It's finally here!
After months of work, testing, and community feedback, the procedural map system is now live! Most of the major issues have been smoothed out, and the game's replayability has been massively increased. New systems have been added that improve the new player experience as well as give more depth to the gameplay. And the system has been designed with additional content in mind, creating a streamlined system to add more to the game.
Procedural Maps
The static frozen canyon has been replaced with a procedural map system. It is built using map tiles in a similar way to Diablo's level generation.
There are currently 2 environments (Snow and Desert) that can appear at any point in the map using transition tiles. This system will be significantly expanded in the future and we have tons of environment ideas such as caves, swamps, lava, etc.
Each week there will be a set game seed (this week is "Week-1") that will determine the level layout and in the future be tied to the primary leaderboards. Each time a game ends or you create/leave a multiplayer room, this map will be generated.
However, you can generate a new map by grabbing the die. There is currently no way to save/enter a map seed, but a system to do that will be added soon!
Map Progression
We've taken a hard look at our system of progressing through the map by closing gates, and we realized that standing on towers may not be the most intuitive or fun way to do so.
Therefore, this update brings with it an entirely new system for progressing down the canyon. Instead of standing at gates to close them, you will now kill enemies to do it.
Each time you kill an enemy, it will grant you some energy toward closing the next gate. Difficult shots and maintaining combos will generate more energy. Once the progress orb is filled, you can shoot at it (or let it happen automatically) to immediately close the next gate.
We feel that this system is both more understandable for new players (if you kill enough enemies the gate will close), as well as more interesting for veterans who can now create strategies around how to efficiently generate the maximum amount of energy while still successfully defending the enemy onslaught.
Aimed Shot
For a game that is almost entirely about shooting an arrow, there has previously been few opportunities for decision making about the process. Before now, shooting fast was rewarded more than shooting accurately, which seemed counter-productive to playing the game like a well trained sniper.
So this update also brings a new archery system, the 'Aimed Shot', which will make your arrow stronger the longer you hold it back, up to a maximum of 5 seconds.
Not only does this increase the damage it does, but it will also compound your energy generation. Hitting a fully charged headshot at 100m will give you a massive boost.
We think that this new system should give an additional level of depth to the archery gameplay without forcing players to learn a new button or skill.
Additional Notes
While we've spent months working on this new system, it's still a massive overhaul and not every combination of map tiles and multiplayer interaction can be tested, so I expect this week to have plenty of issues for me to fix.
Please continue submitting issues in the discussion forums, or better yet on the QuiVr Discord where I can reply and get extra information immediately.
Finally, I want to give a huge thank you to all the people who helped me test the new map systems in the beta branches both this past week and over the past few months during development. It is incredibly helpful and I honestly could not do all of this without your help, suggestions, and support :)