Things have been (awkwardly) slow in the game's development as I have many things to do, but here's an update after so long.
Features and Content
Updated the game to now be on Unreal Engine 5
Updated Various UI Elements in the Menus. (Still WIP)
Updated Various Tooltips in the Menus and Buttons (Still WIP)
Updated the VFX and Hitbox of Gerard and AM3's Active Ability: Spider's Bite.
Balance
Sed and SAIRO's Active Ability Shadow Seeker/Laser Shadow now travels along a given path for Seven (7) seconds before dissipating.
Gerard and AM3's Active Ability Spider's Bite will now dissipate after traveling for seven and a half (7.5) seconds.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue which caused the game to have an error when launching, but still allowed you to play the game. This error is gone and you can play properly.
Known Issues
Colour grading is still off. I knew this would be a pain, but didn't know it'd be this much of a pain. Back when I created the game on Unreal Engine Version 4.25, everything was smooth but I don't think I'll be able to fix colour grading at all.
That's it for this update. Relatively small as I get back into it and push new updates, but this should change the fundamentals and help get rid of that annoying error. If you find anything bad, let me know.
Cheers,
Austin James
April 2022 Known Issues
Hello MekaRiders,
After the latest update there is a bit of an annoying bug when you start the game. This doesn't affect your ability to play the game, but I do acknowledge it is indeed annoying. I am actively working to try to fix this in an upcoming update but I have no ETA for it.
Cheers,
Austin
MekaFighters Dev Update - April 2022
Hello MekaRiders!
Welcome to April Dev Update! Big changes are occuring so we'll go over them!
Price Transition
When I started work on MekaFighters during the MechJam of 2021, I was excited and happy to work on it. My main goal with game development is making games that people can get together and have fun with. Sadly, I don't think I reached that goal this time around. I put in a ton of work and wanted to make big things for it. I had a lot of ideas and I still do. However, my motivation is dwindling and I don't think it's fair at all for me to ask for money for the base game. Soon, I'll be transitioning the game from the $2.99USD Price Point to Free to Play. I will keep skins as paid as that is necessary at all to the game and can help me out a bit. For players who have purchased the game before the transition, PLEASE reach out to me on the e-mail (mekafightersdevs (at) gmail.com with your SteamID64 so I can verify you owned the game before the transition) and I will give you all the skins for free, it's the very least I can do as you supported me before I decided to make the swap and I'm extremely sorry for this transition, but I feel it's the best thing to do rather than keep it paid. Now onto other news!
Changing Terminology
I always want things to not be confusing so I'm changing some in-game terms. "Fire Rate" is now "Attack Cooldown" and the lower you have of it, the better. And with this new term change, are some updates as followed:
Wendy and JICE: Lowered their attack cooldown from .35/s to .25/s
Sed and SAIRO: Lowered their attack cooldown from .225/s to .155/s
Nika and TERA: Lowered their attack cooldown from .3/s to .2/s
Khaleed and ZHEN: Lowered their attack cooldown from .35/s to .25/s
James and JK1: Lowered their attack cooldown from .35/s to .25/s
Gerard and AM3: No Change
Dev Note: While we are lowering it for most Mekas, Gerard and AM3 are particularly strong already when utilizing their Active Ability (Spider's Bite) as they are intended to. We aren't making any changes to them at the moment, but will keep an eye out.
New Mekas
Even though my motivation is dwindling on the game, I still would like to introduce new Mekas at random times when I do get the bursts to do so. Please understand, there are no ETAs for any of these new Mekas and I will not be providing any because I have no idea when I'll get around to it.
Cheers,
Austin James
April 2022 Game Update
Hello MekaRiders,
Welcome to the April 2022 Game Update. As announced in the April 2022 Dev Update, the game is transitioning to be free to play, but skins will still be paid for. This will be taking effect within the next 2 Weeks (aiming for April 19th, 2022).
Now onto what's changed:
Balance
Wendy and JICE: Lowered their attack cooldown from .35/s to .25/s
Sed and SAIRO: Lowered their attack cooldown from .225/s to .155/s
Nika and TERA: Lowered their attack cooldown from .3/s to .2/s
Khaleed and ZHEN: Lowered their attack cooldown from .35/s to .25/s
James and JK1: Lowered their attack cooldown from .35/s to .25/s
Gerard and AM3: No Change
Dev Note: While we are lowering it for most Mekas, Gerard and AM3 are particularly strong already when utilizing their Active Ability (Spider's Bite) as they are intended to. We aren't making any changes to them at the moment, but will keep an eye out.
