Combat Arena Alpha
We are now internally testing the latest Combat Arena Alpha patch with all its changes! The first few internal builds of this patch were pretty funky, but we’re working out the issues and plan to release patch 2.2 once we have it working. It won’t be long now!
This week we made balance changes to many familiar abilities, as well as improvements to new ones. We fixed issues such as Rush and Pilfer’s starting animations taking too long, Kinfolk getting stuck in an animation loop when staggered, and Shield not being invoked correctly. Additionally, we’ve made some long-requested adjustments to how the Burn and Poison status effects work.
Single Player
We’ve added the logic and VFX for the key item that immediately returns one Kinfolk’s soul flame to the human character when the Kinfolk falls in combat.
We’ve added 3 more cutscenes to the game’s story. With these, all of the cutscenes for our first dungeon are now complete! This also involved dialogue fixes and changes for some in-game conversations.
NPCs got lots of polish this sprint! The biggest change was implementing off mesh links with our pathfinding solution, allowing them to traverse over gaps in the navmesh. This means they can now jump over obstacles, across gaps, and down ledges. It’s surprising how much added life it brings to the game! Here’s an example of what it looks like:
Improved the system in which NPCs shout at you so that they have better context of their current situation. For example, they have something different to say when they see you for the first time as opposed to after they’ve been fighting you for a while. At the moment there are about a dozen different AI states that can have their own unique dialogue, and we’ll continue building on it.
Added a stopping distance for melee NPCs so that they actively maintain a good distance from the player to land their melee attacks.
Added some changes to combat branches of existing NPC Kinfolk, largely to make them easier to fight in lower-level areas.
The combat music used to start when an NPC entered the suspicious state. We changed it to start when they enter combat, and it’s a much better fit.
All NPCs in the world can now roam around their respective areas as the player explores. It’s really cool to look in the distance at night and see a herd of Lumala wandering around together.
We added a ton of new SFX to the single player game this sprint!
Gladias, Galvolant, Star_Man, and Awburn now have voices.
There’s a jingle that plays when you start a new mission.
Windmills make noise when you get close to them.
On top of additional terrain sculpting, we’ve made some changes to the underlying terrain systems:
We’ve regenerated low poly meshes for many of the terrain tiles we’ve been focusing on. This means that farther away areas look more like the close ones again and have all the new work our terrain team has put in.
Improved the efficiency and reliability of our world streaming solution. We previously had some circumstances where it would get confused about exactly where the player is, and you'd notice problems like pop-in become pretty severe. This change greatly improved that.
We had previously attempted to add grass bending, but it caused problems with some of our other systems, so we had to shelve it for a time. This week, we added the support it needed and implemented it correctly! Now, the grass moves under the characters’ feet as they walk through it. It’s easier to spot the smaller Kinfolk in tall grasslands now!
Community
The KFT (Kindred Fates Tournaments) Discord Server has a tournament coming up in the Combat Arena Alpha! It will take place on December 4th, in celebration of the Alpha’s anniversary. For signups and more information, join their Discord server!
Thanks for stopping by, friends! We’ll see you next time, on December 3rd!
