Hey Ninjas!

This is week three of devlogs discussing our game, Ninjas on Trampolines!

It's been two weeks since our last post, but this was on purpose. We will be changing to a every other week model just so that these devlogs have ample content to discuss. These last two weeks have been turbulent for our game’s development, with a few mishaps in build quality and stability. However, we have gotten through these hardships and have a bunch of new features to show off! Starting off with a new gamemode…

Paintball: Enter into the arena with a massive sponge ball that absorbs the paint of those who attack it. But beware, if the ball is not your color it is a dangerous object, flying around, painting both the background and players in its path.

Recent Additions

[NEW MODE] Inkwell: In this gamemode, players fight over a quill that they can dunk or throw into inkwells, paint zones that spawn around the arena. Dunking/throwing the quill into an inkwell will result in a paint explosion that will paint your enemies in the zone.

Inkwell is still a prototype and we're looking forward to implementing more features in the coming weeks. We plan on adding multiple weighted spawn locations to the inkwells, so they should spawn in areas further away from players. The quill will also see physics changes in the future, given how they interact with trampolines.

UI/UX: We had a prominent change to our pre-match UI/UX, now allowing players to practice before everybody’s ready. This warm-up time allows players to learn controls, and mess around with friends without affecting the main experience.

Also, a settings menu has finally been added to the game. Players can now adjust volumes for various elements of the game, change screen resolution, and toggle fullscreen/vsync.

Bandanas: Our bandanas are now fully procedural! We’ve adopted an approach similar to Celeste’s hair system to achieve this new look, to great success. We’ll be replacing the animated bandanas with these new bandanas in the coming weeks. 

Animations: New animations are now in the game, featuring a new design for our character. We have moved past placeholders! With this redesign, we’ve adjusted hitboxes and damage areas respectively.

With the aforementioned bandana changes, we no longer have to include bandanas in the character animations.

Recent Changes

[FIX] Paint: Fixed a bug that was causing huge amounts of paint lag, due to the paint shader’s interaction with the walls and ground.

[CHANGE] UI/UX: With UI changes on the horizon, we’ve been brainstorming menu layouts. We plan on moving toward a more doodle-y UI with simpler, flat colors. While nothing is final, we feel this will help stylize the entire UI to be more in-tune with the game itself.

In the coming weeks, we plan to refine what we have presented in this devlog and start working on a few new features.  Until next time!

Olympus Interactive