Progress
We’ve been continuing to improve the feel of combat recently. We found that it was hard to anticipate when to shield or dodge when fighting against NPCs, and because of this, fights often devolved into a contest of who could spam attacks the fastest. We want defensive options to be an important consideration in combat, so we raised the damage on some abilities, and added longer wind-up times to their attack animations. This makes it easier to anticipate these attacks and react accordingly. Of course, if you fail to react properly, you’ll be punished for it more than before too. We’re keeping this change isolated to NPCs right now, so it won’t have any impact on PvP; you’ll still need to rely on super quick reaction time there. That being said, if there’s enough demand for longer wind-up animation times in PvP, testing it out would be as easy as checking a box.
In the video below, keep an eye on how much longer it takes the Kinfolk to go through the attack animations in the second clip. (We’ve made these changes to several different Kinfolk and abilities, but these are just 3 examples.)
All of the planned mechanics for Red Letter mode have been implemented, and we also improved the UI. All that’s left is a bit more balancing, polishing, and creating the necessary final in-game art!
NPC health bars have been modified to display only when they have taken damage within the last 5 seconds, or when they’re one of the 3 most recently damaged NPCs. This helps to avoid cluttering the screen with health bars and gives NPCs better opportunities to sneak up on the player.
We’ve upgraded our pathfinding for NPCs. The latest version has performance gains, better stability, and a few new features which will allow for some interesting behaviors in the future.
The design team has put together a suite of “mini-challenges”, and is now deciding which to include in the Beta. A small handful of these have been implemented, iterated on, and play tested. We’re finding a lot of fun in the new ways these encourage the use of different Kinfolk and abilities, as well as interacting with the environment in new ways! Programming for the first batch of game mechanics surrounding these mini-challenges is already complete.
A lot of effort has gone into greyboxing for set pieces this sprint, with most of the design team’s focus being spent here. We’re paying close attention to how much or little space there is between these set pieces, and that there’s always enough room to fight without also feeling empty. Striking the right balance between open space, strategic obstacles, elevation changes, and visual clarity is a tricky task, but getting it right makes all the difference for PvP.
Item effects can be displayed in the combat UI now. At the moment this only applies to certain items in special cases, but this can be expanded to other item effects in the future if needed.
There was previously a bug with lock-on where the camera was aiming incorrectly due to a setting that offsets where the regular camera aims We also adjusted the transition from the lock-on camera to the regular camera to be seamless.
Community
Our community Wiki page is currently down and we’re looking into a solution. We’re sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience!
LEXICON
The full lexicon can be found here.
Asset: Essentially any in-game object. Buildings, trees, leaves, etc.
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.
NPC: A non-player character.
Pathfinding: The code that tells an NPC how to get from one place to another.
Red Letter mode: The codename for an unrevealed game mode to be included in the Combat Arena Beta.
Set piece: A model used in the environment, such as buildings, statues, etc.
Sprint: A two week period used for organization. Our newsletters are released on the last day of our sprint.
UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc.
Thanks for checking in on us! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on May 17.
