Remember the good ole days when games used to be challenging? So do we. Crawle is essentially a survival dungeon crawler sandbox game. Crawle focuses on realistic survival using mechanics such as sanity, hunger, thirst, energy, diseases and permanent death. Your task is simple: survive.



(Note: Some of these images are pretty old)















-A randomly generated environment.
-There is no EXP in the game and therefore there are no levels - you are not restricted in any way.
-After a while your supplies will run out. Fortunately, you can visit a dungeon to grab some supplies and resources.
-Going without food will cause your character to become sick, diseases may also develop on your character from eating raw food or being around dead animals, increasing your death rate. They will also decrease certain stats.
-Dungeons can be found through holes in the ground, be careful though because sometimes you can end up in other worlds.
-There are bars for hunger, thirst, energy and sanity, if any (aside from energy) reach zero, you will die.
-Depending on the type of world you have you only have two or three chances in the world. Unforgiving mode however only gives you one chance.
-Sometimes a travelling Merchant will drop by to say hello. In the mean time, you can trade with villagers.
-Earthquakes can occur, causing new holes to appear, revealing new dungeons/caverns.
-There is no traditional health system, instead your health is based off your blood content and the damage to your body parts. You can also bleed out.
-Animals do not despawn, instead they can be skinned, picked up and taken to your house or just left to rot.
-Multi language!




http://www.sleepystudios.com (Main Site & Forums)
http://www.sleepystudios.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=45 (Crawle Board)
http://www.indiedb.com/games/crawle (IndieDB Page)




Crawle 0.5.0 PTV 3: http://sleepystudios.com/showthread.php?tid=495

[Development] 4/3/12

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[Development] 5/3/12

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[Super-Development] 7/4/12

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[Deveopment] 8/4/12

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Okay so lets start off with something I've said before: delays. A while ago I said I'd be taking a short hiatus. Unfortunately that's not possible for me since this game wouldn't even get worked on if I left it. So, I'm trying my best to work on it from time to time, getting a few things added here and there, making little tweaks. Therefore, 0.3.0 will be delayed. 0.3.0 will also be a bit different the next time you see it but we'll save that for later.

Alright so a few of the things I've done are balance related. Animals' damage is now based off their type (e.g. a bear hits harder than a chicken) and like before their health.

Earthquakes have been reduced to a 1 in 1000 chance (down from 1 in a million) because frankly, content restrictions are plain silly. Also, the Merchant spawn rate has been bumped down (a lot) and diseases have been bumped up again.

I've added another "dimension" as it were, houses (which I've mentioned before). There houses are mainly to shelter you from the night but we do have zombie invasion plans (so that they break in and murder you while you hide ;]).

The game is a lot more optimised now: worlds render and generate faster and use up a lot less memory as does the game in general. Currently I'm working on fixing a leak coming from the text rendering system that takes your FPS down by about 10.

A big thing for me to finish for 0.3.0 is world generation. Currently, I'm working on my biome system and now I've finally got round to reducing the chance of things spawning in awkward places (not quite there yet, but I have yet another idea) and having empty land. In the screenshot below you'll see that most of the world is covered up by things:




And finally here's a changelog of all the changes from this week:

# FIXES
- Fixed tree collision.
- World loading should now be much faster.

# CHANGES
- Faster intro sequence.
- Balanced out the animal's damage (and based it off what type of animal they are).
- NPC AI tweaks.

# ADDITIONS
- GUI scaling for the world info.
- Language support for the new strings.
- Added hit and impact sounds.

P.S. I think I did mention that we're on Twitter now, I'll be posting links to news there so it's a pretty damn good way to keep up to date. Also people who would like to 'beta test' new releases (not public ones) can still PM me.

It isn't really how I wanted to release this patch but unfortunately over the next two months I won't have time to even work on Crawle, so I've released this to try and get something out to make up for my absence. Enjoy!

Changelog below:

0.2.5 --> 0.3.0
# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- New bars.
- Improved the day-night cycle so it's more realistic.
- NPC names turn red when they become hostile (i.e. at night).
- Added a item description box.
- Added a death menu.
- Added information boxes for world modes.

