Hello everyone!
It's been a while since the last update, but that's because I've been working hard on the biggest one yet. And now, after almost two months of work, I can finally release it!
Customisation
Make your rat look fancy! Now you customise your avatar in four different places: one headpiece + three body extras.
But what to customise them with? Well, when a match ends, there's a chance you'll get a random customisation item drop with rarity ranging from Common to the super rare Legendary!
Currently there are 27 unlockable items, but I definitely want to increase that number a lot in the coming months. And I will!
Please be aware that the Inventory system is still beta and being heavily worked on by Valve. Steam trading of items you don't want/need should work in most situations, but Steam marketplace isn't working right now – this will be enabled in the coming weeks. Once it's in, you'll be able to sell your duplicate items to other players.
Freezetag
I've been working hard to make Freezetag better for a number of reasons.
The problems we faced in the original version of it were pretty obvious, as the teambased game types in Ratz had some issues.
Specifically, if the best players were randomly assigned to one team, the other team would have barely a chance… it just ends up in a slaughter,
with lots of demotivated players! Sadly, letting players decide to switch teams wasn't an option, as it could be abused (like switching in the last round to the winning team).
Thankfully, I've come up with some improvements and now if you play a ranked Freeztag game, some things will be different:
• After every round, the teams get re-balanced so you get a new fair team composition every time.
• Because of this rebalancing, it's now not about which team wins but rather how many rounds YOU as a player win.
• Win more than 50% of the rounds in a match to improve your rating!
Other changes apply to both ranked AND custom Freezetag games:
• Now if a teammate is frozen, you will be able to see them even through walls. That way, you can always know where they are and be quick to help unfreeeze them!
• Preparation time at the start of each round has been reduced to three seconds.
• In Freeztag only, maps now have a lot of extra 'barriers' to hide behind. They can be used as cover and should make it easier to help you unfreeze teammates. But be careful!
If you rush forward alone and your team gets out of range, chances are that you will be in a position none of your friends can help you...
Mouse Input
Every shooter that is made in the Unity engine has the same problem with mouse input: it's not frame independent.
After a bit of thinking, I came up with a new experimental solution to capture the mouse position multiple times per frame!
This leads to much more responsive mouse handling. So, if you're one of those people who've been thinking that the mouse control doesn't feel quite right in Ratz, I'd encourage you to enable the Enhanced Mouse Input in the Options menu and see how it feels then!
With this, Ratz Instagib is now one step closer to full release. I hope you all enjoy these new improvements… please let me know what you think in the comments while I continue to make the game even better!
Some more images, in case you're curious: