Rise & Fall · build 23236902 · published
Hey everyone!
I'm back, and healthy again.
We're eager to get an update out, especially after playing over the break and getting annoyed with how sensitive the camera in Free Roam was being on controller. That's been fixed.
How to opt into the free test branch to test new features early:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/276C-85A0-C531-AFA3
Controller Sensitivity Improved
Controller sensitivity for 3rd person camera adjusted to be less sensitive
Horizontal and vertical sensitivity have their own values
In the future, we'll add these as sliders in the Settings menu so you can set them exactly how you like!
On that note, we'd like to bring the Settings menu into Arena and Free Roam, so you can set values in-match and in-game! It can be tedious going in, checking a feature, and going all the way back out and then into Settings just to make a single change.
It would also be nice to be able to see the current track playing, and skip to a new track in the pause menu while in-game, so we're working on that as well!
Camera rotation speed has been made more frame rate independent--but we're still seeing some cases where the camera moves faster than it's supposed to! But overall it's a significantly more comfortable experience than before.
Player Shadow Distance Adjusted
The player has 2 shadows as of now (and always has)
Shadow #1-- their 'real' shadow, which is affected by light sources and adjusts in real time.
Shadow #2-- their 'fake' shadow.
This is a decal that we project onto the ground all the time. It's used to give people a point of reference where the player is while in the air. It's common in precision platformers where you need to know where you're landing.
All player's fake shadows have been adjusted for Free Roam to extend the height of the map
Basically, no matter what height you are in Free Roam, you should always be able to look down and see your fake shadow as a reference to where you are in the air.
You'll especially notice this in the lift ring challenge, where you can be pretty high in the air without a platform below you.
Springs
The basic spring has been adjusted to give you slightly more time while going up and going down after colliding. We found that it was just too fast and too snappy to be a comfortable way to move around a space. Now, timing your movement on the top of the spring's height is significantly easier, and lines up better with adjustments we've made to other movement objects.
Several Star Challenge Tweaks
Several star challenges have been adjusted to be easier to complete.
After testing the game and seeing it played by different people, we felt we could do even more to guide the player with what they are supposed to do.
The level of challenge also better represents the very beginning of the game, where the goal isn't to challenge the player yet. The goal of Free Roam is to teach people how to use the game's mechanics and understand how different things work.
There WILL be more difficult challenges, but those will come after we've set a reasonable starting point!
There's nothing worse than playing a new game and already failing a tutorial because the developer didn't make it flow well enough or asked too much too soon!
The star around climbing the tree is significantly easier and more straightforward
The star at the end of the bunker is also easier and more straightforward--we focus on teaching you the basics--understanding you're supposed to shoot the ball into the net-- before we add any difficulty wrinkles that can be distracting.
Also fixed a few spots where collision was missing
Wood platforms (the ones that stick out of the tree specifically) have had their meshes adjusted to have less gaps. The original mesh had wide gaps, which when scaled to our game's size, looked like the platform was less safe than it actually was. So we've scaled their faces up to leave significantly smaller gaps, making them feel as safe as they actually are.
Home Screen
We've renamed 'Offline' in the home menu to 'Versus' to better reflect what the mode does.
It made sense when we were prototyping online features, but right now since everything's offline, it can be confusing (and not needed).
Player's bottom UI circle projects onto player meshes and clubs when it shouldn't
Dash Panels should apply more force to balls than they are currently
Dash Panels that are angled shoot shoot the ball in that angle (so upwards, if the panel faces upwards)
//This already works for springs, so we just need to move the logic over from springs into dash panels, which are slightly different!
Ball Grabbing (Free Roam only) - Sometimes when grabbing a ball when another ball is close by, you may still be holding a ball, even if you should have thrown the ball away
Charged Swing (Free Roam only) - Sometimes the player spins during a charge swing
//This was fixed a long time ago, but accidentally got reverted at some point. Working to put it back in today, and absolute worst case, by next week.
Camera Speed - The camera in Free Roam can still move at slightly faster speeds, instead of a consistent speed. We've adjusted logic to make the function that moves the camera run at a locked 60 times a second, but we're still seeing spikes (although it's not often). We'll continue looking into this.
Quality Settings - Adjusting Quality Settings isn't always applying the different quality values you set (aka High, Med, Low settings). We know what caused it so a fix should be out soon!
Lighting In Free Roam - Shadows are appearing in a few spots where we don't intend them to be! We need to run another bake on the large scene to remove some
We've been doing tests to check if we can ship out test features to the main branch yet
We noticed some performance problems in Versus mode on lower end hardware that we're not happy shipping.
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!
//We think cloud syncs are working correctly, but we want to do some further tests before we announce it to everyone!
The first woman playable character is mostly ready to go out!
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.
//Some improvements are in, some more hints and cues and nudges are there, but we've got more coming
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.\[/p]//These are built (trampolines that give you more air based on how hard you fall down onto them). //We haven't gotten the math and the numbers feeling right just yet, so we haven't turned this on yet.
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! 🦔🦔
//Adjusting player movement for slopes is about 50% done, we've got the basics down, we just need to make sure it triggers where we want it to in all cases
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!
-Dave
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