Supraball
Supraball 2? Patreon?
Now that Supraball 1 is getting closer to completion, I wanna look a bit into the future and find out if there is any interest in this at all.
Update 1. August 2018
Dev Blog 4. July 2018
We have just two more features on the todo list.
One of them is that you can run matches in a party with up to 10 people and determine on which side everyone is. So I can for example invite 7 friends (Me+7=8) and put 4 on each team. Then we will play with 1 stranger each, or a bot if no fitting human is there. This feature is quite important because starting a match the way you want to was only possible in lobbies, and in those we have no bot support to fill in the gaps.
The other missing feature is that you can play normal matches while being queued for ranked. This is important because ranked matches with new players never happened because they expect a match within seconds, but they would need to queue for 20-30 minutes to get the first match going. The follow up matches happen much more quickly, but to spark the flame can take a while.
Apart from that there will be some translations (mainly Russian and Chinese should be relevant), and the rest is polishing of existing things.
How far the game can make it, I dunno. We are measuring every day how many matches on average all new users have. This helps us measure how well new features affect new players drive to keep on playing.
2 weeks ago we set a new record. New users played 4.2 matches that day. When we started recording this data in september 2017 it was 1.2 - 1.9 matches per new user. We've almost constantly tripled that number by now. On the average day its like 3.3. This is the collaborative effect of a lot of changes, like personal goals (we know they are buggy but will be fixed soon), like finding another match in udk without going back to the launcher and more.
And just to be sure incase you get this wrong: those new users lose interest in the game before having seen the launcher once. They get into the tutorial and from there right into their first match.
Which brings me to the biggest problem the game has in my opinion: it's just too damn hard and I have no idea what to do about it.
Let me explain it this way: in a shooter you have the goal to get to a certain object or to kill someone or destroy something. You go straight to that objective and do as you've been told.
In Rocket League you just hit the ball towards the other goal - the controls are so hard for new users, that nothing more can be asked - and it's just alright to do it like that.
People approach Supraball the same way - they go straight for the objective and don't look left or right: They try to get the ball and shoot at the goal, but this game just doesn't work like that. Anything but the direct way to your objective is fine in most cases. And if you don't do the right thing (quickly passing to someone mostly) you will get punished. Smashed to the ground, knocked out.
To solve this problem for beginners, the entire gameplay concept would need to be turned on its head and it would be an entirely different game. We don't want that of course. We love the complexity and how much teamplay is required. But it's just really hard for newbs to get instant satisfaction as everyone of us expects to get it from a new game. If a game doesn't satisfy me in the first few minutes I am not gonna play more of it, or do you?
There is one thing we can try. I've told you over half a year ago about the new KO system, which is way less punishing. The system is also nearly done and can be tested then. What it does is, hitting an opponent ball owner kicks back that player and leaves the ball where he was. Only in rare occasions is there a knockout (in the box and when kicked into walls). So when the new player gets knocked in this new system, he will just get pushed back and lose the ball but his gameplay is not interrupted.
So long!
Update 15. June 2018
Most of the code for this was done by Skylar, but due to lack of time we couldn't properly test & deploy it until recently.
The idea is that players get a personal goal like "do 10 successful passes" and gain XP as a reward. The goals were all picked so that they encourage team work more instead of trying to win everything alone.
Additionally, this update brings back the "unified match report" tab, but now fixed for lobby reports.
Update 25. April 2018
* Introduced exchange system (forging new items out of lower tier items)
* Shield renamed to Deflector in options
* "Servers on Standby" changed to "Servers available"
* Show how many of an item you own
* Possible fix for UI freezes after some time
* Fixed launcher crashing after matchend sometimes
* Removed Ping limit advanced option
* Disabled that players would refuse a game server because of a low ping
* Shorten too long names in home tab ladders
* Fixed stats not updating
UDK changes:
* Added 3 new guns
* Fixed Dash being broken sometimes
* Bots more likely to volley and quickshoot
* Fixed that spectators see no radar
* Fixed that match server would not load when you were on a practice server before
* Improved spectator camera rotation
* UDK starts in Fullscreen on first launch instead of window
* You can now spectate on any matchmaking server with "open IP" if you have the IP
* Fix ESC buttons not working if you have ESC open during mapchange
* Disabled scoreboard in tutorial
* Muted players are now saved
Dev Blog 29. March 2018
Update 28. February 2018
This is part one update of a multi-part update. We have more game-related changes ready but those still need to be properly tested and prepared.
The big part for this update is mostly the Daily Rewards feature. If you win a certain amount of times per day, you can claim a reward, if you keep winning five days in a row, you can get an even better reward!
Other changes in this update:
- Added servers in Brazil (Rio) (some time ago)
- Fixed launcher crashing after match-end sometimes
- Removed Ping limit advanced option
- Disabled that the launcher would refuse a game server because of a high ping
- Game starts in fullscreen on first launch instead of window
- Shorten too long names in home tab ladders
- Hide friend-compare stats if you have no friends
Our other game project - demo available
You can now try out the demo of our other game Supraland.
Supraland Demo
Dev Blog 5. February 2018
What this is, how you can get your own and what we've been doing lately, here is the article:
http://supraball.net/de-DE/article/Dev-Blog-5-February-2018
Update 21. January 2018
New ingame screens:
- New after-match screen showing player stats and allowing to play another match (so don't reflex-exit out of UDK when the match is over!)
- New TAB screen showing all players and live stats
- Easy one-click friend-adding in TAB and post-match screen
- Easier kickvoting in new TAB screen
- TAB screen allows muting players
- TAB screen now shows you which position the other players are
- ESC screen no longer showing players, only menu buttons.
- ESC screen allows queuing for matchmaking while in practice (it uses "any" settings and unranked)
Other changes:
- New home tab in launcher - showing your stats and comparisons to friends, quick access to opening a party, small news, seeing your customizations
- Simplified being invited into a party: you can now accept an invite even if you are queued or you are in another party - the current party or queue will be closed automatically
- New circular charge ring instead of old charge bar
- Fixed that canceled matches were counted as a draw and eventually gave/removed rank points
- Ranked matches now require you to click a "Start Match" button
- Fixed that you would always have a "rejoin" prompt after a ranked match ends
- Optimized Stadium map performance
- Fixed that overcharged shots had a spin
- Fixed a bug with the %-progress display in the tutorial
- Radar symbols changed
- Lowered volume of the sound you hear when you carry the ball
Gameplay changes:
- Ball now bounces off walls at the correct angle (exit angle used to be too big)