Cradlecrown v1.6: friends and a faster start

Until now, if you wanted to play with someone, you had to send them the room code through some other app. v1.6 brings that into the game. The game also starts faster, and I finally got round to a cleanup I’d been putting off for a while.

Friends

Your profile has a new Friends section. Type a username, send a request, and once they accept they’re on your list. You can see what each friend is doing right now: online, in a room or in a match. If they’re in a room, there’s a Join button next to their name that takes you straight in.

The Friends section on the profile: one incoming request and five friends, one online, one in a match, one in their own room, one offline and one keeping their status private

If you’d rather not show where you are, you can turn that off on your profile. Your friends will just see that you keep your status private.

Invite a friend to your room

The waiting room has a new Invite a friend button. Pick someone from the list and a notice pops up in their menu; when they hit Join, they land in your room. It works for locked rooms too: a friend you invited gets in without the password.

The Invite a friend list in the waiting room: friends who are online or in a room can be invited, while the button is dimmed for those in a match or offline

The notice in the invited friend's menu: "Enes invites you to their room", with Join and Dismiss

Friends leaderboard

Making the first page of the global leaderboard is hard. So the leaderboard now has a Friends tab with just you and your friends, ranked by online win rate.

The Friends tab on the leaderboard: the player and their friends by win rate, each with their Founder's Pack frame

Community

You can add your Reddit and Discord usernames to your profile. They show up on the mini profile that opens when someone clicks your name on the leaderboard, so other players can find you outside the game too.

The mini profile that opens from a name on the leaderboard: title, online stats, most played civilizations and a Reddit username at the bottom

Founder’s Pack in matches

Supporters’ titles and frames used to appear only on the profile and the leaderboard. Now they sit next to your name in room seats, on the loading screen and in the match’s player list. If you play under a custom match name, they’re hidden, since the title would otherwise give away whose account it is.

Two players in a waiting room, with the Treasurer and Warden titles and frames under their names

A faster start

The code the game downloads when it first opens went from 606 kB to 296 kB. Most of that was the art for the soldiers marching across the menu, which now loads just after the first frame is on screen rather than with the page. The menu shows up noticeably sooner.

Behind the scenes

As the project grew, it had collected a pile of old documents, tools nobody used anymore and style rules fighting each other. I cleared those out and moved the stylesheets into a single folder, dropping 653 style declarations that were being overridden anyway. You won’t see a difference in the game, but it makes the next releases easier to build.

One small fix as well: in the library, Wei’s book now wears cavalry colours.

Let me know what you think on Reddit at r/cradlecrown or at [email protected]. See you in the rooms.