DESIGN
We’ve made several improvements to how the camera interacts with the player and NPCs. Previously, the camera had a tendency to collide with characters in a very jarring way during combat, forcing the camera forward and potentially messing with your aim. It was also fairly easy to get it to clip through certain environment objects. Now, the camera no longer collides with abilities or other characters and we instead fade characters out when they are extremely close to the view. Here’s a quick look:
Fighting against flying enemies just got easier! You know that feeling when you’re trying to aim your skill shots at an Avieon, but the grass just keeps getting in the way of your view? No more! The camera now offsets itself from the ground when looking up into the air. This way objects on the ground won’t block the screen as you aim abilities up at a sharp angle. Here’s a video showcasing the difference:
The child character models got new rigging, so now their clothes move more naturally and don’t have as much clipping where clothes overlap. We’ve meticulously tested the clothing items to make sure each behaves as expected.
We reduced the size and frequency of the speaking text that appears above NPCs so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming. Seeing text displayed above 1 or 2 characters who are speaking in the distance is a nice touch, but when 5 or 6 would all say something at once it felt a little off putting.
SFX have been added to various objects in the game that were previously lacking them, including dodging, bond forming, soul flames, and shrines. The SFX can really add to the gravity of these instances.
Terrain improvements have been made to some of the world’s vista points, as well as around important landmarks and points of interest. An hour or two of touching up can really make all the difference sometimes.
This sprint, we’ve written and started implementing a handful of new small side missions and character encounters that play into the game’s lore and world building. Some of these side missions have branching choices that will impact the outcome to varying degrees.
We’ve added several new points of interest to the area of the map we’ve been working on, including a few small environment puzzles. A lot of attention is being given to make sure that the density of interactive content in this area is up to snuff.
New VFX were created for an important aspect of the game’s world building. We previously had an idea for how we wanted this effect to look, but we’re taking a new approach to make sure we’re communicating the idea effectively.
Development
Several performance optimizations have been made to ensure the game is able to run properly on a wider range of hardware and at a higher framerate. In certain areas of the game that were previously problematic, we are now seeing double the framerate we were previously.
We spent some time fine tuning an important combat encounter that occurs early on in the game’s story. It’s easy to forget sometimes how much more comfortable we are with the game’s combat than new players will be. These changes bring the difficulty of the encounter more in line with what new players will be expecting, while also reducing the battle’s impact on performance.
For a while now, fall damage has been implemented, but reduced to the point of being almost nonexistent in the interest of making certain aspects of testing easier. This sprint we reverted the damage threshold back to its intended value to get a better idea of how it will impact certain areas in the environment, as well any abilities that launch other characters into the air.
We’ve improved how attacks are fired. Now they fire more reliably when you push the button, and they have a better connection to the character’s animations. This makes it easier to stop doing an attack if you start moving the character in the middle of an attack animation.
We were seeing some issues with saving and loading back into the game, so we’ve been working on a fix for that. Since there are so many variables involved, this can take a long time to test properly.
Apparently the Phantom Kinfolk heard our threats concerns from last time. This sprint we only saw one, and even that one wasn’t for certain because it was only visible for a moment in the middle of combat.
LEXICON
Asset: Essentially any in-game object. Buildings, trees, leaves, etc.
Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds multiple times per week to test new changes.
Clipping: When objects in the game intersect in unintended ways.
Cutscene: A non-interactive video sequence that occurs between segments of gameplay and depicts part of the story.
Editor: (aka Unity Editor) The program developers use to make changes to the game. Developers can test their changes here before their changes are added to a build.
Framerate: The number of frames that play per second, determining the smoothness of motion.
Greybox: A method used for designing large portions of map, dungeons, or other important areas. It involves constructing the general form of the thing in question using placeholder assets and shapes. It’s like a framework so when the correct assets are ready, they can be placed in the orientation that was already laid out. This allows for other developers to work on and around the Greybox before the final art is finished.
Headlook: Code that tells an NPC to look in a specific direction.
Logic: The programming side of any feature. For example, “cooking logic” would be the base level programming for the cooking mechanic.
NPC: A non-player character.
Overworld: The playable area in the open world exploration part of the game.
Phantom: A rare Kinfolk with a different color scheme.
Point of interest: An area given special care and attention, intended to draw the player’s interest. An abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods filled with strange notes would be a point of interest.
QA: Quality assurance. The people who test the game and report bugs.
Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.
SFX: Sound effects.
Set piece: A model used in the environment, such as buildings, statues, etc.
Shader: An effect that changes how things visually appear in the game. Shaders can do many things to alter overall appearances.
Soft lock: A situation where the game becomes impossible to progress due to a bug, glitch, or flawed logic.
Spawner: Code that spawns Kinfolk or NPC Summoners into the world. We can give them a multitude of settings to spawn based on time passed, or enemies defeated, etc.
Sprint: A two week period used for organization. Our newsletters are released on the last day of our sprint.
Summoner: The people in Hinterlock who can summon Kinfolk.
Texture: A 2D image that’s applied to a 3D model to give it color and shading.
Tiling: A noticeable repeating pattern on a model or terrain due to using a texture to cover a large area.
Tooling: Dev tools that help improve efficiency.
VFX: Visual effects. Kinfolk attacks, dust clouds, water splashes are all examples of VFX.
World building: The process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, ofren associated with a fictional universe.
xNode: The software we use for handling our dialogue implementation.
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on December 15.
