Plugins and hidden areas

In the last post I mentioned something called Plugins. These are supplemental upgrades that grant you certain advantages in combat and navigation. Unlike your standard combat upgrades, these can be equipped and unequipped whenever you are at a workbench. In the game, they take the form of removable SD data cards. At first, you can only equip 3 plugins at a time, but you can upgrade the PSIgauntlet to have up to 5 slots to equip Plugins.

Actual Size

Each Plugin grants certain boosts, such as damage increase, shielding, speed increase, faster recharging or longer charge for weapons, decreased energy cost for moves, and multiple tiers of power for your final move.

 

Secret areas are places that have lots of useful items inside. However, tey look no different from the normal offices and laboratories. It is possible to find them on your own, but as you cure more employees, they will give you hints that will help you find them more easily.

Morality Factor

When you find a partially infected employee or weaken the infection of an enemy with the Crystal pistol, you have two choices: you can heal them, or you can drain them. Similar to the decisions regarding the Little Sisters in BioShock, these choices will have long term effects.

Healing the employees will not give you a lot of rewards at that moment, but as you heal more of them, they will help you in various ways. One example is exclusive Plugins, recieved through PCs found in offices. You will also recieve helpful hints as to the locations of offices and labs via the TeleComm (telepathic communicator).

Draining the employees will provide a major boost to your maximum health and energy levels. Enemies will also be more cautious in attacking you.

Like BioShock, or rather, BioShock 2, the choices you make will determine how the game ends. If you Heal every employee, the ending will be positive. If you Drain all of them, the ending will be negative. If you Heal some and Drain some, you will have to make a choice in the end to determine between two "Neutral" endings. Depending on what choice you make, the ending will  be either "Neutral Positive" or "Neutral Negative".

Circumstantial Powers: Heal, Forge, Charge, etc.

In a previous post, I mentioned a Heal ability to be used in combination with the Crystal Pistol. This power belongs to a separate set of abilities called Circumstantial Powers. These powers can only be used in specific situations, and each power is used in a different situation.

Heal: When you find an employee of HELIOS who is partially infected, you can use Heal to remove the Hive crystals, thus curing the employee. He or she will then provide you with various rare materials and a small number of upgrade crystals. Once you are able to use the Crystal Pistol, this approach really begins to pay off.

Charge: The PSIgauntlet does not utilize limitless energy; it must be recharged from time to time. Fortunately, you can recharge it from any power source you find, be it power crystals on the walls, electrical panels, or even near-dead enemies. Simply approach a power source and hold down the interact button (X button for XBOX 360, E key for PC) until the power meter is full. Different sources provide different amounts of energy. If you run out of power, the PSIgauntlet uses your health as a reserve power source, allowing only basic attacks. Your health will replenish from this fairly quickly once you are out of harm's way.

Drain: As an alternaive to Healing, you can Drain the energy from a partially infected employee. This provides a huge boost to your power supply, as well as a lot of power crystals. Like Heal, you will be able to Drain more often once you gain use of the Crystal Pistol.

Forge: Forge is the power that lets you turn scrap parts into specialized components. However, it's not something that's really out in the open in terms of gameplay, as it will be built into the Workbench mechanic from the get-go.

I'm debating whether or not to add certain other circumstantial powers, but I hope to find some way to implement transport-oriented abilities.

Tools Update

I have decided to include the crossbow and the Crystal Pistol as weapons in the game.

The crossbow must be assembled from scrap metal and spare parts found in offices. Assembling it and oher weapons will take a different form than the ragtag assembly of grenades and other support items. You will have a specific set of parts you need to find or make. The stock, for instance, will have to be bent from a metal pipe. The arms will have to be psionically smelted from scrap metal using the Gauntlet. As for the launching system... let's just say a lot of rubber bands are required (again, the Gauntlet will make them into what you need).

The Crystal Pistol is one of few weapons utilized by the enemies infected by the Hive crystals. This gun, somewhat similar in concept to Halo's Needler, launches Hive crystals at you in an effort to add you to the ranks of the mutants. Rather than having homing abilities, these crystals will apply gradual damage after you are hit. This damage stacks as more projectiles strike you, and damage continues until you heal yourself.

