Beta 7: UI overhaul (part 1 of ?)
Developer commentary
After Kickstarter funding dried up, I recently got a part time job that ended up being nearly a full time job, which severely hampered development speed, which is why this update took so long to come out.
I've finally decided to go full force with a UI revamp. Every previous "UI update" was more or less bandaid fixes using old UI systems. This update finally updates some of the most badly needed pages using Unity's new UI Toolkit system.
The style select screen was probably the biggest dumpster fire of a page in the entire game. I had no idea how to organize it and went through a couple of iterations that largely stuck to the same format. But now, this new one splits it into two sub-pages, with the single shared element being the moves displayed, and I think it looks and works better than ever before.
In addition, I think I've more or less finalized the visual identity of the UI, matching it with the artstyle of the game itself. I've focused on solid black/grey gradients focused on one to two colors, using brighter colors and outlines only around the most important parts of the page, like navigation buttons. I've learned a lot about UI development and design through this and I really don't envy front end developers in the industry lmao
-Dan
Making the tutorial was the first real challenge of working on this team, but a welcome one. The real difficulty came from brainstorming the best way to teach the player gameplay fundamentals. My goal was to do it organically by putting the player into situations where the fundamentals are the solution to a problem without explicitly saying that they are, though I did make the very first tutorial's description more obvious just to be sure that it would get the player thinking. Having originally changed my major in university from computer science to math because I didn't like coding, it was empowering to be able to actually program these features into the game and be able to play them!
-Christian
PSA: Temporarily disabled as UI is being revamped:
-Controller UI navigation
-Keyboard only controls
UI Major revamps
Checkpoint
Select style
In game HUD
Rebind controls
Pause screen
-Trial folders now show if you have an unfinished trial
System changes:
-Replaced tutorial with multiple trial challenges that teach the player fundamentals
-Removed tutorial requirement for arcade and story mode
-Characters now have their ragdoll durations cubed relative to their height.
-Attack areas have an updated brightness intensity that scales with damage
-Berserker injection no longer increases damage, but got a massive speed buff from 1.25x to 1.7x
-Nerfed Neural Overclock by draining energy while active
Other:
-Arcade mode put above story mode in the menu as it is meant to be tried first
-Fixed attack areas not moving with the enemy when they get knocked back
-Fixed stun animation having a janky animation upon recovery
-Fixed immediately setting controls to mouse position upon first entering the settings menu of a play session
-Fixed color setting not loading until opening the settings menu
-Fixed enemies sometimes attacking backwards after using a move which faces you backwards after the animation
-Fixed description for Neural Overclock
-Fixed trials selection screen notes not scaling properly