Zetheros
Developer
Hey Exanimates,
We're still working on the last couple of force powers and of course various bits of content for the update. We mentioned last week that one of the powers we were working on had some troublesome input system interactions and indeed this took some effort. We've made some important changes and additions to our input system and casting mechanics that allow powers to temporarily take over or modify certain control functions, both in and out of combat. This allows for all sorts of specific input methods that will see more use with powers being quite diverse, and that we've even considered for some of the simpler powers. It also supports a bit more multi-tasking, for example being able to use certain powers while running. We added our first true power synergy, where using one power during another changes its behaviour and gives it a new purpose. This was one particularly cool interaction and we couldn't not do it, but we have ideas for various other power synergies and we really like the gameplay and build implications of these interactions. Force is looking great overall, we're not quite done just yet, but we're very close now.
While working on force we also made some improvements that are not entirely specific to it, like some cool new lighting features and improvements to the new lighting system and more AI features, such as the ability to understand who's responsible when a miscellaneous object hits them, or say a door slams into them.
We've been updating more and more items and converting them to the procedural system, now including various unique items that we hadn't planned to do just yet. We're getting quite close to our target of making all items procedural, and we've also finally added in some items that we made previously, but had some technical issues that we only managed to solve now thanks to some engine and tool updates. We're also working on some small, but nice features to generally make itemisation a little more interesting.
We've made a lot of progress, but we're not exactly rushing to get the 2nd insider test out as it is, we got a lot of useful testing and feedback from test 1, the testing branch builds before then, and we're keeping ourselves busy anyway. We'd rather test as much as we can in one go as we get close to the full update release and we don't really want insiders to burn out on testing smaller incremental changes.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
We're still working on the last couple of force powers and of course various bits of content for the update. We mentioned last week that one of the powers we were working on had some troublesome input system interactions and indeed this took some effort. We've made some important changes and additions to our input system and casting mechanics that allow powers to temporarily take over or modify certain control functions, both in and out of combat. This allows for all sorts of specific input methods that will see more use with powers being quite diverse, and that we've even considered for some of the simpler powers. It also supports a bit more multi-tasking, for example being able to use certain powers while running. We added our first true power synergy, where using one power during another changes its behaviour and gives it a new purpose. This was one particularly cool interaction and we couldn't not do it, but we have ideas for various other power synergies and we really like the gameplay and build implications of these interactions. Force is looking great overall, we're not quite done just yet, but we're very close now.
While working on force we also made some improvements that are not entirely specific to it, like some cool new lighting features and improvements to the new lighting system and more AI features, such as the ability to understand who's responsible when a miscellaneous object hits them, or say a door slams into them.
We've been updating more and more items and converting them to the procedural system, now including various unique items that we hadn't planned to do just yet. We're getting quite close to our target of making all items procedural, and we've also finally added in some items that we made previously, but had some technical issues that we only managed to solve now thanks to some engine and tool updates. We're also working on some small, but nice features to generally make itemisation a little more interesting.
We've made a lot of progress, but we're not exactly rushing to get the 2nd insider test out as it is, we got a lot of useful testing and feedback from test 1, the testing branch builds before then, and we're keeping ourselves busy anyway. We'd rather test as much as we can in one go as we get close to the full update release and we don't really want insiders to burn out on testing smaller incremental changes.
Have a great week!
-the BM team
