Progress
- We’re trying out some changes to how you respawn after being defeated as your human character. Now you can choose to respawn at: 1) the closest shrine to you, 2) the last shrine you visited, or 3) your campsite. We've found that giving you options (along with showing how far each option is from where you blacked out), can be helpful for players who are attempting to retrieve their Soul Flames— especially after we recently adjusted them to burn out faster. (I know that sounds scary, but trust me, they needed it.) All of this is in a trial stage and we haven’t made a final decision, so we’re looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Note: The respawn options here don't include a campsite because there's an intermittent bug with displaying the campsite's distance.
- We’ve recently introduced a new progression system related to Red Letter mode that adds a lot of replayability for the beta in general. This is different from any progression systems related to player rank/ELO, and instead awards you a currency based on your personal performance. Once you’ve saved up enough, that currency can then be traded in for rewards related to Red Letter mode.
- Preliminary work has started on the official model for a major set piece that will be featured in the beta! We’re excited about the unique atmosphere it’s going to add to the world in its fully-modeled glory.
- We've added a maximum distance and a starting rotation requirement for lock-on. Now, to initiate lock-on, you need to be within a specific distance from your target and have your camera pointed in their general direction. This prevents you from locking on to targets that are super far away, or that aren’t in view.
- Significant improvements have been made to the game’s controller support. While controllers were supported at a very basic level previously, they were only really usable for combat. Now you can use a controller to navigate dialogues, close item and tutorial windows, capture Kinfolk, use the map, and open up various UI menus. There are still some areas of the UI that don’t have full controller support yet, but this was a massive improvement for controller usability overall.
- Our process for assigning EVs to Kinfolk has been improved to make it easier to understand, and the UI is easier to click through. Previously, you needed comically pixel-perfect aim to actually click the buttons to assign EVs.
- We’ve added the idea of cached locations, which is super helpful behind the scenes. We can now save locations by name and quickly access them via a drop-down search bar for immediate teleportation in the editor. Since we're constantly editing different parts of the world, this improves team coordination by allowing us to give names to coordinates in the world. Before this, the coordinate systems we had to go through were more multilayered and difficult to navigate.
- Our co-op testing workflow has been streamlined, making it easier to conduct multiple game tests consecutively without needing to create new builds or restart the editor. This tremendously speeds up our dev time since creating new builds can take hours, and the time spent restarting the editor repeatedly adds up fast.
- Several bugs have been fixed, including one where the human character would stop following your Kinfolk if you swapped from one party member to another, and another bug where NPCs were incorrectly using abilities, particularly Homing Blast and multi-charge attacks.
Community
- Our community Wiki page is back up! Thanks again for your patience!
Lexicon
The full lexicon can be found here.
- Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds multiple times per week to test new changes.
- Cache: To store a piece of information so it can be easily accessed at a later point.
- Editor: (aka Unity Editor) The program developers use to make changes to the game. Developers can test their work here before their changes are added to a build.
- NPC: A non-player character.
- Red Letter mode: The codename for an unrevealed game mode to be included in the Combat Arena Beta.
- UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc. Workflow: The sequence of steps someone follows to complete a task.
Thanks for checking in on us! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on May 31. (3 in a month— that’s our first newsletter blue moon in a while!)