Psyrat is getting a remodel, and probably a new name too. I’ve gotten help from a talented artist who generously decided to create and donate some her art for the game.
Her name is Adri and she’s a pretty cool banana
You can check some of her art out here: http://the-7th-plane.tumblr.com/
Turns out she’s pretty skilled in 3D modeling as well and, needless to say, I got pretty excited when she showed me this:
Psyrat was probably the monster that was in most need of a remodel and now it’s gonna be pretty dope looking. I’ve been working hard to get this model in-game and so far so good.
I’m still making animations and some small adjustments but the new Psyrat(or whatever its name will be) should be in-game soon with the next update. Maybe one day Adri can make a rat looking monster and a new Psyrat can make its appearance into the arena.
Adri has also sent me more 3D models to put into the game and they look great as well. You can check them out in future posts.
v0.0.95 Hotfix #2 + Countering + Canceling
This patch fixes some important bugs as well as adds two new experimental features in. Some monsters have some crappy animations for countering, but of course this is all temporary.
Bugs
-Fixed the circles under the trainers duplicating
-Fixed not being able to leave your party. Since changing the game to third person, there wasn't any way to leave a party due to the mouse not being available to click a button in the UI. Now you can once again leave your party by going into the monster menu(TAB) and using the mouse to click on the red close button on the party list. You can also leave your party with a controller by using RT+B while in the monster menu.
-Fixed a bug where if you were on the second page of abilities and then changed to a monster that didn't have enough abilities to go to a second page, that monster would then not be able to pick any abilities or switch pages.
-Fixed enemy monsters being highlighted at the start of battles. This was carrying over from having them targeted prior to the battle.
-Fixed a bug that made abilities activate twice causing the animation to bug out.
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Gameplay
Cancel & Counter commands are new and may provide new exciting ways to battle. However, this is all still in testing and either of these could easily be scrapped if it ends up not working out. I think players would rather test this stuff rather than just hear about it, and since the game is still in an early state I'm going to put it out there so you can do just that.
-Cancel Command
-Allowing you to give a Cancel command to quickly cancel abilities at the cost of some stamina and meter. Will be cool to see how this comes into play. This will be done by pressing C on the keyboard or LT on the controller. If you have an ability queued up, it will cancel the queued ability. If you use it again while no ability is in queue, it will cancel your current ability at the cost of a bit of stamina and meter. The amount of meter consumed is the same amount as is gained by starting the ability that you cancelled up. So in the end you don't gain or lose any meter.
Once abilities are within a certain amount of time until finishing they will no longer be able to be cancelled. For example, Scratch doesn't have enough time to be cancelled once it has been activated. Fireball can be interrupted well within the activation time because it has a much longer cast time. Cancelling projectile abilities can be a good way to fake out your opponent. Just don't spam it or else you'll run out of stamina.
All abilities can be interrupted before they start activation, meaning melee abilities can be cancelled while your monster is still moving towards the enemy. The exception are charging abilities like Charge and Tackle. These cannot be cancelled once movement has begun.
-Counter Command
Counter is here to help give another option vs getting rushed down. It is meant to be a risk that will help you come back from a losing battle by properly reacting to attacks and dishing some back. I am unsure whether this version of Counter truly does all this but I will tweak it from here.
Allowing you to use the new Counter command. This will be done by pressing the SHIFT+SPACE on the keyboard or RT+LB on the controller. It's easier to remember it by thinking of it as EX Block. This will put your monster in a counter state after a short delay. If struck with a melee ability during this state, your monster will interrupt the ability.
Countering will briefly stun the enemy and give you advantage on your next ability. A successful counter will also reward you with 15 Stamina in order to help counter-attack. A quick ability following a counter will be hard for the enemy to interrupt but armored abilities can counter it effectively. A slower but stronger ability will punish armor attempts as well as blocks but will get interrupted by quick abilities.
I really thought it would be good to make counter a base ability rather than limiting it to only certain moves. This gives you the freedom to follow up a counter with anything you want. I'm sure there are more possibilities beyond my testing that I haven't thought of.
You can cast Counter while blocking which makes it much safer to use, though more predictable and slower from neutral. I'm unsure on whether this will remain in the game but for now it is possible to do so.
-Heavy Projectiles Break Through Obstacles
Heavy Projectiles can now break through obstacles like Rock Wall. EX Rock Wall won't break to heavy projectiles and Reflect Barrier will still reflect them.
-Non delayed casting after blocking
Casting an ability immediately after having just blocked will cast the ability without delay. The standard delay to abilities is pretty small but makes all the difference in the heat of battle. This will hopefully help with getting rushed down by opponents.
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Bugs I'm still working on
-Third player entering multiplayer games cannot move. Can currently be fixed by being invited to battle or sometimes by pressing T.
