"Biweekly" Update - 7-2-2023 (Reworked (upgrade name redacted) preview, lots more background art incoming!) (Patreon)

Hey everyone. So, the past few weeks may not have been quite as productive as I'd like, but despite not really doing any streams, things have been steadily improving! I managed to get some good work done on the (upgrade name redacted) rework I mentioned recently, and I also have some great news for the near-future of CPE that we'll get into in a bit. First off, the ability rework!

Spoiler for a late-game ability in v0.46 ahead, so skip the next few paragraphs and gifs if you don't want to see that! Like I mentioned in the last update, I've been considering reworking the Hoverjets ability that you acquire late in the game. The old Hoverjets has two functions: first, holding Jump in midair allows Alicia to fall much slower. Second, doing a grounded dash and continuing to hold the Dash key will allow you to dash indefinitely, until you stop holding it or get hit. The main goal in reworking it was to keep the same general utility, but make it more interesting than "hold a button to dash forever". Now, keep in mind this is VERY EARLY FOOTAGE; all of this is subject to change, and none of the proper animations are in place. The current animations are just repurposed from other parts of the game, so focus more on the way it functions rather than the way it looks for now:

The new Hoverjets has two major functions. First, while Alicia is in midair, she can press and hold Jump to start charging up the Hoverjets. While she's charging up, her falling speed is DRAMATICALLY reduced, but her horizontal speed remains unchanged, allowing her to hover over wide gaps with ease. However, Alicia can only stay in this charged state for a short period of time, and if you stay in it too long, the charge will be canceled and Alicia will start falling again at full speed. This works fairly similarly to the original Hoverjets midair function, with the two main differences being that it reduces your falling speed even more than before, but now has a limited duration.

Of course, if that's all there was, this would be a pretty lame rework, but that's only the first half of the new Hoverjets. The more interesting half is this:

After charging up in midair, if you hold any movement direction and press the Dash key, Alicia will use that built-up energy to rocket in whichever direction you're holding; it may not be super easy to tell from the gif above, but you have full control over the direction you burst in - you can even go downward. This can only be done once per jump, though certain actions (like walljumping, or bouncing off an enemy with the Weighted Boots slam attack) will refresh your ability to use it, allowing skilled players to chain some truly ridiculous platforming tricks together. I've played around with it for a while, and I love how it changes the way you move around the world; I'm STOKED to see how y'all can use this to break the game wide open :p

Spoilers end here!

So aside from that upgrade rework, I have one really huge life update that will heavily affect CPE.. but for once, this time it's in a good way! As you probably know, Puffernutter (my wife) has worked with us on Crisis Point on and off. She's been in charge of improving our background art - if you remember some of the really nice concept stuff we've shown off in the past, she was responsible for those. If you've been wondering why none of those nice backgrounds have made it into the game yet, it's because she just hasn't had the free time for it. Her main job has been freelance graphic design, and her clients usually keep her very busy, so she unfortunately doesn't often have time to work on CPE.

However, due to burnout from working for big corporations (as well as issues getting them to pay her on time), she finally made the decision to cut ties with her primary client this past week, leaving her with a LOT more free time, a large amount of which is now going to be dedicated exclusively to Crisis Point! She's not going COMPLETELY full time with us; our income on Patreon isn't quite enough to cover all of our bills comfortably, so she's planning on pursuing other work at the same time, but it's going to be a night and day difference compared to before. I'm also hoping that getting to work with her more often will help me stay motivated, too, so with any luck this will be a hugely positive change for everyone on the CPE team!

So that's all of the major stuff. Orex has still been plugging away at the animations needed for the new cutscenes (there's a lot), and he'll be starting on animations for the aforementioned upgrade rework soon, but that's about all we have to show off/talk about for today.

CPE development has been slow lately, and I'm really sorry for that, but with Puffernutter taking on a much more active role in the game, I think we're about to see a really big change in CPE's development speed, and I'm super excited to see what comes next. Thank you all so much for sticking around, and continuing to be excited for Crisis Point! Hopefully we'll see you at the streams (I swear we'll do them regularly again eventually), but if not, we'll see you again in the next development update!