PROGRESS
The past two weeks have been a whirlwind! After pulling some long hours to get everything ready for our booth and GDEX demo, we had a wonderful time sharing the game with everyone we met during our three days at GDEX. While we were there, out of a pool of roughly 70 games, Kindred Fates won the award for best in show art and design, as well as being runner up for the best in show unreleased game! This was a huge honor for our team, and it truly validated the countless hours we’ve spent agonizing over character designs, animations, set pieces, ability effects, music, lighting and all the little details that help bring Kindred Fates to life.
Coming out of GDEX we got right back to work, taking all of the feedback we gathered and applying as much of it as we could to the demo in time to show it all off again at Torg! We’re pretty happy with what we managed to squeeze into the demo in the five days between shows, and we can’t wait to share it with everyone at Torg this weekend.
For those who aren’t able to see us in person, here’s a quick look at one of the videos we’ve been playing on loop at our booth.
So, what did we get done these past two weeks? Here’s a breakdown:
Implemented the results screen for arena matches.
Added the new player vs AI mode that allows players to play full arena matches against a team of AI opponents.
Created 4 AI difficulty levels, each with their own teams, for PvAI mode.
Added the lock on feature to the game’s tutorial.
Added a target for the player to lock on to in the tutorial area.
Added a shout to prompt the player to try locking on to to the target in the tutorial area.
Resolved an issue with fog near the edge of the game’s map.
Enabled the swap Kinfolk UI buttons to display gamepad icons.
Fixed an issue that prevented the game from loading if you didn’t have an internet connection. With the exception of PvP, the game can be played entirely offline.
Temporarily allowed Kinfolk to interact with types of objects that they ordinarily wouldn’t be able to interact with. This is something we did to streamline things for the demo, but we’re also treating it as a sort of trial run to see how Kinfolk handle a little extra freedom.
Added a new location to the world.
Enabled the game’s interactables to better support gamepad.
Added boundaries to the demo’s tutorial area to prevent the player from falling off the cliffs and dying.
Added a shout near the 2nd tutorial where a party member asks you to summon them.
Extended the black screen before loading in for the first time so that the player doesn’t see their character’s clothing load in.
Reduced the depth of field intensity a bit to that objects in medium range don’t appear too blurry.
Added a system that allows separate music tracks to be assigned to each arena.
Added a new basic controls tutorial for jumping, dodging, shielding, swapping, attacking, and lock on.
Prevented NPCs from leaving the combat area mid arena battle.
Added controller support to the ready up and score screens.
Reconfigured how music starts and stops as you enter and leave arenas.
Fixed a bug that caused the camera to lurch greatly during melee attacks on some characters.
Added a login prompt that appears when opening the network tab.
Created six preset teams of Kinfolk to make it easy for new players to try out a variety of playstyles and team configurations.
Fixed missing colliders for several set piece objects.
Created a new shader that makes the edges of the arena glow when the player is close to them. This helps make the arena bounds more obvious in the middle of combat.
Fixed a rendering issue that was preventing some of the button prompts from properly showing which button needed to be pressed to interact with certain objects.
Improved the feel of several Kinfolk while using a wide variety of abilities.
Fixed an issue that was causing rock slide rocks to be invisible.
Fixed an issue that was preventing a Kinfolk’s face from rendering properly.
Made major improvements to the visuals of an unrevealed ability.
Adjusted the time of day for each arena.
Fixed a major bug that was causing the game to get stuck on the results screen.
Put in safeguards to prevent the player from getting stuck outside the arena.
Added dialogue options for selecting which AI team to face off against.
Put in safeguards to prevent the AI from abruptly vanishing forever after swapping Kinfolk.
Improved the look of the white flashing effect that appears on Kinfolk while they are temporarily invulnerable to be much smoother.
Fixed an issue that prevented fire on release from working on controllers.
Added controller support to the arena match UI.
Fixed a bug that caused the camera to lurch forward when applying camera shake while sprinting.
And more…
Community
Come see us tomorrow at Torg! We’ll be hanging out at our booth there on November 2nd and 3rd 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.
Hope to see you there!
This past week, the account system on our website has been experiencing some stability issues, sometimes preventing users from logging in or playing the Alpha. We apologize for any convenience this might have caused you! We've been working hard to identify the issue, which we believe was caused by a bug in the Leaderboard. We’ve disabled the Leaderboard for the time being until the bug is fixed. If you experience further issues while logging in, please email support@skymill.com or make a ticket in our Discord server. Thank you so much for your patience while we worked on this!
LEXICON
The full lexicon can be found here.
NPC: A non-player character.
Shader: An effect that changes how things visually appear in the game. Shaders can do many things to alter overall appearances.
UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc.
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on November 15.
