No Concept Art This Update!
Reading Time: 12 Mins.
🌟 Heya, everyone! 🌟
Sticking my head up from beneath the pits of development hell to bring you a fresh (2nd) update regarding the aptly named, reboot project titled “Cryamore 2.0”! I would wager if you’re not into art (then why are you here, lol), it’s not a particularly “interesting” update, but it’s an update nonetheless. Scroll down to the technical-s’mechnical stuff if you’re into that sorta thing.
First, A Word From Our Sponsor
Today’s devblog update is sponsored by this random dude on Twitter, named Duke. I personally thought he had something very interesting to say, so let’s see what Duke had to say about the game’s pending release:
Now, I don’t want to sound mean, because I don’t want anyone to take my “tone” the wrong way, so let’s be nice here: I don’t personally know Duke, but from what I can assess, he’s not that bright of a person, but it’s okay. I’m sure he’s still loved by someone out there. I have love for Duke, and so should you.
And if you’re like Duke, it should be particularly clear that you haven’t been following any of the details of the game’s development hell it’s been in for the past “over 10 years”, despite us writing over 70 updates during the course of the Kickstarter campaign when we cared about keeping unhappy people happy, even from the update video I made that detailed the specifics, setbacks, and struggles of what happened during the 1.0 version of the project, and even right on my blog here on the site, that details (with full transparency) what has transpired up to this day, on October 15, 2025.
Ex.A: How Esmy felt about Duke’s statement.
I’ve demonstrated all my abilities and skills over the course of my career and people know this, yet still treat me as if I’m not capable, and will quite literally worship and/or chase after anyone who does less because they do the same thing at a lower level as a cog on some huge team wheel (all while still disrespecting them at that too. The irony). Personally, I’m perpetually dismayed how some people, even some of my own peers that I’ve genuinely done a lot for, can be so passive and callous towards my efforts to always keep trying and not quitting. It’s almost as if that’s what they want me to actually do instead.
But sorry, Duke. I’m not a quitter. It’s just not in my blood.
So, it’s been 13 years (to be precise) worth of information from yours truly, the project lead “Robaato”, that has not been read and kept up with by detractors such as Duke. With that said, it’s what I expect from someone who goes by the name "Duke" on the internet with a corny Duke Nukem avatar. Personally, I’ve always felt Duke Nukem games are trash, so that relatively shows how I feel about Duke’s actual opinion here. It’s all love!
So, with all that said, I want to announce that I will be adding my lovely friend Duke as a special guest character in the game. Here is his reveal! Drumroll please… 🥁
Ex.B: You know me, I’m a sucker for details in my art. (Disclaimer: Duke will not be in the final product, but his spirit will live on through the enemies and NPCs.)
TA-DAHHHH! Meet in-game Duke, everyone! He’s the NPC test object that I made and use for running all my nifty technical stuff that mostly no one actually cares about that every game has running under its lid. After all, the real Duke didn’t wanna see any concept art. So, I believe this design represents Duke to its fullest character: faceless, talentless, and works extremely well as a drone. Let’s see what Duke (in the game) has been utilized for!
The Entity Radar System
I built a pretty complex radar system with contextual awareness from scratch. Yeeup, a lot of mathematics involved. Every Entity in the game, from your basic Mobs, to Bosses, and NPCs in town utilize the exact same system for keeping track of Esmy in the game world.
They can use either a spherical method of awareness (a configurable detection radius), or I can make them very short-(or near-)sighted and use a Metal Gear Solid-esque cone radar (pictured below) to detect Esmy with, based on the mob’s specific design. For Duke, since the real-life counterpart is short-sighted, I’ll use the cone version of detection to demonstrate:
I want 2.0 to run like silk, not relying on any hefty use of technical features like NavMesh or a complex A* Pathfinding algorithm, so Entities naturally follow a “scent trail” that is left by Esmy as she moves around, in a refined and clean classic-feel type of way. (Any other entity can also lay scent trails, by design btw.) Now, I labeled it a Scent Trail System because it’s mimicking the behavior of a creature tracking where someone has been, not because Esmy gets musty out there running about mining all that ore… 🤧(I’m sure someone out there is into that. Armpit fetishes are real.) But in lore, this makes sense, as Esmy herself is pretty much a running Cryam-generator, and the game’s creatures are running amuck off that same energy, it’s only natural for them to always hunt after her. So, you can imagine the various types of various enemies I can build off this alone. Even Duke has been jump-scaring me while testing. 😵
Whilst patrolling, if it picks up on Esmy whisking past it, it will begin to chase and try to do bad things to her! If/when she moves out of the detection range, it’ll switch to picking up her Cryam “scent” and will slowly follow it until it reaches Esmy and gives chase again, repeating the cycle (until you flee for good or kill it). This is also especially important for walls and corners, and the Entity will follow whatever path Esmy trekked, searching for it without getting stuck or frustrated:
I made sure this behavior mimics people like Duke. Whenever I disappear and they are just sniffing around looking for me, only to attack my character while ignoring other context clues. So, if you ask me: I feel pretty accomplished.
The Cryam Ability System
I also rebuilt the entire Ability system from scratch right down to the reboot’s game design specifics. I’m feeling very lazy today, so I’m just gonna copy-paste what I already wrote from my design document about what it entails:
So, to demonstrate how this works (again, with no concept art (heck, even no new animation!) just pure code from someone who Duke implies that he doesn’t, in opinion, “knows anything about making a game”), I’ve rigged up a little prototype UI to show exactly how the system works (in theory, since you can’t play it yet):
Ex.C: Actually, I lied. I used the concept of Esmy T-posing in the HUD.
