Two Weeks Until Launch

This week of development was focused on systematically updating problematic moves within each characters move-set. This was accomplished through systematic A/B testing as well as gathering feedback during general playtests. What was accomplished was that now the game is far more balanced with less exploitable combo's and a fair meta overall.

Kite

“Kite’s movement is fast, skill intensive, and enjoyable. but his combos and attacks is the area where he struggles the most. These set of changes are made in order to make Kite’s kit more cohesive and have his moves blend into each other. These changes should also help Kite solidify his identity as a fast-paced combo character.”

Neutral Normal

• Can now be canceled after 2 kicks

Down Normal

• Decreased Knockback base from 5 → 4
• Decreased Knockback growth from 5 → 0

Side Normal

• Increased animation play rate from 1.6 → 2.4
• Changed Knockback angle for the first hit from 20 → 180
• Second hit is now different from the first hit and has a Knockback angle of 20

Air Normal

• New Animation that no longer moves Kite’s center of Gravity
• Added Colliders to his left arm

Neutral Special

• New animation when throwing shuriken's

Up Special

• Increased Knockback base from 1 → 4
• Decreased Knockback growth from 7 → 0
• Increased Number of hits from 3 → 7
• Increased Knockback growth of final hit from 0 → 5
• Changed knock back angle from 90 → 20

Down Special

• A new model for Log Particle
• New Model for Teleport Scroll
• Teleport scroll no longer has collision

Signe Patches

“Signe’s move-set was quite balanced already but is missing some more variation in her move-set with combo-able attacks and kill moves.”

Down Special Updates

This was before making any changes.

The selected change, knockback amount was reduced but the angle launches the opponent into the air rather then against the ground.

High Level Changes

Updated Signe’s down special to launch opponents far farther. This was to help give Signe a more signature kill move as before this move had a far too low risk to reward ratio. In addition this move no longer has sweet and sour spots instead it does the same amount of damage and knockback as long as an opponent is hit. Because of these changes this move has a huge payoff if players are able to land it successfully.

Values changed

Angle: 290 ⇒ 45

Knockback Base: 3 ⇒ 2

Knockback Growth: 28 ⇒ 25

Forward Normal Updates

Original version with no changes.

Selected variation where players are no longer able to easily combo opponents.

High Level Changes

Updated Signe’s forward normal to now knock players at an angle with higher base knockback and less knockback growth. This was to prevent Signe from being able to spam her forward normal to achieve an easy kill in a 1v1 match.

Values Changed

Angle: 10 ⇒ 45

Knockback Base: 1.5 ⇒ 5.5

Knockback Growth 18 ⇒ 9

Down Normal Changes Made

Original Version

Selected variation where the move knocks players into the air by a relatively consistent amount.

High Level Changes

Updated Signe's down normal to now knock opponents upwards at a consistent amount. The purpose of this change is to allow Signe to combo opponents into her more powerful moves.

Values Changed

Angle: 45 ⇒ 90

Knockback Base: 1.5 ⇒ 6

Knockback Growth: 17 ⇒ 1.5

Warden Updates

Warden has so far been a very popular choice due to both his design and ease of use. One sore spot in his move set is his recovery, which often ends up with players hitting the wall, rather than ending up on the stage like other characters. We have revised the path he follows to fix this issue. His audio files have also been edited for consistency in both volume and sound.

• Up Special: Vine
  • Change the position he is pulled towards to be above the platform to prevent him from hitting the side and falling back down.
• Audio
  • Audio files have had their volume and pitch normalized, with fade in and fade outs added to the start and end of each sound.

“Warden has so far been a very popular choice due to both his design and ease of use. One sore spot in his move set is his recovery, which often ends up with players hitting the wall, rather than ending up on the stage like other characters. We have revised the path he follows to fix this issue. His audio files have also been edited for consistency in both volume and sound.”

• Up Special: Vine
  • Change the position he is pulled towards to be above the platform to prevent him from hitting the side and falling back down.
• Audio
  • Audio files have had their volume and pitch normalized, with fade in and fade outs added to the start and end of each sound.

Zoners

Shared

• Normal Side:
  • Increased particle output to make the attack look stronger
  • Increased collider range to give the attack a small buff
• Normal Down:
  • Increased particle output and added a trail to improve the visuals of their slide
  • Increased cancelable timing by 7 frames to reduce spammablility
  • Increased collider timings until their movement ends to make their colliders last longer making it easier to hit opponents
• Aerial Attack:
  • Updated colliders to be able to knock opponents backwards or forwards based on their location to the Zoner
  • Increased particle output to make the attack look stronger

EK-0

“EK-O’s moves should sound more robotic in movement, currently they are lacking in audio fidelity to give them the feeling of a robot.”

