Dev Blog #1

Work done on team gamemodes, maps and a new player mechanic! Also Improved player netcode and fixed a ton of bugs.

This week we have improved our netcode by tuning player interactions with dynamic objects (objects that move). That used to cause a flick because the player sees all game objects in the past. Now the flick is gone. The server is more tolerant with desync now. This doesn't mean our game is more prone to hacking, our logic is still fully authoritative.

Old news for those who follow us on facebook but this past few weeks we've been perfecting our hook mechanic. And it is now pretty much done (balancing aside). You can hook other players, objects and parts of the map, pulling them towards you or yourself towards them. This enables very funny and unexpected gameplay elements that we are experimenting with.

You know what is pretty? Light shafts. I've added volumetric lights to the project and they will soon be available on the Pit and future maps. Setting up the "quality settings" for it was a little weird since the buffer that controls the rendering has to be completely reset to disable them in the current setup, and we did run into some weird "black screen" bugs earlier on, but nothing unfixable. Overall it looks good, but I'll keep an eye out for problems.

Trying to get the right feel of the new map, vs_chute.

The map is divided in 2 main areas, the parking lot, where most of the players will stay, and the roof, where the "bad_bot" does it's bad things. The roof needs to be a calming place, since the only time something can hurt the bad_bot is during a "trash rain", which is kinda rare.

Now, the parking lot is pretty dangerous: There is the shredder, lots of high speed flying refrigerators and other unpredictable robots that may be friendly or not. The first half of the corridor has cold, unpleasant blue color, and the second half has a dangerous red, leading the players to the middle part. Of course players will have to expose themselves to danger during the gameplay, but with this color scheme new players will have a hint as to where they should stay, leading to a fun, instead of frustrating, gameplay.