The Crab Factory

One hundred crabs pour out of four burrows and crawl over neighbors blocking their path, then climb down as they reach their destination. The horde switches between these low moving piles and tall stacks up to five high. Your drawn lightsaber keeps the crowd farther back while committed attackers brave its reach. Find a concussion rifle, seal the burrows and shut the factory down.

Can a cave whose insect burrows spew p60's crabs at the player be a boss fight -- burrows that only explosions seal, crabs that sometimes drop health and power cells, concussion rifles to do it with -- built as generation 2's first project on its own copied toolchain?

From a small pool to a swarm

Early saturation trials exposed a distinction between pool capacity and release policy: raising the maximum creature count alone did not raise the factory's live cap. The hundred-crab design kept one controller, reusable slots and bounded attack and pickup budgets, while burrows released short pulses through several lanes.

A forced simulation step is not a performance measurement. The early spike notes distinguish simulated time and frontend timing declarations from elapsed test time and actual occupancy; transient effects also need to be counted rather than inferred from living creatures.

Piling is movement, not a taller stack

The crawl-over behavior follows each crab's destination across neighbors that obstruct its route. It steps down after crossing, losing support, reaching the destination or reaching a time limit. Deliberate stacking is a separate behavior: incidental piles are limited to three high, while tall stacks can reach five.

A bounded spatial search, support ordering and object signatures keep the work controlled without adding helper objects for piles. Heap state is recovered after loads through the restore guard.

Evidence and limits

The physical checks measure crossings over moving supports, progress toward destinations and actual returns to the floor. Disabling piling produces zero supported crossings and fails the intended check; a log saying that piling ran would not be enough.

The build-8 gate recorded twenty passing rows, including six negative controls. Those checks were headless OpenJKDF2 runs. The owner play test and retail Jedi Knight verification remain outstanding.

Back to Research

Crawl over the crowd. Piling crabs follow their movement targets across neighbors in their way. They cross backs and step down, forming incidental piles up to three high. Tall stacking remains a separate behavior, reaching five high.

The horde changes its own behavior. Stacking starts on. Every ten seconds a fresh random roll has a 50% chance of switching between stacking and piling; otherwise it stays as it is. Saber fear, gradual turning, half-speed animation and creature sounds remain.

Bounded work for one hundred crabs. A spatial grid limits each seeking crab to nine nearby candidates, with no extra things for the piles. Twenty checks pass, including six negative controls. Physical checks measure traversal across moving supports, progress toward destinations, descent, stacked bodies, collapse, pulse thresholds and saved-game recovery. Tested headlessly in OpenJKDF2; the owner play test and retail Jedi Knight verification remain open.

1. Follow the instructions included with the download.

STACKING AND PILING: stacking starts on. Every 10 seconds there is a 50% chance to switch between tall stacks up to five high and low piles where crabs crawl over neighbors to get where they are going. Removing a supporting crab brings its riders down

a concussion rifle lies just in front of where you start, and two more out in the cave; power cells, health packs, a bacta tank and a shield recharge are around the walls

SEAL THE BURROWS: two blasts close a burrow, wherever they land on its mound. A blaster bolt does nothing to it

THE SWARM: up to 100 crabs pump out in four-crab bursts, circle you in layers and come in to claw you; one backing off is about to pounce. Each burrow you seal makes the remaining burrows pump faster

SABER FEAR: keep the lightsaber drawn to hold the crowd farther back. Committed attackers still brave its reach; switching weapons lets the rest close in

a dead crab sometimes drops a power cell or a health pack: grab it before it blinks out. At most 16 drops remain, with the oldest replaced first

seal all four burrows and kill the last crab: the factory shuts down and the level ends

piling crabs cross backs that block their route, then climb down; incidental piles reach up to three high. Tall stacks keep moving with their supports. Attackers break away, and a drawn saber still holds the passive crowd back

crabs scuttle at a slower pace and turn gradually while keeping you in view; animations retain their half-speed timing

the crabs' fighting adapts p60's crab kit for a 100-crab swarm; the cave is the kraken's (p59) without its acid. Start with the lightsaber drawn, then find a concussion rifle

tested in OpenJKDF2 only; retail Jedi Knight has not run it yet

The swarm chitter, pump, emergence and three death crunches are deterministic procedural sounds generated by the COG Factory's sfxlib; no external audio service was used for these six sounds.

The crab (crabs.3do, crabss.mat) is by Gnarly, scaled and animated by the COG Factory's crab kit (p60); its creature calls, claw attacks and landing sounds were generated with ElevenLabs. The cave's textures and the rumble, crack and tremor sounds come from p59, the kraken fight (textures from Nano Banana sheets, sounds from ElevenLabs). The burrows, the cogs and the level were generated by the COG Factory. The pickups and their sounds are stock JKDF2.