Progress
- We created a new ability called Anti Air. We’re especially excited about this one because 1) it gives grounded melee fighters a new tool for dealing with aerial combatants and bringing the fight back to the ground, and 2) it gives you a cool new way to follow up on knock up attacks and end combos in an explosive way. Here’s an early peek at how it works:
- We’re almost finished setting up two new arenas, both of which feature set pieces we’re really proud of. The final art and bounds are complete; all that’s left is to tweak some lighting settings and touch up the distant terrain. We’re especially looking forward to sharing the environmental storytelling for one of them. These won’t be the last arenas we create for the beta release, either!
- Multiplayer Stability Fixes:
- We improved our ability and stagger code to be more reliable. (Fingers crossed) all of the bugs that can cause a character to lock up when firing an ability have been fixed.
- We made several improvements to how we synchronize server and client character positions. There is now less rubber banding and characters are much better at keeping their positions in sync.
- We modified our hit notification reticle to rely on the server to know if a player has been hit. Previously, the remote player’s computer might think that an enemy was hit but the server didn’t see it, so that player might get a false positive from the hit indicator. The new version always takes the information from the server to ensure both players are getting the same information.
- We fixed an issue where sending too many aim and fire inputs in rapid progression could put the game in a bad state.
- Characters now reset to the correct positions when a new round starts. Before this change, both players would occasionally spawn at the same location.
- Bug fixes:
- Fixed errors that were causing the host player's PC to crash when playing in one of the new arenas.
- Fling was not firing on the remote player’s side.
- Characters would fly off in random directions when swapping between them.
- Quicksand didn't prevent the remote player from dodging or jumping like it’s supposed to.
- The Germinate passive used to stop working after being staggered.
- Fixed NPCs not aiming some attacks correctly due to recent optimizations on input handling.
- This week we fully deployed the website portion of the new account system (Windmill) for internal evaluation and testing. Work also began in earnest on the in-game portion which will replace matchmaking and post-round stats with much more reliable systems. Be on the lookout for more about that in our next newsletter!
Lexicon
The full lexicon can be found here.
- 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.
- Input: Any button press, mouse click, etc. that a player does to tell the game what to do.
- Local Client: The player who is experiencing the gameplay with their own inputs (ex. controlling a character with keyboard presses). When you are playing the game, you would consider yourself the local client.
- Networking: The process of sending data between machines so that people playing a multiplayer game together experience the same things at the same time.
- NPC: A non-player character.
- Optimization: Making the code run more efficiently, so it takes less processing power to achieve the same effect.
- 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.
Thanks for checking in on us! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on October 4.