Features and Content
Integrated various features with Epic Online Services (Server Browser, Game Hosting)
Added Linux/SteamOS/Proton Support Natively.
Removed the Roadmap Button from the Game Menu
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where sometimes server travelling failed due to mismatch of travelling URLS.
Fixed an issue where the login text would not change when various operations were occurring.
February 2022 Game Update
Hello MekaRiders!
As announced earler in the January 2022 Dev Update, MekaFighters is getting some big changes in a small update to the game. We recommend you read the dev update linked to know why these changes are occurring, but onto the patch!
Features and Content:
All Characters and their base skins are now available for free, forever, for anyone.
Removed the Shop and Shop Features such as: Character Shop, Skin Shop, Redemption Shop, and Microtransactions from in the game. All skins can now be purchased on the Steam Store as DLC.
Added map previews for when you're selecting a map to play on.
Private Games are soon going to be replaced by Custom Games. Please read on later to learn more about Custom Games. For now, Private/Custom games have been disabled.
Meka Information (under Meka Select) now includes various character statistics such as health, power, damage, and more.
James and JK1, the Dawning Shadows and Gerard and AM3, the Widowmakers are now added to the login screen rotation.
Balance Changes
Sed and SAIRO, the Shadow Fighters
Active: Shadow Seeker - Reduced the invisibility opacity from .1 to .08
Nika and TERA, the Earth Users
Health Regen - Increased from 15 to 30.
Health Regen Tick Amount - Decreased from 5s to 2.5s
Active: Force of Earth - Now deals a minimum of 350 damage from 250.
Dev Notes: Nika and TERA are supposed to embody being one with the earth and therefore should be receiving more attention from it. These are some small changes, that give a big impact to it and further show they are earth users.
General Changes
Playfab
Playfab has been removed as the backend in this update which is why a lot of these changes are occuring. Most of Playfab's code is phased out at this point and we're back to the barebones system I had in-place before attempting to make it a live-service game.
Coming Soon
Custom Games
Custom games are a new way to play MekaFighters, create a session with some customized options to make a better gameplay experience and best of all, create password-protected games and play in private sessions with your friends.
Server Browser
With Custom Games also comes in a server browser! Search for live-sessions and join them with a click of a button, games that require a password will present you with a prompt so you better know it!
Tutorial
While MekaFighters is a very simple game, I still feel the need to introduce something to let new players of the game know what they're getting into.
This is a small update with big changes that have been in the works for a bit. Hopefully I'll be able to work hard enough and get another character out soon, I can't wait to show what I'm doing.
Cheers,
Austin James
MekaFighters Dev Update - January 2022
Hello MekaRiders!
It's been quite a while since the last update and I'm sorry about that. Getting caught in a mix of various things whilst working on other various things; but enough of wasting time let's get to it! TLDR at the bottom!
Character Updates
From here on out, I'm changing the way you unlock characters. They'll be absolutely free, for everyone. Whilst I had originally had the idea of going like "Apex Legends", "League of Legends", and other various titles of just playing and then you earning enough currency to unlock them as a sense of progression; it became devalued when players could just unlock everything by buying MekaTokens to unlock things easily.
Microtransactions
This is a bit of a heavy pickle and I'm always working to give the most for as little as possible. I'm removing these and moving them over to a DLC System using Steam. This will take some time to go through for every skin but the good news is that the prices will be the same; but with region-based pricing through Steam. This also gives me an opportunity to reduce the overall workload I go through for every Microtransaction. MekaTokens, Skins, and Microtransactions are being disabled on 1/30/2022 at 3:30PM CST.
MekaTokens
What I thought would be a good idea as a sense of progression and being able to unlock things have lead me to a lot of headaches whilst doing verification and such on the backend. I'll be removing these in a future update as most things will just be on Steam's side. You will be unable to Purchase MekaTokens, but can still earn them in your games for the time being.
Content Updates
While these have been extremely slow as of recently, I am planning (with February being the first month) to release about 1 Update a Month (depending on the severity of various things) to bring a workload off of myself instead of wanting to do updates every 2 weeks. I am just one person in the end and wanting to bring a very extreme amount of updates may not be for the better.
Player Accounts
Player accounts will be changing and you will no longer have an account level attached to it as the game is moving from the live-service model.