# FIXES
- Fixed sound and music.
- Fixed sound and music options.
- Fixed the camera system!
- Fixed the merchant not changing to his zombie sprite at night.
- Fixed NPC names not centering.
- Fixed the save button in the options menu not working.
- Fixed inputs not being recognized.
- Fixed action messages (e.g. "Level Up" ).
- Fixed pressing esc in menus opening the options window.
- Fixed chests being able to give you multiple portions of EXP.
- Fixed diseases not properly generating.
- Fixed diseases not properly clearing.
- Fixed chests blocking.
- Fixed world border collision.
- Fixed spawning outside dungeons after logging out.
- Fixed tree collision.
- World loading should now be much faster.
- Fixed resizing in fullscreen mode.
- Fixed music in the options menu.
- Fixed action message positioning and fading.
- Fixed item drops jumping about.

# CHANGES
- New random generation.
- Reduced Merchant spawn rate.
- Increased disease rate.
- Going below 50% hunger or thirst will drain your health.
- Dungeons are no longer saved in the world file.
- All worlds except Unforgiving worlds are now based on 'death chances':
- Die once: sent back to respawn point.
- Die twice: lose items, exp, etc.
- Die three times: like Unforgiving mode, your world is deleted.
- Hard mode only has two chances: lose items, exp, etc and permadeath.
- Reverted dungeons back to old maze format, temporarily.
- Even more code cleaning!
- NPCs now respawn every 30 seconds.
- Improved NPC AI to comply with the new collision system.
- Folder cleaning.
- Added more NPCs to dungeons.
- Time is now saved in the world data folder.
- Removed F to unlock FPS.
- Randomised the spawn point.
- Added a border around the world.
- Increased the energy regen rate.
- Sound engine no longer loads if music or sound isn't enabled.
- Chests now open (visually) after being used.
- Attacking is now based off energy and health.
- Balanced disease rate a bit more.
- Randomised the Merchant spawn point.
- The Merchant will now leave if you enter a dungeon.
- You can now delete multiple worlds.
- NPCs now drop loot. Stays on the ground for 30 seconds.
- NPCs' attack hits are now based off their health.
- All inventory items are now dropped on your 2nd death.
- Attached the inventory to the player files.
- Items now drop to the ground (and are pickup-able).
- Earthquakes!
- Changed the position of returning from a dungeon to stop holes bugging out.
- Rewrote the village system.
- Made the amount of villagers dependent on the amount of houses.
- Changed baskets to follow chest logic.
- Dungeons are now saved in the world file.
- Dungeons now have a randomised spawn area.
- Animals no longer become 'evil' animals at night. Realism, etc.
- Bunnies now have a 70% chance to run away from you.
- Faster intro sequence.
- Balanced out the animal's damage.
- Animals' damage are now based on the type of animal they are.
- NPC AI tweaks.
- The intro can now be skipped using Space.
- Folder structure and name changes.
- Chests, baskets and pots now give you items instead of EXP.
- You now need at least 14 energy to run now.
- You lose 10 energy for not sleeping at night.
- Villagers now spawn outside their specific houses.
- Villagers now spawn with a random direction.
- Villagers' names are now saved.
- Combat is now click-to-attack instead of walk-into-to-attack.
- Easy mode no longer has permadeath.

# ADDITIONS
- Health bar.
- Holes now teleport you to dungeons.
- Collisions.
- EXP bar.
- You now gain 15 EXP per day and 30 EXP per week.
- Very minimal and temporary combat system.
- NPC health bars.
- Dungeon portals to teleport you back home.
- Escape to exit to the main menu whilst not in-game.
- F to hide/show the GUI.
- M to hide/show world info.
- Added action messages.
- Proper inventory system.
- More NPC names.
- Biomes.
- New seed type: long grass.
- New seed type: cactus.
- New seed type: dead weed.
- New seed type: sandstone.
- Improved the world generator to be more realistic.
- Cut down on world generation time significantly.
- Dungeon themes.
- Chickens!
- Dungeon pots.
- Added back running.
- You can now enter houses!
- GUI scaling for the world info.
- Language support for the new strings.
- Hit and impact sounds.
- 'Miss', 'Dodge' and 'Parry' luck rates.
- N to return to the menu (while in-game).
- Right-clicking the 'world mode' button will not cycle it backwards.

