Rise & Fall · build 22625304 · published
Hey everyone!
How to opt into the free test branch to test new features early:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/276C-85A0-C531-AFA3
Adjusted damping math to provide better camera smoothing
Player's impact sound with ball has been fixed.
That satisfying 'thud' sound you hear when hitting a ball is back, and won't get cut off from playing anymore.
Significant performance increases across entire game
Taking use of GPU Instancing, static batching, shared materials, mesh optimization, LOD's, and more.
Optimized all kinds of objects to use less memory, resources, and draw calls while still giving same result
Removed some legacy meshes and streamlined Arena for all maps
Combined meshes in cases where there was no need for them to be seperate
Proper Occlusion Culling in place to significantly boost performance
Proper lightmap bake in place to boost performance
The Grid shader (which 90% of the scene uses) has been optimized to be even lighter on performance
Reduced triangle count on multiple heavy objects, freeing up performance
Arena sound distance reigned in (won't hear it from as far a distance)
Removed shadows in areas where they weren't being seen anyway
Reduced scene density in dense areas by ~1million triangles while keeping the same appearance
Free Roam has a mini shooting range, with a mini game where you shoot the ball into triggers to unlock a star.
Also includes a switch which can automatically reset your balls for you.
Stars have a sound you can hear from a certain distance to help find them easier
Added an area with water (no unique interactions yet)
On top of the normal sound fans make, they now also make a specific sound when you are inside a fan, which stops when you exit one.
Coin has more pickup range and a better sound effect.
Rocks in scene now have correct collision effects.
Fan was rebuilt to be more modular, use less resources, so we can include more of them in the scene
Terrains have more grass patches to them
Some trees are now climbable and have stars at the top of them to collect
Optimized portal object
More performance improvements
Added LOD's to several objects to free up performance.
And more!
A lot of this week was needed performance improvements.
Without the headroom, we couldn't keep building the game, or we'd have to split the game into smaller chunks (less fun).
But we really want to play with large, sandbox-style play areas where you can run around and collect items and use your movement in new ways.
The improvements also make the entire game run better, which gives us room to add even more things to the game!
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
3rd Person Camera can occasionally get twitchy
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!