Rise & Fall · published · build 22521800
Hey everyone!
A bunch of new features out on the Test branch, with an attempt to get everything out to Main in a few weeks.
How to opt into the free test branch to test new features early:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/276C-85A0-C531-AFA3
The indenting messes up if I remove this line so pretend it's something important.
Camera in 3rd person no longer clips into ground
Camera is being smoothed and damped better and results in less jittery camera at high speeds
Increased dead-zone to also reduce twitchiness.
Added unique Surface Impacts.
Players now make a kickup effect when landing on a surface.
There's 4 types of surfaces the player can collide with, each with unique sound effects and impact effects.
1) Grass
2) Dirt
3) Rocks
4) Snow
5) "Concrete"
Effects also vary based on player size. Larger sizes have a bigger impact effect, smaller is smaller.
More surfaces will come soon! We want to make sure we've caught whatever quirks the new system has before we expand it out with more.
Added unique footstep sounds for different surfaces
You'll hear your feet impact with the surface you're touching.
Includes:
Grass
Dirt
Rocks
Snow
"Concrete"
There's about 7 unique footstep sounds per object, with slight pitch and volume variance, so it'll make moving around feel more natural and sound nicer when playing.
Players now have a brief window where they can still jump, even if they're no longer grounded.
This makes jumping between platforms significantly more accurate and feels so much better.
This also just makes jumping feel much better in general. It eliminates cases where you pressed jump but the player was temporarily off the ground, and a jump wouldn't register.
Now there's a 0.3s window where jump is still available after you stop touching the ground, making platforming significantly smoother!
Along with coyote time, we've added Jump Buffering (also called Input Buffering).
This means that pressing jump will result in jumps happening much, much more consistently.
Before, jumps could only happen if you pressed the jump button on a frame where the player was touching the ground
With jump buffering, every time you press the jump button, it performs a check to see if you're close to the ground or not, and if you are, waits to land and performs a jump.
It makes a world of a difference in terms of feel. Jumping just feels natural now.
We've given each size slightly more gravity to make their jumps feel like they have some weight to them.
This only affects the descent of the jump, which felt too long and too light for all sizes
Reduced the time you spend in-air on 'Down', but kept the 'Up' unchanged.
This follows platformer jump tuning, where the 'Up' is about 3/4s of the jump, with the 'Down' being 1/4 of the time.
Players now make a skid sound effect (and animation) when stopping on a dime after running at a high enough speed.
Sound varies based on size
Effect triggers when a certain speed is reached where a skid would be needed to stop momentum.
Makes the stopping feel more responsive.
To help make the sizes feel more unique, the large size for Normal Guy has bigger forearms, much like a gorilla.
Tweaked the object pooling logic for shrink and grow so the sound effects don't get cut off mid-way
ShrinkFX has a new 'deflating' sound that sounds like air escaping the player to shrink them down.
Removed and cleaned up some effects to make the visual clearer
Normalized all effects to play for a max of 0.3s so they all feel synced and cohesive.
Sound effects while diving are hearable again.
Fixed janky particles while dive boosting
Built a basic jumping section
Used as a fun little challenge to use the sizes and your jumping and gliding
Also used to help debug any quirks we may have with the jump
Added some polish to the grass and the dirt paths to make them look more like a real space and less like a prototype area
Performance improvements by setting objects Static that were supposed to be Static and somehow got unset that way
Objects in the distance have been tinted a little blue to not call your attention as much
Added collectible stars at the end of several challenges
They just respawn, there's no counter for them yet, but they're fun anyway!
Cannons in Free Roam no longer fire when turned on by the switch
//Will be fixed in next update
Player's bottom UI circle projects onto player meshes and clubs when it shouldn't
Low FPS in Free Roam when looking in certain directions
It's a fun mashup of platformer and sports game we've been wanting to try for ages
Make your way through platforming challenges
Find the ball in the level
Bring it to the blue goal on the other side
Beat the team defending it to destroy their base, opening up access to the next level.
Score on the net to destroy the base and move on!
