Welcome to the last production devlog. We are all very exited to go into the next two weeks of polish. This is the stage where we can't add any new assets or game braking files to the game., a very important stage because this is where we balance everything and make sure there are nog bugs in the game.  You will find the progress we made, like always down bellow.

Programming

For the last week the programming team has been focusing more on tying all scenes and system together but we do have some flashy stuff to show you!
First up the character select screen has been revamped with animations and each player now has a dedicated color assigned  to them. For example the first player will always be the color yellow, even when picking other characters. This required some important tracking of the selected characters in the backend to make sure the correct color of character portraits are being shown during gameplay and on the end screen. But more on those later ;). First enjoy this GIF of the selection screen.

Oh and now you can leave the game after joining which is also nice!

Game countdown

Now at the beginning of a match, instead of just throwing all players right into the game. We give the players a small countdown to breath and prepare before the game starts. This way the players can already search the crown in the map and pick a strategy.

Character portraits

Like we teased above we now have  character portraits in the game so the players know how many points they have during the game. And that it is clear who won at the end of the game of course.

Sounds

One of the most important pieces that was still missing from the game is sound of course. And we are happy to announce that a lot of actions in the game now have sound attached to them. But sadly enough this hard to show you in a GIF so you'll just have to play our new build ;)!!

Art

We also made an other building to put in the scene. This is to create more variety in the background and tom make our game visually better looking. Not to say that our game was ugly before of course.

The new building is a building with a roof garden this was made with the intention to have some more hue difference in the background. When making these hue differences we also have to keep in mind that the background is not the most important thing in our game. That’s why we make sure the value  of the background is darker than the ones in the foreground. This is done to create contrast and to make our characters and our billboards ‘pop’.

We also made some portraits for our characters. These are to make clear what character you have selected and to make clear with what character you are playing. The portraits include every single character with every available color possible. The portraits are part of the designs with a cell shaded paint over. These are some examples of the paints for every character with a different color.

Cooldown effect was made to make sure that the players ability is on cooldown.

Fog was increased to make sure the platforms and characters stand more out.