Χαῖρε καὶ ὦ φίλε (Chaire kai ō phile) to another update of our game, Olympunch!

Particles

This week, our team focused... A LOT on making particles and giving the game that final seasoning it needs. This section of the post will be a bit long, but with a lot of images! So, read ahead!

One of these new particles is to visualize when the player is stunned:

For this, we utilized the already existing fists of the characters as particles in addition to another texture we made!

The next particle we'd like to present, is a very important one. It is the *death strike*. It is a giant lightning bolt that smites down from the heavens to pulverize the gods that were punched out of the arena! And here you have a nice preview on what this particle looks like in the game!

Then, we go on to the next, rather small particle. It is just a simple trail with some lines in it which will play when the player swings around the obstacles.

Another particle effect we have created this week is the effect, when you break through the barrier on the outside. This effect is especially important to show the player what is going on right now. And here it is, in all its glory!

Looks cool, right? We think so aswell! The particle has a nice impact, but not too much of an impact. It should feel like a signifier in the first place to show that the player just broke through the barrier and is about to be eliminated.

So, the last particle we have to showcase today is a rather complex one, so I think it's only fair to take a step back, and explain the process a little bit. First off: what is it? The particle we are showcasing in the following is a particle, that is supposed to spawn once the player bounces off the barrier. It is like a small "shockwave" that goes along the mesh. But the problem is: how do you do this? Well, we asked ourselves the same question when approaching this problem and we may have a lead here. So, the logical approach would be to just use a decal to project it, right? Wrong. Because you can not spawn a decal through a niagara system (at least not that we know of). To work around this, we created a material which basically emulates a decal, and uses a regular mesh as the bounding box volume. And this is how it looks on the static mesh:

As you can see, it works perfectly fine! We just used an in-engine cube to test it on, and it is all we need! So we basically now spawn meshes with this material on it through a niagara system. And what does it look like? Well, look for yourself!

Pretty cool, right? Yeah, we think so aswell! There is only one issue left to solve with this one: The barrier. Because the barrier is translucent, the projection doesn't really work on the barrier. That's a thing to figure out next week! Stay tuned!

A lot of these particles are now implemented as well, although we are still striving to do this in a more optimized way. Some of the are yet to be implemented, but will be very soon to make the game come together!

HUD and UI

The HUD and UI are now also almost finished! What's even better is that the animations for the opening and closing of the menu are back! Instead of using a sprite sheet, which can be resource-intensive in a game, we now scale the paper part of the scroll to create the animations.

Next for the UI, we've introduced a consistent interaction mechanism for both the main menu and pause screen. Previously, these screens needed different gamepad buttons to select an option. Now, both the main menu UI and the pause UI use the A button for this.

The HUD has also gotten a bit more attention, and now the speed bars are connected both to the player state and the player speed. Since these all determine how hard a player will hit their opponent, it was important to us to show these in a clear way. 

Further Additions to the UI and HUD

Several other smaller "quality of play" changes have been introduced. For example, during the player feedback session, we were told that the dual arrows on the ground to indicate 'aim' and 'direction' were confusing, and difficult to see. With this in mind, we will be modifying the arrows to include only the aim arrow, which is pictured below, in a more relevant artistic style.

Another small change is the introduction of a nicer on-theme image to show the controls! Don't worry, text will be added once we finalize the controls, which have been modified since the playtesting feedback.

Environment and Post processing

This week was busy! We did some additional changes to the environment and made the grass look less...boring. For this we created a wind material, which uses some nodes and calculations to  make the grass look more like grass and less like clay! 

Furthermore, we added some fire to the large pillars to make them a little more interesting. We basically used a large version of the fire on the heads of the characters, to avoid making a completely new system. This way we only had to tweak some stuff!

This week we also did a little bit of post processing! This includes some settings for Lumen, brightness adjustments and color grading.!

Here is a before image:

And this is the after image:

A lot more life in there, isn't it? There is still some tweaking to be done, but overall it's already looking better!

Sounds and Audio

In addition to all of the visual changes and tweaks, we’ve selected the sounds we will be implementing into the game! While visuals are a main focus, the sounds are like a cherry on top, and will definitely help create a more immersive, as well as competitive, feel to the game! Huzzah! 

