Dev blog 5

Introduction

Hello players,

It's been a while I am writing the Bounters development blog. It took a while to find how to fix jittery, and sometimes, rubber-banding movement Bounters, and now it feels much better than before. It still needs testing to see if there is any bugs or improvements.

While fixing it, I have also reworked UIs, and added weapons.

Reworked Gameplay Loop

Until this patch, players need to extract from the field so they won't lose their loobies and make it their scores. Now, instead of extracting, players are staying still for certain time to transfer the loobies and keep staying on the field. Players can continue to collect loobies and fight other players until taken down by other players.

I changed the idea from extracting to transferring so players can enjoy the match more fluid (without breaking the flow).

With this change, the lootbox has changed a bit. Instead of having reset time for each players, it has global reset time.

For example, Player A collects loobies from Lootbox A, Player B also could collect loobies from Lootbox A. But Both Player A and B cannot collect loobies from Lootbox A until certain amount of time. Of course, other players can collect without waiting, and after collecting, they gotta wait too.

Now, if Player A collects loobies from Lootbox A, other players cannot collect from Lootbox A including Player A until certain amount of time. The reset time can be configured by server host.

Also, Weapon of the Round is removed due to no extracting feature. 

Players will keep respawn until match ends, and there is only 1 round. 

Customization

I added the customization feature. Previously, players could wear helmets and armors in game. Now players can wear not only helmets and armors but also clothing such as shirts, pants, and shoes in main menu.

Also, the color can be changed as well; even skin color too. It has some color presets and players can choose their own color by RGB sliders.

For example, you can wear orange colored shirts, blue colored pants, yellow colored shoes, and have green skin color.

Customization (shirts) will be applied on first person arms as well.

Customization feature was actually planned to be released during Early Access because it wasn't necessary to main gameplay loop. However, while I was developing and testing, every bots and players had same white character models wearing black helmets and body armors and it definitely did not look interesting at all. Since helmets and armors are purely cosmetics, there was no need to let players choose to wear it or not in game, it was just time consuming without any effect on gameplay. Thus, I decided to move those helmet and armor to customization feature to reduce the unnecessary time. 

Players can see their customized character as well. It will also hold randomly chosen weapon.

Other Changes

Movement animations of player model is changed. Previous placeholder animations looked too stiff and unnatural. With the new animations, player character's movement feels much more natural. 

I replaced old custom field file system to new one. With previous system, the custom field's file structure was not in a single file, but a folder with multiple files. Now, it is packed as single '*.bgf' file so it's nice and clean, easier to prepare for Steam Workshop integration, and hopefully increase security since it won't allow custom scripts. I will add more components such as ladder, jump pad, doors, etc. that will make custom fields more unique and interesting in future.

Also, I fixed rubber banding and jittery movement of clientside-prediction. Now it's much smoother than before.

Game rules are revamped. Lootbox reset time is changed like I mentioned above, game time is changed from choosing either day or night to specific time between 1 to 24. 

Conclusion

Some features in this devlog were actually planned on Early Access, but for some reasons it is implemented now. I hope this would make Bounters get out of Early Access faster.

As always, Bounters is currently WIP, more contents from features that are already implemented will be release during Early Access, and feedbacks are always welcome.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you have wonderful days.

-Polyworld Games-