Download:
http://www.downloads.sleepystudios.co ... le/Crawle030Installer.rar

I think you have a great idea here. My only advice is to hunt down some good tilesets to make your world look more complete. Maybe you can figure out how to make auto tiles?

I'm also working on a sandbox game (different), and I think you're on to something. Love the earthquake idea!

Chickens? Love that idea!!!

Of course! Chickens are the most innovative things in Crawle. We've recently hired a new pixel artist so there's A LOAD of new stuff (as you'll see below). Good luck with your project ;].

First of all let me just apologize for the lack of updates. I've already mentioned that this is the time of the year where I have exams and can't really spend much time on any of my hobbies (i.e. programming) and since no one else on the team is able to program I've been doing small things bit by bit.

The first major change is the much cleaner and generally better looking world gen. This came about from doing a speed-programming session (however I found the bug that caused worlds to look ugly after the session). Things will no longer (or shouldn't) spawn in places where they shouldn't be, such as trees in water and flowers on stone. Here are a few screenshots of this 'new' world generation:







In addition to this new world generation, I've also added a new Swamp biome. The graphics for the plantlife and other things in the swamp are still in development, but here's a screenshot of it in it's current state:




On top of that, our new pixel artist, Gol3m, has created a brand new dungeon theme including a brand new monster: scorpions!




Although these were implemented in 0.3.0, they never really looked good or served a purpose. House interiors have been revamped with a whole new set a graphics, here's an early mockup (a few things have been added but it's still very much in development):




Our plan at the moment is to create a handful of interior styles and apply a random one to each house.

Now let's move on to something that has been asked for time and time again, the ability to name your worlds. It's finally here! To be honest, this took me two minutes despite me dismissing it as impossible almost 3 months ago.




As you can see my three worlds are named. And yes, there will be easter egg worlds for worlds with "special" names.

So finally, I've added a very basic NPC interaction system, you simply click an NPC to talk to him (like you would if you were attacking an animal). This will bring up this very culturally-aware written interaction box:




That's it for all the visual stuff, here's the changelog, it's got a load of fixes and changes. Oh and I'd like your opinions on whether or not world deletion should have a password system or simply a confirmation box:

0.3.1a --> 0.4.0
# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- Updated the disease graphic.
- Fixed up the item description box.
- Completely new and revamped house interior graphics.
- New sandstone edges.
- New tree types: willows and dead trees.

# FIXES
- Hitting no in the esc menu in fullscreen mode should no longer quit the game.
- You can no longer create new worlds if you already have 3 worlds.
- World data folders should now properly be cleared.
- Various optmisations.
- Fixed random teleportation to dungeons (non-existant holes).
- Fixed the random tree leaves without stumps.
- The enter key should no longer break textboxes.
- Fixed some NPCs not having names.

# CHANGES
- You can no longer press the delete button if you have no worlds to delete.
- You can now only press the play button if you're in "delete mode".

# ADDITIONS
- The ability to name your world!
- Worlds can now be password-locked.
- House exits.
- New dungeon theme.
- Varied tree heights.
- Cleaner and generally better looking world generation.
- 20 new NPC names!
- Olaf the Farmer.
- NPC interaction (click to talk).

I thought I'd work on Holes and the whole dungeon system a bit more today. For one thing, Holes that spawn in sand will always teleport you to Sand-Themed Dungeons.

Also, in order to prevent yourself from falling through the universe, you now need to put down Ladders by clicking a Hole, and it'll look like this:




If you want the explanation why you don't die if Ladders exist then read this Official explanation:

Portals in Crawle are made of Sekaruium. Sekaruium only creates Sekaruium solution (which is the portal-entering substance in the middle) when it reacts with wood that is in a ladder-like shape. Because of this you can go through portals and not go through the universe and that's why not having a ladder will kill you.

You'll get this lovely message if you forget to place down a ladder:



Now, keeping up our reputation of making what most would consider as one of the most dickest games out there, there is a 1 in 50 chance that you will slip off the ladder and die before the ladder has reacted with the Sekaruium. You'll get this message:



That's about it. Good news though! Exams are starting to spread out more now and so I should have a load more free time ;].

