We are working hard throughout the months during pandemic, so hard we forgot to write the December devlog T_T. For that, we apologize. But we are here now, sharing what's new for the game contents and more. So let's get started!

PROGRAMMING

We have tried the game internally, and we have shared our thought about it. The artist think we need more spices, something to juice up the game. We agreed to add some things.

We have created the Hit stop system. We are heavily inspired from Brawlhalla with lacks of hit stop, but 2D Fighting game is really about hitstop. every time you land you attack to your opponent, those frozen frames give a nice impact and satisfaction to your attack. So we add the hit stop system for every offensive moves. This is a must.  If anything, the struggle is how to implement the mechanic. One way we know is to set Time scale to zero to stop things in the IEnumerator function (We are using Unity Engine), then we reset the time scale back to the usual value.  But that doesn't work well with multiplayer. Two players, fine. But 3 or 4 players, no can do, sire. We finally found out how to implement the mechanic, by turning on the kinematic in the Rigidbody, and set the animation speed to zero for certain time. We have to remodel the structure code all over again, but it was worth it. 

Besides from hitstop mechanic, we also add the cancelling mechanic. This will help the player to trick the player, or a escape mechanism to land another move, and many more. We implement the cancelling only for the neutral light attacks and non air charge attacks, as for the charge attacks, we implement the cancelling when player is charging the charge attack, so he doesn't have to wait until the charge attack animation to be finished. This is what the cancelling looks like. Maybe some of you won't notice a little bit, but the indicator is the animation is returning to idle state

We also have implemented the block system, and the block system will have like 3 stocks,  every time opponents hit you, your stock will be decreased. If the stock is run out,  you will automatically got hit. For now we have 3 block systems; neutral block, down + block, and side block. Neutral and down block are pretty much the same, the difference is when the opponent hits you, the down block will drag you further back. This will help you to escape, but it will cost you manna, and you will use all the stock. The stock itself will be reset to usual value if the block button is released. Side Block on the other hand though, is useful, another alternative to push the opponent player, and give yourself some space. This will cost manna too, but won't decrease the block stocks, only you have time delay before you can't use it again. Here are some animations of both character doing block and side block

There is a another GIF posted in our Instagram to see the implementation clearly

We also create the flow to be much faster, by making sure you can switch move or animation faster, even before the animation ends, this will make game more fluid. This is the example of Merlin doing his little aerial combo.

Some other things that we have done :

• We added 'ammo' for the projectile skill, so you can shoot the projectile until the ammo runs out, then it will cost your manna, and cool down the skill before you can use your projectile again
• We add offscreen indicator if player is out of camera bounds
• Instead of choosing the character by moving the cursor like how you play Super Smash Bros, we decided to make it  to have mechanic like classic fighting game character choosing, where you press the start button, and then you can navigate your player indicator with directional button.
• The skill buttons will be a dedicated buttons, and We will add more variation for certain skill for certain situation (on air, skill + directional, etc) for certain character to open more possibilities and make each character having unique treatment by players.
• Since this is platform fighters, we also want to make possibilities to fight while the players are on air, so we add more air non-skill attacks. So for now we have 4 air attack (neutral jump, side jump, pound attack, and heavy jump) the pound attack is not displayed yet, we will post the move soon ^_^

Now we are working for our third character, the Ito clan shinobi, Ito Hanze! He doesn't look like a mage at all, but using his mystic Kuji-in or hand seals and also his ninjato, he will cast his shadows and his divine beast to control the stage, and his opponents a hard time! We will post more info for him soon!

ARTIST

We have several new content to share with you from art division. First, a new revamped Merlin! We want to give him more color, and darker tone to make him more fierce, and aesthetically good!

The available body parts seem not enough to deliver more fluid and better move, so the artist has to add some body parts with more perspective and angle to make more moves possible. Kinda dizzy and pain in the neck, especially for someone who rigs it :D but that's the commitment right there!

We are also in working of new stage to play around with and revamp the previous volcano stage to add more detail and finesse. 

Teaser for the new stage

other things :

• We will launch another prototype build to test, but this will be more like a private test, because we only implement local multiplayer for now, and we don't have AI yet, so we'd prefer to face the game face to face, while also keeping the distance and also health protocol, because of this pandemic because it is easier that way. But if you are interested to try the build, you can reach us to our Instagram, or email or other socials to request the build. If lot of people interested, we might publish the build to this site.

• We are now live at reddit! Go visit here and join us to get information from there, and also discus anything related to the game with us or others!

That's the devlog for now, we will still upload more contents on our socials every weekend, so stay tune, and keep in touch :D Cheers!