Our next update objective is to get back to focusing on polishing the game itself. We’re excited to have a new audio expert on board who is processing and improving the game’s sound effects. We’ll be focused on tuning, visual polish, and more work on the environments while awaiting the new sounds.
New Studio Logo - The intro splash screen has been changed to use our new Table 9 Studio logo!
ONLINE MULTIPLAYER!
Online functionality has been implemented! There’s still likely a lot of kinks to work out here, but we’re very happy to have it online and working.
To play multiplayer, enter the Skirmish (character select) lobby. The UI has changed a bit here to make room for a friends list and lobby panel. Press F (or Left Shoulder) to switch and give the Friend Invite panel priority and navigate your friends list. You can also invite from the normal Steam (shift+tab) overlay.
Inviting friends is not currently allowed anywhere except the character select lobby. This may change in the future. In the Steam overlay, clicking on a friend will not show “Invite to play Sumo” or “Invite to Lobby” unless you are in the character select lobby menu.
Built-in Steam voice chat seems to be working, but this was relatively automated and we aren’t sure if we’ll keep it. There’s a barebones ‘now talking’ UI, but not much else in terms of voice chat controls. If we decide to keep this we’ll integrate some muting/voice volume options later on.
Known Major Issue with Multiplayer: If you invite a friend to join you, and that friend leaves the lobby, you will be unable to invite them again until a game restart.
Mobility Changes
September brought in some serious playtesting from outside my usual testers, and with it, some large-scale changes to the movement and ability system. These changes have been in consideration for some time, but seeing and hearing from new players pushed it over the edge.
Quick Dash and Jump are no longer tied to collecting Boost! Each mobility button now has a cooldown, displayed to the left and right of the Boost bar beneath your character. The Boost Bar is now exclusively for ability activations.
These changes are the most likely to receive further iteration based on more playtesting, but initial reactions have been positive, and I liked how these changes take the pressure off of needing to constantly think about and manage the Boost resource.
Maneuverability has been improved across the board by way of adding Friction. Prior to this build, if you pressed up, you travelled north, and continued to travel north until you pressed down. Pressing right during that northward travel would cause you to gain eastward momentum, but ultimately that would get you travelling northeast, because the north momentum was still going on. I believe this to be a cause of a fair bit of maneuverability/controls/clunkiness feedback I’ve gotten, since in a video game you general expect pressing right to eventually make you go right, so I’ve added friction to counteract it. Friction slows down momentum in a given direction if that direction isn’t being pressed, so you’ll turn a little sharper. Torque rate and maximum velocity have also been increased slightly to help with turn rates.
Overall, the general rule of thumb should now be that a character can stop on a dime from their own maximum velocity in a single direction - if you are travelling east at max rolling speed, slamming the stick to the left will stop you pretty quickly without travelling much further east. However, any additional velocity beyond the character’s own maximum (such as getting bumped by another player, getting an ability used on you, or stepping into a hazard like a water jet), you won’t be able to stop immediately.
Environment Update
All battlefield arena components (not background art) have received a polish pass, focusing on:
- Better Textures
- Adding Detail Maps
- Matching arena component colors to the background environment color palette
- Adding a splash of color in the form of the Sumo symbol on each arena
Performance
Though I still do not have a low quality rig to performance test on, I’ve discovered a rather large performance hit in the form of the Anti-Aliasing method Unreal was using. Sumo now uses FXAA rather than TemporalAA, which for a game like this, doesn’t have a noticeable impact in graphics, but does have a large impact on performance for lower end machines.
Other Changes
Improved the VFX of the slow debuff applied by Chuf’s special ability.
Sped up and scaled down the particles applied when picking up a boost station, make them less obscuring.
With the change to maneuverability, Naps’ spawned Clones will no longer chase down boost stations. Spawned Clones now have their own boost bar that only displays the dash/jump cooldowns.
Made the main menu button prompts UI cleaner with proper automated scaling and margin settings.
Bug Fixes
Fixed the WaterWorks pipe not transitioning to bright red just before bursting for every burst after it’s first one.
A fix that required many changes to the scale of objects in the game has taken place to fix various issues that cropped up in adding online multiplayer. This shouldn’t have any impact, but if anything now seems extremely out of place in terms of scale (3x as big as it should be), let me know.
In order to fix the rare Chuf/Naps ‘partially fell through the floor’ bug, the parent component of all characters is no longer their model, but a separate collision sphere. This may cause other issues but ultimately was a change that has been needed for awhile.