Progress
Our main focus over the past month has been improving polish and fixing bugs for the Beta Combat Arena, and we’re beginning to shift some of our focus to development for the Early Access single player.
Our next arena is in the final stages of polish before we release it in the Combat Arena Beta! This arena is called Training Ground, and will be the default arena from now on when fighting the Guild Officer in camp. The arena is also visible from camp, but only accessible during combat.
We now ensure valid IV and EV values in PvP by clamping values. This works by forcing all EVs and IVs to fall within the pre-assigned range for the given Kinfolk, and prevents hacked/exploited Kinfolk from having too many IVs or EVs in PvP.
We’ve made adjustments to show a Kinfolk's nickname more often in UI and dialogue instead of their species name. This makes gameplay feel more immersive for those who nickname their Kinfolk, and can make it easier to distinguish between different Kinfolk of the same species.
We no longer allow soul flames to burn out while another Kinfolk on the team is evolving. Instead we pause the timer on the soul flame during the evolution cutscene. This ensures players have a fairer shot at retrieving their fallen companions.
We've made it so players can't have an empty basic attack slot when assigning abilities.
We've reduced the range of beam attacks to prevent players from killing NPCs too easily from very far away in the overworld.
With the Combat Arena Beta more stable, we're able to shift our attention to developing more of the single player. There are a few writing decisions we want to adjust- they were originally made with publishers in mind who would only get a smaller snippet of the story than will be in the full EA. We'll also be fixing bugs and regressions after spending so much time focused on Beta Combat Arena. One of the big ones to start with will be fixing terrain issues caused by adding Ether Run.
Bug Fix highlights (Non-Exhaustive)
Fixed Kinfolk getting stuck shielding if the Kinfolk was shielding when certain cutscenes activated.
Fixed multiple issues with adjusting loadouts, including problems when equipping teams with fewer than 4 Kinfolk or a Kinfolk with fewer than 5 abilities, and making UI clearer to read.
Fixed an issue where lunge inputs could be activated when digging or using self buffs.
Fixed a regression where Salamurder didn't have any abilities or correct stat scaling after being added to the team.
Here's what we've posted on Bluesky over the last month:
Which Beta Starter Is Your favorite? https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3lrwhafddds2n
Early Development Fun Fact: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3lsicgnmud22s
What Is This For? https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3lszpb5633k2e
Lexicon
The full lexicon can be found here.
Cutscene: A non-interactive video sequence that occurs between segments of gameplay and depicts part of the story.
Ether Run: The new wave survival mode included in the Combat Arena Beta.
Loadout: The selection of Kinfolk, their abilities, and held items for a particular game mode.
Overworld: The playable area in the open world exploration part of the game.
Spawner: Code that spawns Kinfolk or NPC Summoners into the world. We can give them a multitude of settings to spawn based on time passed, or enemies defeated, etc.
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 August 1.