-Local Multiplayer isn't quite working since the third person change because both players have to share a camera. I'm working on a splitscreen feature that will activate when a local player joins but that will go away if the both of you battle each other.
-Monsters charging in the wrong direction. Still unsure as to what is causing this.
-You can enter arenas that are full making the max player size when creating arenas pretty useless as long as it's greater than 1.
Hope everyone has fun testing these new mechanics. Take care everyone.
Quick Progress Update
Hey everyone. I just wanted to give a quick update on what I'm working on right now. Not all of this will make it to the next patch. Apologize if there are lots of errors since I'm typing this up as quick as possible in order to get back to fixing.
Bugs
-I'm trying to fix the Trainer duplication bug in multiplayer. I'm pretty sure I fixed the circles under the trainers duplicating but I won't be completely sure until I put a new version up.
-Fixed not being able to leave your party. Since changing the game to third person, there wasn't any way to leave a party due to the mouse not being available to click a button in the UI. Now you can once again leave your party by going into the monster menu(TAB) and using the mouse to click on the red close button on the party list. You can also leave your party with a controller by using RT+B.
-Fixed a bug where if you were on the second page of abilities and then changed to a monster that didn't have enough abilities to go to a second page, that monster would then not be able to pick any abilities or switch pages.
-Fixed enemy monsters being highlighted at the start of battles. This was carrying over from having them targeted prior to the battle.
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Gameplay
Cancel & Counter commands are new and may provide new exciting ways to battle. However, this is all still in testing and either of these could easily be scrapped if it ends up not working out. I think players would rather test this stuff rather than just hear about it, and since the game is still in an early state I'm going to put it out there so you can do just that.
-Cancel Command
-Allowing you to give a Cancel command to quickly cancel abilities at the cost of some stamina and meter. Will be cool to see how this comes into play. This will be done by pressing X on the keyboard or LT on the controller. If you have an ability queued up, it will cancel the queued ability. If you use it again while no ability is in queue, it will cancel your current ability at the cost of a bit of stamina and meter. The amount of meter consumed is the same amount as is gained by starting the ability that you cancelled up. So in the end you don't gain or lose any meter.
Once abilities are within a certain amount of time until finishing they will no longer be able to be cancelled. For example, Scratch doesn't have enough time to be cancelled once it has been activated. Fireball can be interrupted well within the activation time because it has a much longer cast time.
All abilities can be interrupted before they start activation, meaning melee abilities can be cancelled while your monster is still moving towards the enemy. The exception are charging abilities like Charge and Tackle. These cannot be cancelled once movement has begun.
-Counter Command
-Allowing you to use the new Counter command. This will be done by pressing the C button on the keyboard or RT+RB on the controller. This will put your monster in a counter state after a short delay. If struck with a melee ability during this state, your monster will interrupt the ability.
If the counter isn't triggered, then your monster will be briefly stunned following the counter state, giving the enemy the advantage.
Countering will briefly stun the enemy and give you advantage on your next ability. A quick ability following a counter will be hard for the enemy to interrupt but armored abilities can counter it effectively. A slower but stronger ability will punish armor attempts as well as blocks but will get interrupted by quick abilities.
I really thought it would be good to make counter a base ability rather than limiting it to only certain moves. This gives you the freedom to follow up a counter with anything you want. I'm sure there are more possibilities beyond my testing that I haven't thought of.
-Customizable Arena
Right now when you make an arena you choose which map to load up. With the customizable arena, it will just be one arena. Once you enter you can access a computer that will allow you to change the appearance of the map. From dirt, to grass, to ice, to some scifi looks.
This will let you change the look between battles without having to make a new game. It will also save me a lot of trouble of having to update many maps over and over whenever I want to add a new feature into the arenas so hopefully following this I will be able to focus more on polishing arenas as a whole.
-Dojo KotH
I teased this a while back but I'm still working on it. It's just harder to work on this stuff when there are so many bugs still around. But it's working pretty well so far. You can battle different AI Trainers, one after another. AI that lose are deleted and replaced with new ones(harsh!) so being the King should mean getting some fresh battles each time. Players that lose are not deleted(phew!) but are just put at the end of the queue.
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Bugs I'm still working on
-Third player entering multiplayer games cannot move. Can currently be fixed by being invited to battle or sometimes by pressing T.
-Local Multiplayer isn't quite working since the third person change because both players have to share a camera. I'm working on a splitscreen feature that will activate when a local player joins but that will go away if the both of you battle each other.
-Monsters charging in the wrong direction. Still unsure as to what is causing this.
-You can enter arenas that are full making the max player size when creating arenas pretty useless as long as it's greater than 1.
