Hey Ninjas!

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

These past 2 weeks have been spent polishing many aspects of our game, with the goal of creating a more stable build that can be shown off at big events. We have made big improvements on systems like audio, player visibility, game modes, player interactions, and layout design.

Recent Additions

[NEW] Level Design: We have made 8 different stage layouts, each with a variant. While this might sound like a lot, after testing only 1 of those versions actually has promise of making the final cut. Harsh huh. Something important we learned through this process is that our game might end up with different versions of maps based on how many players are in a given match. We will keep you updated as we continue our level design process and how map variants might work.

[NEW] Glyphs:

Formally known as “Tricks”, this mechanic has been in our minds for a long time, and we finally got around to implementing them! Glyphs allow players to passively mark the wall with their paint, given, they are willing to put themselves at risk by freezing in place for a few seconds. With some improvements, we hope this feature adds new depth to our gameplay, allowing for more strategy than just straight combat.

Recent Changes

[CHANGE] Audio: Looking back, our audio has been a complete mess. We had several different intertwining systems to play audio, and it was getting to be a hassle. To fix this, we completely reworked our audio system to have every sound clip in one place and can be called/played with a single line of code. This has helped immensely when working with audio clips, both for adjusting and keeping consistency with volumes throughout different states of our game. Along with this, we have added an audio mixer into the game. This allows us to categorize different sounds in our game (into either Music or SFX) and change sound volumes based on mixer group volumes instead of individually.

[FIX] Attacking/Player Hitboxes: Our player attacking system has gotten a few changes, which both improves hit detection and priority. Hitboxes had an issue where it would not detect any players if they were not in range at the start of an attack, which should not be an issue anymore. Along with this, we have changed the hitboxes to be box colliders instead of a polygon collider to improve accuracy and speed of collisions. Player vs. Player interactions are also improved drastically, now relying on player velocity to resolve attacks. Now, when two players attack each other, the faster player always wins that encounter. 

[CHANGE] Paintball Game mode: The paintball got some adjustments this past week fixing up some bugs and improving the feel of the game mode overall.  Both the size and the mass of the ball were reduced to allow the ball to reach higher velocities without risking the ball imparting too much force to the trampolines.  The outline of the paintball has also been increased to make it easier to see in frantic situations.

[CHANGE] Inkwell: After some playtesting, the inkwell as a game mode has been scrapped, however, the individual components such as the Quill and the Inkwell themselves are being repurposed as Items that players can pick up.  

• Quill: The quill will be thrown like a javelin (similar to the current version) however instead of trying to throw the quill into inkwells the quill can be used to skewer players painting them.  The quill will pierce through players and can get lodged into walls.
• Inkwells: Inkwells are being repurposed into an item that will spawn randomly around the stage.  If a player attacks the Inkwell, it will explode and paint nearby opposing players. Upon exploding the inkwell will despawn.

In the coming weeks, we plan to continue making new stage layouts, finalize our art direction, and start looking into getting our game on Steam.  Until next time!

Olympus Interactive