Particle systems: I found a problem with a couple many of my particle systems that was drinking cpu. I had them set to world simulation while they were moving so it had to keep track of thousands of particles and update their position... This is fixed! I've made a particle system that generates as you go.
Lighting: I am using volumetric lighting which looks real sexy, but having all of them on at the same time also eats up gpu. I have restricted this to be on only if you are close to them but I need to further develop this. I want to add sort of billboard images so when you are far away it doesnt just pop in and out but become a sort of static image.
UI: Unity UI canvases are sometimes quite annoying to work with. So by default the "canvas" comes with a canvas scaler and graphic raycaster. The scaler makes it easier to adjust the resolution and the raycaster so that you can interact with it. But both those things eat up processing. And completely unecessary when not using them. In my noobiness I left my canvases with these components on... But now I have reworked all of them!
Water: The water looks real sexy. But its eating up a lot of gpu. Its reflecting all of the graphics bla bla bla. A real good pc should be able to handle this but mid to low has trouble. So I have made a simple water if you set the graphics to medium or low and the water only begins rendering when you are close to it.
There are a bunch of smaller tweaks I made to game design like how the enemy drones operate and detect collisions. Character materials, reducing mesh colliders, rewarding players with multipass for main game. Bla bla bla bunch of other things nobody will notice.
Neon Valley 0.3.0
New modes! Well an upgrade to the old ones. This update changes all of the game modes to have single player elements. So that it still has some challenge for users in their solo instances.
Deathmatch: Drones begin invasion, they come in numbers and program to hunt you down. There might still be performance issues I need to optimize. However, they are challenging. I have also added bomberman inspired falling cubes that restrict player area towards the end of game.
Lava: The fire is sentient, It's coming after you! Added tracking fireballs that erupt from the lava. Also added hill waypoints that you need to reach, rewarding players who are fast but also help other players reach the point.
Data: The sky is falling! Random fragments from the cyberspace are falling from the sky due to a virus containment breach. Disable the virus and retrieve the microchip to the secure locations!
I have also made more fixes and optimizations. The mainframe mode water has been replaced with a simple shader. It doesnt look as good as the previous water but 60% less "expensive" to use. Using this for now as I work on other optimizations which are affecting performance thats messing with the water.
Changes to the user experience. The player now starts straight in the mainframe and can go to menus from there. This is to help immerse the players directly into the game without the extra steps of the menus. Its a better first impression IMO and more interesting.
Theres a bunch of smaler tweaks like game balancing weapons, optimizing in game UI, changing resolutions and some hidden back end things to make game modes smoother. bla bla bla see for yourself :P
Neon Valley 0.2.9.Runningoutofnumbers
Character customization!
Made the first set of character customization items, they can be accessed from "Grind me gears" with the lvl 2+ multipass. Other than that I have been quite busy this week with quality of life changes.
Other fixes and changes:
- I have made my own network position synching for the player. As the default one from Unity Unet only works with rigid body setups and even then quite limited.
- Changed the camera movement as the method before meant the player model would obscure vision in extreme angles.
- New hitbox, one that is more accurate! Also damage has been tweaked now with proper hitboxes. Hit in the limbs are reduced damage and headshots have increased damage.
Those are the large notable changes but on top of this I made a lot of smaller tweaks such as game physics, grenade physics, lighting optimization, mesh optimization, booster changes, grapple hook changes, bla bla bla.
Neon Valley 0.2.98
Multipass!
You will now recieve a multipass with a specific clearance level as rewards for completing the game modes or winning multiple rounds in the arena. These passes give access to weapons testing, character customization, the planetarium and more!
This update brings with it many tweaks to the game modes, making them actually playable. As well as arena combat and the planetarium.
I've also made tweaks to the attack drones as they were way too powerful. Made connecting to The Mainframe more stable. Also, underwater effect! So it feels like you are underwater when you go there now...
