What’s left to do?
Tim and I are very excited to see the project which has been in on-and-off development for the past 3 years finally on its way to being polished and finished.
Having contact with our fanbase via this blog has been really helpful in keeping us motivated and understanding what you want to see in Craig’s rebirth.
Despite the amount of work we’ve done, and despite how the game looks in screenshots and tech videos, there is still a lot to go. We are, as any game studio would be, a little behind schedule but there are good reasons behind this. We don’t want to cut corners to meet self-defined deadlines, and so we have spent much of the past few weeks going over some of the core gameplay elements and redoing large parts of them so that the game is essentially more enjoyable.
This is in part why we are yet to offer a release date – we want to meet and exceed expectations. We want to perfect the game, and that is at the expense of committing to announced deadlines.
So, what’s left?
We are still tweaking and introducing new ideas to the main “conquest” gametype to make it fun, challenging, and unique. There are going to be at least 5 ‘other’ gametypes which need to be put together, too – although these will take significantly less time to do.
The HUD is looking very polished, however there are still lots of small bits and pieces to tweak and add. When we do get around to adding the new gametypes, we will need to adapt some parts to accommodate changes in the game mechanic. Some work on fonts and small images like the cursor or indication icons still need to be done.
On the bonuses/”XP rewards” front, we have about 10 existing in the game, many of which still need tweaking and fixing – another 25 need to be added once Tim has put together the sprites and resources for them. I’m looking forward to seeing which XP rewards get used most, and how people use them to get a strategic edge over the enemy.
The whole main menu structure / look needs to be put together, although most of it has already been planned on paper.
Tim needs to finish off the animations for the remaining enemy tribe leaders. There’s a lot of voice acting to be done, in addition to all the sound effects.
I need to create a save/load script (The gameMaker inbuilt one won’t likely do), a tribe statistics window, a tutorial, and mod/expansion capabilities – this is not a priority, but it will be used to allow for small patches, new dinosaurs or cavemen skins, and new levels without having to release an updated executable (which at this point is almost 50mb in size).
Ricky will begin core work on the soundtrack in just a few days. We hope to show some teasers of the main theme soon =)
Finally, there’s the non-technical side of things.. marketing, contracts, distribution negotiations, pre-orders.. Lots of discussions to be had and lots of work to do.
As always, we’ll keep you updated and in the loop! We’d love to start blogging about some new project ideas soon!
Regards,
Rhys
On track for release soon!
We are powering through this game now and we’re as eager to have this game out as much as you are!
You can see here the official Caveman Craig 2: The Tribes of Boggdrop logo and title (click on it for a chunky huge version).
Keep an eye on our blog for some crisp screenshots coming this week. We’re also hoping to announce a release date and a pre-order deal soon.
Suddenly, cavemen. Thousands of them!
Only the most fanatic of you all will ever get close to this number (~60) of cavemen, I’d expect.. unless you cheat of course.
On a technical note, I still had a full 40/40 framerate! .. Well, until I bought the ‘triple rock’ bonus and a river of rocks streamed through the terrain wiping out every dinosaur in sight.
-Rhys
Caveman Craig 2 – XP Rewards
We wanted Caveman Craig 2 to have plenty of material for those with strategic minds to chew on, while retaining the simplicity and casual feel of the original Caveman Craig. It’s a hard balance to keep.
Part of this is our new “XP rewards” system. Unlike the previous games, Caveman Craig 2 doesn’t just throw random bonuses at you as your tribe grows. Instead, Craig can earn experience points by basically ‘doing things’. As he hunts animals, drags carcasses, preparers food, and teaches cavemen, his XP will grow steadily. Big XP is earned for doing things like saving cavemen, fending off the enemy tribe, or stealing their carcasses.
Your XP can then be spent on a large number of rewards in the ‘rewards catalog’ – including the mammoth and his rock throwing pal (shown above), pet dinosaurs, and many others including our favourite rewards from Caveman Craig and Caveman Craig: SE.
Some rewards are cheap, others expensive. It’s up to you to choose your strategy. Will you spend all your XP on pre-trained cavemen & food resources? Or will you save up for something that will crush your enemy?
