Combat Arena
We’ve made some quality of life updates to the Combat Arena Alpha that we’re looking forward to sharing with you!
We’re continuing to improve the feel and fluidity of combat. Previously, when players tried to dodge in a specific direction right after using certain attacks, they would only ever be able to dodge forward. After making some changes to how dodging is processed, the game will now let you dodge whichever direction you like.
We added a functionality called “Auto Fire On Press,” which allows you to speed up firing times when desired by bypassing the aiming phase of an ability.
Previously, when players selected their ability firing type from the settings menu, it applied that firing type to all ability slots. In most cases this is fine, but in some cases it can be handy to have different firing types for different abilities. For example, you might want to use the “Auto Fire On Release” firing type for abilities on your [E] key, but the “Use Same Key To Fire” firing type for abilities on your [R] key. The settings page now supports this type of set up.
The VFX for Angelic Ray no longer leaves one ring of light behind after the ability ends.
We’re finished adding new features for this next patch, so the main focus is moving onto testing bug fixes to get another patch out to you.
Single Player
The detailed outlines for the first third of the story missions are finished! This involved a lot of writing and design, and we’re really glad to have it planned out in this level of detail. While we’re continuing to focus our art resources on this section, we’re going to continue writing the rest of the story missions like we have for the beginning.
New UI has been implemented for character customization. We officially have at least 2 options for every customizable feature, and many of the features have all their options modeled out. We’ve also added a clothing section to the player inventory.
The concept art for the starting region is coming along well! We’ve completed an overview piece, and are currently working on art for a town. Here’s a sneak peek for some of the ideas we’ve had for houses in this town:
We’ve added the ability to set up wild Kinfolk variance relating to size and whether or not they’re a Phantom. When your Kinfolk evolves, they should keep the same relative size across evolutions. For example, if you have a particularly large Awburn, they would evolve into a particularly large Embear.
We continued working on allowing parts of the navmesh to be tagged as unwalkable for certain types of Kinfolk. We also fixed various issues with NPC patrolling and targeting.
The developers added new abilities that required several additions to ability logic, such as optional parameters for modifying how damage ticks can occur, allowing abilities to steal health, and a new ability category: Homing dashes.
Our larger bodies of water previously had some issues with loading in properly, so we’ve split them into smaller tiles, similar to our terrain. We’ve also had to test out some new methods for our rivers to ensure they have underwater rendering when they’re deep enough to warrant it.
Our grass bending tool continues to be somewhat finicky, but this time it was specifically not working in builds while simultaneously working normally in the Unity Editor. Thankfully, we have it in working order in our builds again.
To help the QA team test the single player more easily, we’ve restored their ability to fly and use super speed with cheat codes. It definitely comes in handy with the larger map!
We’ve been working on the concept art for a Kinfolk who will be important to the main story.
Community
Our next community contest is now open! We’ve nicknamed this the “Art Art Contest,” and the goal for this one is to create 2D art to hang on the walls inside the game’s buildings! The Skymill team will be selecting 3 winners to add to the game as official art, as well as some other prizes. The contest closes on September 15th, at 12pm EST. After we select the winners, voting will begin for the Community favorite, who wins a runner-up prize. Check out all the details and requirements in our Discord announcement before making a submission. We’re so excited to see what everyone comes up with!
Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you next time, on September 9.