I tried to do quite a lot today, ended up adding quite a few new things but not as much as I wanted (but those things will be added very, very soon).

First of all, I've added Carpets, Fireplaces and Beds as well as fixed the house generation significantly (things should no longer spawn outside the house interior, etc):




I've also made houses slightly smaller:




Finally I've completely revamped the tutorial, it is now in pages and is more clean and informative:




Apart from that there's only been a few fixes and changes but here's the changelog for the patch so far:

0.3.1a --> 0.4.0
# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- Updated the disease graphic.
- Fixed up the item description box.
- Completely new and revamped house interior graphics.
- New sandstone edges.
- New tree types: willows and dead trees.

# FIXES
- Hitting no in the esc menu in fullscreen mode should no longer quit the game.
- You can no longer create new worlds if you already have 3 worlds.
- World data folders should now properly be cleared.
- Various optmisations.
- Fixed random teleportation to dungeons (non-existant holes).
- Fixed the random tree leaves without stumps.
- The enter key should no longer break textboxes.
- Fixed some NPCs not having names.
- Fixed the wrong amount of chairs and tables spawning in houses.
- Fixed and improved house generation.
- Fixed combat sounds being cut off.
- Fixed chests giving EXP instead of items.
- Hitting 'N' to go back to the menu should now properly save the world.

# CHANGES
- You can no longer press the delete button if you have no worlds to delete.
- You can now only press the play button if you're in "delete mode".
- Holes now need Ladders in order for you to not die.
- You have a 1 in 50 chance of dieing whilst going down a Hole with a Ladder.
- Removed the binary language.

# ADDITIONS
- The ability to name your world!
- Worlds can now be password-locked.
- House exits.
- New dungeon theme.
- Varied tree heights.
- Cleaner and generally better looking world generation.
- 20 new NPC names!
- NPC interaction (click to talk).
- Ladders can now be added to Holes.
- Carpets.
- Fireplaces.
- Beds.

In other news, I've also made a little portal-like thing for Crawle!
http://www.sleepystudios.com/crawle

Woohoo! 0.4.0 is out! Simply open up your updater and let it patch!

So some of the thing's I've in the past... while include a brand new options screen:




I've yet to do an actual volume slider (stop begging, it's coming. gosh.) but everything else is pretty much done there. Tell me what you think (anyone who says the old one is better will die a slow and painful death).

You can also see in the screenshot that there are new buttons for Languages and Resolution. These new buttons also have right-click support.

That's really about it for visual stuff. I've done a load of fixes, changes and literally rewrote all of the major systems in Crawle over the past 2 days so the game should hopefully be waaaay more optimised.

Here's the changelog!
0.3.1a --> 0.4.0
# KNOWN BUGS
- NPC names are not functioning well, they've been turned off.

# GRAPHICAL CHANGES
- Updated the disease graphic.
- Fixed up the item description box.
- Completely new and revamped house interior graphics.
- New sandstone edges.
- New tree types: willows and dead trees.
- Revamped the options menu buttons.
- Revamped the mode buttons.
- Revamped the options menu.
- Language options are now in their specific language.

# FIXES
- Hitting no in the esc menu in fullscreen mode should no longer quit the game.
- You can no longer create new worlds if you already have 3 worlds.
- World data folders should now properly be cleared.
- Various optmisations.
- Fixed random teleportation to dungeons (non-existant holes).
- Fixed the random tree leaves without stumps.
- The enter key should no longer break textboxes.
- Fixed some NPCs not having names.
- Fixed the wrong amount of chairs and tables spawning in houses.
- Fixed and improved house generation.
- Fixed combat sounds being cut off.
- Fixed chests giving EXP instead of items.
- Hitting 'N' to go back to the menu should now properly save the world.
- Fixed sprite walking.
- You can no longer gain sanity whilst having a sanity-based disease.

