Alpha 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 updates bring a new player character, NPC troll model, animations, 2 new spells, and a wave of bug fixes.
Models and Animations
I spent a good amount of time on these updates playing around with new humanoid animations for the player and smoothing out the animation transitions. New animations have been added for movement, attack, and spellcasting, including:
- Run forward
- Walk backward
- Strafe left and right
- Jump in place
- Jump forward
- Cast projectile spell
- Cast instant spell
- Cast area of effect spell
- Basic one-hand attack
- Strong one-hand attack
- Spell interrupt
- Equip weapon
- Death
The transitions are especially looking at lot better when casting during combat. The new knight model will also start with a maul attached to his back, and he’ll grab the maul prior to the first autoattack animation. I’ve also added a script to rotate the angle of the weapon properly on attack swings.
Spells
New spells in the Alpha 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 builds:
- Furious Strike – Strong melee attack that deals instant normal damage and additional bleed damage over time, instant attack
- Heal – Heals a friendly target for 50 damage, 4 second cast
Particle Effects and Projectile Collisions
The projectile particles and explosion effect have both been updated with some improved fire and sound effects. I’ve also made some updates to the collision system for projectiles like the fireball, allowing for a spell to go through friendly and enemy units and hit the proper target. Projectiles will still be interrupted and fail to impact the target if line of site is broken or environment objects get in the way. The projectile navigation also seemed to be a bit inconsistent, so I’ve increased the frequency of vector to target calculations to smooth out the tracking.
Bug/Fix
Some miscellaneous fixes for Alpha 1.0.1 and 1.0.2 builds:
- Increased NPC run speed to prevent easy kiting of enemies
- Decreased NPC braking distance to allow enemies to attack more consistently while chasing a fleeing player
- Added wider mouse zoom ranges
- Added hard stop calculations for the navmesh agent to prevent NPCs from sliding into their targets
- Fixed an issue where friendly units would run in place after returning to spawn point
- Fixed an issue preventing some friendly units from returning to starting point between rounds
- Fixed an issue preventing spell particles from colliding on objects that died in flight
- Players that move while casting instant spells will no longer risk colliding with their own projectile
- Fixed an issue where round spawn enemies would drop aggro on the player’s keep
Big Updates Coming Soon
I’m now on Alpha build 1.0.6 for internal testing, so I’ve got several more devblog updates to go until it’s up to the current version of the game. I plan to keep rolling these out pretty quickly and can’t wait to show the big changes ahead!