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Artificer Backers:
Another friendly reminder that the Artificer design challenge will start on November 14th and will last until December 6th in the private Discord channel. If you want to participate, it’s very important that you join the server before the end date. See this post for more detailed information on how to access the dev team Discord channel and submit your name. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to support@skymill.com. We’re so excited to be starting soon- 10 more days!
Combat Arena
We released a hotfix for the Combat Arena Alpha that addressed problems with Kinfolk not swapping properly. We also fixed issues with Dig not behaving properly when Use Same Key to Fire is enabled.
Single Player
We have implemented a very early first version of characters that support customization into the game. This is the character that will (soon) be the result of character creation.
The procedural settings for terrain sculpting have been a major focus this sprint. As we fine-tune these settings for the current biome, it becomes much easier to apply them to new biomes in the future. Earlier this week, you saw a sneak peek of this as we showcased our terrain sculpting process. We have an extended version to share that lets you see further along in the process.
We added the capability for certain hitboxes on enemy Kinfolk to receive damage differently. This will most likely only be used in the game’s story mode.
The basics of NPC summoners are implemented and working! Now NPC summoners can actively move around and make decisions simultaneously with their Kinfolk when in combat. This was extra tricky since all NPC summoners and their Kinfolk share the same PlayerData, similar to how it works for actual players of the game with their own team of Kinfolk. Many spots in the game’s code had to be edited to allow NPCs to do things that previously could only be done by the player.
We created the behavior tree frameworks for summoners and their Kinfolk to have unique, adjustable Utility AI. Everything unique about the NPC summoner- from how they decide to move around and act in combat, to which Kinfolk are on their team, to the stats and AI of each individual Kinfolk- live in these assets. When an NPC is spawned, it checks all the actions listed in the AI asset, and dynamically builds a behavior tree that is able to perform all of those actions. This allows us to easily create different NPC summoner variants and plug the desired AI into them in editor or runtime when they are spawned. It also saves on duplication if there are any grunt-type summoners who have similar AI. They can now share the same AI asset.
Work has started for allowing an NPC summoner's Kinfolk to use combos that involve swapping characters mid-combo. This allows for greater combo diversity and more dangerous abilities to be chained together by a summoner's Kinfolk. We’re very excited by some of the possibilities this opens up for enemy encounters >:)
We made some major progress in fixing the pop-in for trees. As you get further away from the models, they transition to less detailed versions in order to save on processing power (and vice-versa as you get closer). Historically, these transitions have been more abrupt than we’d like, but they’re in a good spot now. It’s a minor detail in the grand scheme of things, but we hope it’ll be a meaningful improvement to immersion.
The spawning issues weren’t limited to the Combat Arena Alpha this sprint! There was a separate issue causing problems for spawning in the Single Player. Thankfully, everything is back in working order there too.
The combat in the Single Player has been in need of tuning up (for different reasons than the Combat Arena Alpha). We adjusted the accuracy of some ranged attacks and fixed issues with Auto Fire on Press and Auto Fire on Release. There were also various bugs that finally got the devs’ attention this sprint after focusing on the Combat Arena Alpha’s bugs for a while.
Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you next time, on November 18.