# CHANGES
- You can no longer press the delete button if you have no worlds to delete.
- You can now only press the play button if you're in "delete mode".
- Holes now need Ladders in order for you to not die.
- You have a 1 in 50 chance of dieing whilst going down a Hole with a Ladder.
- Removed the binary language.
- You no longer drop all your items in easy mode on death.
- You only lose a third of your exp in easy mode and half on normal mode when you die.
- You now only drop 3 random items in normal mode.
- Shortened disease rates in normal and easy mode.
- Lengthened disease rates in hard and unforgiving mode.
- Tree's no longer have a randomised height (variations coming soon).
- NPCs are now saved into the world file.
- NPC locations in dungeons are now saved.
- Rewrote the item system, works a lot better now.

# ADDITIONS
- The ability to name your world!
- Worlds can now be password-locked.
- House exits.
- New dungeon theme.
- Varied tree heights.
- Cleaner and generally better looking world generation.
- 20 new NPC names!
- NPC interaction (click to talk).
- Ladders can now be added to Holes.
- Carpets.
- Fireplaces.
- Beds.
- New tutorials! (+ Revamped the old one).
- Consumable items (fully functional this time).
- Crit system (20% chance).
- Right-click support to screen resolution options and language options.
- 10 new items.
- 2 new item types: material and misc.

We're not dead! We're working on some... stuff. Anyway as I did promise that there would be a load of big things in 0.5.0 here's the building system that I've finally got around to implementing. There is a lot of work left to do on it and there're a plethora of ideas and thoughts going into this system - it won't be your average click to place block system.

Here's a video of the basic building: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdkO1GQMn28

And an image:



Apart from that I'm sorry but I really haven't had enough time to do anything immensely fascinating apart from very minor bugs and tweaks to world generation and the game in general. However! You can expect more in the coming days (weeks... months... this is gonna be a big one) and trust me, with what I've got planned in this patch it will be worth it.

While I'm at it and creating some amazing system and game-changing mechanics I'd like to hear your thoughts - what would YOU like in 0.5.0? Bear in mind realism though. No space unicorns. Never. Again.

Progress! I've been working on the inventory functions a bit more recently just to finally finish it off. The main thing I've added is the ability to equip items:




As you can see I've added an equipment menu that shows you all of your equipped items.

I've also added a ton of new weapons and armour, including this Raider set that will drop off Raiders (which is a random event that I'll explain when it's actually finished):




There's also been a few graphical changes, stone now has corners!




And the willows have gotten a significant update!

*Insert reappearing magic act here*

Look's like there's actually been a load of development recently (well... I might've done all of this in one day).

Let's start off with the disease system. It's been completely overhauled! Airborne diseases have been removed and you will no longer be diseased simply by walking around for a while; instead, diseased food will cause a disease (after a period time, the chance of getting a disease increases with time).

Furthermore you can also gain diseases by standing around dead animals. This is because animals no longer simply vanish (ground-breaking, right?) when killed, their corpses will stay on the ground and begin to rot, like so:




You can then skin it:




And butcher it:




You will also be able to carry the animal home (or anywhere else you wish to take a rotting corpse) if you are strong enough and deal with it there.

Also because animals do not despawn anymore they will no longer drop any sort of random loot. As a final bit of news on NPCs they are now saved to the world file - just so you know.

And now *drum roll* world generation has been improved... again! This time I've done something a lot more worthwhile in that biomes will completely fill the world now, here's an example:




Finally, you now walk and run faster. Gosh, stop complaining .

Unfortunately that's it. But! We're currently working on a load of different systems and I personally am dedicating 80% of my free time in order to make sure that Crawle 1.0.0 comes out fairly soon. Also, to celebrate over 5000 downloads I will be releasing a few public PTVs and more frequent Dev Logs (which you can find on our youtube channel) starting later this week so see you then!

We've released a new PTV! This PTV includes the ability to pick up and drop animals and villager trading!

http://sleepystudios.com/showthread.php?tid=479

If you haven't installed Crawle before you'll need to install this first: http://downloads.sleepystudios.com/dllinstaller.exe

I've finally added a skill system to the game. It isn't anything visual, for example you won't be able to see your level or EXP (eventhough it is calculated in the background) but you will notice that as you fish more you will catch fish more often.

The two skills I've added are woodcutting and fishing. Woodcutting at the moment is your standard woodcutting skill, you mercilessly click the tree until you've taken it down and gotten your logs.

