We are extremely excited and proud to unveil new features which will enable builders on CREY to monetize their creations.

As mentioned in our previous statement regarding Finance & Monetization, we believe that giving the option to builders to make real money out of their imagination is one of the key pillars to making game creation truly accessible. We want to help aspiring game developers pursue their dream of making a living off of their creations a reality, with the belief that with enough financial stability coming from their games, builders out there will be able to spend more time crafting games and creating ever more entertainment and fun for others.

Without further ado, let’s jump in to what’s new!

Earn Sparks

Builders can now earn Sparks. Sparks are CREY Games main platform currency and are brought by players in our store to be spent inside games made by builders. Sparks earned by builders are subject to fees and can be exchanged for real world money in the Creator Program after reaching a certain earnings threshold, more on fees and thresholds below. In order to earn Sparks, builders can set up shops in their games to entice players into buying things. Like all of our features, we strive to make them accessible and easy to use.

The Creator Program

The Creator Program is where builders can exchange their Sparks for real world money. It is also a space where builders can access all other information regarding their Sparks including their earnings history and their exchange request history. In order to be eligible to apply to the Creator program, users must comply with the following rules:

• Users need to declare their country of residence and Zip code
• Users must agree with the following Terms & Conditions:
  • I am of legal age (18+)
  • I must respect CREY’s EULA and Terms and Conditions.
  • I am responsible for the recognition of any taxes and obligations in my country of residence
  • This is a beta-version of the monetization program
  • I will need to accept a full set of terms and conditions later in order to continue participating in this program
  • I agree to provide my name, address, and banking information in order to receive a payout
  • I am liable for any illicit or illegal content
  • CREY has the right to accept or reject a potential payout according to applicable laws

If the above conditions are fulfilled, users who apply to the Creator Program are automatically and instantly accepted, greatly simplifying the process to monetize games.

For more detailed information about the Creator Program, please check out our FAQ.

To register to the program, please click here.

Monetary fees and thresholds

CREY Games strives to make game creation as accessible as possible through no-code, technological innovation and finance. In order to keep providing innovative tools and features to the builders out there, CREY Games needs to sustain itself financially, without compromising it’s core values. Therefore, to stay true to our mission we have decided to provide our builders with the best fees in the UGC gaming industry.

Any commissions incurred by CREY Games makes goes toward sustaining the company, covering our operations and reinvesting into building our service. Here’s a breakdown of the builder earnings:

In game transaction:

We will charge 20% of the value of Sparks that is earned by a builder for all in game transactions. This means that the builders get the remaining 80% of Sparks.

Examples

If a builder sells a bag of currency worth 10 sparks, CREY Games will take away 20% of that amount meaning the builder will receive 8 sparks in his account and 2 Sparks will go to CREY Games.

We also round up in favor of builders in case of decimals. For example, if a builder sells an item for 6 Sparks, they will earn 5 Sparks.

Exchange of Sparks

In the Creator program, successful builders can request an exchange of their Sparks for real world money. In order to be eligible for a cash out, builders must have at least 30,000 sparks in their account, or the equivalent of 300 USD. At cash out, builders are subject to a 30% fee from the requested amount.

To make cash out request, users can click on the “Cash out” button which will trigger a process where all of the Sparks in the account will be exchanged for real world money.

A pop up will appear where a user must indicate his or her PayPal account information (email) and the desired currency in which they wish to receive payment. CREY Games supports transfers via PayPal only at this stage, please contact us if you have any issues with PayPal.

Once the request is made, the Sparks in the user’s account will be placed on temporary hold and the user will receive an email confirmation with the details of the exchange request.

After a request as been made, it goes under review by our internal team. An audit is performed to make sure that the request was not made by a user who has breached community guidelines, committed fraud or has been involved in illegal activities such as money laundering. Please allow up to 7 days for this process to happen.

If the request is accepted, the user will receive a confirmation email and a transfer on their PayPal account.

In the unfortunate event where the request is denied, the user will receive an email with an explanation and their Sparks will be returned to their account.

