UPDATE: EASTER ACCESS #5.9
Hoooo boy, this one was an absolute nightmare to get this out, it felt like the worlds biggest game of whack-a-mole, but I think it is all good to release for you guys! YAY!
I'll spare you the blabber about me working 12-16 hours a day, and how freakin exhausted I am, but I won't spare you from me showering you with a million thank you's and ...a million apologies.
Here's the completely organized change-log/bug fix list ...thing:
INPUT:
I have spent a significant amount of time working on this, and it is a constant battle it feels like, but I am slowly progressing, finding better ways of doing things.
When I started working on Metal Heads, my knowledge of dealing with 8 players on one computer was almost non-existent, I knew that there were limitations, but I couldn't find any information to help with this. As a result, I have been constantly making what I THINK works, and it seems to work for a little bit, but then I do something else which breaks everything, for example the online multiplayer, then keyboard support, then making keyboard support work in online multiplayer.
I am still battling these issues, especially in regards to keyboard users, but I am confident that I will get the game to a point where there aren't any issues with keyboard players.
- I discovered an issue where if for example, a player launches Metal Heads and hits ENTER on their keyboard, then joins an online server, but then hits the START button on a connected controller, the game was creating 2 "souls" for that player. The game got confused about this, and assigned the player either with "NONAME".
I have found a better solution of setting player names, but have not yet fully implemented this yet.
For the most part, the last few tests I have done with Discord users haven't had any game breaking problems happening if players use keyboards or unsupported controllers.
- I discovered some other issues in relation to player enumeration which should fix up some general input problems, and an on-flow of problems throughout the whole game, it's menu's etc
- Seemingly as a result of the above, I have fixed a bug where players wouldn't appear in the end mini-game winner screen, and also seemingly have fixed a "PLAYER 0 IS THE WINNER" issue that is related to this bug.
- Also as a result of the above, in round based mini-games like Creepin Creepers, all players will respawn every round again. If they don't...let me know (and I'll be very confused).
- I got a hold of my old xbox 360 controllers for some testing, however all of the cables are broken, and I don't have a wireless adapter, so may end up purchasing some cables or a wireless adapter soon to help with input testing.
- I tested out a Spartan controller that was worth about $5, and it worked about 2 weeks ago, but now it fails to even be detected by Steam or Windows....I was using this controller to help with testing really generic/basic aftermarket controller support...I spent a few hours trying to figure out why it worked and now doesn't, but figured there are better priorities.
LOBBY SCREEN/CHARACTER SELECTION SCREEN:
- Fixed up an issue where keyboard players couldn't hold the right arrow key to leave the lobby.
This took about 6 hours to fix today....and it was of course the most stupidly simple thing ever.
BOARD GAME MODE:
- Re-instated drop-in/drop-out mechanics for the board game mode, however there's a few scenario's yet to be tested, so there are still problems.
- Fixed up the 3D text showing the wrong amount of rounds left in the board game. (This was a stupidly simple fix that my tired brain couldn't comprehend, so it took longer than I wanted it to take)
- At the end of the board game mode after the Trivia, all other players SHOULD show up rather than the winner and maybe 1 or 2 other players. But I haven't been able to test this fully yet.
- Trivia mode is still very much unfinished and broken, and the answer still is generally player 1, but if a player dropped into the last round, the game may set them to be the answer....pro tips right there.
- Egg fart sounds are louder than in EASTER UPDATE #5.8. 3x volume vs 1x...this is important.
MINI-GAME TUTORIAL:
- Tutorial screen kept on showing a video of the previous mini-game, but the name of the current mini-game, which was really confusing, so now have brute forced it to show the correct one....
It's not an elegant solution, and is more of a band-aid fix for now.
If you run into this problem, let me know.
- Made the description text scale according to the amount of text.
BOSS FIGHT MINI-GAME:
- The boss fight mini-game NOW WORKS! YAY!
- Re-created the entire boss character scripting, as it was old and outdated and very broken.
- ANY player can be the boss now, everyone can see the boss, it is animating correctly, synchronized correctly etc.
- Depending on which player wins the board game, the lighting in the boss arena will match that player's colour, as will the boss's "eye"/"cockpit"/"visor" (which one is it? hmmm) to help represent which player it is, as players were not aware that they were the boss due to not reading the tutorial.
- The boss's super amazing health bar and energy bar UI show up for both server and client now and is updated in sync with server and client.
- An arrow appears when the boss player's energy goes below 20% to help guide them to go and recharge in the middle of the map.
- Once the boss player starts recharging, the boss player can do a QTE (quick time event) where they will need to hit the buttons that appear underneath the energy bar. Every time the player gets a full sequence correct, they gain a large chunk of energy. The boss can also do this after being overcharged.
Right now, like all UI buttons, it's all designed for the xbox controller, however I will eventually be implementing a switching system that detects that player's form of input and changes the UI icons to match, so that it's more intuitive and understandable.
- The boss's cockpit/visor/eye now flickers and goes dark when charging, then turns back on again when finished.
- The boss's arms now blocks player movement, making a bit more difficult to get up close to the front of the boss.
- The charging pillars now work almost 100% without issue. The ONLY problems I know of are that if there's a player standing in front of another player who is interacting with a pillar, The player who is interacting, gets blocked and the button presses don't work. I aim to fix this in the next update.
- Added visual cues to show players that they need to run to the pillars.
- Added visual cue over players who get knocked down when another player runs past, it pops up with the Y Button.
- Players who are knocked down by the slam attack can only be helped up by other players, and have a little yellow swirl above their head. Sometimes this doesn't really work, so players need to move around a bit before they get the right spot. I'll make this way better in the future.
- Boss starts pouring out smoke when low on health and this shows up for clients, not just the server.
- Added a place-holder cinematic at the end of the boss fight. It currently kind of shows the boss exploding a little bit, and is reallllly basic, but it's better than nothing I guess.
It also occurs no matter who wins.
- After the boss fight/board game is over, players are now re-entered into the lobby correctly.
Previously, the game wasn't setting a particular value to be TRUE, and so everyone ended up as player 1 (player 0).
OH BALLS:
- Made the Oh Balls jump height slightly higher.
- Made the Oh Balls falling platform rings not drop down as far, to allow players to still recover if they get caught as the platform is spinning downward before it drops.
TAP OUT:
- Tap Out survival mode difficulty lowered slightly by making it so the player doesn't have to tap as much. However there is still a potential problem where client players need to tap more than the host, so I'll do more tests to find out if this is actually a problem, or if people have very different expectations of the survival mode.
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FINAL NOTES
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There were more changes and fixes that I didn't even allow myself the time to open up my developer log and note down, but there were LOTS...most were due to an on flow effect from fixing other issues, so not much point noting them all here.
I will be working like a mad-man for the rest of April to try and finish up the board game mode and boss battle mechanics before I start working on making more mini-games while simultaneously working on fixing up network performance in many of the mini-games.
Online multiplayer is not a simple thing, and even bigger companies, with very highly skilled and talented network engineering teams struggle....I'm one guy, and my skills with networking are very limited...but are rapidly developing along with the game.
Many of the mini-games were atrocious to play online to begin with, and now most of them can be played without any issues, or very minimal issues online, so it's only a matter of time before the other mini-games run well online as well.
Thank you all again for being so super supportive of the game, and so patient with me.
It means an incredible amount to me and gives me great joy that I can create this fun for you.
You are the life-blood of this game, you put the "metal" in Metal Heads.