Combat Arena Alpha
We’re still in the bug fixing phase for our single-player milestone. As always, we truly appreciate your patience and understanding while we finish up with this! We’re nearing the end, and hope to begin work on a new Combat Arena build soon. Many of the features we plan to have in the new build are already done, we just need the time to make sure they all play nicely in the Combat Arena. We’ll keep you updated!
Single Player
We standardized our single-player UI for keyboard and mouse inputs (removing some of our button prompt placeholders and making them key prompts).
Added the remaining menu options for our storage system. Here’s a look at the process from catching a Kinfolk to using the storage system! (Keep in mind that the storage system is still new and will undergo many iterations in the future).
We’ve been making great progress on all manner of progression systems, both for our current in-progress dungeon, as well as laying the groundwork for future dungeons!
Finished our first ever puzzle in the single-player! Puzzles are an important part of dungeon progression, and it feels great to finally have one in the game.
Added key-dropping, which means you won’t progress until you complete certain tasks.
As always, we’ve put a lot of work into refining our NPC AI!
Reworked the NPCs’ pathfinding script so that they more accurately follow paths along the NavMesh.
Gave NPCs the ability to actively avoid dangerous damage over time abilities such as Scorch and Caustic Cloud. In this process we also gave the NPCs an easy way to perceive other threats around them so they can react accordingly.
Added a flag for marking when NPCs are aggroed. This allows for logic such as playing combat music when an NPC aggroes the player.
Added an accuracy setting for NPCs as an additional parameter that can be tuned per NPC, or per an NPC's abilities.
Added NPC logic for when the player snipes an NPC from a distance in the open world.
Our AI behavior trees have gotten meatier! Here’s an image of Skulken’s current tree.
We’re continuing to refine our existing music tracks, as well as starting work on two new ones. This sprint we also finished a bunch of new SFX!
Made new SFX for our first dungeon, such as general ambience, and effects for our cutscenes.
Added and polished the sound effects for one of the in-game shops. This includes fan noises, a door slide sound, and a bell chime when you enter. The shop music also sounds like it’s coming out of a radio!
This sprint we picked through the grass with a fine toothed comb, we’re getting down to the nitty gritty details of foliage placement.
Put a lot of work into points of interest in the open world. These can be things like rock formations or ruins!
We spent a lot of time tracking down and fixing bugs this sprint!
Fixed a problem where having multiple active NPCs can cause the NPCs to act strangely. The problem was that the AI for one NPC could subtly affect another. This fix will improve playability in both the open world and the Practice Room.
Fixed problem where NPCs could reappear after death as inanimate statues (we hope this one doesn’t come back).
Fixed some problems that were happening with shadows, they’re now more consistent and reliable.
Fixed problems causing occasional pauses in the open world. It feels much better now!
Community
Don’t forget to submit a design to our pumpkin/vegetable carving contest! Submissions end on October 25th. Join our official Discord server for more details!
Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you next time, on November 5!
