Crystalline Cauldron

Description

Crystalline Cauldron is a top-down real time card combat game. The player creates a profile and then can customize his or her deck before going into combat. The player can unlock more cards and acquire more crystals to purchase new cards with by participating in the adventure or co-op modes.

History

First Semester

The first semester was the most difficult for getting the project started. This required going through the process of registering the project as an independent study with the University of Advancing Technology (UAT), finding a teacher to overlook the project, and then form a team to develop it. This was also the semester that the team spent learning the basics of DirectX8.1c, working together as a team, and getting the core functionality working for the first time. At the end of the semester, the project also needed to be presented before the team's peersto show what they have accomplished through their process starting from scratch.

Second Semester

The second semester of Crystalline Cauldron lead to the project truly taking a true form. Actor interaction (with the environment and other actors), taking a more dynamic state, and the beginnings of using custom-made toolsets for the project (also from scratch) to accelerate the development cycle. Various monsters with different attributes and behaviors began to emerge. The user interface bar was also created to be the primary user interface interaction for the player.

Third Semester

Third semester was the time for changes for the development cycle with major adjustment in roles and hiring. Templates began to take for to further accelerate and automate the development process for the project. This also led to the creation of the Card Editor toolset. This became a vital need to begin projecting the story telling process of the adventure mode. The scenery came further to life with the additions of the cloudbox and new tilesets. With a dynamic camera system, the camera took a life of it's own and adjusted it's need to what the player or players needed in real-time.

Final Semester

With the core mechanics up and running, it became time to focus on the unique player's experience with the profile system. This kept track of the player's stats, experience, individual decks, story progress, and a few other hidden features planned for future development. Cards that provided effects instead of summoning monsters were also introduced. Crystalline Shard pool also was created to allow a player to generate a means to pay for cost over time instead of looking for shards throughout the environment. Field effects began implementation during this time as well.

Dispersing the team

After the fourth and final semester, NinRac had graduated from UAT and moved across the country to Georgia. While NinRac continued to keep the project going, the other team members were too busy with their school schedules to progress forward. NinRac was then put in a difficult decision and made the decisioin to close up the project and shelve it until a budget became available.

Features

• Real-time card combat
• 8-directional pixel-by-pixel movement
• 7 different terrains with dozens of maps in each terrain
• 47 creature cards (and one additional locked creature card) along with dozens of additional effect cards to add more to the environment
• Adventure mode, versus mode, and co-op mode are all available
• 6 different elements to further add strategy to the game environment
• multiple dynamic camera styles
• Players are able to fend for himself or herself with a melee attack that varies for each avatar to add further strategy and balance
• Profile leveling system to upgrade a player's chosen avatar.