With fishing, you need both fishing bait and a fishing rod (equipped) and you will then need to stand near water and click the water. This will initiate the fishing and every so often (if you still have bait) you will catch a fish:




I've also now added a tutorial on diseases and I've updated the combat tutorial:




I've also added a brand new tutorial for a new feature that I explained in a Dev Log a few days ago - the new Health system:




I won't go into detail until I actually finish it but you'll probably understand it from the tutorial.

Finally, I've added a sort of Quick-Saving feature. Using F you can now automatically save your world. Your world will also now save every 10 minutes.

A new PTV is also out, you can download it here: http://www.downloads.sleepystudios.com/crawle/crawle050ptv2.rar

So there's one prominent feature that I'll be talking about and that's the Right-Click menu system I've added:




I'll be converting interactable objects to use right-click menus. For example, skinning, chopping meat and searching baskets have already been converted:







Apart from that the only other thing I've started working on is the health system, as you can see below I've removed the health bar and added a "Blood Content" bar:




I've also added the ability to bleed out. If an animal hits you well enough then you will begin to bleed out:




I've got a few more things on my todo list and then we'll see a PTV3. After that (and after all the testing and polishing is done) 0.5.0 will be out and I'll be working on 0.6.0 where I'll actually add caves.

I've also put up a Dev Log about all of this stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iEIH0NJ7EM

So after a week of no updates at all I'm guessing that you'd expect something fairly big? Well I don't have anything massive but I do have a few fairly major things.

New Health System

I've mentioned this quite a few times but now I've finally completed it. For those of you who don't know there isn't a single health bar in Crawle. Instead, your overall health is now based off your Blood Content (out of 100%) which you can lose by 'bleeding'. It's also based off the damage done to your 4 body parts (Head, Torso, Arms, Legs). If you have 0 health on your Head or Torso you will die. The health on your Arms will determine your hit chance and the health on your Legs will affect the speed at which you move and the energy taken by running.




Improved World Generation... Again!

World generation is currently the biggest problem in Crawle at the moment, I'll admit that. I've been working on it to get it a lot more cleaner. I'm looking into procedural generation now and I think I might've made quite a bit of progress with it recently. Until then we'll still have the average world generation that we have now (that I'm constantly working on). You can see a few differences in things such as dirt and long grass.We've also decided to remove the sand and stone biomes. The sand biome just doesn't fit with all the others and really it's the one biome that wouldn't actually be helpful in any way for survival. The stone biome has been moved to inside the cave (well, y'know... when I finish it).




Patches and Updates

All those months ago I said that this would be a massive content patch and it really has been. Skills, new health system, skinning, picking up animals and much much more that I'm still working on. Now we have this ideology that 1.0.0 is the finished game, where everything we want in the game is already in there and from there on it's mainly bug fixes. Because of this I'm going to be taking it a bit more slowly with the patches, no more minor increments in patch numbers (I would re-roll back but it'd feel too weird). As for the release of this patch... I really don't know. I mean, I've done A LOT already as I mentioned above but I always feel I could do more. Maybe another couple of skills? Maybe multiplayer? Possibly even finish that damn AI that has been the bane of my existence since November. Who know's. But I will say this, when I do release this patch Crawle will be, in my opinion, very ready for Alpha.

The Community

Alpha sounds scary. It means polishing the game up and getting rid of bugs. Obviously I can't do that on my own (as we've seen these past few months... these bugs never happen for me, goddammit!). So, I propose we finally begin to attempt to grow a community. It would help the game considerably!

It would mean a lot if you all headed on over to the website and registered so we could begin bug tracking and fixing as a community. I'd like to begin this event in the next few days before I go on holiday (the laptop will come with me, don't worry!)

Hope to see you there!
http://sleepystudios.com/

We're almost there! By almost there I mean testing could begin very soon and not that multiplayer is done - the testing phase will decide that.

Today I've finished the rendering of players and also the sending of worlds from the server to the client, it seems to be pretty fast sending but I'm using localhost.

Thus, since I can't portforward over here, if there's anyone that would like to do some early testing, who knows how to portforward and would like to set up a server for us to stress test a bit please feel free to PM me.

Finally, just to prove I've actually done all this stuff (it isn't happening again ):