No longer are the games going to be silent! The current system has a unique song for each map, it may change in the future.
Lift & Acceleration Cannon Sounds
The lift and acceleration cannons got some nice punchy sound effects!
Bots Can Use Lifts
Been working on this one for a while. They still aren't 100% using them when they should but are a lot of the times. Still going to be tweaking this one.
New Fire System
Yes another new fire system... This time you shouldn't really notice a huge difference but under the hood there's a lot that's been changed. This will make changing firing stats much easier on my end. On the user side you'll notice a more consistent speed to charge correlation.
New Knife Detection System
Again on the user side it won't be greatly noticeable. The new system does use less network data so lag should be reduced.
Engine Update!
Balloon Blast is now running on Unreal 4.26! Maybe one day I'll get it up to 5...
Bunny Hops
A new jump system is in place allowing players to perform a sort of bunny hop out of speed boosts or acceleration cannons. By consistently jumping a certain amount of momentum is preserved.
Debris Icon Animations
The debris UI icon will now animate while changing states.
Actual Loading Screens!
WOW
Thank you everyone for your support! I know updates are few and far between these days, I'm becoming more and more limited on my free time. But I will keep addressing bugs and feature requests as much as I can. I do have more features in the backlog that'll really spice things up!
See you out there!
-Leland <3
Winter Update!
Winter Map Visuals
Every map has been given a winter/holiday look! Enjoy!
Speed Boost Sound
Speed boosting will now result in a fancy new sound effect.
Score Update Animation
Score increasing will now result in a fun little animation of the score text. It seemed to work perfectly on the first try... I'm either getting more reliable at programming or I've completely broken everything. Only time will tell.
Thanks everyone for your continued support! It's been quite a hectic year so I've had little time to work on my own projects. I really hope to have a more regular schedule in the new year.
Thanks again, have a safe and happy holidays.
-Leland <3
Fixes & Minor Changes
HUD elements will be properly cleared if a player is forced to spectators.
Added background to server list.
Added "No Servers Found" text if no servers are found.
Made the scores bigger and added stroke to the text.
Added score to the spectator HUD
Added scores to replays
Set an FPS cap. This will reduce GPU use without effecting performance.
Thank you everyone for playing and for all your feedback. I'm hoping to keep quality of life updates coming as long as I can. Thanks!
-Leland <3
Free To Play Update!
New Knife Fire System
The fire system has been overhauled. The knife movement has been smoothed on clients. Prior to this update the knife would jitter considerably on clients but now it's buttery smooth.
General Changes
Removed mini map. People weren't really using it and it felt weird and out of place. If there's demand I'll work it and see about re adding it.
A draw condition. Draws were very unlikely but they did happen. Now a draw results in an actual draw condition. Prior it would give the win to blue team since they were first to get checked in the win check functions.
Rotation speed scalar removed while charging. Prior your rotation speed would scale with however long you were charging your shot for. Now it's a set value immediately after starting the charge.
Did a lot of network optimizations, in general gameplay should be smoother.
Updated translations
Max fire range has been reduced by 30%. It was far too easy to camp double point zones and snipe people as they were approaching.
Decreased the distance at which you could pickup your knife.
Pressing escape will now clear all HUD elements and rebuild necessary ones.
Bot Changes/Fixes
Bots are generally far more aggressive.
Bots will now have a 50/50 chance to target players who have popped their balloons.
Bots will now retrieve their knife before returning to spawn.
Bots now have a 1 in 3 chance of continuing to chase players once they (the player) leaves the double point zone.
Bots now have a 1 in 3 chance of continuing to chase players after their (the bots) balloon has been popped
Fixed a bug that could cause a bot to switch between going to spawn and the double point zone in rapid succession.
Some New Sounds
A knife pickup sound.
A knife swoosh sound as it flys passed the player.
Fixes
Fixed a scoring bug that could cause a team to gain extra points if there were too many bots on the opposite team.
Fixed a bug that could cause a fired knife to fall through the ground.... Mostly.
Fixed a bug that could cause a knife to not despawn after pickup.
Fixed the warning beeps if a player doesn't have a balloon after 70 seconds. The sound will now destroy itself properly and will now stop if a player obtains a balloon during the sound.
Made all clients display whether they have a knife or not more consistent.
Fixed jump pads causing some FPS drop.
Fixed a bug that could cause joining clients to not get a gameplay UI.
Thanks again for all your support! For those of you who bought the game check your knives for a special skin. Thank you!