-Sometimes abilities will begin activating immediately, causing melee abilities to miss or for certain animations to play twice or something. It's weird.
v0.0.95 Hotfix #1 + Command Queuing
This patch came fast in order to fix a bug that wasn't letting new players log in. Bug should be fixed, all logging in should be good now.
However, since this was rushed, there are a few things that I was still testing that made it into this patch. It is likely that there is a bug or two in this version.
I will try my best to patch things out as they are found. Please make a post to report any problems you find in the game. It really helps me fix things much faster.
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Fixed Bug
* New players can log in again. Yay
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Known Bugs
* Monsters you battle are highlighted at the very start of the match
* Queued abilities sometimes don't trigger when back in battle position after a knockdown reset
* Local multiplayer is a bit broken due to the new camera and split screen functionality didn't make it into this patch yet. Should work fine during battles though
* UI for cancelling a queued ability isn't there yet
* Still some UI that a gamepad can't handle very well
* No way of cancelling a queued ability with a gamepad. I guess you can just block for now...
* Monsters don't turn when you talk to them, resulting in the talk cam sometimes being behind a wall
* No way to early cast melee/short range abilities(Cast Now) since repeating the same ability command now queues up another one
* Abilities that are queued before the battle countdown starts are cancelled as soon as the countdown begins
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Queued Commands
Issuing a command while your monster is unable to perform the command now queues the command up to be performed as soon as your monster is able to. This should remove the need to spam keys in order to have your monster follow a command as soon as possible. Pressing X now cancels any ability in your queue(no UI for this yet).
Queued abilities are displayed with an ability icon on your monster during battle. This icon is visible to all players with a few exceptions.
This also allows you to queue up an ability before the battle has even started. Your monster will the perform that ability as soon as the battle starts. The queued ability in this situation is not visible to the enemy player. The same goes for when a knockdown reset is taking place(though that's a bit bugged right now).
If the queued ability cannot be used due to not meeting a requirement such as having enough mana, the ability will be removed from queue when it would have been time to cast it. The reason for not removing it right away is because some abilities and some future ones give your monster resources which would then let you be able to cast the queued ability.
So the obvious drawback of queuing an ability up is that the enemy can see what ability your monster will perform next. There is an upside however. All commands have a delay between the moment you press the key and the moment your monster begins to react to this command. It's a small delay but it's a huge deal during a battle. However, if you queue an ability up and the time that it has been in queue exceeds the time of this delay, then your monster will completely skip the delay and go straight into performing the ability.
https://youtu.be/KsAZUR1dVx0
It's an interesting feature that I was playing with in my dev build but now it's out for others to test, though I wish I could have polished it up a bit more. It feels cool to tell your monster to perform a bite attack and then follow it up with a flareball. Without the delay it makes it almost feel like you are comboing abilities together. You can even try to queue a dash after another dash which looks a bit wonky right now but could maybe be effective in dodging multiple projectiles.
Log In Bug
--UPDATE----
Bug has been fixed with recent Hotfix. All logging in should work fine now for all players.
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Pretty sure I just found the bug, like 2 min after posting this...
The bug is preventing new players from logging in. If you created your account prior to the last patch then the bug isn't affecting you. This bug has to do with the huge reduction in file size that the game got in the last patch.
Unfortunately this bug has to be fixed by a patch so I'm preparing the game to be patched right away. This means there might be some new features which I haven't been able to test properly that might come in which could be bad. Any sort of problems from things coming in earlier than intended will get fixed in time. Since new players can't even log in, fixing this bug takes priority.
So i'm preparing for a new patch to fix this problem which I will try to push out as soon as I can(maybe a few hours).
Again sorry about this guys.
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There is a bug that is preventing some players from logging in. I'm looking into a solution right now.
Thanks to The Great Blasian Monk for helping me find it(sweet name).
To anyone who is experiencing this, I'm really sorry. Hope I fix it quickly.
Testing Counter Strikes
In this video you can see a counter attack in action
https://youtu.be/BvR_Vk0BmCw
The idea is that if you time it against an incoming melee attack you will get a punish. Your monster doesn't have enough time to transition into a block before the strike but an armored ability will activate on time allowing you to counter it yourself. This wasn't an intended effect but it seemed interesting so I kept it in. If the counter isn't triggered then the user becomes vulnerable for a short time. The counter also doesn't work on ranged abilities.
I would like to do more with the counter. I've been thinking of making counter a base ability like block and dash. Your monster would do the initial portion of the counter attack in this video, and you would be able to select from a few different counter attacks to perform. By default it would be a quick counter like in this video that does a bit of damage and is too fast to block but can be countered by armored abilities. Another option could be a heavy damage ability that would still do decent damage past a block and would punish an armored response with a knock down but could be countered by another counter. Another option could be a throw maybe, that knocks the enemy down without doing any damage resulting in a reset which includes refilling the stamina bar for both monsters.
