Road to Update 14 (V0.0.1.4): Living Towns and Quests
Update 13 gave you the world map and fast travel. Update 14 fills that world with people. Towns now have crowds living their day, the law watches what you do, enemies hold the roads and the wilds, and the first story quests of Act 1 are in. Here is what is coming.
Living towns
- Busy streets: Black Hollow is packed with townsfolk, and the crowd follows you as you walk through the city, so every street you are on feels alive.
- Daily routines: people work, eat, shop, pray, sit on benches and go home at night. Fewer people are out after dark.
- Named townsfolk: blacksmiths, innkeepers and other named characters live in their home towns, show their name and title when you look at them, and stay dead if you kill them.
- Distant crowds: towns look inhabited from far away, not only up close.
- Townsfolk talk: greetings, comments on your drawn weapon, the rain or your reputation, and shouts for the guards when trouble starts.
Crime and the law
- Bounties: attack or kill someone where it can be seen and you get a bounty.
- Guards: they walk up and give you a choice. Pay the fine, go to jail, or resist.
- Jails: you are sent to the nearest jail, time passes, and your bounty is cleared.
- Holds: each hold keeps its own law. A bounty in one hold does not follow you into the next.
- Reputation: how each faction and town feels about you changes how they treat you.
Stealth
- Sneak through towns and camps with a detection eye that shows how close you are to being seen.
- Sneak attacks deal triple damage on enemies who have not noticed you.
- Enemies search for you when they hear something, and bodies left in the open raise the alarm.
Quests
- A brand new quest system with a journal, an on-screen tracker and quest markers on the compass and minimap.
- The opening of Act 1: "Awakening" and "Word from the Priests".
- Contract boards in towns: clear camps, hunt beasts, deal with raiders, make deliveries and collect bounties.
Enemies and the roads between towns
- Bandits, the Wild Tribes and the Flaming Eye, each with their own fighters, archers, brutes and leaders.
- Bandit camps and Wild Tribe villages across the map. Clear one and it stays clear for a few days before new occupants move in.
- Life on the roads: guard patrols, travelers, pilgrims, merchant caravans with their carts, travelers resting by a fire at night, bandit ambushes and Wild Tribe hunting parties.
Performance and saves
- Big crowds are much cheaper to run: in testing, a full Black Hollow went from around 25 FPS to around 40 FPS at 4K.
- Saves now keep everything: who is dead, places you discovered, camps you cleared, encounters on the road, quests and reputation.
What moved, and why
The combat framework Crewin is built on is getting a full rewrite from its developer, and he asked us to wait a few months for it. Rather than build twice, everything that depends on it moves to a later update: the enemy combat AI overhaul, wildlife and hunting, companions, merchant shops and bosses. Those are now planned for Update 16.
So Crewin does not sit still in the meantime, Update 15: Guilds and Trades comes first, with guilds, crafting, farming and thievery.
Testers
The Update 14 test build is coming to the testing branch soon. Please report anything you find in our Discord: https://discord.gg/TKWaBRE3cK
Thank you for sticking with Crewin. The world is finally starting to feel alive.