FranknJohn
FranknJohn's Furnace has opened its doors!
We’ve got a little (late) festive present for you all, the Furnace of Anger has finally opened its gates to let FranknJohn and Mary Anne continue their journey into the depths of Dr Harmin’s lair. What horrors await? Who knows, but you can be sure that they’re tougher than those sissy little garden twerps!
We’ve made a few little tweaks to the game also, adding a quick tutorial (still a work in progress!), and combining the skill trees into one single one.
We’re getting there – it’s been slower than we’d hoped, and we hope you can forgive us for that, but sometimes life (and emigration!) get in the way. We’re one step closer to exiting Early Access – for those of you that are on board with that we would love to hear your opinion on the things you like in the game, as well as the things you don’t. For those of you that would rather wait until the final release (it’s OK, we understand!) we look forward to seeing you on the other side.
Let’s all have a fantastic 2016!
The bitSmiths
Edit.
Patch Notes Version 0.5
Added
- added the furnace area ( with new enemies, traps, props, audio etc)
- added save version number to profile
- added a temporary boss room for furnace
- added a little ooze number pop in UI on collection
- added Ooze Containment upgrade (saves some ooze when leaving Hub)
- added game brightness slider
- randomised piston animation (speed and start time)
- added secrets in garden
- added basic tutorial with story/lore
- added water plane below garden room
- New garden rooms with secrets in them
- created a new boss room for the garden for the bossified furnace enemies
- enemies can be bossified
- added some text in TutorialManager stating that the tutorial is isn't finished
- alternate attacks (slam and swipe)
- Furnace area entrance unlocked after getting to end of furnace (temporary)
Bug fixes
- fixed loads of bugs in enemy spawning
- bug fix in level gen script when creating branches (level generation would never finish)
- bug fix where fnj is still red from hurt in surgical table fixed
- fixes to furnace and garden enemies
- fix where enemy hurt pause gets stuck
- small bug fix for traps when enemies die in trap
- Turtle skullcap bug fix kept decreasing players defences
- fix for the damage particles playing at the wrong position
- crash where enemy dying in rake trap fixed
- Boss Room bug fix (end not triggered)
- fix for not all skullcaps spawning
- implemented a workaround for a weird Unity bug with triggers
- rare level generation bug fixed
- fix bug where upgrades lead to player gaining health when Hit
- fix for camera after fall
- fixed a mimic bug
- fixes to props
- animator transition fixes for furnace enemies
- idle anims playing on doors in levels
- Fixed no audio on head after load bug
- Enemy line of sight bug fixed
- various bug fixes
Changes
- games is a little easier on first playthrough
- rake resetting better
- gave rocks "health" so they get destroyed quicker when damage upgraded
- garden sprinkler spurts 6 rounds of projectiles then pauses for a bit
- marbles changes to ooze
- upgrade tree trimmed and merged into one tree
- tweaks to slam and swipe attack
- reworked area loading
- tweaked level generation
- tweaks to furnace and garden enemies
- tweak to projectile shoot follow script
- tweaked enemy spawning
- tweaked some of the platforms in garden as they were interfering with pathfinding
- removed/moved some enemy spawners that were inside geometry in furnace rooms
- tweaked the boss room to pick two of the next levels enemies and bossify them
- demon horns fire ability does a little more damage
- if picking up two health pickups and only one is needed. One of them doesn't get used, just falls back down
- enemies aggro others when they get aggroed themselves (used to be just on hurt)
- little less health spawned per level
- few tweaks to some skullcaps
- Optimization for the outline shader
- made crit damage red
- enemies don't pause when being attack (thought this was already in...)
- made the colliders on the treerock group smaller because they were making the rocks hard to Hit
- point light shadows get turned off at distances greater than 20 to improve performance
- re worked the projectiles, same functionality but more modular
- changes to how passable objects animation are played
- pathfinding optimisations
- various tweaks/optimisations
- performance tweaks
Update #3 - Local Co-op & Combat Revamp!
Here it is! Today's update brings a swath of additions and changes, namingly local co-op play and revamped combat. We're super excited to get the update out and hear what you think of it! Being a bit of an idiot (Paul), I tried to add a discount to coincide with the update at the last minute, but it told me I can only add one for the following day (obviously!) So for those of you who simply can't wait, you can get it at full price. If you're in no rush, add it to your wishlist and avail of a juicy 33% discount tomorrow from 6pm. The discount lasts a week.
