Progress
Our aiming reticle has some new flair we’re pretty excited about! Now when you hit an enemy, a hit indicator appears. This indicator gets larger and redder the more damage your attack deals, and builds with successive hits.
This sprint, we made significant strides in improving the feel of combat. Of the features we discussed in the last newsletter, more than half have been implemented, including improvements to screen shake, hit pause, and creating chunkier VFX for many abilities.
We've made it so any ability can add extra character motion on a per-ability and per-character basis. This is similar to root motion (something we use for character movement during abilities) but isn't tied to animations, giving us numerous new options for polishing the feel of abilities and certain characters. Here is an example of how that can look in gameplay.
Ranged basic attacks now have a set number of charges in addition to their normal short cooldowns. We are still testing the number of charges and the recharge time, but so far we’ve seen that by turning ranged basic attacks into a more limited resource, players will have to change up their combat tactics while they wait for them to recharge. This design decision was made after noticing that many playtesters defaulted to simply kiting and using ranged basic attacks, and we hope to instead guide players toward using their other ability slots, using shield and dodge, or swapping characters.
We fixed multiple issues with combat:
All projectiles were unintentionally piercing through multiple enemies. Now, only specifically designated projectiles will have this ability.
The basic attack aim reticle could sometimes go missing and wouldn't return unless the game was restarted.
Characters were sometimes able to launch abilities even while in a stagger animation. Abilities can no longer be spawned while a character is staggered.
Characters wouldn't always reset their stagger animation to the beginning if they were staggered again. Now, the stagger animation always resets to the start whenever it is triggered.
Dash attacks did not always move toward the lock-on target when lock-on was active. Now, they always go directly toward the target when the player is using lock-on.
This sprint we finished a major stability milestone with multiplayer, mostly related to informing the player’s machine about how good the connection is rather than just trying to connect, failing, and trying anyway (resulting in a bad state).
On the account system side, in this upcoming sprint we expect to fully switch over to Windmill: Our new account system backend with increased functionality and fixes for bugs from the old system. Thanks in advance for bearing with us for any downtime or issues while we move over; we expect it to be fairly unnoticeable.
Next Steps
Looking ahead, a lot of our remaining goals for the simplest version of the Beta revolve around restoring functionality from the Alpha— Things like the logic for navigating matchmaking through the UI, the round state system, the score screen, etc. Close attention is going to issues that were prevalent complaints of the Alpha, such as lag and connection strength. We've also been upgrading our account system to perform better for matchmaking as well as upgrading and expanding its overall functionality.
Once these pieces are working with our new systems, we plan to roll out a stripped down version of the Beta for our backers with Alpha access to test. Essentially this would be an updated Alpha with the same Kinfolk and functionality as you’re used to.
After we’ve verified this version is in a good state, we’ll add new Kinfolk, arenas, and Red Letter mode in for one last chance to catch any issues before it goes out to the greater audience. Once we’ve confirmed that version is stable, we’ll roll it out to Backers with Beta access. To be clear, we intend for the period of time where only Alpha players have access to the content intended for Beta to be as short as possible. We're looking to do this as a way to avoid as many unexpected Day 1 issues as possible and to make the transition from Alpha to Beta as smooth as we can.
We don’t have an exact timeline for this, but we will be sure to give everyone plenty of notice well in advance of each of these being made available to players.
LEXICON
The full lexicon can be found here.
Hit pause: A feature that very very briefly pauses a character’s attack animation right at the moment they damage a target. This makes hits feel more chunky and satisfying.
Logic: The programming side of any feature. For example, “cooking logic” would be the base level programming for the cooking mechanic.
Sprint: A two week period used for organization. Our newsletters are released on the last day of our sprint.
UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc.
VFX: Visual effects. Kinfolk attacks, dust clouds, water splashes are all examples of VFX.
Thanks for checking in on us! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on July 26.
