This release brings new skills and treasure chests. The new lightning strike modifier deals heavy damage at a high mana cost and is available to the cleric, wizard, hunter and engineer. The new ghostly fist packs quite a punch and lets the Hunter join in on truly knocking the baddies back. The new treasure chests will grant temporary boosts to your skills that immediately apply to any weapons or skills that you already have.

We also improved upon the skill system by adding healing, mana, throwing speed and a couple of class specific skills. The hunter gains the hawkeye skill, which will let you zoom in for that critical shot, and my new favorite is the cleric's life syphon. The cleric can use their health as a mana pool. It is risky, so manage it carefully, but it can be used to devastating effect.

[previewyoutube=c3C7HvRz3XU;full][/previewyoutube]

Changelog for v0.2.8
2020-06-26

[h2]Enhancements:[/h2]

• Reduce Susan's speed
  
• Add lightning strike modifier
  
• Add Hawkeye skill for the Hunter
  
• Add max health, health regen, max mana and mana regen skills
  
• Reduce the cost of the ballista and limit the player to one ballista per spell slot
  
• Add bonus temporary skills via treasure chests and put treasure chests in the dungeon level
  
• Add throwing speed skill
  
• Add life syphon skill for the cleric
  
• Add ghostly punch skill for the hunter
  

• Fix erroneous "Starting Wave 1" message in dungeon
  
• Fix hunter not shooting as expected after playing for a while
  
• Balance the cleric's healing field by reducing healing per second & increasing point cost
  

Knockback v0.2.7 contains two major features: a new procedural dungeon layout that you conquer room by room and a new skill system for leveling up weapon parts. The dungeon delve adds some new strategies and interest. As long as you aren't in a baddies field of view, you can sneak around to get into a good position or just pull a few baddies at a time. The procedural layout provides a lot of replay value.

The new skill system is just the tip of the ice berg. For now, all skills are reset and you keep your existing players but you can now pick which weapon parts you want and how many points you want to put into them. Stay tuned for additional skills that will modify your players stats and lets you customize in whole new ways.

Changelog for v0.2.7
2020-06-20

[h2]Enhancements:[/h2]

• Create a hero creation/selection tool for managing characters
  
• Only display skills & weapon parts that are relevant to the current hero/class.
  
• Add a skills concept that can be upgraded as levels go up. This replaces random leveling awards.
  
• Limit weapon parts on a per class basis to provide a little more differentiation and specialization.
  
• Create a new procedurally generated level that you traverse from beginning to end.
  
• Create a new AI for dungeon levels based on sight so players can sneak about.
  
• Many rebalancing changes
  

• Move message text below the center of the screen.
  
• Make an effect that intuitively shows the push modifier is attached bug
  
• The starting area swinging barrel deals too much damage bug
  
• XP was not always being awarded properly between client & server
  
• No bomb sound on client machine
  
• Castle ground is too low on the southern side.
  
• And many more...
  

Changelog for v0.2.6
2020-05-29

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

* Double in game menu - there were two instances this was occuring. Once when you first entered the menu you would see the audio and upgrades. Then another case that was very hard to replicate. Both should be fixed.
* Fix the text in the input menu that was unreadable.
* Jumping off the lobby level would sometimes respawn the player at a position where they would become stuck. The player will now respawn at one of the player spawn locations.
* Sometimes voices would get mixed when switching between characters -- fixed.

Changelog for v0.2.5
2020-05-28

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• When looking from the stair room to the great hall, performance would drop on some machines. This was due to lighting. I've reduced the quality of far away lighting to fix this.
  
• After updating the enemy AI, many enemies stopped attacking, this should be fixed.
  
• Baddies would sometimes pause or stop moving for a while and then walk again, this should be fixed.
  
• Opening the menu in single player now pauses the game.
  
• While playing single player there is no longer a timeout between waves.
  
• When a user goes into the debug log, give a message telling them how to get out.
  
• Network errors were only being reported in the log, now you should get a prominent message and a button to exit on error. This isn't very elegant but it conveys the information you need.
  
• The player should no longer look like it is floating on awkward terrain.
  

• I've added a new forest level to play around in. This is snagged straight from a demo scene and simply has a survive to win victory condition.
  
• New sound effects are added for: engineer, giant, ghoul, scavenger and zombie. Great work StormPlooper!
  
• The weapon select UI now lets you drag and drop weapons into position rather than assign them at runtime.
  
• Modified one of the dummies to spin around w/ a sword and shield.
  
• Fixed the graveyard spawning so zombies/ghouls now spawn above the tree and tumble down when damage is dealt to a gravestone.
  
• Enable the reticle by default.
  
• Known Significant Issues:
  
• #19 Baddies do not use throw attacks when expected. (again)
  

Changelog for v0.2.4
2020-05-21
This release primarily contains network enhancements to deal with low bandwidth and unreliable networks. There are some other goodies in there like new Zombie sounds (Thanks Mike!) and improved AI for the Blue Ghoul. Also a fair number of balance changes.

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• Remove the buggy teleport aura for players.
  
• Reduce enemy damage and increase speed/acceleration at higher levels.
  
• Weapons & Mods now start at max level in the weapon forge.
  
• Fix the lack of a bomb sound on the client and possibly other sounds.
  
• Crits are now visible on the client & server side.
  
• Music defaults to 50% when you first start the game.
  
• Improve network syncing to reduce bandwidth and fragmented packets
  

• #11 - One user reports always moves forward/left on Windows
  
• #17 - Zombie and Blue Ghoul don't attack, they still do damage when they first approach but no longer perform their attack action.
  

Continued thanks to all those that are supporting Knockback. Special thanks to those that have helped me with testing and bug reports! This also includes a new testing voice set. It is applied to all characters now but will probably only be on the wizard moving forward. Big thank you to Pridgey for the sound effects!

Changelog for v0.2.3
This release contains the addition of a dungeon level as well as a number of co-op and single player bug fixes. Not all bug fixes & enhancements are listed in the changelog.

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• #14 - Artifacts (table, crystal, etc) should not take friendly fire. bug waiting for test
  
• #12 - Crash due to chandaliers bug high priority
  
• #10 - Networking on Linux/Mac only works for a few seconds bug high priority
  
• #2 - Improve the clarity of the castle/badlands level.
  
• Known Significant Issues:
  
• #11 - One user reports always moves forward/left on Windows
  

This small patch (v0.2.2) should fix the issues with the Linux and Mac networking. Please post bug reports if you find any problems. Thanks!

Jason

Well this has been a whirlwind of a weekend. Many thanks to all those who have decided to support my first game and early release. I've fixed a number of bugs reported by users below. I also had 3 mac users report that they were unable to download the game. I believe this is fixed but I couldn't recreate the problem locally. Please post to the to the bug list if you're still seeing this problem after updating.

-Jason

Changelog for v0.2.1

[h2]Bug Fixes:[/h2]

• #8 - Buildings "Explode" on castle level
  
• #6 - Ranged enemies aren't throwing
  
• #4 - Enemies slide across the island like it is ice.
  
• #3 - Bridge is difficult to cross
  
• #1 - Water is white on "Ugh" video setting