Tune in for more updates the coming week and planning to have the demo done very soon :D
Neon Valley 0.2.96
Target practice! I've added the targets for the practice range. Still need to add some kind of recognition for taking out all the targets in time. Will add this for the next update. You can get to the practice range in the mainframe via the boost tunnel or the teleport platform! Test it out and give me some feedback :D
Other changes:
Tweaked the drone speed and damage. I still think they get way too hard but this might be a good thing. Changed the boost from the waypoints on the obstacle course/timetrail mode. I still need to make tweaks to give more flow.
Lastly I've finished making hte first animations for the sword and will try implementing it the coming week!
Neon Valley 0.2.95
Settings and stuff! Well not completely, still setting up the settings but at least the first pass for optimization is now in!
You can change the graphics quality in-game and in the title screen menu. This graphics quality reduces the post-processing mainly but also other tweaks. This should increase fps by 20+ when set to quality low, hopefully helping most of the people having issues running the game.
As I mentioned this is just the first of optimizations and settings that I am working on for quality of life stuff hue hue.
This patch I also made some tweaks to gameplay, mainly how the booster/grapple works. I will be tweaking more systems for some game balance changes in the coming patches!
Neon Valley 0.2.9
Single player game modes!
Currently they are only accessible through The Mainframe. This is due to the focus on releasing the demo version, so I have put my focus on finishing these game modes in the demo scene. However, I will be adding these to the main game maps too so anybody can easily start a single player game. These game modes are not single player exclusive. You can still play them multiplayer either co-op or pvp.
Let's get down to bidniz, the game modes are as follows:
Time trial course - Following a set cours players race to complete each waypoint as fast as possible. With bonus points on not touching the ground. A fireball the "hunter" is spawned to chase you and will kill on hit. An electric shield the "guard" is spawned in front of each waypoint to hinder your path, which also kills on contact. I am working on a method to reward players for helping their competitors either by grappling them when they fall or creating a platform to help them reach the waypoint. This is to promote positive competition, something which I am trying to push forward in my game modes.
Invader defense - New attack drones! They hunt you down in groups mercilessly. No seriously, I think it's a bit too difficult right now but hey that's the challenge right? The drones enter neon valley through portals as they breach through the firewall. Players are rewarded for each drone kill and there will be rewards for defending your fellow players. The enemies are relentless so make sure to always keep on the move.
Floor is lava - I have made changes to the floor is lava to be objective oriented. Just like before you get points based on survival time with bonuses on skillful gameplay. However, now you must get from point to point and there will be rewards in supporting fellow competitors reach a point. This is again to promote positive competition and I plan to include changes such as this to all of my game modes one way or another.
Neon Valley 0.2.85
Some gameplay polish for this week and it took a bit longer as I am reworking a lot of my systems for future use. Had to set up a lot of things for new game modes, the way weapon scripts are handled and setting up scripts for the settings.
Still working on sword mechanics and animations, this will take a while. But in the mean time I am working on quality of life things, as well as setting up new game modes and what not for the free demo release.
Anyway heres a list of what I've been up to!
Fixes:
- Fixed F for melee not doing damage.
- Rotating shields not blocking things should now be fixed.
- Teleport grenades were not teleporting people.
- Weapons were not properly showing up, especially the movement gadget.
- When switching shoulders bullets were not firing properly centered. As if they were offset. This should be fixed but I think there is still an issue with the Railgun having some sort of offset shooting bug.
Changes:
- Lava mode now has objectives. Like playing lava mode in real life, you have to get from place to place. You get more points for reaching further areas and I will be adding deeper mechanics that reward you for saving other players from certain death. As well as rewards for more people reaching the point. Giving a mix of co-op and competitive. This is the start of lots of game mode changes where I want to experiment with positive/inclusive competition rather than going down the toxic competition route.
- Visual changes to the bullets. Got rid of the blocky bullets and replaced them with sexier VFX looking things.
- Reworked the bullet spread mechanics. Before they were like fortnite which was a fast implementation and I hated it. Now its more like a standard fps where the more you spray the more it goes everywhere. But controlled bursts and proper timing between shots keep bullet accuracy.
- When you switch shoudlers the character actually switches sides now too! There is still an issue where the shoulder obstructs view when looking in certain angles though. This will be ironed out soon!