Check out our last two posts that discuss both in detail.
http://steamcommunity.com/games/305460/announcements/detail/240159292067193012
http://steamcommunity.com/games/305460/announcements/detail/240159465335915314
One last thing before we hit the patch notes, I'd like to introduce you to MaryAnne, the first additional playable character in FranknJohn. She is a badass fighter created by Dr.Harmin some years ago, but he found her too wild and powerful to control. Since then, she has been biding her time, waiting for the right moment to unleash her ferocious retribution.
Patch Notes
Local Co-op
- Connect an xbox controller and press Start in the hub to join in as MaryAnne!
- Enemy health is scaled up by 30%
- Enemy aggro is distance based
- If a player dies, the living player can cast Blood Sacrifice to resurrect them - at the cost of a 50% health transfer
- Marbles are shared
- Upgrades are shared
- No split-screen! All the action takes place through the same camera
- You can use a combination of two controllers, or one controller & keyboard/mouse.
Combat Revamp
- More accuracy! Base attack no longer uses unreliable physics forces/spring joints. Now controlled with a combination of animation and collisions
- Shooting angle changes to match the angle and direction of slopes
- Skullcaps now alter Damage, Attack Speed and Attack Range values
- Skullcaps now have a damage type (Physical, Fire, Poison, Shock, Ice)
- Every Skullcap has a special ability with a recharge counter filled by killing enemies
- Added lot's of yummy feedback to base attack
- Added hit particle effects for each damage type
- Added a particle effect when a Skullcap is equipped
UI
- Completely re-skinned in-game HUD, for better representation of changed mechanics and better feedback
Audio
- Sound effects added for MaryAnne
Enemies
- Aggro ranges adjusted
- Axe Zombie tuned better and behaviour more readable
- Ranged particles more easily read in terms of distance/height
- Added short slow-down money shot effect when last enemy in a radius is killed
Other
- Upgraded to Unity 5 - you should notice big performance gains
- Lots and lots of bug fixes
Our focus now changes to the Furnace of Anger, a shiny clockwork and cog driven world of blistering lava and jabbering mechanical denizens that provide power to Dr.Harmin's mansion.
As always, we want to hear your feedback so we can keep improving the game.
Hope you enjoy the update,
Paul and team
News #3 - Upcoming Combat Changes!
I am back! The update coming on May 19th brings co-op play to FranknJohn. But that is not all! Oh no. We have also been super busy making the core combat more exciting and engaging based on your valuable feedback.
Turn on the kettle and pull up a chair. This is a long one.
The most common criticism on the base attack has been that it lacks variety. You are doing this single action for the whole game, which gets repetitive and doesn't offer much in the way of variety or experimentation. Bottom line, it just wasn't very exciting and couldn't carry the whole game.
A big part of the problem lay with the way the base attack had been built. It was implemented using physics with a spring joint to control how the head behaved. The head was shot out using force and recoiled using the spring. This lead to many issues when trying to modify the attack for a Skullcap and ended up restricting their design. Due to the unpredictable nature of the physics, we could never gain exact control over it, hence some of the weird behaviours you may have noticed.
Attacking was also quite ‘loose’. We tried to enhance the functionality of the attack by giving players some agency over the direction of the head once it had left the body. This sounds cool in theory, but in practice, analogue sticks just aren't cut out for that kind of use (nor are our fingers!) It came at the expense of accuracy and feeling, leading to a kind of toxic frustration that erodes away at you the more you play. A more focused base attack was needed.
So we went back to the drawing board and dissected the entire system. We had one simple goal - how could we make the core gameplay more exciting? What we came up with was a system that is more flexible, providing more attacking options through additional base attacks and opening the door for Skullcaps to offer real variety.
The first thing we did, was scrap the physics. Instead of forces and springs, we moved to simple lerping and as a result gained complete control over the head. Attack speed, range, recoil and a tonne of other small values that add to the feel of the attack, are now extremely accurate. The base attack is more satisfying than ever! It’s a punchy, straight in and out jab without any of the loose feeling or uncertainty. Happy days!
Moving onto Skullcaps! They have been sort of loosely defined as ‘power-ups’, with a blue-sky approach to their design. Some had cooldown abilities, some had added damage, some had weird effects on gameplay and some didn't do much at all. Not only was it hard to communicate what each new Skullcap did, they didn't really augment gameplay in a satisfying way. So we set about sorting Skullcaps into categories and used a distributed point system to balance them and open up different styles of play.
The Skivvy
- Skullcaps now control Damage, Attack Speed and Attack Range
- Skullcaps have a damage type
- Skullcaps modify the base attack and augment the additional swipe and slam attacks
- Every Skullcap has a special ability with a cooldown.
Prefer to stay at distance? Pick up a Skullcap that has huge range and speed, but low damage. Want to get a little more intimate with the nasties? Try out a Skullcap with low range and speed but insane damage. Not only that, but the form of the base attack can also change. You can get a nice idea of some of them from the screenie below (you may have to zoom in to read!)
