THIS. IS. MODERN BALLFARE!
That's right! We are finally leaving Steam Early Access! It's been a very wild few years and we believe we've added enough shiny new features and polish to officially call it a product! One we are proud of. There is always more we want to add, more we want to improve, and more crazy ideas that we want to try, so keep an eye out for that in the future.
We've poured a lot of love, sweat, tears, and turds into this and it's come a looooong way from our first release. Thank you very much to everyone in the community that has helped and supported us throughout this process, you've all been amazing!
NEW FEATURES
There is so much to talk about! We've been busy, we've been having fun, and as always we've been finding as many excuses as possible to put weird silly things into the game. There is a lot to cover so I'm jumping in!
Bosses From Hell
The undead horde has some new recruits to throw at you on boss waves. A fast-moving flying screecher that tries to poop on you, and an undead necromancer that ghosts through your attacks whilst laughing at you from afar as you are swarmed by it's minions.
Minibosses From Hell
We've also added two new mini bosses; a stronk healing boi that will buff enemies around it, and a slow-moving area-blocker that will slow you down if you get caught within it's aura! These fellas will turn up in the later waves at any time to deliver you pain if they catch you by surprise.
Dank Dungeons Map!
A new spooky map for Balls From Hell. Survive against the undead hordes in this medieval castle dungeon and explore it's secrets!
Skills In Hell
Single use unlockable skills are now useable in Balls From Hell. Rush B through an undead horde, throw a dancing-detonating-trap-Serbiaball, or just heal yourself if that's what you are in to.
Guns In Hell
Weapons now have weird and wonderful upgrade variants to help you survive the later waves. Who doesn't want a triple barrelled shotgun, or a rapid-fire duck launcher?!
Respawn In Hell
We've finally achieved the technical prowess to replicate real life in that when a someone dies in Hell, their coffin will appear somewhere close by. If it is found and the death toll is paid they'll come back from the dead.
Coins For Your Poor Friends
You can now drop in-game currency for other players to help each other out with those high priced upgrades and abilities. So now if you are hard-carrying or getting hard-carried you can share the wealth and increase the fun! Or something like that. Technically you are throwing poop at each other still, so bare that in mind.
Balls From Hell Difficulty Options
Some extra difficulty options for ya, one that makes it easier, and another that makes it harder, best of both worlds!
Grave Grotto Improvements
Completed a bit of an artistic overall of key map areas, along with the addition of some secret areas to unveil, powerful new weapons and skills to collect and use on the horde of the damned.
Skybrawl Map!
A new PvP map specifically for the Bats 'n' Balls game mode. Hone your sabre rattling skills and knock enemies off the map to kill them. There are single use jetpack skills spawning around the map to help you out too.
Melee Weapon Skins
A bunch of extra melee weapon skins got added too, like a chainsaw, a cinderblock on a stick, and other stuff too that I've forgotten and am too lazy to double check as I write this. You can unlock these from the Balls From Hell bosses, so finish reading the rest of this juicy update and then go kill them bosses.
Melee Stun Mechanic
Successfully parrying an enemy will now stun them for a moment, giving you an small window to punish them with a ball whack. This means you can now officially stun your friends with your melee skills. Nice work!
Loadout Unlock System
PvP loadout skills are now unlocked through the XP levelling system that you work towards when you play any game mode. It also gives you information about where to unlock each item, and skill descriptions that are both helpful and unhelpful - you are welcome.
Added Pocket Poland!
Throw Pocket Poland at other countries to capture them. You'll then unlock access to culturally appropriate them or something. This totally isn't a pokemans and is quite clearly it's own unique thing; Pocket Poland :)
NEW BALLSKINS
Picked from community requests!
- Puerto Rico (For: MercenaryGundam)
- Yugoslavia (For: Yugo, David_Dabo1, LGamer4040, and many others)
- Socialist Republic of Romania (For: Lukedy)
- Austria-Hungary (For: Lukedy)
- Wallachia (For: Lukedy)
- Serbian Empire (For: Pug for Vule)
- Prince-Bishopric Of Montenegro (For: David_Dabo1)
- Curacao (For: deb)
- Palestine (For: deb)
- Manchukuo (For: John Parker 117)
- German Empire (For: RyanDoesStuffYT)
- Guatemala (For: Maltazar Vernegance)
- Gibraltar (For: Maltazar Vernegance)
- Aromanian (For: PieSamuray)
- Replublic Of Vietnam (For: karyna721)
- Coloured Balls (For: MercenaryGundam - Red, Orange, Yellow, Purple, Pink, Green)
- Texas (For: BlacksmithT776 - Said stateballs but didn't say which, so you get this one! :P)
- CIA (For: Myself? Nobody asked for this, I just got carried away with flags...)
