Slap City
Slap City 0.8.1
General
-Added music select option for offline matches
-Fixed issue where watching a replay would save a broken duplicate if replay auto-save was enabled
-Fixed issue where it was possible to taunt and crouch before a match started
Online
-Fixed issue where Arcade Game Over screen would be overlaid on top of online play
-Default quick search is now "anything". If you have played online previously, this will not overwrite your settings.
Stages
-It should no longer be possible to throw characters through the wall in Healing Mode
-It's now easier to score with a Sticky ball in Golf Stadium (extended the scoring areas into the walls)
Jenny Fox
-Changed Nair base knockback from 90 to 110
-Changed Nair hitstun from 0.9 to 0.8
-Changed Dthrow knockback angle from 30 to 40
-Changed Dthrow base knockback from 140 to 180
-Changed Dthrow knockback gain from 3.0 to 2.8
-Changed Dthrow hitstun from 1.0 to 0.75
-Changed Dthrow DI from 1.2 to 0.8
-Changed Dthrow SDI from 1.2 to 1.5
-Accidentally reduced Dthrow's hitstun too much while tweaking it sorry about that we'll fix it in the next patch
Ultra Fishbunjin 3000
-The Fspecial attack now only flashes Fishbunjin's body with the superarmor color while he actually has superarmor (frames 5-9)
Princess Remedy
-Changed Dthrow knockback gain from 2.5 to 2.8
-Changed Uair DI from 1.2 to 1.5
Business Casual Man
-When using Uspecial to fire yourself into the ground, you no longer gain brief invincibility from standing, rolling, or attacking from the downed state
-Changed Ftilt hitstun from 0.9 to 0.8
-Changed Dtilt base knockback from 130 to 140
-Changed Dtilt knockback gain from 2.1 to 2.2
-Changed Dtilt DI from 1.1 to 1.3
-Changed Dtilt SDI from 1.5 to 2.0
-Dthrow no longer slips off edges
-Changed Nspecial base knockback from 110 to 140
-Changed Nspecial hitstun from 0.9 to 0.8
Patch 0.8
General:
-Added Arcade mode! Take on a series of challenges across six difficulties!
-Added Business Casual Man! Whose side is he on?
-Added option to disable the flashy "OOOOOOHHHHH" text when winning with a strong attack
-Added option to automatically save replays
-Hold down attack when out of lives in a team match to grab a life from a teammate with lives to spare
-Press the cog on the stage select screen to change random stages
-Fixed issue where pressing a button to move ahead from title screen could put you two screens ahead by accident
-Characters now turn off their invincibility blinking correctly when performing edge attacks
Online:
-Added "Random" to online stage select
-Added admin menu to toggle available stages for lobby
Stages:
-Added Turnip Corp
-Added Frozen Court
-Added Golf Stadium
-Fixed the grab edges on Saturnian Palace being placed too high
Ittle Dew
-Changed forward and backward roll invincibility frames from 0-14 to 0-12
-Changed Fstrong DI from 1.0 to 0.5
-Changed Fstrong SDI from 1.0 to 1.5
-Changed Fspecial base knockback from 20 to 30 (related to Fishbunjin's armor)
-Changed Fspecial knockback gain from 1.2 to 0 (related to Fishbunjin's armor)
-Removed invincibility on edge attack (due to a mistake, it was invincible)
-Changed ledge climb invincibility frames from 0-25 to 0-24 so it's consistent with other characters
Masked Ruby
-Changed forward and backward roll invincibility frames from 0-12 to 0-10
-Changed Fstrong DI from 1.0 to 0.6
-Changed Dstrong DI from 1.0 to 0.7
-Changed Nspecial startup from 14 to 12 frames
-Taunt can now be canceled by any input after 120 frames
Jenny Fox
-Changed forward and backward roll invincibility frames from 0-14 to 0-12
-Changed Fstrong DI from 1.0 to 0.6
-Jenny's Fspecial axes can now be destroyed by attacks
-Changed Fspecial base knockback from 50 to 30 (related to Fishbunjin's armor)
-Changed Fspecial knockback gain from 1 to 0 (related to Fishbunjin's armor)
Ultra Fishbunjin 3000
-Changed forward and backward roll invincibility frames from 4-20 to 0-14 (Due to a mistake, his forward roll invincibility frames were 4-20 instead of 0-16 since version 0.7)
-Changed Fstrong DI from 1.0 to 0.6
-Added more hitboxes inside body to Utilt
-During his idle, crouch, walk, and run, Fishbunjin is immune to the slight knockback from Jenny's boomerang axes and Ittle's bomb (the bomb itself, not the explosion)
-Dstrong now loses its super armor 65 frames after it begins if Fishbunjin is falling during the attack
-Changed Uair active frames from 17-22 to 19-24 (due to a mistake, the previous version had changed it from 22-32 to 17-22)
Princess Remedy
-Changed forward and backward roll invincibility frames from 0-14 to 0-12
-Changed Fstrong Knockback gain from 4.1 to 4.15
-Removed invincibility on edge attack (due to a mistake, it was invincible)
Business Casual Man
-Keeps the Boss Key of life permanently pressed
Patch 0.7.1
Note that the graphics in the lobby is super temp!