We didn't stop there - we've been prototyping two new base attacks; a cleave and a ground slam (as you've seen above) The idea is that these additional attacks, like the base attack, will each serve a specific function. The cleave hits enemies in an arc and knocks them back, but does less damage. The ground slam does an overhead (overtorso?) slam, doing hefty AOE damage, but at the cost of a longer charge up time. Before, the best strategy was to aggro enemies and hit them on the run. With these new attacks, we are trying to encourage you to get stuck in, equipped with the tools to deal with a variety of situations. These attacks aren't ready for the coming update, but we’ll share more info about them very soon.
Last but not least, we added an attack animation to the body, tilted the head depending on shoot direction and added tastier particle effects when face-smashing things. There is more crunchy-ness in the sound effects too. We also added subtle feedback to enemies when taking damage, such as a tiny pause when hit and a bit of knockback. All of these little things really help with the feel of the combat.
Hope you found this interesting and we can't wait for you to try out the new changes!
Paul and team
News #2 - Local co-op coming May 19th!
Hey there!
As you know, we've been hard at work on local co-op play. Well, the time has just about come for us to release it into your grabby hands! Not stopping there, we have also revisited the core mechanic and changed how Skullcaps work in response to your valuable feedback.
Today, I want to dig into how the co-op works. On Wednesday, I'll talk about what we've done to make the core mechanics more EXCITING!
From the very beginning, we saw ourselves playing FranknJohn with a buddy. We all grew up wasting away summer holidays in front of a SNES with our friends, squirting water guns at zombies, hurling red shells and Shoryuken'ing each other in the face. It was a magic time. A time, that time itself has seemed to forgotten. We want to bring a bit of that magic back.
We've been very conscious about avoiding a 'tacked on' feel, where perhaps one player has more authority or power than the other. In FNJ, both players are equal. With the change to Skullcaps (more on this in Wednesdays post), you can adopt play styles that compliment each other. You could play it safe and use range, get up close and personal, or a mixture of the two. You must really work together to overcome the games challenges.
Here is a list of the current co-op mechanics and rule sets:
- A second player can drop into the game in the hub by pressing start
- Enemy health is scaled up (this may extend to damage/enemy count)
- Enemy aggro is distance based (may change to dmg based)
- If a player dies, the living player can cast Blood Sacrifice to resurrect them - at the cost of a 50% health transfer
- Marbles are shared
- Upgrades are shared
- Game camera follows the average position of both players, no split-screen
- You can use a combination of two controllers, or one controller & keyboard/mouse.
What we plan to add in the future:
- Character selection screen - at the moment if you want to swap characters, you must swap controllers
- Co-op Skullcaps - heal/buff partner by headbutting them? Yes please!
- Mini-games - FranknFootie, FranknSumo, lot's of fun possibilities!
I hope that has given you a taste of what local co-op is like in FranknJohn. I'll be back on Wednesday to break down the combat changes with you. Things are also progressing nicely with The Furnace of Anger, the next big update after this one. We'll be sharing our work-in-progress with you over the coming weeks!
Oh! One last thing. We also took the time to upgrade to Unity 5, so you should notice some nice performance gains.
Have fun and thanks for playing,
Paul and team
Competition Winner!
The big question is, did you manage to kill the boss?
http://cloud-2.steamusercontent.com/ugc/45375528363309562/84EBDA731D8688CC573CFE3099C7CC71455A4C8C/1024x0.resizedimage
Competition Time! Win a FranknJohn T-Shirt
We have a tasty FranknJohn T-Shirt to give away!
Take a look
If you would like to win this elegant garment, simply post a screenshot to the community hub.
We will pick our favourite on Friday 17th April and send you the shirt, along with our admiration and respect.
What are we looking for in a screenshot?
Peril, excitement, certain doom or just something funny.
Update #2 - Small but important!
We've been busy putting the finishing touches on local co-op play and we can't wait to share it with you. We've also been making nice progress on the next area, The Furnace of Anger. In the coming days I'll be sharing more information with you, including a release date for the co-op update as well as concepts for the Furnace enemies. Rest assured however, you'll be able to play with your friends very soon :)
Onto Update #2 then. It's a small one, but that doesn't mean it's insignificant, right?
General
- Base upgrade cost adjusted to correct value
Skullcaps
- Skullcaps are now swappable! Picked up a new one but want your old one back? No problem! Just pick it back up again from where you left it.
