on your primary and secondary weapons as well as your grenade.
These mods tie into the heat system mentioned above: each mod has a heat cost when triggered which means that players must strike a balance between raw power and being able to fire fast enough to eliminate enemies. Sure it's possible to fire a shot that spawns 12 burning blades which each spawn a black hole when exploding but it'll cost a lot of heat, meaning you won't be able to fire again until your weapon cools enough to afford the heat of another shot.
Here are some of the weapon mods added this month (many more are planned for future updates):
Common Weapon Mods
- Cooling Shot: Shots that hit enemies cool your weapon
- Light Shot: Projectiles are no longer affected by gravity
- Bouncing Orb: Chance to fire a bouncing orb along with your normal shot
- Heatsink: Cooling speed increased
- Extended Mag: Max heat increased
- Wind Up: Damage increased for each shot fired in a row (resets when overheating or stopping fire)
- High Caliber: Damage greatly increased but max heat is reduced to 33%
- Iron Sights: Damage increased when aiming
- Glue Shot: Shots slow enemies
- Charm Shot: Shots charm enemies (they will temporarily fight for you)
- Ricochet Shot: Shots ricochet off surfaces
- Snake Shot: Projectiles move in a wavy pattern
- Fast Shot: Projectiles fly faster
Rare Weapon Mods
- Stun Shot: Shots stun enemies
- Weak Shot: Shots weaken enemies, causing them to deal less damage
- FMJ: Damage increased to shots dealing more than 85 damage
- Cluster Shot: Fires an inaccurate cluster of 2-8 shots
- Chaotic Shot: Projectiles deal much higher damage but fly in random patterns
- Big Shot: Projectiles are larger (both in terms of visuals and hitbox)
- Explosive Core: Projectiles have a larger explosion radius
- Ghost Shot: Chance to not heat the weapon when firing a shot
- Poison Dagger: Chance for enemies to get hit with poisoned daggers when being damaged by this weapon
- Iron Shot: Projectiles are far slower and heavier but deal much greater damage
- Combo Counter: Deal bonus damage when hitting the same enemy multiple times in a row (resets when missing or hitting another enemy)
- Precision Laser: Damage increased for each shot you hit without missing
- Earthquake Shot: Shots knock enemies back
- Close Shot: Large damage increase when hitting nearby enemies
- Distant Shot: Large damage increase when hitting distant enemies
- Afterburner: Every fifth shot is a guaranteed crit
- Mace Ball: Chance to fire a heavy but damaging mace ball along with your normal shot
Epic Weapon Mods
- Damage Shot: Damage greatly increased
- Crit Shot: Chance to crit
- Power Shot: Crit damage increased
- Mega Crit Shot: Chance to megacrit (3x crit) when landing crits
- Giga Crit Shot: Chance to gigacrit (10x crit) if all other mods on the weapon are crit based
- Supercharger: Fire rate increased
- Stacker: Elemental damage stacks increased
- Heatseeker: Shots that hit enemies spawn additional shots that fire at nearby enemies
- Quad Shot: Fire 4 shots with reduced damage and increased spread
- Looper: Projectiles have a chance to explode multiple times
- Random Shot: Every time a shot is fired, a random projectile is used
- Piercing Shot: Bullets pierce through enemies
- Saw Blade: Chance to fire a sharp saw blade along with your normal shot
- Elemental Shot: Shots have a random elemental damage type
- Crystal Blast: Chance to fire a close range AOE blast with each shot
Legendary Weapon Mods
- Double Barrel: Shoot an extra shot each time you fire
- Splash Shot: Shots deal splash damage to a radius around their impact point
- Black Hole: Chance for a black hole to spawn at the impact point of each shot, sucking nearby enemies and projectiles in
- Blade Cluster: Chance for a cluster of blades to spawn at the impact point of each shot
- Homing Shot: Chance for projectiles to home to nearby enemies
- Ice Shot: Chance for shots to freeze enemies
- Fire Shot: Chance for shots to burn enemies
- Lightning Shot: Chance for shots to shock enemies
- Acid Shot: Chance for shots to poison enemies
- Clone Shot: Chance for projectiles to duplicate while in the air
- Fireball: Chance to fire a fireball along with your normal shot
To make the divide between weapon mods and perks more clear: weapon mods now only affect what comes out of a weapon when fired and perks can handle any other cases. Some mods have been converted to perks such as Exploding Enemies (enemies explode when eliminated) or Icebreaker (enemies take damage when thawing from ice). This allows for many more mod and perk synergies, making perks more interesting and viable rather than being purely for utility. There'll be more work done to make sure that the mod system feels easy to learn while still allowing some crazy combinations.
Here's a fun quick example: the grenade has a Black Hole mod which creates a black hole when exploding. All nearby enemies and projectiles are sucked into it. In the clip below I'm firing an orb launcher with a mod that spawns blades when exploding. You can see them being sucked into the black hole until it runs out and then the homing mod kicks in and sends all of the projectiles to the nearest enemy.
Survival Mode Challenge Modifiers
New challenge modifiers have been added to challenge islands this month, increasing the amount of potential variation across runs.
- Army Of One: All enemies are of one random type
- Afterlife: Enemies are invulnerable for 5 seconds after being eliminated
- Friendly Fire: You can damage yourself with projectiles and explosions
- Shrapnel: Enemies explode into a burst of projectiles when eliminated
- Rebirth: Enemies spawn a random lesser enemy when eliminated
- Ocean Of Lava: The ocean is made of lava: watch out!
- Trapped: All traps and hazards on the island are enabled!
- Homing Enemies: All enemies have homing projectiles
- Double Edged Sword: All explosions do far more damage in a far larger radius
- Randomized Mods: All weapon mods are randomized for this island
- Sharpshooter: Missing shots causes you to take a small amount of damage
- Elemental Enemies: Enemies explode into a random elemental damage area when eliminated
These are in addition to the challenge modifiers mentioned in a previous update such as Low Gravity or Instagib.
Controller Aim Assist
I've been doing a lot of playtesting on controller and noticed that aim assist was badly needed. I've added two settings that players using controllers can use: a Low setting that simply lowers sensitivity when near a target and a High setting that offers a subtle magnetic pull when aiming near enemies. Players can of course play without any aim assist if they wish. In Duel mode, only the Low setting will be applied for fairness.
Survival Mode Quality Of Life Improvements
- New Icons: Placeholder icons are starting to get replaced: I'm going for a nice clean and simple style with these icons: aiming for them to be easy to read no matter the size on screen!
- Horde + Wave Island Types Consolidated: As I want each portal type to offer a meaningfully different style of gameplay, I am merging the Horde and Wave island types as they were too similar. A similar experience to the old Horde islands can still be found when on a challenge island with the Army Of One challenge modifier active.
- Pacing: Previously, all portal types had the potential to spawn after finishing the first island which meant that an underpowered player could take on an elite challenge which of course ended up feeling unfair. It also meant that it was possible to get very overpowered early on if you only chose hard portals and got Epic or Legendary rewards. I have done a lot of work to balance this out with the harder portal types slowly trickling in as you progress through each biome. The current layout is:
Island 1: Horde (1 wave)
Island 2: Horde (2 waves) OR Defense
Island 3: Horde (3 waves) OR Defense OR Challenge
Island 4: Shop
Island 5-8: Defense OR Challenge OR Elite
Island 9: Shop
Island 10: Boss - Respawn Tweaks: Downed players now respawn with only 33% health to prevent downing on purpose to regain health.
Thanks for reading!
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