This patch marks a bunch of highly experimental changes, with the help of our newest employee and a team of wonderful interns from the DAE school in Kortrijk
Spacetime changes
We’ve been discussing the physical scale of the game world of Diode Arena, in order to help lock in the art direction. We wanted the game to feel faster and the builds to accordingly be smaller and feel more like DIY constructions. Since the game is still in beta, we decided to make a bold change to experiment with this. Changes can still be rolled back fully or partially based on testing. We’ve worked out the physics for you, in short:
1 block will be physically 1/12 of a meter (down from 1/4th), meaning builds will range from RC size to the size of a small car
The setting of the game will have slightly reduced gravity of about 2/3rds of Earth (6.66 m/s²)
This effectively means the game’s physics should feel the same as before, except everything moves twice as fast! (part stats have been scaled accordingly)
To match the increased pace we also doubled all weapon damage in the game, again this might be re-adjusted later
We are specifically looking out for plane builds, which we’re worried could be uncontrollable and unkillable, we may have to make balance changes for them specifically…
Smooth cubes
We wanted to experiment with the basic building blocks the game offers, by removing bevel and editing the UVs we achieve an effect where neighbouring cubes blend together into a larger seamless shape. We also removed the larger cube variants and replaced them with concave and convex versions of the 1x1x1 cubes with different stats. This might mess up some of your builds of the previous version, but this is a price I'm willing to pay.
Pilot character
In an effort to flesh out the lore of the game and help with marketability we’ve decided to experiment with adding characters, the first of which is a pilot representing the player, remote controlling their bot. In the future this character will appear in online matches and be customizable. For now they’re displayed in the battle menu and career page. We will also be adding more characters for the tutorial and match announcements in the future
Gamepad UI navigation
We’ve added proper gamepad UI navigation using a selection approach that jumps from one target element another, which should be a huge improvement over the old virtual cursor solution. This overhaul is almost finished but we’re keeping a lookout for remaining bugs!
Career page
New menu that features all kinds of progress information of the player account, including the specific rewards that can be earned by levelling up, achievements, and global statistics the game has been keeping track of. This also replaces the old inventory view you used to get by clicking on the currency display on the top right.
Minor changes
Wheels can now produce skid marks when slipping over the ground
Added new AI builds and removed some broken ones
The match start has been reworked as follows: team gates will start closing as the countdown starts, when fully closed, only players outside of a valid spawn base will respawn, other players will be healed and if needed recovered into an upright position. This means that players who stay waiting inside their team hangar will not be forced to respawn for no reason
Various consistency fixes for AI
Taking into account the range of their own weapons
Improving steering input for both hovercraft and cars
Better ways to detect being stuck and using recovery mode
Added control legend info to the builder
Bugfixes
Fixed bug that was preventing players from unlocking cosmetic parts with earned vouchers