It’s finally time for the great recap of all the things happened in 2013!
CrossCode has come a long way. Thanks to all the help and the great feedback we managed to push CrossCode quite a bit. Since the TechDemo, CrossCode has changed a lot. And today we present these changes to you in the form of a video! This video will cover the biggest changes we made to the game, all commentated by our composer Intero!
So… less talking more watching!
A quick heads up: creating such videos is a new experience for us, but we still hope you enjoy the result! We learned a lot from making it, so expect better quality next time.
Also, in case you find the hit sounds a bit strange at parts: yeah, that’s a bug. We’ll fix it soon!Also, let’s summarize all the new stuff with text too!
CrossCode now has real cutscenes, which are mostly presented via dialogues and various animations. The characters in the dialogues are portrayed with facial expressions. We aim to always make the appropriate expressions for any given situation, so you can expect lots of them! Also characters might talk to you via the new side message system which is displayed at the lower left of the screen. Since these run in real time while you run around bashing enemies, you can also check out a list of the last 50 messages in the pause menu.
What is a RPG without NPCs to interact with? …Right! CrossCode now has them too! You will able to talk to a lot of NPCs while playing the game. But we don’t want NPCs to be just mere decoration, topped with some text. NPCs will mostly have something interesting to say and maybe also have a quest for you. We also plan a different kind of dialogue system with NPCs, which will hopefully make NPCs and the dialogues feel and look even better.
The TechDemo really had no story whatsoever. But this changed completely. Cutscenes are a big part of our development and they are coming along nicely. We spent a lot time on them to make them just the way we want them. This is mainly because we don’t only want to deliver fluent gameplay but also a good story that keeps you entertained.
Just like a classical RPG, CrossCode also has a classical menu, which you can access anytime outside of a battle or a cutscene. Here you can look up your items, change the equipment (which is also the only menu that is basically finished), level your skills, look up information or change game options. The goal here is to create a visually appealing and yet easily accessible menu. Especially if you want to quickly look up things you don’t want to meddle with bulky and slow menus.Let’s dive into some combat-related features!
In the TechDemo you could not attack enemies on close range. Well you could, but you would take a large risk. With the new close combat attacks you can not only attack enemies close-up but also hit multiple enemies at once! You are still in the risk of being hit from the back but you have a bigger chance to survive in a fight against a large number of foes. It also gives you more “mix-up” options to approach enemies.
Sometimes you can’t counter an attack and dashing always would put you in a bad situation (like an enemy attacks with an “area of effect”-attack). This is why we added guarding. Guarding will reduce the damage you take by a lot but only if you guard the attack in the right direction. If an enemy attacks you from behind, you will receive the full damage.
To make the combat more interesting we added the so-called Element Modes. Each mode will make you more resistant to the corresponding element and grand you special abilities only available in the specific element mode. Each element mode will also have special use in combat. Heat is a aggressive close ranged element, while Cold is a defensive element. Shock is for risky fast paced attacks and dodges, while Wave is for backing up, healing and trying to figure out a strategy. Of course CrossCode will feature enemies that use one or more elements, too. There might even be enemies that require you to switch through 2 elements or more to fight them effectively. Element Modes will also have special properties for solving puzzles in the game.
To make combat even more fun, we added battle techs. Battle Techs are skills that are executed by holding down the charge button and releasing it. While charging, time will slow down, which gives you a bit of time to think about your next step. Which Battle Tech is executed depends on the action you’re currently doing and how long you hold the charge buttons. The actions are throwing, attacking with close combat, dashing or guarding. Each Battle Tech will consume 1 or more of your SP, so you can’t just throw them out but have to use them wisely in the combat. You can easily regenerate SP by just attacking the enemy. Outside of combat your SP will regenerate to a given threshold.
And this sums everything shown in the video…
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or wait…
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we forgot the greatest news!
Thanks to node-webkit we managed to bring CrossCode to the Desktop! That’s right. CrossCode will also be available on Windows, Linux and Mac. This is pretty new to us, too, so expect more announcements at a later date.
But wait! There is still more!
Not only can we bring CrossCode to the Desktop, we can also bring it to the Wii U! Thanks to Nintendo and the Nintendo Web Framework we can port CrossCode to the Wii U. There is still some stuff to do to make the game run on the Wii U. As you might imagine the Wii U has a specific hardware set and we need to adapt CrossCode to make it more playable and avoid potential problems.
And… that’s it! Now considering the fact, that we only work on CrossCode in our free time, quite a lot of stuff happened. This year, we hope to finally change the pace and work full time on CrossCode. It will be an interesting year for Radical Fish Games and we hope that we can continue to show you our progress every second week. We have great things in store and a demo in work. So stay tuned for an awesome year, full of CrossCode-Action!
Until next time!
