Progress
We’ve improved the visual and audio feedback for when you successfully dodge an attack. Dodges now display special visual and audio cues, as well as briefly slowing time when the player successfully avoids damage. This makes dodging attacks much more satisfying and rewarding! The brief period of slow motion gives you a moment to react and potentially begin your counter attack, plus it just looks cool. Let us know your thoughts on if this time slowing effect should be included in multiplayer, or if you think the feature should be single player only!
This has been another sprint full of combat improvements.
On top of dodging, we’ve added new VFX in a few other places to improve clarity and visual quality. All Self-Spawn and Cone Attack abilities now have impact VFX upon hitting an enemy. When you successfully shield an attack, a special impact effect will indicate that the attack was blocked. Melee impact VFX also rotate to better match the direction of the attack.
Super armor is finished and has been added to each ability that requires it. This feature grants the user immunity to stagger as well as any effect that would forcibly move them during the ability. The exact length of this immunity time varies depending on the ability. Some bulkier Kinfolk even have super armor while using certain abilities where others do not.
We've added some classic red “taking damage“ edges to the screen’s UI. Naturally, this effect appears whenever the player takes damage, lighting up and making it clear which direction the damage came from.
We've added an option for some abilities to activate only when the user collides with the ground. This is particularly useful for attacks where the user slams into the ground.
At long last, all character dodges and abilities now support a short period of animation canceling at the end of the animation. That might not sound like much to some, but this fixes an issue that has hampered the feel and flow of combat since the early Alpha. No more waiting half a second after your dodge fully ended to be able to fire an ability. No more waiting a weirdly long time after launching your first attack to return to your idle animation so you can fire your second. This has been a massive improvement to the feel of combat and we can’t wait for you to try it out. Of course, attacking and dodging will still require meaningful commitment, and tankier Kinfolk will still have animations that last longer than average, but now you won’t feel stuck in between like before.
Combo attacks like Swipes will also allow for animation canceling with movement inputs. This allows players to move in between individual hits of certain combo attacks, and even space them out a bit if they choose. This means if you hold forward, and click Swipes once, the character will swipe once and then cancel out of the end of the attack’s recovery animation to start running forward again. This helps combo attacks feel much less unintuitively restrictive and more fluid. The player does, however, still need to continue the combo within a small time window or else the combo attack will end and go on cooldown.
We revamped our dialogue flow for when Kinfolk learn new abilities upon leveling up. The UI now directs you to the Kinfolk’s ability info page where you can see the ability's stats, description, and swap out your currently equipped abilities with any other known abilities. The flow for learning multiple abilities at once has also been streamlined, which can help when a Kinfolk gains several levels at once.
We’re making slow but steady progress on a complex portion of the code for Windmill, our new and improved system for handling user accounts and matchmaking. We’re also currently looking into options for automated testing with this system, which would save our QA team a lot of time and sanity.
Combat bug fixes galore. Here are a few:
We fixed some abilities not activating their cooldown bar while they were on cooldown.
We fixed a bug where some melee attacks were not having their hit boxes enabled/disabled at the right times.
We fixed the hit indicator UI around the aim reticle showing when NPCs damaged the player. The hit indicator now only shows when the player damages an enemy.
We fixed a bug where characters would dodge without transitioning into their dodge animation if an attack was being animation canceled by a dodge.
While we've continued to make steady progress on Beta-critical items like Windmill, next week we’ll be focusing even more on these items and less on combat improvements. Work on Windmill will continue until it’s finished, and new work will start that focuses on reducing lag and keeping things stable. Once our work on one of these two areas is complete, we’ll also be concentrating more on essential UI like matchmaking and the score screen.
LEXICON
The full lexicon can be found here.
Automated tests: Tests that are programmed to run automatically whenever a new build is made. Reduces the need to manually test features repetitively (ex. making sure every ability works as intended for every character).
Hit box: An area in the 3D space (usually attached to an ability) that causes damage when it collides with a hurt box (usually attached to a character model).
Movement input: Pressing a button that causes a character to move in a certain direction. (For example, using the WASD keys on your keyboard are often for movement inputs.)
NPC: A non-player character.
QA: Quality assurance. The people who test the game and report bugs.
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 stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on August 9.