• Audio:
  • EK-0’s attacks now play Robot specific sound effects

“Players have problems understanding the true power of Kane’s abilities as such the visual indicator of the attacks powers has been increased.”

• Special Neutral:

  • Updated charge visuals to make it clearer to the player that they are charging a stronger projectile

• Special Side:

  • Updated explosion visuals to make the collider radius more clear

• Audio:

  • Kane’s attacks currently use Robot sound effects (nerf)

Matcha

“One of Matcha’s greatest pain spots we focused on this week was her Neutral special board throw.”

Neutral Special

• Decreased Lifetime Length from 10 seconds → 5 seconds
• Increased the amount of frames it takes for a hit to be able to pass to damage the opponent (RehitRate) from 4 → 6
• Lifetime State Calculation
  • Modified the seconds of lifetime elapsed to change state from [0.00, 1.25, 5.00, 10.00] → [0.00, 0.50, 1.00, 4.00]
  • Increased the Lifetime State needed to callback the projectile from 1 → 2
• New Velocity over Lifetime Calculation
  • Now uses a new system to determine the velocity of the board over time, instead of subtracting an arbitrary 15 points every tick.
  • The new system employs a curve graph to determine where the velocity should be comparative to her MaxSpeed (850), in a range of MaxSpeed to -MaxSpeed.

Side Special

• Fixed a bug where Matcha’s Audio and Particle effects do not stop when the move ends, when the player cancels the move, or if she dies while executing it.

Kaos 

March 25, 2024

Side Normal

• Changed knockback angle from 45 to 60.
• Reduced knockback growth by 1.

Developer Comment: This attack can knockout at mid percentages, so these changes are aimed to reduce its power. Increasing the knockback angle vertically effectively reduces horizontal knockback.

Up Normal

• Changed angle from 110 to 80.
  • Developer Comment: The angle change removes the need to turn around to do a follow-up attack on the hit player.
• Reduced knockback base from 4.5 to 4 and increased knockback growth from 10 to 22
  • Developer Comment: This change aims to make the up normal a kill move.
• Changed the ability type to movement ability with a max speed of 800.
  • Developer Comment: Making the player move forward during the ability makes it easier to perform a follow-up attack to the hit player.

March 27, 2024

Music Notes

• Can no longer home to a target when launched from up special
• Reduced charged damage from 5 to 4

Developer Comment: This change aims to stop Kaos’ ability to out-zone the zoners with these projectiles.

Up Normal

• Reduced sour spot knockback base from 4 to 2 and reduced sour spot knockback growth from 20 to 18.

Developer Comment: Reducing the sour spot knockback reduces the overall knockback power of this move, but makes hitting the sweet spot is still feel rewarding.

Side Normal

• Changed knockback angle from 45 to 60.
• Reduced knockback growth by 1.

Developer Comment: This attack needed a bit more knockback reduction.

Down Normal

• Removed armour

Developer Comment: This change allows more counterplay on this ability as it was too powerful.

Down Special

• Reduced base radius from 250 to 143, and decreased radius increment per consumed music note from 20 to 25.
  • Original radius range: 250 - 370
  • Updated radius range: 143 - 275
  • This change aims to reduce the min and max range of the ability.
• Hit stun decreases the further the hit actor is from the center of the sound wave.
• Increased sound wave hit stun increment per consumed music note from .15 to .19.
• Sound wave is now destroyed when Kaos is hit stunned

Developer Comment: These changes allow more abilities to counter the sound wave and will promote a more strategic use of this ability. The hit stun increment is increased to compensate for the hit stun decay. However, the hit stun duration is still decreased on average.

March 28, 2024

Side Normal

• Changed cancel normal frame from 28 to 38.
• Removed armour.

Developer Comment: These changes are aimed to reduce spammability.

March 29, 2024

Down Normal

• Fixed a bug where it can hit up to 3 times

Up Normal

• A music note will spawn on sweet spot hit.

Developer Comment: Making the up normal a movement ability removed its ability to spawn music notes on sweet spot hits like the other direction normals.

Major Bug Fixes

Fast Fall Bug Fixes

There were some issues where players would activate a movement ability, air dash or jump while in fast fall and the gravity scale would remain at the fast fall value. This has been fixed to have their gravity scale reset to the default value when any of these actions are performed

Base Skeleton

• Increased the Z value of Matcha’s skeleton from -89 → -81.5
  • This was because her feet were entirely clipping through the floor.

UI

• Added button indicators to the bottom right of the screen in the initial menus, to display what inputs do what