Progress
- The combat arenas’ weather profiles have been updated (likely one of the final visual improvements before we release a new build for the Combat Arena Alpha). This lets us create unique weather conditions for specific areas, often related to changes in lighting. While the regular lighting in the first picture is good for general use, the arena-specific lighting helps to make the arena to stand out stylistically.
- We’ve implemented public matchmaking in-game. As of now, testers can easily queue into public matchmaking by clicking the "Public" button within the matchmaking UI.
- The game is now much better at resetting its state after ending a multiplayer session. It used to be that joining a multiplayer session and ending it would leave lingering changes to the state that would cause errors when trying to initiate a multiplayer connection for a second time. It’s now possible to initiate a multiplayer connection for a private or public match, return to single player at the end of the match, and then restart a new multiplayer connection repeatedly without issue.
- We’ve added additional validation steps around joining a host's game after accepting a private invite. This ensures that accepting an invite only moves forward with sending the remote player into the host’s game if a connection is possible and the host is not already busy in a different multiplayer match. This validation process is automatic. If it fails, the player who accepted the invite will be notified that they failed to connect to the other player because they’re no longer online or they’re in an invalid state to host them.
- Players will now be able to cancel matchmaking or disconnect at any time within the matchmaking process without crashing the server, which was a prevalent issue until recently. They can also disconnect at any time within an arena match without crashing the server. When players disconnect during a match, the other player is notified of the disconnect and is given a way to exit the match.
- A nice quality of life improvement: we’ve reduced how much time it takes to connect two players by roughly 5 seconds! Woo!
- We modified how we organize our assets so we can easily swap between Combat Arena Alpha builds and test builds for the full game. This way we only include released content within the game's files for builds that we release to the public.
Next Steps
- Our next big update to the Combat Arena Alpha is extremely close to being ready to release. We’ve finished all of the features (things like getting matchmaking ready) and are just down to fixing bugs.
- While it’s looking like Combat Arena Beta 1.0 won’t be ready until sometime early next year, we’ll be continuing to update the Alpha version with upcoming Beta features as those features are completed.
- We’ve disabled the store on our website while we’re in the midst of upgrading areas of our account system, but you can still buy the game on our Steam page here.
Community
- We had the best time at GDEX and TORG these past few weekends! Thank you so much to everyone who came out and played the game, it was such a blast meeting all of you in person and geeking out together! We got tons of great feedback and made a lot of special memories and friends.
- And we’re not done yet! We’ve been invited to exhibit Kindred Fates at GalaxyCon Columbus from December 6-8 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center! Like previous events, you can talk with the devs about the game, enter a raffle for a free plushie, and play an early version of the upcoming Combat Arena Beta with us! During the show, the Combat Arena Alpha will also be on sale again at a significant discount.
Lexicon
The full lexicon can be found here.
- Asset: Essentially any in-game object. Buildings, trees, leaves, etc.
- Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds multiple times per week to test new changes.
- Client: A player’s computer when playing in multiplayer. All the clients connect to a server to make sure the same thing is happening on everyone’s computers.
- Host: (In P2P multiplayer) The player whose device manages the game world and sends data to the other player, making sure everyone is in sync. Also referred to as the server.
- Remote Client: (aka Remote Player) Any player whose data is being networked across the server to simulate a character's actions. In P2P multiplayer, this is the opposite of the host.
- UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc.
Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on November 29.