🤔How to Access Test Branch:
How to opt into the free test branch to test new features early:
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/276C-85A0-C531-AFA3
🌍4v4 Coliseum🌍:
-Fixed a bug that was causing CPU players to group up too much on the middle of the arena
-Improved performance in many areas
🌍1v1 Classic🌍:
-Fixed a lighting bug causing the map to be blown out by lights at times
-Properly lit and set dressed, improved skybox, added foliage, feels more lived in.
General:
Performance improvements across the board
-The Wins Tracker sometimes doesn't go away after returning home
//Will be patched this week!
📥Ship Test Features to Main Branch📥:
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.
✅🧪Single Player Adventure Levels🧪:
It's a fun mashup of platformer and sports game we've been wanting to try for ages
Make your way through platforming challengesFind the ball in the levelBring 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!
☁️Cloud Saves☁️:
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!
👩🏼Women Playable Characters👩🏼:
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.
💾Account Progression💾:
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 Stage Hazard Variants and Customization♾️:
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.
👋🏼Better Tutorial Experience👋🏼:
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
🔊Better Music Randomness🔊:
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
🤏🏼More Unique Size Interactions🤏🏼:
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 in Free Roam🪙:
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.
😁Improved Character Animations & Expressiveness😁:
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.
👀More Feedbacks from Hazards and Materials👀:
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.
🏆Tournament Brackets🏆:
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.
🏃🏼♂️Player Momentum🏃🏼♂️:
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
✅🦘Coyote Time🦘:
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!
💪🏼Unique Character Abilities💪🏼:
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.
⛰️New Unique Biomes⛰️:
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
Help shape the future of Rise and Fall!