We've pushed code in recent builds that should handle Steam Cloud saves for everyone, we just want to give it a little more testing and confirm it's merging playtimes of multiple devices correctly each time!
The first woman playable character is mostly ready to go out!
We just need to apply a final fix to her clothes to make sure there's no clothing mishaps during gameplay (weird UV and texture normals bug)
After we're confident with her model, we'll release more variants, until we've got 8 total women characters (or template characters)
Again we're building the system to be modular, so eyes, hair, noses, mouths, clothing and accessories can be swapped in and out and create some nice variety.
With Cloud Saves confirmed to be working, we'll next start applying basic player levels to your account based on games played, goals scored, and achievements unlocked in-game.
It's meant to be a foundation for progression as you play the game.
By default, not everything will be unlocked, but you'll unlock more as you play.
Maps, characters, and cosmetics would be unlocked from playing the game.
More unique stage hazards will come with the new toys we've been experimenting with in Free Roam:
Switches, Levers, Cannons, and Collectibles
Grab-able Hazards: Want to reposition a hazard or take it with you? Go ahead and play around.
//We'll be experimenting with what level of freedom makes the most sense, and what players like. Do you want complete freedom of any hazard in-game? Or does it make sense to limit to hazards on your side?
Adjust Hazard Refresh Time: Make hazards rotate on a set interval you choose, or set to random for absolute chaos.
We're continuing to flesh out the tutorial in Free Roam to teach the basics of the game controls in a simple way. Expect little challenges and tests that teach you how each of the main actions work in-game.
The music player will soon take into account what songs have been played previously and aim to play new songs, vs playing a random new song every time.
//I think this has mostly been corrected, but we'll be adding some caching to make sure this works every time
Wanna use your weight to slam down on a trampoline, then shrink small when going up to get super big air? Small interactions like that are on the way.
Weighted pressure plates, pipes and gaps only small size can fit through, breakable objects only large can smash, to give an idea.
Collectibles (like coins, fruits, stars) will come to free roam, as we build more tools for making custom platformer-style levels for the single player experience.
Giving another pass to our player animations. They're responsive (aka they hit the key poses at around the right times to make player feedback feel like they're working), but they are a little twitchy due to the way we initially made them and sped them up.
So we'll be doing a pass to lock in those key frames, normalizing their speed and cutting out in-betweens that look a little twitchy on higher frame rates.
Characters will blink again and have various facial expressions based on what's happening in scene, giving them some more personality and aliveness.
Gliding will get unique animations, with a unique pose and character tilting in the direction you're leaning in.
Unique animations for player jumps in the 'up' and 'down' state of the jump.
Hazards are getting updated to have more visual feedback when interacted with, and we're taking this even further.
Things like 'dash effects' when receiving the effects of a dash panel, or unique audio when inside a fan are all little details we're putting in to make feedback feel even more clear and 'finished' when using.
Materials will react differently depending on the object they're interacting with
//Think how the ball has unique interactions with snow, grass, dirt, sand and more--we want to apply that to the player and more unique interactions between objects.
A tournament mode where you can play against a set of teams to win a championship.
Create a team with a team logo and player roster, and compete in a league against other teams.
//Part of us expanding ways to play Arena Matches. With more character model variety in-game, we can make tournaments between teams and eventually build up to seasons with playoffs.
Movement in Free Roam feels good, but we want to take it a step further.
'Momentum' (to us) is where players gain and lose speed slightly based on running up or down sloped surfaces or terrain. So running up or down surfaces have a feeling of weight, and you can do fun things like shoot yourself off a curved surface for big air! 🦔🦔
Along with momentum, 'coyote time' is that brief period you've walked off a surface but can still jump. It's common in platformers, and we've been looking forward to implementing it here too!
Why choose the Lightning characters over the Fire characters?
We want to add small gameplay reasons for having different elemental characters on your team.
We'll be experimenting with the best implementation, but we have lots of ideas!
//Think supers/ultimates, elemental affinities, strengths/weaknesses, team chemistry.
Marsh, Jungle, Forest, and Beach Biomes will roll out once we've build environments for them that we're happy with and can keep the file size reasonable.
More to come!