HOOK and CABLE

This week started by taking feedback from testers and apply their thoughts onto our game.
The first one, and we we were already concerned about for a while had to do with the hook and cable. There was no clear way to visualize the cable and/or how it would hook. There were various ideas but we settle to the one that ended up being implemented.
Now, when you are in range of the hook, the cable will show up regardless or it having been activated or not. This has n other purpose but its visualization. You do not rotate and you do not get any impulse from it. To clarify that this is not the actual hook but a mere visual aid, the emissiveness, as well as opacity were dialed down.  We believe this works in accordance with our roles and testers have responded positively towards this addition.

Still on the Hook mechanic we had MANY MANY people asking for the direction input to be upgraded. After a listening to the testers followed a brainstorm. The plan was to have the players correct velocity vector actually be what determines which direction the hook will rotate you. This way, if you are moving left to right and shoot a hook, you will never rotate from right to left, but rather, keep the momentum and direction you already have. Moreover, we have finally been able to include a speed increase. The longer you stay hooked, the faster you rotate.

Other tweaks were also added. Some simple, some other were not. 
We realized that you could "cheat" by quickly grapple to the hook and release and have a quick power up. No longer possible. Now you have to complete a full turn for that to be possible. You also cannot simply stay in the hook forever. After X amount of time, you will be released, independently of the hook status. 
There was also a big bug causing us some trouble. For some reason, at no specific time or location, if hooked you would stop rotating around it. You could still punch, and rotate around yourself. Just not around it. It is now fixed.
You could have hook to other hooks, if in range, even though you were already hooked. That is also resolved.
Visually, the base now also stays in place while the main hook body moves downwards and upwards.

What needs to be done next is to only allow one player per hook at the time. Since the hooks also rotates, we want them to rotate to the same direction as the player. if there are two players, they now have the possibility to rotate in different directions causing some visual overlap issues.

Dash Responsiveness

The dash still felt inadequate, lacking the desired level of responsiveness. However, we quickly identified a rather foolish mistake: the dash was triggered upon releasing the dash button. Rectifying this error and reducing the dash cooldown time brought it in line with our intended design, precisely meeting our expectations.

Barrier

In order to enhance the gameplay experience, we opted for a modification: when a player is in a stunned state and overlaps with the barrier, we disabled collisions. This allows the player to come into contact with the barrier without falling out of the stadium, while still being susceptible to being knocked out.

Punch Build Up

We implemented significant changes to the punch mechanics. Now, players have the ability to charge their punches for increased knockback. By holding down the punch button, the punch mesh retracts and undergoes three distinct stages of rumbling, accompanied by progressively intensified haptic feedback (which will be detailed later on). Upon reaching the final stage, the maximum punch power additive is added on top of the punch power effectively making your punch stronger.

Haptic Feedback 

To enhance the game's responsiveness, we recognized the necessity of incorporating haptic feedback. Currently, it is implemented in various instances, providing players with a more immersive experience. Haptic feedback is triggered in three increments of intensity while charging the punch, during impact when hitting or getting hit, when executing a dash maneuver, and when successfully hooking onto the hook. These implementations of haptic feedback contribute to a heightened sense of engagement and interactivity within the game.

Bug Fixes

We encountered a significant problem with the HUD not functioning properly in the build, which required us to invest some time in troubleshooting. Eventually, we identified the root cause: the HUD was being created before the characters, resulting in none of the references working correctly. To address this issue, we adjusted the sequence to ensure that the characters are created before the HUD, resolving the problem.

Additionally, we discovered a bug where the character would spin uncontrollably upon releasing from the hook. Fortunately, this issue had a straightforward solution. We implemented a fix by ensuring that the pitch and roll values of the character are consistently maintained at zero, thereby preventing the unintended spinning behavior.

In conclusion, that concludes our current progress. With only one week remaining, we are entering the last polishing phase of development. Despite the challenges and hard work, we are filled with excitement as we approach the near-final presentation of our precious game. We eagerly anticipate your valuable feedback, which will undoubtedly contribute to the refinement of our creation. Thank you for joining us on this journey, and we can't wait to share the final product with you. Stay tuned for more updates!