When Esmy fires any ability (eventually not from her crotch like depicted), whether that’s during combat, for use in the field for puzzles, or other reasons, whichever Condenser (the gauntlet-like device on both of her wrists) the ability is equipped on will trigger and deplete the cost, then after Esmy completes the action, it’ll regenerate back to 100%. And if you’ve been paying attention to the concept art: she has two of them, so you can do some pretty cool stuff (in design, because not all the abilities are tangibly made yet, of course) with them! From combos, to stacked abilities making an entirely separate move if you use them at the same time, homing projectiles, AoE fields, and much more. All that functionality is built in the game to this date.
Additionally, the Mobs and Bosses use the same exact Ability system. So, certain abilities that a specific creature uses can be “Reaped” (i.e. stolen by Esmy) to add to her repertoire of skills. It’s part of the overall designed game loop: In an area? Stuck at a puzzle? Might need to find the special enemy that has the ability you need to progress.
All these features are built and ready for production level. I’ll expound further on them specifically when the time comes where I can show them off later on.
All this ties into the…
The Calendar System
Cryamore has always featured a day and night system in its design, and that has been carried over to the 2.0 version of the game. After all, from the beginning, I was highly influenced by one of my favorite games, Brave Fencer Musashi, so it’s one of the many elements that has stuck in the rebooting process. It’s been so fun working on this, as I’m actually NOW capable of developing the game based on the original vision I’ve always wanted it to be, compared to during 1.0 I had to rely on others and didn’t know as much.
But again, I’m lazy today… here’s the GDD excerpt of the specifics:
If you look in the non-concept art possessing right corner of the game: that right there is a Calendar in its most rudimentary format. The game doesn’t run on actual real-time, but NIT (Noka Island Time), in which a full day takes 24 minutes instead of 24 hours. So you don’t have to get actually bored with the mundanity of mining ore deposits and hunting creatures. The simplified “sun” and “moon” will rotate around the game’s world (implied by the shadows), the environment will change hues based on the phase, and background music will change between “Act 1 and Act 2” versions based on the daytime and evening phases:
One thing that I altered from the original 1.0 game was actual numbered time values, like “10:00”, “5:30”, etc. I wanted to simplify that. So now, an in-game day is cut in 4 different phases, Dawn, Day, Dusk, and Dark. If you need to Reap a certain creature at a specific time of night, it should be clear you need to find it when it’s Dark. If you need to hit the item shop before they pack up, make sure you visit during Day and Dusk. That’s what the bar in the middle of the right corner represents, the duration of the day’s current phase. It’s a rather easy-flowing alternative to remembering actual time. We do enough of that in real life, lol.
Ex.D: In the initial, less-appealing, 2D version of the game, you actually had to pay attention to literal time slots (top right).
Time can be sped up. Time can be slowed down. And can even be reversed… But that’s a topic for another day. 👀
How does this effect Esmy though? Well, for that, we have...
The Enervation System
Ex.E: The “Nap Bag” onesie as visualized in the 1.0 version of the game. I’ll be recreating this animation in 2.0.
Now, “Enervation” is an unorthodox way of saying “Fatigue” but every game calls it that. I wanted to be different. Esmy’s Enervation level is the green bar at the bottom of the screen, representing how tired Esmy will get during her travels. The longer the day goes by, EP regenerates slower, and when she gets on the near-brink of tiredness (around 10%), she can only walk at a steady but slower pace, signifying the fact that you would need to find a spot to rest!
Esmy has a Nap Bag that she can use out in the field when she sleeps that will recover her back to 80% for more trekking, as demonstrated by the sprite animation in 1.0 (I’ve yet to make this in 2.0 yet, but it’s okay because Duke doesn’t wanna see any concept art; only stuff from “someone who knows anything about how to make a game”).
And you could also rest at the Inn in the hub town Ghilcrest for special buffs (for a cost), Esmy’s home (for free), as well as buy energy drinks from the item shop that have limitations: they can’t replace a proper rest.
When you use the Nap Bag, time will literally fast-forward to cut out all the waiting for when she’s ready to wake up (which you can cancel out of at anytime). I made sure the Enervation system is very robust and also not annoying in design, so from a production level, this also works flawlessly. When it comes time to test, I’ll be making tweaks to it as I go along.
The overall point of the game’s design is to feel like you’re actually out there on an adventure with Esmy exploring in the Overworld and various caves and dungeons, and the Enervation system brings a lite form of survival tactics to the fray without being too cumbersome.
And That’s It For Now!
There’s a variety of other systems that I have running functionally as well in the game, but not ready to remotely show yet, such as the Status Effect-triggering Weather system, the Town NPC Schedule and Patrol system, Dialogue and Cutscene system, and many others that I’m currently finishing up! I have a full-stack list of features I’m tackling so I can get to full-steam production mode, which entails, unironically, making concept art and new assets after.
Games are art, amirite? What does it matter if anyone sees concept art anyway... They’ve seen enough of that (and more) from me. All in all, I hope this update will impress Duke enough as it’s exactly what he wanted to see. And you who’s reading as well. Double-and if you wanna see concept art, that’s what I created this page for. I know, I know, I ALSO design my own stuff too. Big deal.
Been joyously reconnecting with an intelligent, thick, fine-ass shawty from overseas, so I’m in a very good mood today. Time to listen to something relatable.
Hey Siri, play Waterboyz by Earthgang.
✨💧✨
