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UPDATE #13: Combat, controls and camera improvements

Again a long period of time between updates, as we were trying to fine tune a couple of elements of the game that we thought needed more improvement, mainly with the camera, the combat and the overall visibility of the characters while playing, controls and animations.

Added:

  • New Jump Animations. The animations that were being played while jumping or jump running where not taking in account the last modifications that we performed on the jump function, causing a rather strange effect of freezing and sliding when ending the jumps.

  • Controls optimization. The controls used for the combos where failing randomly to detect a sequence of keys that could generate a combo, and from time to time, the controls where freezing any combat strike. We have improved the overall system to try to achieve a more fault-tolerant system.

  • Characters visibility. The depth of the level is limited and because of its construction and level items, when the player was fighting or moving behind and object, the lack of visibility was causing problems in actually controlling the characters. We have implemented a transparency function as used in some strategies games, that causes objects between the player and the camera to become slightly transparent.

  • New game Over screen. We have implemented a new game over screen that we think just looks cooler than the old one.

    Fixed:

    • Camera optimization. We have make some adjustments on the camera focus, that now lets some empty space to the right of the game character as to allow a better visibility on the challenges to come.
    • Combat optimization. As with the camera management, the combat system is a recurring action that we have been performing in the game as to try to have the best possible experience. In this case, we have tried to have the game character to keep as close as possible to the enemies and that to keep a better orientation toward the enemies. We have also increased the stunning state of some of the enemies as to give the player a little edge on attacking and defeating the enemy.

    The game has now a steady frame rate and improvements in this section are becoming harder and harder to achieve, but we will keep fine tuning the game in the next releases.

    Our next actions will be now focused to the sound manager, that is lagging behind in the overall stability that we have been introducing into the game. So we will try to integrate a more flexible system that will allow us to control the mood of the system, the narrating voices and the overall sound effects of the game.

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    Thanks for playing our game and Stay tuned...