Well, it's been a while...
Unfortunately my personal life has been hectic so I have been unable to focus on keeping you guys updated on Unreal Table Ball. Anyway, lets talk about what HAS been done, and how close we are to actually releasing the first Unreal Table Ball Feature Demo.
Classic Game Mode Complete
The entire featureset needed for the "classic" game mode is complete, this means that now you can play the game that Table Ball is based off of, bouncing the ball off of bumpers and all that.
Redesigned Main Menu
We've completely redesigned the Main Menu, if you're in the Lockyz Media Discord Server, you've seen some of the renditions of the new Main Menu, and now I will show you four different versions I had, just before showing off what it now looks like. They're all fairly similar layouts but it very quickly evolved into what I envisioned.
The original main menu. I felt like having the left bar stop where it did didn't look great so I changed it to...
The buttons in this version of the menu and the lighting just weren't it for me, the buttons wouldn't change on hover and that's really bad if you were playing on just a controller.
I had changed the material used throughout the game for the ball and bumpers to make it glow a little, I also removed the reflections... But I thought that having the reflections there made it look better (and allowed me to more properly use Unreal Engine 5.4's capabilities). The placement of the objects in the game had also been modified in this version.
In this version I FINALLY updated the "floor" of the scene, I also brought back the metal feeling of the bumpers and ball on the main menu, but overdid it a little.
And now, we have the final one. The current main menu. I felt like it was more "artsy" to have the objects be within a field, it also gave me a chance to insert a new Easter Egg since I had to remove the original Main Menu Easter Egg in the transition to Unreal (In Table Ball Unity, sit on the main menu for I believe 5 minutes, and then watch what happens)
Customisation System Experiments
When making the change to Unreal I didn't know how I was going to make it work, nor how I'd make it look. The old customisation system in Table Ball was so... well messy... in how I made it work. The good news is that the new version is MUCH more modular where some of the different sections are different "widgets". I still haven't fully implemented this (You could probably tell since I greyed out the button on the current main menu), but the logic behind it works, and I know how I'll implement it. Basically there'll be a text file on your local hard drive with values for the Left Bumper, Right Bumper, Ball and Background and you will be able to change any of these four values ingame. I've decided against a regular DLC check for the save file as I still fully intend on a DRM-Free version of the game, which would cost the same as the Complete Collection Bundle on Steam, and a free version without any access to the customisation system ingame. Below are a couple concepts on how it may look in the final game.
This was the first version I made, obviously I was going to bring back the right sidebar and bottom bar, I had just wanted to get the look of the colour selection buttons down first.
And this is how it currently looks, It's still unfinished, I'm debating decreasing the size of the grid to put in a "preview" of what it'll look like. The background of the scene now also changes.
Other Changes
In the current dev build of the game, I've started implementing ways of testing various ingame functions, for example the AI Randomness scale can now be played with in the games main view. This will eventually be moved to the settings page, but I'm focusing on making sure the player can change these settings while the games going. I also haven't fully implemented a pausing mechanic so right now the UI is very cramped... Those buttons on the right of the menu are being used to test the customisation system and see how easily I can implement it. I intend to work on skins once I finish the work needed to finish other basic stuff within the game.
Part of development requires knowing what everything is doing, for example you can see that as the right bumper changes where it's moving to the X value changes, same with the Left Bumper
And now you can see that as the colours for each asset has changed, so to has the Hex value displayed. This is what I'm using to help me test the customisation system, in the future I'll also be able to see things like the current skin name, active powerups, how long until the active powerup is unactivated, etc.
Closing
Unreal Table Ball is very close to being "Demoable", heck I could even implement a few of the games achievements and Steam stats already, and so I think I'll be opening up to Public Testing within the next few weeks while I polish up some issues within the game. While not everything I want done is done yet, I still feel it's best to do beta testing as early as possible to allow myself a better understanding of what you, the community want. I'll first be announcing this future Feature Demo in the Table Ball Discord Server, please join there if you'd like to be notified for the first Feature Demo,