General
-Controller settings can now be fully reset by pressing F1 on the startup load screen
-Added menu under Controllers for switching Keyboard direction keys between Arrows, WASD, ESDF and ZQSD
-Fixed issue where player arrows ingame would be offset incorrectly
-Hitstop received by shields no longer scales with total damage of character
-New ability for hitboxes to hit only targets in front/behind/above/below (such hitboxes have different color when visualized)
Online
-Online lobby has been updated
-Up to twelve players can join the same lobby
-A player can connect two controllers to play online as two people (for lobbies with 4 player matches setup)
-"Quick Match" has been exchanged for "Quick Search". Quick Search settings can be saved on the search screen
-New lobby features:
--"Auto-Match": wait for other player in lobby to play match against
--"Seek Player": challenge other player in lobby to a match
--"Setup Match": challenge several other players to a match
--"Invite Friends": invite steam friends to the lobby
--"Lobby Admin": only visible to lobby owner, change name and settings of lobby
Ittle Dew
-Fixed bug where Ittle's teleport would go further if not controlled
Princess Remedy
-Changed Fstrong base knockback from 100 to 110
-Changed Fstrong knockback gain from 3.8 to 4.1
-Increased Dair animation recovery by 8 frames
Bear Mine
-Increased brightness of background
Patch 0.7p2
General:
-made minor improvements to online input buffer; less dropped frames, smoother when pings are shaky
Stages:
-Changed hitstop of stage hazards to 0 so characters with superarmor can't get stuck
-Harbor Street: lowered middle platform
-Added Bear Mine
-Added Summit
Jenny Fox:
-Changed max charge time of Ustrong from 62 to 60 frames so it matches all other Strong attacks
Princess Remedy:
-Changed Fstrong angle from 40 to 50
-Changed Fstrong base knockback from 140 to 100
-Changed Fstrong knockback gain from 4.9 to 3.8
-Changed Fstrong hitstop from 2.0 to 1.6
-Polished Remedy's animations
Patch 0.7p1
General:
-Fixed a bug in the tutorial
-Added screen shake to heavy hits
-New replays now have version in their name, so you'll know when they'll break
-some AI improvements
Ittle Dew:
-Taught Ittle how to use her eyelids
-Polished Jab, Jab2, Jab3, Ftilt, Dtilt, Utilt, and Fstrong animations
-Changed active frames of Jab from 3-7 to 3-5
-Changed active frames of Jab2 from 3-7 to 3-5
-Changed active frames of Jab3 from 5-12 to 5-9
-Slightly extended range of Dtilt
Masked Ruby:
-Polished Jab, Ftilt, Utilt, Dtilt and Fstrong animations
-Changed Jab hitstun from 1.0 to 0.9
Jenny Fox:
-Fixed Finisher getting stuck in the ground
Ultra Fishbunjin 3000:
-Polished Fishbun's animations
Princess Remedy:
-Added Remedy x Rave skin
-Flasks now have a glass breaking particle when destroyed by attacks
Changes to Slap City from Alpha to Early Access
Hi, I'm Elias, the main programmer and designer on Slap City, and in this post I'm going to briefly talk about some of the changes made to Slap City since the Alpha version. Doing the alpha was a lot of fun, we got a lot of great feedback, and I'd like to thank everyone who participated! Now, Slap City entered Early Access! Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it, it's been in development forever and now people can buy an unfinished version of it? Boggles the mind.
