Progress
We finished implementing our new "Ready up" screen. This is a new feature that was not present in the Alpha Combat Arena, and it allows you to select which of your customized team loadouts you want to use in your next PvP battle. You can also choose to battle with your current party if preferred. You’ll have about 45 seconds to select your team before being forced to lock in your choice. Once both players have locked in, the match begins. There are still a few improvements we’d like to make to this feature in the future, but for right now we’re happy to have it up and running.
We’ve nearly finished implementing the Results screen, which will display once a PvP match ends. This screen is pretty similar to the one that showed at the end of matches in the Alpha but with a few small visual improvements.
Private matchmaking now has a complete loop that can be navigated entirely with the in-game UI (no special dev commands needed!). Players can send invites to other players for a one on one match, then when the other player accepts the invite, both players are teleported to the arena and the match begins. When the match ends, the players are returned to the areas they were in before starting the match, and further invites can be sent for additional matches.
We fixed a memory leak that was causing a few megabytes of memory to be used every second. Left alone, this could add up over time and cause computers to crash or seriously degrade performance.
We reduced the amount of memory allocations per frame by nearly 95%. Memory allocations during runtime are bad because as the memory adds up, the computer will later have to spend extra time clearing that memory space as it frees up, which causes hitches in the game's performance. By greatly reducing how much memory is allocated per frame, these hitches are now essentially non-existent and the game should hold a much more stable FPS.
The load time after clicking play in the main menu has been reduced by over 10 seconds- a pretty noticeable difference!
We modified our world streaming system to support loading between "Load Configs": pre-selected configurations of specific tiles of the world’s terrain that are loaded in at a given time, instead of relying on regular world streaming that loads all tiles around the player within a given radius. This is especially handy for areas like the multiplayer hub and arenas, as we can now control exactly what gets loaded or unloaded between areas.
The map for Red Letter mode is getting a major overhaul. All of the placeholder art is currently being replaced with final art, and some big terrain changes are being made to accompany that
The outlines of certain interactable objects now light up to make it clear that the player can interact with them. Apart from being a nice little bit of polish, this helps make it really clear which objects can be interacted with, especially in a chaotic environment.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed the player loading into the world without any default clothing.
Fixed a bug that caused the mouse to be in the wrong state when loading into the game or when a PvP match is starting.
Fixed NPCs in the world being accidentally included in your PvP match, causing the match to never start because NPCs were being rude and never "Readying Up". (For players there is also usually a timer that counts down during the "Ready Up" phase, but NPCs were breaking that too.)
Fixed the PvP match starting too quickly when a remote player is first joining the host, causing the remote player to not have any Kinfolk.
Community
We’re going to be at GDEX next week! Come see us in person at our booth from October 25th through the 27th at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Talk with the devs about Kindred Fates, enter a raffle for a free plushie, and even play an early version of the upcoming Combat Arena Beta with us! This version will also include some brand new content that has yet to be revealed.
If you can’t make it that weekend, don’t worry, we’ll also be attending TORG, also at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, from November 1st through the 3rd.
Hope to see you there!
Team
This week, we sadly bid farewell to someone who has worked tirelessly to bring Kindred Fates to life for the last 4 years. Joey, one of our developers, will be leaving our team to pursue new opportunities. During his time on the project Joey built many of the game's biggest systems and features, including the conversation system, bonding and capturing mechanics, flying and swimming mechanics, the Skymill account system, the back end for our website, and much much more. He's a wizard with code and we're going to miss him dearly, but we hope you’ll join us in wishing him well in the next leg of his career.
LEXICON
The full lexicon can be found here.
Host: (In P2P multiplayer) The player whose device manages the game world and sends data to the other player, making sure everyone is in sync. Also referred to as the server.
Local Client: The player who is experiencing the gameplay with their own inputs (ex. controlling a character with keyboard presses). When you are playing the game, you would consider yourself the local client.
Networking: The process of sending data between machines so that people playing a multiplayer game together experience the same things at the same time.
NPC: A non-player character.
Red Letter mode: The codename for an unrevealed game mode to be included in the Combat Arena Beta.
Remote Client: (aka Remote Player) Any player whose data is being networked across the server to simulate a character's actions. In P2P multiplayer, this is the opposite of the host.
UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc.
World Streaming: The process of breaking up large terrain into smaller tiles that can be unloaded if they aren’t visible from the player’s current perspective. Reduces processing power needed to run the game.
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on November 1.
