It's been two months since last update. But I've been busy even if I fell a bit behind on writing. 283 tasks completed across the two months, a good chunk of that was a big change I'd been putting off for a while.
The biggest thing that happened this summer was ripping out Positioning and Rebound and replacing them with the new Flow-Matic meter (more later) and predictable opponent scoring.
• Removed Positioning entirely
• Implemented a new defender stat split system (Block/Steal/Points)
• Designed and implemented the Flow-Matic meter, a new mechanic built directly into the Match screen
• Redesigned the Match screen, and did some juice work while I was at it (animation + SFX mostly)
• Reworked a bunch of cards to work with the new Flow system
• Added new card effects mostly related to the Flow system and the now visible defender scoring intent
• Added some new Jinxed cards
• Mapped out and documented all boss coach abilities properly (game balance)
• Rebalanced tactics stats
• All sorts of other balancing related to the teams stats
• Reward panel is no clickable to see the whole reward list
• Tuned ball distance from the hoop, reset animation speed, and pulsing text timing
• Added lots of SFX and other visual polish (🪄 particle effects)
• Fixed reward fallback logic so players get the reward below if they don't qualify for the one above
• Rebuilt the coach UI and restructured the teams UI in Match
• Reworked the available Match tooltips
• Polished quarter score animations so scoring feels more connected across quarters
• Fixed some (not all) fullscreen and ultrawide layout issues in the main menu and Match
• Improved the trading UI to clearly show points needed vs. selected
• Various button group rebuilds that had drifted out of style with each other
Squashed a lot of bug including:
• Rookies not displaying correct stats when unswapped
• Total points going negative
• Item visibility bugs after a rookie swap
• Quarter scores animating incorrectly on the last quarter
• Three-digit stats getting clipped off-frame
• Web build not saving progress correctly
• Illustrated some more pixel art (cards, items and characters)
• Added asmdef to the codebase for faster reload times
• Reorganized the codebase for clarity
• Built dev tools to manipulate match score and resume a run in any chapter with dummy data, to speed up testing
Gave the itch.io page a pass, looked into updating Steam store tags, and put together a super basic trailer/gameplay video
——————————
That's July and August. The scoring rework was the kind of change that's a bit scary to start because it touches so much, but the game feels better for it now that defenders and Flow actually matter in ways they didn't before.
If you would like to know something specific about the game, the development or myself please feel free to drop me a line or comment.
All the best,
Frilli