- FBI (Same as above) And these ballskins from the community!
- Braila (By: CopiluCuSarmale)
- Alsacer (By: Alsacer)
- Armatian Federation (By: T-14 Armata)
- Markolandia (By: Yugo)
- Gorthia (By: Чук)
NEW ACHIEVEMENTS
All artwork is hand-drawn by our lovely community!
- I Love Democracy (By: mosambikyu)
- InTeRnEt CoNnEcTiViTy PrObLeMs (By: Oğuz)
- Political Negotiation (By: Yugo)
- Saving For Retirement (By: CopiluCuSarmale)
- I Love Goooooooooold! (By: Mr.Abdlerahman)
- Sarj-Ant (By: mosambikyu)
- Colonel Colon (By: Yugo)
- Long Balls Of The Law (By: Edster)
- Nice... (By: Dootzy)
- See You In Hell! (By: Srebrny)
- Hell Never Changes (By: Sword_Head)
- No, This Is Actually Hell (By: Adem)
- With Friends Like These (By: Dootzy)
- I Don't Do Disco (By: Srebrny)
- Where are my friends?! - ohh right (By: EpicGodYoshi)
- I Love Negotiations (By: mosambikyu)
Thank you to everyone that sent their wonderful art for us to use!
TWEAKS
Re-worked, improved, or reinvented game features!
- Reworked the AI melee blocking system so now it scales with difficulty.
- Reworked the AI melee attacking system so they behave more naturally and try to attack you in different ways.
- Reworked the melee knockback system so now it feels much better whacking balls around.
- Improved the way AI hunts for the player in a few areas, meaning they look a little less dumb some of the time.
- Revised the melee weapon hit detection to be fairer and more responsive.
- Added a small counter mechanic where if you successfully block an enemy you can attack a little bit faster than before.
- Reworked the impact knockback for the Pulse gun in Bats n Balls so it behaves more consistently.
- Added sound effects, animations, and particles to the loadout in the Main Menu so it feels extra epic when you style your balls.
- Massive rework to the Balls From Hell zombie spawn system - now they pop out the ground like real scum from hell! Yay!
- In Balls From Hell you now start with a basic melee weapon in your inventory.
- In Balls From Hell you can now whack back flying enemy projectiles with your melee weapon!
- Rebalanced the Balls From Hell weaponry - far too many specific details to list here (so many that I didn't keep track of them!).
- Rebalanced the Balls From Hell zombie health and currency reward values.
- Added 'waiting for host' loading spinners to the PvP pre-game lobby.
- Added a new hover tooltip system for areas like map select and the loadout. So now you get a bit more information where some might need it.
- Improved the icon rendering in the UI so those poorly drawn icons are extra crisp.
- Added some extra XP ranks (They are named after key community members!)
- Added in helpful and unhelpful tips to the death screen in PvP game modes. The best time to learn is when you are dead!
- Added extra player count options to the host screen. You can now 1v1 or 2v2 me bro.
FIXES
Fixed embarassing parts of the game that crashed, broke, or otherwise looked balls!
- Fixed an issue where the melee block animations weren't in sync with the block timing.
- Fixed a bunch of small issues around AI pathing and behaviours so now they are even more optimised.
- Fixed an issue in the loadout where sometimes you couldn't select certain skills in certain slots.
- Fixed an issue in the PvP pre- and post-game lobbies where the upcoming game mode name was incorrect.
- Fixed an issue inn PvP where the post-game voting system could display broken maps.
- Fixed a few issues with spawn positioning in the Bunkertown map.
- Fixed an issue where the default loadout selection could be incorrect when you first boot the game.
- Fixed an issue where the Golden Pinata wouldn't be consistently shown to all players.
- Fixed an issue with the texture of the Myanmar flag (Thank you to people like eieiofigith, XXXOCTOPUSEXODUS-69, and others for pointing it out!)
- Fixed an issue with the Saint Lucia flag displaying as Guatemala (Thank you to people like Maltazar Vernegance, SLOVENIAARMYBALL, and others for pointing it out!
