TAR Update (Oct. 1): Defense Mechanics & Climbing Trees news - The Arcane Relics™

Hey everyone, this is the first post of October. It’s already Fall, where did the Summer go? Anyway, here’s what we worked on since the last post-

This past week Jon started working on the varying block effectivenesses based on the used item, for blocking. Some notables:

• Every shield and weapon has a block effectiveness rating, which will reduce the received Stamina damage when blocking an attack. Shields are generally the most effective.
• A character’s Strength now adds onto the Stamina damage they’ll inflict on a blocking opponent, however the opponent’s Strength will also counteract this.
• Certain items, such as weapons, may not block 100% damage of a particular damage type (e.g. fire) even with a successful block. Imagine holding your dagger out in front of you for defense as a dragon breathes fire upon you… Probably wouldn’t do much.

You can now climb trees to your delight. It’s quite funny seeing a knight in full armor climb a tree.

Some notables of tree climbing:

• To climb, simply jump into a thinner tree (maple/cone) while facing towards it.
• While mounted on a tree, your Stamina will recharge at half the speed, if still, and will be consumed when shimmying – even if you’re not holding the sprint button.
• You can also walk & jump around on the branches.
• In the future, we plan to add some sort of Dexterity prerequisite for climbing trees.

The overhauled audio manager is nearly complete, for the public demo anyway. Here are some of the new features:

• Players can enter different reverb zones causing sound effects emitted nearby them to possess the reverb of the zone they’re in. Previously, only one reverb zone was possible at a time for all players.
• Ability to crossfade music tracks. We’ve setup a music crossfade in the Town when near the Tavern.
• As stated in an earlier post, all local player’s vocals and footsteps can be heard even if they’re quite a distance away from Player 1.

Unity Tip: Jon noticed when coding music fading between scene loads that he was using Time.unscaledDeltaTime and there would still be a noticeable pop, probably due to a frame hitch on load. Switching to Time.realtimeSinceStartup seems to be much smoother. He would recommend using the realtimeSinceStartup for any interpolation between scene transitions.

New additions in props include: jug, sack, wicker basket, & wall shelves. You can loot sacks & wicker baskets, but jugs have to smashed to collect their contents.

Some improvements to the walls across the river from the Town, including the start of round peaked roof towers & more battlements about the walls.

Also, there’s now shells of the Square Guard Towers. Eventually, you’ll be able to go inside too.

• Added a grass particle when striking grassy surfaces.
• Tavern progress: Chandelier supports and rafters.
  (WIP)

• Reworked equipment positioning system: now different characters, like male and female, can have different equipment placements, helping with appearance and reducing clipping.
• Reworked female tunic to look better.

• Traveling to a new scene with a box in hand, or any heft-able, will correctly clean up the hefting status. Previously, you’d still play the hefting animations in the new scene, even though the object was removed.
• Added more battlements to some town walls.
• As mentioned earlier to test out music crossfading, we added tavern music when near the tavern.
• Added console command ‘condition popups’ to see number popups for any item condition damage.
• Reworked projectile positioning, so now you can throw objects out of a tree. Previously, the projectile would immediately hit the tree, since it would spawn just in front of where your character was facing.
• There’s now feedback for failed spell-casting, purple smoke emits along with a sound.
• Musical accent for acquiring new abilities!
• Town optimizations, running a bit better – now using Unity’s occlusion areas.
• Animator optimizations: now using hash IDs instead of strings for referencing animator parameters.
• Hot coal & water footstep effects – little flames from stepping on hot coal/burning surfaces or splashes emitting from your feet in shallow water.
• You no longer swim as fast as you normally move around.
• Fixed: rabbits should no longer make chicken sounds.
• Player labels now show your character’s name instead of “Player 1.”
  
  (Taken while playing with lower quality settings.)

• Summons no longer attack the summoner.
• Improved warp placement when traveling between scenes.
• The sun now interpolates its rotation smoothly, even though time progresses in increments. This makes the time passage when sleeping look a whole lot better.
• Fixed a recently created bug, where the chair you are sitting in would warp with you when transported into an arena match.

We've updated our roadmap (for v0.0.22), adding the date when we last updated the list.

That's all for this update, until next time!