Make it go faster
One piece of recurring feedback we recieved was that it took too long to die.
When a character is struck by a strong attack, they go flying. If the attack is strong enough to kill, the character goes flying all the way to the blastzone and explodes into confetti and bones. In the alpha, this took far too long to happen, but it was not something we in the development team were even feeling, having stared ourselves blind at the speeds characters were going at to even notice that it was all too slow to really feel fun. After all, if you're destined to be KOd, all you were doing at that point was waiting, sometimes (for what could feel like) several seconds, for your character to make its way across the screen.
GIF: alpha slowness
The implementation that was come up with to solve this was simple; for knockback over a certain value, make the character execute their movement at a faster rate. This eats through large flight distances in a much shorter time, without changing how far you'd fly or be unable to act for. Additionally, high knockback values are now increased further by multiplying a portion of them slightly.
GIF: Early Access fastness
So now, combat was suddenly much snappier; if it was gonna happen, let it happen quickly.
3D smearing
However, as a cascading effect of this, if characters were hit REALLY hard, they would vanish from the screen in a couple of frames, making it sometimes a bit harder to understand what just happened. This gave me incentive to implement an idea I'd had in the back of my mind for a while - dynamic 3D smearing.
In 2D animation, smears are used to imply quick movement between two frames. A characters' features are stretched way out of proportion from point A to point B for a single frame, giving the illusion that the character really did move there, and didn't just teleport their face.
GIF: with smear
GIF: without smear
For Slap City, I wrote a vertex shader that can smear a 3D model along a vector, and project onto two spheres at the endpoints. This is used by the game to morph characters into bullet shape when moving too fast for standard non-stretched rendering to hold together.
PNG: what it means to go fast
Removal of gatlings
In the alpha, "gatlings" meant moves that could be canceled into all other moves besides itself four frames early. Four frames might not sound much, but for combos, it made them much easier. So easy in fact, that it was hard to NOT combo. Gatlings were a thing that had been added as kind of a joke much earlier when the game had still been a prototype and were never really tested without. After some testing with them disabled combos were still very much a thing, but had to be more earned. Also knowing that it would be easier to keep track of and balance the real framedata, it was finally decided to remove them completely.
Land canceling
Another important change made since the Alpha is the replacement of L-canceling by Dash canceling. "Canceling" isn't the right word for it, but it's the cool word for it. In the Alpha, pressing defend just before landing with an aerial attack would halve the amount of landing lag. If you were playing competetively, it was something you always wanted to do, no matter what move you were doing. It felt a bit unnecessary, why not just halve all landing lag? But it's such a neat place for an input, so I wanted it to do something. Another thing you could do in the Alpha after L-canceling was hold backwards to get a dash backwards. This was expanded to work in both directions and is now known as Dash canceling. Friction against the floor was increased for landing, so not doing it will slow you down, something you might actually want sometimes. And lastly, the input window was increased to reflect the decreased importance.
No aerial clashes?
On a whim one evening, we tried removing aerial clashes. This led to a bunch of fun stuff, but why exactly? It's because when two moves clash, the result is...nothing. Nobody takes damage, and nobody goes anywhere. Whereas a trade, then everybody takes damage, and everybody goes flying. In the end, I still decided on leaving clashes activated for one aerial per character, to inject some possible pseudo-prisoners-dilemma style mindgames into the game.
Fastfalling
A small but significant change; all relevant aerials can be fastfalled (fastfell? fastfallen? what a verb), making combo movement ever so slightly faster.
Bigger blastzones
Taken together - characters flying faster, dash canceling and fastfalling it was no wonder some of the stages needed some bigger blastzones to account. As a meta-effect, now there's the occasional edgeguard. Even I have edgeguarded now. Happy surprises!
Cosmetic Skins
Oh, and we have skins now! It was a bunch of work to make it work, but we made it work. Which one is your favorite?
PNG: skins