TLDR: Things are changing. Every character is going to be free in the next update, MekaTokens won't be usable anymore, Microtransactions are being disabled, and content updates will be every Month instead of every 2 weeks.
That's all for this update, very big changes in a small update. Expect this patch regarding all this information to drop sometime in February. I'm not committing to an exact date, because I wouldn't want to disappoint.
Thanks for sticking with me,
Austin James
MekaFighters Dev Update
Hello MekaRiders!
It's been a bit since the last update, but fret not development is progression well! Life can sometimes throw whammies at you, but you need to push forward! I've been doing other things as well, but this is about MekaFighters not anything else so let's get into the dev blog! Onboarding - A new thing with most games is introducing players to the game via tutorials and granting them items based off of that and that's what I'll be doing next! When a new player launches the game, they will now be met with a text-based tutorial and upon completion will be given a choice to choose between 3 Mekas as a reward for completing it. Sadly, this will only be for new accounts/players who have not yet completed it and will not be offered for pre-existing accounts.
Ongoing Meka Development - New Mekas are on the horizon. Along with the daring bombardier, robot and meka combo, and the demonic force attempting to take over the world in a custom-Meka unit are some new ones to come along. Along with those are a friend who just wants to help out, an adrenaline junky consumed with going for exciting plays, a hunter who sees the glory in everything, and last but not least: a combo who want to cleanse the world to bring justice everywhere.
Engine Changes - Despite the Unreal Engine being extremely robust, I do make changes to it from time to time to better support MekaFighters and it's code structure to keep it up. However, some things don't go as planned and things break and this is one of those times. There were some issues with the latest changes I've made and now I'm having to fix even more parts of the engine than what I had previously wanted, but fret not! Things are moving along smoothly with the fixes but as of now I am unable to build any new patches for the game until those issues are fixed up.
That's just about it for this update, pretty small compared to others and I'm trying to work as fast as I can to make sure the Engine is up to speed.
Cheers,
Austin James
Patch 4 The Hallowing Nights - 10/22/2021
Hello MekaRiders!
Welcome to the Hallowing Nights Patch, it's not really an event, but here's an update on the "Halloween Event". I wasn't able to reach my goal of implement the new system where you can earn every event skin for free and I apologize for that. But, the price of the "Hallowing Nights Skins" will be permanently reduced in terms of price, but rarity will stay the same. Rarity price would be 1400 MekaTokens (with event discount included), but instead will be at the Uncommon Rarity price of 600 MekaTokens for each skin. If you buy the bundle of the 3 New Skins, it will be discounted and only be 1200 MekaTokens, rather than 1800 MekaTokens. The skins are: Halloween Racer Wendy and JICE, Halloween Snow Patrol Nika and TERA, and Halloween Squid Gerard and AM3. Once again, I'm sorry I wasn't able to hit my goal this time around. Hopefully by the upcoming holidays, the new systems will be in for event skins to be earned completely for free. (Note: There is currently a bug with the new skins bundle system. The bundle is supposed to get disabled if you buy a skin standalone, but currently it doesn't and stays enabled. Sorry about that!)
Now onto what's in this patch!
Features and Content:
Introduced new SFX for various abilities.
Introduced new SFX for abilities coming off of cooldown.
Introduced new SFX for when attempting to use an ability that is on cooldown.
Introduced a new Character Balance Database. This database was made purely because of the way that Mekas and Skins are made. For those who aren't aware - each Meka that is made, and it's skins, are new character blueprints entirely. This was starting to become tedious when deciding to do balance changes and would require me to go into every blueprints and change things. This database relieves some of the load off of me, but there is still some work for them and I'm fine with this. Here's a little look on the database:
Began working on controller/gamepad support so that you can play the game with just a controller from launching the game. (This is in preparation for steam deck support and supporting controllers in general). Please note: this is highly work in progress and is nowhere near completion, but I did set up the basics and you can play with it kind of.
Added support to the redemption system to be able to get skins. Previously, this used to only be able to grant MekaTokens.
Bug Fixes:
Fixed an issue where Paradiso's background music would not play after entering the map.
Fixed an issue where Gerard and AM3 were not scaled properly when changing skins.
Fixed an issue where when changing skins as Gerard and AM3 they were using the wrong animations.
Fixed an issue in the skin selector menu where the rarity colors were not being used on the skin borders.
Thanks for sticking with me and see you on the fields! Cheers,
