Wow, it’s been a long time since we’ve been in touch! We know we’ve been overdue in reaching out, and it’s finally time for us to fix that!
But first, you might be wondering why we were quiet for so long. We didn’t want to be. The full story is too long (and maybe too uninteresting) for right now, so we’ll just quickly summarize, to let you get on to the fun stuff. (Or just scroll down!)
In short, it’s just two of us — Jon and Tom — making this game we love. Though things were going well when we last reached out, various life pressures got the upper hand on us, one after another, and we had to take several steps back from being in regular touch with development updates and other creative content.
One of those pressures was simple employment: we needed to keep roofs over our heads and food on the table. We’ve entirely self-funded the game’s development so far, which means when we’re working full time on Highpoint, we’re not making an income. Of course, working full-time in the games industry (by day) has had its share of turmoil as of late, and in addition to the time and energy it takes, we’re not left with a lot of room for our passion project.
Piling on to that were a handful of other challenging personal events, which made the journey much harder at times. When things got tough (for either of us), we needed space to catch our breath. We now have, thankfully, but it took longer than we wanted.
Regardless, we want to say this with our entire hearts: thank you for your patience and support while we’ve been away. We didn’t intend to disconnect for so long, but the time away let us focus on what we needed to most. Many of you reached out to check on us and the game during the break, and everyone was very sweet about it. We really appreciated it!
Anyway, we’re finally at a place where we’re ready to be in better touch again, and we’re very excited about that!
Now let’s talk about the game!
Despite the challenges, we’ve gotten a lot done since we last touched base! Read on for the highlights.
Code rewrite and rollback networking
Over the past year, we’ve rewritten practically all of the game’s code from scratch to introduce rollback networking and to make our codebase more robust and much more organized.
If you’re not familiar, rollback networking is a model that runs an identical simulation on each connected client (and the server) and uses input prediction to compensate for the inevitable delays of receiving data from remote players over the internet. The upside is a much more responsive feel (feels like “zero ping”) and, in our case, a higher-fidelity result with fewer noticeable moments of “lag”. Basically, the game looks and feels better than ever!
A bunch of well-known multiplayer games use rollback, especially a lot of fighting games. The biggest inspiration for us adding it to Highpoint was Rocket League (one of our favorites, maybe yours too).
One downside of rollback networking is its complexity. We’ll be honest, it wasn’t easy to get working! But we’re very happy with the results — even if it did take a very long time to get done!
The other huge advantage to rebuilding our game code is how much more straightforward it is now to prototype new features. Before, it was a bit of a chore, but now we’re a lot freer to experiment and have fun with new ideas! In fact, we’ve already got a new mechanic plugged in that we’re trying out and liking — but we’ll talk those details another time! 😉
New court dimensions and layout
We’ve changed the layout of the court, adjusted its dimensions a little, and also changed some boundary rules — all to address some design and gameplay shortcomings.
No gaps
We’ve removed the empty space between the midfield and the end zones. This means you can’t fall out of bounds with a missed jump anymore. More importantly, it also means the ball won’t fall through the gap and make everyone wait for it to return back in bounds.
Stricter boundary walls
We made several changes to how the court boundary works, to keep more of the play happening in-bounds. Players now interact with the boundary walls and cannot go out of bounds by choice — but of course can still be knocked out by an opponent. Players can no longer carry the ball out of bounds either; so with the end zone gaps removed, this means the ball will always remain in-bounds!
This change, in combination with the previous one (no gaps), helps to make gameplay more continuous and with less interruption. Now that the ball cannot go out of bounds, the action never has to pause while waiting for it to come back, which we think helps gameplay flow and pacing a lot.
Standardized spacing outside the court
The last time you played, each court was the same within bounds, but could be very different immediately outside of that. This created inconsistency as some maps had a lot of negative space, while others had environment assets within immediate proximity, confusing players as to what surfaces were potentially “landable” or had collision. Additionally, depending on the surrounding environment art, sometimes a strong punch could send you flying through some nearby object, for example the concrete pillars in the Underpass map.
Now we’re treating the space immediately surrounding the court as standard for all maps, and we’re updating our maps’ environments to fit this new spacing. In general this means environment objects will be pulled back away from the court, enough to leave space for your bot when you’re smacked out of bounds. If you get knocked too far out there, the idea is to KO and ragdoll your bot, and allow it to collide with those environment objects, rather than passing right through them like before.
Basically, you’ll still be able to enjoy the environment variety that each map brings, just with a bit more space reserved for gameplay.
And more
A couple smaller things worth mentioning, rapid-fire style:
We’re about halfway through overhauling the game’s UI (this is a work in progress). This will bring more clarity and consistency to the entire user interface, and will help prepare us for finalizing its look-and-feel with the aid of artists down the road.
A while back, we updated the engine to Unreal 5 (where it will stay!). This gives us access to lots of cool tech, not just the lighting and rendering stuff that you usually hear about. Some of the newer features aren’t as flashy as others, but every piece helps us achieve the quality that we know Highpoint deserves.
That's all for now
We’re glad to finally be back in touch. There’s still a ton of exciting stuff ahead for Highpoint and we can’t wait to reach those heights and share them with you!
We’re going to remain focused more on development than communication in the near term, so we won’t promise to show up with fresh news every month. But, we also won’t lose contact like we did before, either! We intend to reach out with meaningful updates when we have them, or with a periodic “We’re still cookin’!” message if we have nothing specific to share.
No matter what, we’re still just as stoked about Highpoint as ever. We’re gonna keep working our hardest to make it as amazing as we know it can be.
Thank you again for hanging in there and continuing to show your support for the game. We eagerly look forward to you playing!
With love,
Wildbloom (Jon & Tom)