At some point you will obtain a Crystal Pistol as a carried item, but you'll need to modify it using the workbench before you can use it. Once you do so, it becomes a sort of anti-infection gun, in that it gradually destroys the Hive crystals infecting the enemy, making it possible to completely reverse the infection using the Heal power (I'll tell more about that in a later post.)

Combat

The powers I've described in the past are rather simple unless you can combine them. This will be accomplished by a feature similar to the weapon menu in Bio-Shock, in which each weapon has 3 types of ammo you can use. However, to apply this to your Gauntlet powers, the  interface will be altered to denote primary and secondary equipped powers. Depending on which set of powers yo ave equipped, your possible moveset will change. So far, in concept, my favorite pair is Telekinesis with Electrokinesis as secondary. This provides a move set similar to that of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (minus the force choke and lightsabers)

To maximize the capabilities of tis combat system, I also plan to implement a kill-streak mechanism called Psionic Momentum. This feature consists of a power meter that fills up as you kill more enemies. The more power in the meter, the stronger your attacks get. When the meter gets full, you enter a powered up "PSIforce" state, where you start building up more and more power, which you eventually release in a devastating final move. In the previously mentioned Tele-Electrokinesis set, this final move is similar to the Tempest move in The Force Unleashed.

I have plans for other effects of this PSIforce state, but those will be revealed later.

Workbenches

Another mechanic I have planned for the game is the ability to create new tools and weapons using things you find. I first saw this in BioShock, but the mechanic will be rather different in Crystal Crypt. For instance, instead of the U-Invent kiosks of BioShock, which I found to be rather odd in an underwater paradise city, the hero of Crystal Crypt must use the more natural workstations found in offices and labs. The supplies you find will also be more in keeping with the laboratory setting.

How you use these workstations is drastically dfferent from BioShock in that you don't really know how to make an item, apart from a basic guide as to what you need. A grenade, for instance, needs at least a container, an explosive, and a crystal to power it. What type of container and what explosive you use affect how the grenade funtions. You can also add an "accessory" to give it a different effect, such as a vial of Sulfic Acid for chemical burn damage, a strip of magnesium to make a flash grenade, or just some extra explosive for more oomph.

I won't spoil the other possible items you can make, but I'm trying to find some really neat things to build with these workstations.

The workstations also double as a way to spend a different kind of crystal on upgrading your PSIgauntlet. The game will explain this in that these crystals enhance the dfferent types of emitters, at the same time enabling the Gauntlet to interpret new commands from your brain. The interface will be similar to a skill tree.

That about wraps things up for now. Don't expect Crystal Crypt to hit shelves for a couple more years, if I ever get it off the ground at all.

Planned tools and powers

To make it out of HELIOS alive, you'll need to make good use of all the tools and weapons you obtain in the course of the game.

The first and most prominent tool that you recieve is the PSIgauntlet, a sort-of glove-like apparatus worn on the left hand that grants you amazing abilities. The basic powers include

• telekinesis (moving things with your mind)
• thermokinesis (controlling heat, mainly as fire)
• electrokinesis (electrical powers)

As you progress you are able to develop other abilities, and upgrade the ones you have.

Certain tools require both hands to wield due to size. To compensate for the loss of combo options, these are used as boosters for the PSIgauntlet. An example is the PSIbazooka, which has no real energy source of its own, rather drawing on the gauntlet for energy and amplifying its output. You can still control what energy type to use with the gauntlet, but the bazooka forsakes the number of complex attacks in favor of a very big blast.... Heh heh.

The laser pistol is a dual-wield item, meaning that it doesn't need the gauntlet to work. You can shoot enemies and use the gauntlet at the same time. It uses semi-auto fire and supports about 30 seconds of continuous fire before you have to recharge it with a quick swipe over the top with the gauntlet. This is one of the few weapons that cannot be boosted by the gauntlet.

The Disruption Beam fires a continuous beam of energy that stuns and sort of melts any enemies it touches. An overheat constraint prevents constant use, and it too must be periodically recharged with the gauntlet. 

The last weapon for this post is the first weapon you get once the action kicks off: a one-handed katana. You get this from a broken display case in one of the hastily abandoned offices. You can use it alone to hack snd slash, or use the gauntlet to surround the blade with energy for a short time.

To get an idea of what these tools will look like, check out my Sci-Fi Props Blog here:
http://hyperdragon97-props.blogspot.com/