This is very WIP so I'll have to figure out how to implement something like this without it making melee abilities too weak. I've been thinking of ways to make melee abilities more common as well as giving players more ability options during battles.
Patch v0.0.95
I'm putting this patch out earlier than I was going to because it fixes a huge bug found by Jason Rodriguez. So big thanks to him for finding it and helping me find the cause of it.
Fixed Monster Freeze Bug
* I can't guarantee the bug is gone for good, but I definitely fixed the root cause of it and haven't experienced it since
* Fixed a bug that resulted in your monster not being able to receive any more commands in battle
Reduced Game Size
* Game should now be about 950mb rather than multiple gigs
Third Person Perspective
*New Third person perspective changes the way you experience the game outside of battles
New PlayerHub
* New PlayerHub supports the new 3rd Person perspective
* PlayerHub now includes the Arena and the Incubator
* ArenaHub & Incubator Room scrapped
Wilds
Some improvements to the Wilds. Many more improvements to come as well as a probable name change to this since Wilds isn't quite fitting for it. Will probably name it Sky Challenge and bring the Wilds back in another way.
* Improved the graphics a bit of the islands in the Wilds
* Increased the size of the islands in order to get the same amount of battle space as you get in the Arena maps
* Fixed a bug that brought your monster back to full health if you added or removed a stat point from your monster's health stat
* Increased the healing in between islands to 40 from 20 to better fit the increased amount of health that the game received a few patches ago
Visual Changes
* New camera when talking to monsters now brings you up close and personal
Abilities
LavaRock
* Now has the same amount of force as Rock Shot
Third Person Camera + Talk Cam + Landscape Test
Sharing some of the testing I've been doing. Here you can see the new third person camera as well as the new camera for talking. I also tested the game in a landscape setting and after a lot of tinkering I got most things working in.
https://youtu.be/lhMJoQ3Kfxc
Testing New Spawn Effect
One of the more fun things I worked on today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMP016ZR95c
I will probably add this effect on the Trainer too, and I was thinking of maybe even adding it to the environment to simulate the effect of the map loading in, but I'm not sure on that yet.
Patch v0.0.9.2
This is a smaller patch to clean up and fix certain issues. There are a couple of buffs to certain abilities but it's mostly a visual effects change for certain things.
Tighter Battle Camera
Visual Changes
* Battle camera is now a bit closer to the monsters (significantly closer when monsters are in close proximity of each other)
* Decreased the size of the Battle UI a bit to help free up some screen space (Will try to make this customizable in a future patch)
* Updated visual effect for Recharge base ability
* Made the red circle effect under projectiles thinner and more subtle
* Changed the color of EX Psychic abilities to make them stand out more
* Fixed fire melee abilities not having the proper fire effects or colors
* Uppercut abilities now have more of an upward force, launching enemies up a bit
* Using the Cast Now command by issuing the ability command a second time now properly displays the added " NOW!" text (I will probably find a better way of issuing this command in a future patch)
* Removed the belts from spawned AI. (Belts were being tested here and will return in a future game mode)
* Added many trailing effects to different projectiles where appropriate
* Made Water projectiles more visible
* Stopped many ability effects from immediately disappearing as soon as the ability ends
* Improved the visual effect of Flame Breath and Frost Breath as well as their EX counterparts
* Added a spawn effect to rocks that are spawned during abilities, such as Rock Punch & Rock Protect
* Added a large dust effect when rocks are spawned to leave a haze of dust in the air during battle
Hiding Non-Battle UI
You can now use the ";" key to toggle most non-battle UI. This will help free up screen space to better spectate/record battles.
Abilities
Heavy Psy Bubble can be a very powerful EX ability but its slow speed combined with its projectile lifetime makes it a bit too easy to avoid. This change should make Heavy Psy Bubble a bit more of a threat without going overboard. Psy Bubble also gets a small increase to help out a bit.
Psy Bubble
* Projectile lifetime increased from 4.5 seconds to 5 seconds
Heavy Psy Bubble
* Projectile lifetime increased from 4.5 seconds to 6 seconds
Psy Burst has it's situational uses, but usually Psy Push could accomplish similar results. To make it more worthwhile its damage has been increased.
Psy Burst (EX Psy Push)
* Damage increased from 3 damage X 3 to 5 damage X 3
While the EX versions were already useful, Flame Breath and Frost Breath became a lot less useful after the change of pacing for battles in the previous patch. To help these abilities out I have given them persistent armor, which the used to have in a much earlier version of the game.
Flame Breath
* Now has persistent armor during the entire cast time
Flamethrower
* Now has persistent armor during the entire cast time
Frost Breath
* Now has persistent armor during the entire cast time
Freeze Breath
* Now has persistent armor during the entire cast time