Additions:
- Game mode gates in the Mainframe. This will be used to implement mini games inside the Mainframe that can be played solo or co-op. This will be used in the regular game modes so solo players wont be left empty handed.
- More hints for the hints menu!
As mentioned there were a lot of hidden system additions and changes which are setting things up for bigger updates in the future! So stay tuned for what I have planned hehehehe
Neon Valley 0.2.8
Melee!
I've added F to melee, does a small ammount of damage and push. Works well in combination with weapons and gadgets for fast finishers. The hitbox I think is a bit too big atm but that needs to be tested for sure.
Secondly I've added the first iteration/test of the sword! It has no animations at the moment, something I'll be working on this week. However, you can at least test out how the mechanic feels as well as how well it combos with gadgets. Its very crude right now but thats where the animations come in. I need to first test the game mechanic first so I can adjust the animations accordingly.
I was thinking of giving sword attacks a slight dash forward with every hit so you can follow people easier. But this means I would need some kind of counter mechanic from gun users. Maybe per shot that it pushes back players slightly? What do you guys think of this :o
Neon Valley 0.2.75
Awesome! Finally most of the game modes and gameplay as well as scoring is more balanced and stable. There are still tons of bugs and polishing to do, which I will be doing every week. Chipping away at it till its all polished marble but I will start putting more focus in adding melee weapons and single player game modes over the coming months. This is in preparation for some of the gameplay overhauls i'm going to do. Specifically with the way bullet spread works and the new gadgets down the line. Also next month I am planning to properly release the neon valley demo and maybe do some free weekends.
Anyway, here's ze patch notes:
- ADS was too zoomed in for pistol. This is fixed but I need to make tweaks to the red dot sight. It looks pretty messy right now
- Camera getting stuck looking up and down. HELLS YES!! Finally this is fixed. It was a weird bug popping up in the last couple months since I made tweaks to the how the camera functioned. In making it smoother for switching shoulders and POV I changed the way it was limiting camera movement. That resulted in this weird getting stuck thing cause the mouse values would go past the limit and the value limiter got confused.
- Tabbing out during name input would make the mouse go away so you cant press next... It was a dumb mistake, I placed the mouse lock script in the wrong place.
- Holding right click as you died meant you spawned still zoomed. This is fixed.
- Dying while reloading made you spawn without reloaded weapons. Also when dying your gadgets were not reloading. This is also fixed using the same technique to fix the one above.
- Input lag on the grapple hook and the booster. It was still using the old method of spawning items over the network which causes delay in spawning things on your local instance of the game.
- Game over screen rank was not in order. Should be fixed now but need to test this with some more people.
- Mask hologram was invisible when in FPS mode. Fixing this was just changing the tag of the mask to match :P Oops
- Disconnecting from the game makes the mouse disappear in the menus, forcing you to alt+f4. I think I fixed this but not sure if the script that fixes it is properly being called. Need to test this more.
- I think I solved the blurring black visual glitch people were having. Turns out this was happening on GTX video cards, and its a problem built into Post Processing stack from Unity. I think i solved it but as I don't use a GTX I need people to help me test this. TBH I didn't really "solve it" I just made a little workaround, it needs to be solved on Unitys end so yeah... bleh.
- Datamode was broken which could've been the cause of random disconnects. I think this is resolved as I haven't managed to break datamode or force the disconnects to happen. But this needs to be tested with 3+ people in the room.
- Datamode chip wasn't disappearing and resulting in the player who held it recieving a "goal" score 5x per second :P This is now fixed.
- Drones weren't properly giving scores either it was too high or too low sometimes. Also they were giving score before all of the drones were broken. I have fixed this but needs to be tested out to balance the amount of score being given. If its rewarding enough and all that jazz.
- Some networking issue that was causing double damage. Something with the way bullets were spawning and detecting hits over the network. I think this is fixed but might have caused some issues with hit detection on the receiving end. We shall see :P
Changes:
- Made some tweaks to the physics of the data chip so that it moves and bounces abit nicer.
- Changed how fast the data chip respawns so people can make more scores with it.
- Tweaked the scoring on kills to feel more rewarding compared to the scores from the drones.