- Cherufe's Rage can now damage the boss
Boss - Queen Sheila
- Mega Puke poison puddles are slightly smaller
- Body slam - big dust cloud plays upon ground contact
- Call for Younglings much clearer now - added feedback
- Younglings now explode with particle cloud and screen shake when hit FNJ
- Younglings now spawn poison puddles and no longer play big explode animation when squished
- Foot Stab has more feedback
- Lightened cocoons, easier to see now
- Increased boss health by around 30%
- Increased speed and attack rate slightly
Audio
- Added FranknJohn hurt audio
- Added some sfx to Upgrade Table
- Added sfx to Zombie Spewer
- Added sound effect for Cherufe's Rage
Bug Fixes
- A number of small bug fixes
Update #1
Today brings the first update of many. We've caught many of the issues you've had with the game since launch and we've also added a bunch of cool stuff. Our next focus is on getting local co-op to you as soon as possible and then onto The Furnace of Anger. Check out the patch notes below and let us know what you think! As always, restart Steam to kick in the update.
General
- You now start in the upgrade table after dying and returning to the hub
- The treehouse now teleports you automatically upon entering with added cool camera pan
- Camera resets quicker when you fall off the edge
Enemies
- FranknZombie attack behaviour changed
- Nibbler attack behaviour changed
- New enemy 'Spewer' added
- Mimics no longer become un-attackable after being feared
- Boss poison puddles are jumpable now
Environment
- Trees now shed leaves when face punched
- Bushes now shed leaves when walked in
- Rocks now smash and break up when face punched twice
- Statues now smash and break up when face punched twice
- Garden rake now looks like more of a threat...
Gameplay
- Floor length adjusted slightly
- More enemies spawn in 1-1 now
- Drop rate values tweaked slightly
Skullcaps
- Rarities adjusted on certain Skullcaps
- Adjusted damage, recharge rates on some Skullcaps
Interface
- Floating status text now way more visible! Popup text shows health loss/gain, damage done, marbles collected and Skullcap names
- Added a subtle screen flash when damage is taken and when on low hp
- Upgrade UI confirmation box now defaults to yes
Visuals
- Adjusted bloom to be more subtle
- Dead enemies no longer show a red outline on their meshes
- Red outlines only appear on enemies that are in close range and behind geometry
Audio
- FranknZombie audio works again
Bug Fixes
- Lots!
Enjoy!
Paul and team
News #1 - What's in the works?
We are slowly waking up from our post PAX/GDC coma's and have been busy working on some exciting new stuff that I want to talk to you about.
First of all, thanks so much to all of you who have bought the game so far. It's really humbling to hear you are having fun with it. Of course, the main reason we chose to go on Early Access, was to get it into players hands and hear what they have to say about it. Positive things are always nice, but it's the negative things we really want to hear.
We've been sifting through a tonne of feedback and it's really interesting to hear about things that we thought were obvious and awesome, that turned out not so to others. For instance, nobody seems to enjoy fighting Zombies or Nibblers as the only real strategy to defeat them is to hit them while running away. With that, let me give you an overview about what's coming in the new few updates. We'll give you plenty of notice when Updates #2 and #3 are coming.
Update #1 - Balancing & Bug fixes (Coming next week!)
Our focus for this update is to tighten up certain aspects of the game and
squish many of the bugs that have been encountered since launch. Here's a taster for what's in store -
- Redesigned Zombie and Nibbler attacks to better facilitate gameplay
- Slightly shorter, tighter levels (until we get challenge rooms in there!)
- More feedback on pickups, floating combat text and environmental props such as previously searched bushes and trees
- Some skullcaps will be tuned and have more feedback
- Smashable ROCKS
- And lots more!
Update #2 - Local Co-op
A heavily requested feature - you'll be able to play FranknJohn with a friend or foe.
Update #3 - New Area! The Furnace of Anger
The red hot gates of the Furnace will open. The Furnace is full of Dr.Harmin's slave creations, working tireously to provide power to his immense mansion. They don't take too kindly to being disturbed from their work. Polish those reflexes, as razor sharp blades, spinning saws and pulverizing pistons, sewn into the flesh of these angry monstrosities will make quick work of you.
I hope this gives you a nice idea of what's in the pipeline - if you have any questions or comments at all, drop them below!
Best,
Paul and team
Playable at PAX East!
FranknJohn will be at PAX East in Boston this weekend, flying all the way over from Ireland. Make sure to stop by to check it out and chat with Paul, the lead designer. You may even be able to nab a cool FranknJohn button ;)
Just to note that with most of the team away at PAX and GDC this week, forum responses might be a little slower than we'd like, but we will certainly get back to everyone within the same day.
Here's to the launch and the exciting road ahead.
bitSmith Games