Map Creation
After some private playtests, I worked on improvements to the Tutorial level to add details and improve player experience when traversing terrain. There were issues with unwalkable, steep terrain, as well as navigating to areas that did not lead to anything. The tutorial level is played mostly linearly, so I wanted to add rocks and obstacles to guide the player through. Later on, the map opens up and will allow for more free exploration.
Duel System – Difficulty & Rewards
The duel system was modified to add various difficulties levels when reminiscing on a fight. After defeating the enemy at the difficulty, the next difficulty level will unlock. When all levels are unlocked, the player is given a reward such as a new stance.
Difficulty levels were accomplished by altering the stats parameters of the enemies which control variables like dexterity, strength, health, and stamina regen. I use a curve to incrementally increase all these variables to scale with overall difficulty level.
Stance Rework
Stances were moved to the player status table and can rotate through various stances with V and B (might change these later based on player feedback). Previously, stances were stored in an obtainable item, but now they are stored permanently within the player’s savedata.
Multiplayer!
Worked on re-adding multiplayer with Unreal Engine’s gameplayabilitysystem and Steamworks API. Previously, players had to start up a separate dueling world and other players could join from there. However, right now I’m focusing on an invasion system where a player will automatically host a server when playing the game, and will randomly encounter “bounty hunters” who can join the server somewhere and track them down. My hope is to create a pseudo-MMO type experience of random multiplayer encounters with simple host-client system, scalable with Steam’s API. This week I mostly focused on getting equipment to spawn correctly by multicasting RPC calls from host to clients.
I’m choosing to do competitive dueling after invasion since dueling requires precise client-side prediction – there needs to be a tradeoff system with keeping both sides fair. With invasions I can give the host all the advantage (if host and client see different things on their screens, host will always take precedence). I’d like to eventually build my own multiplayer infrastructure with dedicated servers, matchmaking, and a database for ranking information and leaderboards.
Building and Packaging
Prepared and packaged a private build for Kickstarter backers and Patreon members. Will work on a public demo on Steam for sometime in late December.
Other Stuff
You can decapitate enemies by slashing them again in a short window after they died.
Added some minor story elements to give some context to the tutorial.
Next Week
Primarily focusing on fine tuning the first level and bug fixing for a public Steam demo.
Time Allocation (23 hours total)
- General Programming (10 hours)
- Level Design (3 hours)
- Building and Packaging (2 hours)
- UI (2 hours)
- Art & Design (2 hours)
- Multiplayer Networking (4 hours)
devpachi 