Freezing time

As we come to the end of the 3rd print, it's time we finish up our features, and put a lock on adding more. We've gotten to the point where we have the basic features for our game, and we think they are pretty solid. So now it's time to polish everything. But before that, let's have a look at what this last week added to the game!

Code

First off, as you've probably notice in the first image, is the visual update for sudden death. Before it was just a red overlay, with sharp edges, that just popped up out of nowhere. Thanks to a new shader safe area indicator is now a smooth circle shape, with some cloudy feeling to it, and has the ability to fade in. So sudden death is more clear when it comes in, and looks far more menacing. Here's a neat gif that shows the fading in and the fog effect.

During playtesting we've head the feedback and damage didn't feel impactfull enough. You couldn't really tell what an attack did, or what the effect was of driving over a bullet hazard. To help with that, we've added floating combat text. Each time a tank take damage, the damage number pops out of the tank. Colors indicate different sources of the damage, or the severity, including bigger text for higher damage numbers.

We've also added a final batch of new powerups to play with! Phasing allows the player to move through walls and terrain for a short moment. Laser charges up a laser and when reaching full power damages all tanks in a straight line, and boomerang shoots a bullet that returns to the tank.

Aside from new features, we've also done a bunch of bug fixes and improvements to existing features. Some examples: Win counters are now dynamic and go anywhere from 1 win to whatever you feel like, Tanks no longer stay slowed when they are in mud when they despawn, some menu options can now use A and B controller buttond for accept or back, the camera could end up jittering when playing with 4 players, and many more.

Art

It has been a pretty slow end of the sprint on the art side, but that doesn't mean we don't have any updates. the UI is still being worked on, with hopefully soon the main menu and end of game screen getting a fancy overhaul. Furthermore, some particle work was done, and the programmer art for the pickup has a nice replacement ready for implementation. A little spark-like particle should also be coming soon when you hit walls and get turned around, but the current sprite is not set in stone yet considering it looks similar to the particle of being damaged.

to finish it off, we also have some new and improved models to show off.

First of all, the phone boot model now takes a bit of pavement with it when it gets hurled across time, this is to help sell the idea that this item doesn't normally belong here and pirates hadn't developped any technology for long distance communication yet.

Following, now instead of a big ugly red rectangle, a big red decent looking circle appears to warn you about incoming hazards.

We also have some new assets for your abilities. We did some research, and it turns out bananas had more shape to them than just a yellow box! the big target model for the airstrike also go a bit more fancy. The homing missile now also got a visual update. Wouldn't want to hug that one. There was also some art made for the new boomerang ability.

last but not least: a steering wheel from a (probably sunken) ship.

Lighting

The shadows are fixed in-game by increasing the shadow render distance (they were hidden because the camera was too far away) & we added some post processing, which adds ambient occlusion and other image effects we might want later on. Also improved the lighting (bake time slightly increased).