Hello!
It's been a while since we've uploaded a patch, or even an announcement for that matter. So we’re here to give you a quick update on what's been going on these last few months!
For ease of reading I'll separate my post into a few segments. Our core areas of focus have been:
I: OPTIMIZATION
- splitting large terrain meshes to improve framerate
- incorporating occlusion culling (disabling objects you can't see)
II: INTERFACE + MENUS
- finalising mockups for in-game and menu interfaces
- implementing these into a working build
- improving a lot of the UX and reducing visual clutter
III: SINGLE PLAYER
- incorporating player feedback into the current level set (no more pizza lava!)
- working through the final sector level designs and getting them implemented
- various system fixes (including more stable leaderboards)
IV: MULTIPLAYER
- overall, making it work
better - finalising vfx and layouts for current levels
- complete reworking of the core multiplayer systems
V: VFX (CAMERA + ENVIRONMENT)
- depth of field, motion blur, bloom, camera movement, completely new anti-aliasing (temporal anti-aliasing [TAA]); changes everywhere
- went over a lot of the lighting and fog in existing levels to improve efficiency and visual palettes
- tweaking colours and integrating new shaders (brand-new custom water shader)
PREFACE
Being an independent studio with other commitments (gotta put food on the table, and have a table in the first place!) we've had to take on some web contracts on the side. These have taken up more time than we initially thought they might. Thankfully these are just about done so we will be back to full-staff on the developer front, and can devote all of our time to Polyball!
Now, back to the updates.
I: OPTIMIZATION
The optimization front is pretty straightforward: our terrain meshes were all gigantic as a result of being sculpted as a seamless entity, so we went back and figured out a way to chop them up into small pieces. Now, we can have those chunks turn on and off based on whether or not you'll be able to see them or not (this is called Occlusion Culling). This helps a lot with levels that have a lot of trees, rocks, or large terrain pieces.
II: INTERFACE + MENUS
Our previous menus were a rough draft of what we wanted to accomplish, and we've improved user flow across the board. We've been working on new pre- and post-game screens, customize pages, and multiplayer screens. We're in the midst of swapping out old placeholder assets for new ones, so this will hopefully make everything uniform and easy to use!
III: SINGLE PLAYER
The new sector is on its way, and its development was slowed due to some scope creep. We became a lot more proficient with our tools which allowed for a larger scale to these levels. After making the Limbo sector it was tough to break out of the black and white, totally cube mindset and get into what I sort of think of as a flip-side to the forest sector. It's on its way, and we hope you do your best to beat our records!
IV: MULTIPLAYER
On the multiplayer front, we’ve been focusing on backend systems and UI. You now have the ability to have one player using the keyboard and mouse in local games, with up to three others using controllers. We’ve streamlined the stats, making it easier to get the important info (who won, kills, deaths, etc.), and redesigned the post-game menus. This will make it easier to navigate to new levels after you finish a match, and display the wins, losses, and other stats for your entire play session.
For online, we’ve reworked the network code resulting in lower bandwidth usage and higher network accuracy. We also took a look at the lobby system and it’s working well in internal testing. Multiplayer is high on our priority list right now, and we’re working to make it as accessible and smooth as possible.
V: VFX (CAMERA + ENVIRONMENT)
This is one of the areas that we've been working really hard to perfect. When you're working with low-poly it's really important to make sure that your effects are well-tuned in such a way to complement the geometry and flow of your environments. We've been ironing out depth of field parameters, playing with the tiniest amount of motion blur, and have gone through numerous other lighting and camera effects that didn't end up making the cut. Not to worry of course, these are all togglable!
On the environment front we've spent some time going over your feedback regarding lighting, geometry, and environmental choices. We've integrated the ones we felt were most conducive to our vision, and want to thank you for all of your support on that end! RIP Pizza Lava, you won't be missed For the most part this includes eliminating one or more light sources in environments that had multiple. In some cases this washed out shadows, and ended up having some unforseen impacts on the readability of (especially platforming) levels. A lot of the fog has been updated, alongside materials and basically the entire superstructure of the volcano sector. We basically went from anthill to Mount Doom with this one, and hopefully it's more volcano-y!
IN CONCLUSION
This is all from us for now, and we'll do our best to keep everyone updated on our progress leading up to our next patch. We've seen some comments from players who have speculated that Polyball is dead, and we want to assure you that this most definitely is not the case. We had to do a major overhaul to get the game where we wanted it to be, and we've learned a lot of valuable lessons from the way we went about it.
Also, if you've read this far you might be interested in following us on twitter for more consistent updates.
Best,
The Studio Monolith Team