- Fixed an issue where the layout of the Secret Menu could break.
- Fixed an issue where the Steam leaderboards could cap out at low numbers.
- Fixed an issue where the game resolution sometimes wouldn't be applied on game boot.
- Fixed an issue where the game resolution would default to the combined desktop resolution of all your monitors instead of the primary monitor resolution.
- Fixed an issue in the resolution options where the UI could sometimes be out of sync with the actual resolution.
- Fixed an issue in the resolution settings where reverting the settings sometimes wouldn't apply to both the Mode Type and Resolution values.
- Fixed an issue where it wasn't clear what is happening with the resolution when in Borderless mode.
- Fixed an issue where the default sound values weren’t applied correctly with a fresh save.
- Fixed more issues around falling off in maps and not dying fully. (Really hope this one is finally fully fixed -.-).
- Fixed issues around Steam achievement registering and unlocking.
- Fixed issues around the loadout item list to improve performance.
- Fixed issues with the lighting in the Main Menu.
- Fixed issues where screen titles in the Pause menu could disappear when you respawned (This was a wild one...)
- Fixed an issue where the shuffle game mode could choose the same one multiple times in a row.
- Fixed a buncha issues with tree pops in multiple maps.
- Fixed some issues with AI jump points in the Valley and Valley Winter maps.
- Fixed an issue with the Discord bot not showing game names in Balls From Hell game host notifications.
- Fixed an issue with Balls From Hell boss drops where it could spawn more than it should.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the Warboard didn't display players as dead when they were dead after they died from something that killed them.
- Fixed an issue where the bosses in Balls From Hell sometimes didn't paly their teleport particle.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the flying enemies could get stuck in rooves and ceilings.
- Fixed an issue where the screen shake wasn't getting triggered for events that should have triggered them.
- Fixed an issue where certain important map meshes weren’t getting displayed on low graphics settings.
- Fixed an issue with the landscape rendering in the Grave Grotto map.
- Fixed some issues around how you purchase weapon ammo in Balls From Hell and the amount it gives you.
- Fixed a issue where you could buy ammo for a melee weapon...
- Fixed some issues around Balls From Hell perks not being purchasable with certain perk combinations or timings.
- Fixed an issue where if you maxed out your perk or pickup slots in Balls From Hell it wouldn't tell when trying to buy more.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the purchase message of weapons and perks sometimes wouldn't appear.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where perk and weapon spawns wouldn't render correctly.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where you could break the perk purchasing and buy many of the same perk making you a god.
- Fixed an issue in Grave Grotto where some perk and weapon spawns were doubling up.
- Fixed an issue in Grave Grotto where extra level geometry was present when it shouldn't be.
- Fixed an issue with Zombie weapons getting culled at incorrect times in Balls From Hell maps.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the player corpses could spawn in a strange position at the end of the match.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the breakable gates would have the incorrect destruction meshes.
- Fixed some issues in Balls From Hell where the Second Birthday perk could double trigger.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where lobby mouse movements would apply to your spawn direction.
- Fixed some issues in Balls From Hell where bosses would get stuck in the level.
- Fixed some issues in Balls From Hell where the zombies could spawn inside each other.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the sounds and particles weren't played fully on the rolling explosion enemies.
- Fixed issues in Balls From Hell about how larger characters like bosses navigate through doorways.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the weapon level up visuals and sounds weren’t getting triggered fully.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the Second Birthday perk sometimes wouldn't reset player values fully.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where you could break the weapon purchasing and spend all your hard earned currency on a weapon you already had.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where weapon sounds could sometimes stop triggering.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where collecting pickups sometimes wouldn't trigger it's sound.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where some pickups would play the wrong pickup sound.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where the death messages sometimes didn't appear.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where zombies could get stuck underground preventing the waves from advancing.
- Fixed an issue in Balls From Hell where zombies could get stuck in a movement animation state.
aaaaaaaaas always, there's probably loads of other things that we forgot to track and add to this list too :)
Thank you to everyone that helped test and feed back using the Beta build! It's greatly appreciated and helped us a great deal! ❤️
This MEGA patch took us a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of love to put out. We really hope you enjoy all the improvements and new features!
❤️ The Modern Ballfare Team
If you have any suggestions, questions, or find any juicy juicy bugs that need a good ol' squish then please get in touch at [email protected] or by joining the Discord server: https://discord.gg/xbseaXmM65
