Combat Arena
Our main focus with the Combat Arena this sprint has been fixing bugs instead of adding new features. This way, we’ll be able to get this next patch out to you sooner. This includes making more improvements to P2P.
We’ve added an option in the settings menu that makes sprinting toggleable if selected. If this setting is turned on, you can tap the sprint button to begin sprinting, and tap it again to stop (as opposed to holding the button down the whole time).
We’re investigating some possible avenues for optimization gains and multi-threading our code, which should lead to some impressive performance improvements.
Single Player
The quick-use favorites menu is fully implemented. You've always been able to favorite items to show up first in your inventory page, but now those favorited items will also show up in the bottom left of the UI while playing as your human character for easy fast usage without having to open your inventory. This makes using healing items or bells during combat much more streamlined.
You can cycle left and right through the list with the Q and R keys, and use an item with Right Click. Some items, like health tonics, let you choose who to use them on. You can scroll through your list of party members with the scroll wheel.
Cycling through items and selecting who to use it on can be done while moving. Using the item causes the player to play a “use item” animation, so you’ll need to consider if stopping for a moment will put you in danger.
On the character creation side of things, we just wrapped up work on the makeup and skin details. Aside from a few touch ups and the remaining hair models, we now have all of the customizable options for character creation complete! From here we plan to make those touch ups to the new models and textures, make the final improvements to the human rig, and then finalize it all before moving on to new clothing and hairstyles.
We’ve completed the system framework for battling with NPC summoners. While the AI part is still WIP, enemy NPCs can now summon their own Lumala or Kodoki or whatever Kinfolk they have to fight you. They’ll also smoothly switch to the next Kinfolk in their party when the current one is defeated.
We implemented the flow that will be used for challenging Guild members/leaders in the single player via a test NPC called "Tough Guy Bruno".
Now NPCs can start as passive or neutral to you, then in dialogue can become hostile. They can also stop just short of defeating you and start a dialogue (tell you better luck next time), or can start a dialogue with you just as they are about to be defeated (congratulate you on your win).
Development is complete for the new system that humans use when following their Kinfolk, and we spruced it up with some new VFX. If you start to get really far away from your human character while playing as a Kinfolk you’ll see a line begin to fade in, indicating the max range that you are able to maintain a mental link with each other. When you cross the max range, the link "breaks" to show that you're about to be recalled.
We made several improvements to our weather systems, weather visuals, and added 6 new types of weather. Several weather types will also have an impact on combat now. For example: during Heavy Rain, Water type attacks will deal a bit more damage than usual, and Fire type attacks will deal a bit less damage than usual. We have also begun development on a number of passive and active abilities that will influence and be influenced by the current weather.
At the moment, we’re working on concept art on 8 new hairstyles, 1 new Water type Kinfolk, and have nearly finished modeling another new Water type Kinfolk.
We now have the functionality for items that can automatically combine in your inventory. This code is currently being used for some Guild-related functions and will probably also be useful for cooking in the future.
We’ve modified camp objects to cut holes in the navmesh so NPCs can path around them. Nothing like having a heart-to-heart with a team member when a random Lumala comes barreling through your tent!
Development has started on several tools and utility xnodes that are necessary for the game’s story. These are mostly related to triggering specific events or sequences during missions or conversations.
We’ve started planning the process for collecting Scribe and Artificer pledge tier rewards. Backers of these tiers should start keeping an eye out! We’ll give more information on this soon.
Community
The “Art Art Contest” is finished, and our winners have been announced! Thank you again to everyone who submitted an entry. You can look forward to seeing these pictures in-game (presented in no particular order):
Mesmerizing Playfulness by Kiwi
Kindred Kings by Art_Squid
Untitled by CursedEye
Congratulations to our contest winners!
Voting for the community favorite is currently ongoing in our Discord. There are tons of excellent pieces that we weren’t able to select as winners, so be sure to give them some love! Community voting will close tomorrow, September 24 at 12pm EST.
Our Discord community has started a collection of fan art wallpapers! You can find all the submissions from the Art Art contest, plus some other fan art, available to download here. Everything in the album has been added with artist permission, and more pieces will be added over time!
Thanks for stopping by! We’ll catch you next time, on October 7.
