Update: Arcade Mode and the Boss Fight
Today we add the classic fighting game arcade mode to Hellish Quart.
In the arcade mode, you will fight a series of duels that end in a boss fight. The character's backstories are, for the moment, in a form of text panels that provide just the basic info about each fencer's motivations. Later in the production, we will replace the panels with proper cutscenes. The already existing cutscenes you will see in the arcade boss fight are made especially to be universal enough to work regardless of which character the boss is fighting with.
The game's boss is designed to be a final exam for your fighting skills. Good luck!
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Hellish Quart pre-alpha v.2023.01.08.0
TWEAK:
- Fencers' starting positions moved back by 0.5m each, so there's actually a free 4m area between fencers, instead of them spawning 4m from each other. This may feel too far in comparison to other fighting games, but it's a "real world" customary distance in fencing, which should prevent "sucker punching" with long range attacks.
- Gedeon: Tweaks of attack canceling timings for more responsive blocks
- Meadow arena: slightly less yellow postprocessing
- All characters: tweaks of the next attack input delay after your previous attack was blocked (mostly longer). This is not a typical "minus on block", because you still can block incoming attacks, you just can't instantly repeat the attack after the first one got blocked. This can break combos, but doesn't apply to combos that were executed before impact. This is consistent with real world fencing, where the riposte is usually faster than repeating an attack.
- All characters: AI tweaks (work in progress...)
- Samuel: Attack animation tweaks for better parry-riposte exchanges
- Samuel: Better attack animations in far-close range dynamic blending
- Game Speed slider value in Gameplay Options no longer saves, it resets to 1.0x speed on every game restart
- Hit reactions from Close Attacks (punches etc.) can now also be canceled by dodging back
- Isabella: increased muscle strength for more accurate sword attack trajectories
- Isabella: you can now cancel a linked attack in mid-combo
- Isabella: way shorter recovery from attacks after impact (the cooldown for the next attack still applies, but she can block way faster after impact)
- Alexander: basic cutting attacks slower canceling on whiffs
- Alexander: a bit slower guard animations (by 0.03s)
- Marta: slower Close Attack animation and slower rate of repeating it
- Isabella: her thrusts are now blocked only if the blade contact was at the top of her blade
- Isabella: better aiming when thrusting
- Isabella: her sword loses momentum on block way faster now
- Barabasz: damage cap on the next attacks in a combo is a bit higher
- Marta: Pressing "Push" again after a push will no longer trigger the follow-up attack, only pressing a proper attack button will do this
- Alexander: his blade can now be bashed through by heavier blades if hit at the weak part (top)
- Isabella: different Hit reaction animations
- Removed the mechanic of reducing the damage on every next attack in a combo sequence or in linked attacks. Although it seemed a good idea on paper, it was not "readable" for players and seemed like a bug.
- Jacek: thrust attacks now have some additional aim
- Damage adjustment for thrusts in the game (generally lower, especially for sabers)
- Generally longer recovery from thrust attacks for heavy weapons
- Barabasz: Damage buff
- Kalkstein: his damage is now way less dependent on weapon velocity to ensure more consistent damage outcomes
- Kalkstein: his sword tip detector should now detect Hitboxes even if it is already stuck inside one (for example because of physics simulation)
- Kalkstein: different Fwd, Y, Y combo
- Jacek: more physics muscle power for more accurate blade trajectories
FIX:
- Switched to a different physics solver in hopes to improve overall physics accuracy and limit impossible to solve scenarios
- Greatly increased the physics solving iterations per frame to try to get rid of the unsolvable collision scenarios which sometimes resulted in the "sticky" swords effect
- Lowered down the maximum angular velocity of all swords to try to get rid of the unsolvable collision scenarios which sometimes resulted in the "sticky" swords effect
- AI: Fixed a bug where some characters were not respecting the next attack delay after being blocked
- Gedeon: fixed a bug where thrusts were recognized as cuts and could bash through the weak part of the opponent's blade
- Laszlo: fixed a bug where a low thrust was recognized as a cut (had unreasonable damage, non-bindable)
- All characters should now be able to correctly dodge back to cancel Hit reactions
- Kalkstein: fixed a bug where he bashed through opponents' blades too often- Isabella: fixed a bug where her hair could pull her head with physics
- Isabella: fixed dropping sword twitching
NEW:
- Arcade mode (WIP)
- Arcade Bossfight (a bit different than will be in the Story mode)
- Arcade Bossfight cutscenes (WIP - placeholder voiceovers)