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If you have any other questions please feel free to contact us on our Discord Channel

Start earning money with CREY Games, join our Creator Program now!

The first month of the year is always a month of great news and great new features here in CREY. Today, we’re improving our platform by introducing new Animated NPCs – In this article we’ll explain how to implement them in your games.

(PS: If you are a newbie take a look at the end of this post to know a little more about NPCs´ world)

How to create an animated NPCs on CREY Platform

Here’s a quick guide on how to use Animated NPCs. You just need to follow this simple step: 

• Open the library and search for “Character”. Find the Animated NPC you want to use in the game.
• Place the character in the scene and double click them to open the settings window.
• There’s 3 settings for the character’s animation;

1. A dropdown list of all possible animations.
2. Current Animation, an index value you can use to change the currently used animation. In game you could use this with a Variable-based setup. The value relates to the order of animations in the dropdown list, between 0 (Idle) and 10 (Run).
3. Play Speed, which adjusts the speed of the current animation.

By default, animations will loop. So if you want an animation to play just once, or stop playing after a certain point, consider creating a system to change the Current Animation back to 0, which is the Idle pose.

The Animated NPC can be affected by all other Gameplay Props like a normal prop – You could set it up with a Directional Mover so you have your NPC walking around, spin around on the spot with a Rotator, and so on.

You can also check out this demonstration of what can be done with the NPC system to get some inspiration!

What are NPCs and why are they important?

NPCs, or non-player characters, are characters in a videogame that are controlled by the game’s AI rather than by the player. They can serve a variety of roles in a game, such as providing information, offering quests or missions, or serving as enemies to be defeated.

Their presence is important because they help to create a rich and immersive game world by providing characters for the player to interact with and helping to advance the game’s story and objectives. Additionally, NPCs can provide a sense of realism and depth to a game by creating the illusion of a living, breathing world with inhabitants who have their own motivations and agendas.

If you’ve used the CREY editor for a while, you may have noticed that placing and aligning text and image props can be a bit of a pain. Believe us, we know your pain.

That’s why we’ve introduced a small, but very useful, update to the Image Prop, Text Displayer, and Click Sensor props.

You can now position the elements relative to the edges of the screen using the new Position grid option.

This opens up a world of possibilities for positioning text, making clickable hotspots, and even making your own UI.

What does this mean?

Because the elements can now be positioned relative to the screen, this means two amazing things:

1. It’s much easier to align elements with each other.
2. They will scale properly regardless of screen size.

That second part is really a game changer. Previously, elements could only be placed relative to the top-left corner, which meant that any padding you put in the X and Y positions would be fixed. This meant that, for instance, if you wanted a bit of text aligned to the centre of the screen, it may look fine on your screen, but other people playing in bigger or smaller screen resolutions would see that text offset.

No longer will you toil under the brutal oppression of fixed coordinates! If you want to align text to the centre of the screen, you just click the centre button in the Position grid, and WHAM. Your text is in the centre, regardless of whether you’re playing on a mondo widescreen monster or a tiny little potato laptop.

Positioning things just right

Depending on where you’re aligning an element, you’ll see this little white dot change places:

This white dot indicates from where the element will move if you adjust the X and Y positions.

If you align to the centre, then the element moves from the centre. If you align it to the bottom middle, then the element moves from the bottom middle.

Keep this in mind if you realign your element and it suddenly disappears off the screen. When you realign, the centre of the element changes — so keep an eye on your X and Y coordinates. If you set them to 0, then the element will always align to the far edges of the screen or the dead centre.

(Oh, and if you’re using the Text Display prop, make sure it’s set to 2D mode — otherwise the positioning doesn’t do squat.)

Can I see this in action?

Yes! Have a look at our game Space Frighter. See the little mini-map in the top right corner? That’s all made with Image Props and Text Displays!

We hope this makes your building easier. Go make some cool UIs and let us know how you’re getting on! We’re always excited to see what you guys build, so drop by our Discord and share what you’re working on in the #your-creations channel.