Weekly Spliced Dev Update: Alpha Time!
With this week's additions to the game, we are proud to announce that Spliced has entered Alpha.
What's New?
- Best 2 out of 3 rounds
- Lots of juice: animations, hit indicators, sound effects, aim fill
- Shield change: Can now be held, but it slowly decreasing in size
- Player Labels
- Character Selection: Moved portal to corner
- Buffs: Robot Torso (charge shot), Jester Legs
- Nerfs: Jester Torso (Knives), Cowboy Legs, Cowboy Torso (bouncy shot)
What's the Motivation
- In our playtests, we received a number of comments about the 2v2 being too short as it was only 1 round. Now, the 2v2 part of the game is best 2 out of 3. The final round where the two winners face off against each other is still in the game as we received good feedback about it. We are still undecided if the final round is a good idea.
- Our game lacked a lot of juice before this week, so we decided to tackle that issue. We added some movement animations for some of the characters: robot, cowboy, and jester legs. The astronaut legs received particle affects to show which direction gravity is facing for the character. For hit indication, we added a cool hit animation and a sound effect. For the cool down between shots, we added an aim fill. The aim reticle fills up green in between shots to show the player when they can attack again.
- We received feedback that the shield was weak and unresponsive, so we tweaked it. It can now be held, but it decreases in size the longer it is held. When the shield is not being used, it grows back in size.
- We added player labels that stay visible through the whole battle so players can better tell what they are controlling.
- We moved the portal to the top corner of each section in Character Selection to force the player to learn the selected legs to reach the portal. Torsos are more self-explanatory so we did not feel the need to add a forced torso challenge.
- The charge shot came in last place in our poll of the strongest torso option so we increased the projectile speed a little bit. Jester Legs were voted as the weakest legs option, so we made some changes. The impulse bombs that allow the jester legs to fly around the map were made more powerful as they now fall under the jester when airborne. This allows the jester to more easily move in the air.
- The Jester Torso (throwing knives) was voted as the strongest torso option as it has considerable burst potential when in close range. We increased the time between throwing knives so that players cannot fly in close and hit the opponent with 2 high damage bursts in a very short time frame. Cowboy legs was tied for the second strongest legs option, but we found the legs too fast in horizontal movement so we slightly decreased that. We received a number of comments about how spammy the Cowboy Torso (bouncy shots) was so we reduced the number of bounces off walls from 2 to 1.
What's Next?
We would like to make the stage more interesting through stage events and possible hazards. We have not touched the stage layout in a number of weeks, so we are excited to experiment with some changes.
We have two new characters that are close to being added: Skeleton (not sure how this fits the theme) and a Space Samurai. The Skeleton throws a skeleton boomerang, and the Space Samurai launches a sword beam. We are still deciding on new leg ideas for these characters.
We need to add some more animations to the game. We are missing the splicing animation that explains how the players get spliced together when they go through the portals.
