Hi everyone, the week has gone by in a split second so it’s time to inform you what was going on with our game and what was not. In a nutshell - as for the graphics improvements, there’s no progress yet, we are finishing the reworks of grenades behavior and the overall environment. And a few other smaller changes, such as the new teaser model, bigger power-up radius or the adjustment of explode time. #2 Grenades: Okay, let’s analyze the grenades first. In the last post I mentioned that we changed the grenade launchers magazines, this week we did some other changes related also to power-ups. We have removed the global time speed-up completely (as a power-up) and it will only remain as an event for the Madness mod (the mod we plan to release in two months approx., no promises). This power-up was originally meant to maintain the tempo of the gameplay, but it was too hectic in the last minutes of the round. It was just too much confusing. So we decided to put this power-up on ice and we will replace it with a new one, that would hold on the original purpose of “maintaining the tempo”, but at the same time won’t be ruining the whole game. The "Quick Explosions" power-up will shorten the sticky grenade detonation time by 0.2 seconds of explosions after it sticks to surface. The default time before explosion is 1.8 seconds. This power-up is passive, not global, and it will not reset after you die. (we can change this eventually). Furthermore, we are nearly finished with the Holy grenade. This is a weapon of massive destruction. But keep in mind that it’s not easy to get and it’s very easy to lose. The holy grenade has an infinite blast radius, as long as you are not in the cover. If you cover yourself behind a wall or a crate, the holy grenade won’t even tickle you. So the crate gun is becoming very useful in this case ;) If you die you loose all holy grenades so be careful! Gun Upgrade: Let’s talk about the grenades a little bit more (onixpexted). The Gun Upgrade was a part of the original concept and was meant to add a special feature to grenade launchers. It would suck in grenades to itself and then fire them again from your own weapon (similar to gravity gun in Half-Life). However, because of the complicated implementation and risk of bugs, we came up with a substitute feature that would be a bit more helpful; the Predictor. A laser sight for grenades.
The gun upgrade that allows you to place barrels will have effect on grenade launchers too. There will be a special vision attached to the weapon that would show you the track of the grenade before you shot it. This laser vision won’t be 100% exact but it will surely help you. Traits: This topic is just in its infancy, but I can tell you something about it. I would like to modify the functionality of the third weapon slot, which is now only for utilities / melee weapons. I would like to prioritize players preferences in this. They will get benefits based on their decisions. Basically i want to replace the third weapon slot with a trait. This will include for example faster explosions, bigger magazines (from the start of the round), more speed or some melee weapons. However this feature is not the priority now and will be included after we finish the madness mode. Besides traits I would like to modify one detail that may influence the gameplay a lot. Right now you are able to change weapons whenever you want, but this doesn’t fit to the game design. The idea is that you would be able to change weapons after you die (before spawning). This sketch is showing how the feature could look like (technical preview)
There’s a lot of other things to tell you, but I don’t want these posts to get too long or boring. To sum the latest information: Besides the regular tuning of the power-up drops probability, we plan other changes, that would not be part of the 0.6 update. Such as the half-block (allowing you to protect yourself and attack at the same time) or a variable probability of power-up drops during the game round. Ok, I really need to end this right now or nobody will ever read this to the end. As I promised you the last time I gave you more detailed information today to make myself as clear as I can and let you stay updated. If you have any questions, post them below this post and I will try to give you the exact answer. Thank you for reading this to the end and have a good luck at the arena! Jouki // posted by Dzetro