Party Animals News

The game is pretty much in the final stages of development, and our main task now is to fix bugs, optimize performance, and modify some content to comply with national policies and regulations.

This phase is a bit longer than we expected, so this will be the last Dev Log for a while.

Subsequent Dev Logs will be posted around the time of release: there's not much more to reveal about the game! And we want to still leave some content and some surprises for players to explore after launch.

Voices

In addition to polishing the game and fixing bugs, the development team is also working on the animals voices. This work is more fun than we thought it would be. The voice actors not only need to act out the types of animals, but also need to reflect the corresponding personalities without any lines.

Outfits

In addition to the base skin for each animal character, you can also unlock additional outfits through level rewards, item shop, Battle Passes, and achievements.



These outfits do not change the actual stats or moves of the animals, but only make them look more badass.

Characters from the Community

Remember in Dev Log 01 when we picked out two very fierce looking animals: Shark and Samurai Nemo?



Now we've taken those concepts and turned them into reality:



If you'd like to submit your own concept as well, you can join our Discord community at https://discord.com/invite/partyanimals

Hiring

As we move towards the end of development, we have started to expand our QA and operations teams.

We are currently recruiting for the following positions: Black-box QA Tester, Security QA Engineer, Game Operations Team Lead, and Console Port Development Engineer.

If you are interested in joining team Party Animals, please submit your resume to us at [email protected]

Q&A

Q: @sttttttop: If you are not release the game yet, how about some merch first[Cry][Cry]

A: Look what this is!




Q: TARDID: Played the trial version of the game (sry). The game looks really good, just want to say that this QE turning camera feels weird and the turning speed is too slow. If you have time, it is best to change a little [flowers][flowers][flowers][flowers].

A: With keyboard and mouse, you can use QE to turn the camera, or press the mouse middle to rotate the screen. You can also enable camera follow, so that your cursor movement will always control the camera rotation. Top-down view games usually do not encourage cursor-controlled rotation, as it is more likely to cause dizziness.


Q: Is it possible to add unique skills based on the characteristics of each animal?

A: Working on it. But ummmm ...... you guys still want the game released as soon as possible, right?

Current Team Status

Hardware Requirements

We are trying very hard to improve the game performance without sacrificing too much visual quality. However, the minimum hardware configuration might still be higher than what people first assumed.

Normally, the performance limitations for a game come from visuals, scripts, sound, animations, and physics. The visuals is usually the most expensive in terms of performance. This is not the case for Party Animals. Besides a complex physics system, we also have to consider the quality of complicated renders, like animal fur, numerous dynamic light sources, soft shadows and AO, etc.



There doesn't really exist any physics based game that has complex visuals. To take a few physics based game as examples: Human Fall Flat, Gang Beasts, TABS, Stick Fight. Visual quality, complex physics, and low hardware requirements. Most games could only choose two out of the three.

This is the biggest challenge we face during the development. Our team is gradually working through all the different modules to increase performance. Sometimes we spend months to refactor the code to optimize 1ms or even 0.2ms of process time. It's like trying to squeeze water out of a dry piece of sponge.

The recommended minimum configuration is Intel i5-7500/Ryzen3-3300X + Nvidia GTX1050/RX560, with 8G memory. This will allow you to play under medium graphics settings on 1080P displays. You will have a better visual experience if you have better hardwares.

We are still testing on hardwares with lower configurations. The goals is to eventually allow players to play with integrated graphics cards by reasonably lowering the visual quality.

Maps

[h3]0. Team Score - Balloon Money Safe
[/h3]

Players need to fight for the money safe in the middle of the map and carry it to their own base.

The money safe is attached to a balloon, so players have to hold on to it and move it like a swing.


[h3]1. Team Score - Ice Hockey
[/h3]

Players need to get the hockey into the opponent's gate to earn points.

Be careful, you might get knocked out by the hockey. The shield will make you a better gatekeeper.


[h3]2. Team Score - Trebuchet
[/h3]

Players need to use the trebuchet to throw bombs to the opponent's base and let it explode to earn points.

You can throw your teammates over to mess with your opponents. You can also stay home and throw opponent's incoming bombs into the river.

Q&A

Q: @给哥⼀⻆钱: I would much prefer knocking out all 7 people. I don't need teammates. I will fight everyone!

A: You can still theoretically punch out everyone in a game including your teammates :)


Q: Will there be mobile and Switch versions?

A: All our time are spent currently on PC and XBOX versions. If everything goes well after launch, we will then start to port to other platforms.


Q: What graphics performance will the Steam Deck have? 30 FPS or 60 FPS?

A: We haven't decided yet. It really depends on the optimization. But we will definitely make a lot of graphics adjustments on Steam Deck. There might just be two sets of graphics settings: standard and visual enhanced. This is probably the case for all consoles.

Usually smaller screens are less sensitive to framerate. So far, we think 30 FPS is acceptable for Steam Deck. There is just a slight increase in latency.

Don't forget Steam Deck is portable, so increased FPS will mean faster battery drain.

Maps

[h3]0. Last Stand - Strong Wind Warning[/h3]



Fight inside a wind tunnel.

When the wind starts blowing at its full force, animals not hiding behind wind barriers will be blown away and eliminated. Players need to manually raise the barriers and hide behind them.

Note: the handles for the wind barrier may break as they get used many times.


[h3]1. Team Score -Electroball[/h3]



This is a completely different type of scoring map from the previously shown Lollipop Factory or the Train: it is a ball game.

The goal of all ball games is to get the ball into your opponent's gate. The first team to reach 6 points wins.

Electroball is a bit like basketball for humans: aim, shoot.



Note: do not hold the ball simultaneously with another player. The ball will explode.


[h3]2. Arcade - Winter Bar[/h3]



Players are split into two teams. You need to throw your opponents out of the bar into the snowy outside to eliminate them.

The difference between Arcade and Last Stand is that you keep respawning back in Arcade mode, until all your team's respawn opportunities run out.

This is pretty much a standard Death Match map.

Sound System

Most games' sound effects are based on the sound triggering mechanism of the event state machine. If a button is pressed, an animation will be triggered and a sound will be played.

Party Animals is different. We use full dynamics-driven animations instead of traditional state machines, which results in smooth, immersive character animations. However, the uncertainty and uncontrollability of the movements made the audio team no longer able to solve the audio problem in the traditional way.

We developed a new physical sound system.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This audio system can simulate the different sounds of dragging, scrolling, and collision. And the sonud is affected by all physical factors such as size, weight, material, speed, and the speed of time passing.

Q&A

Q：Why is the default 4 teams with 2 players per team instead of the default 8 teams with 1 player per team as before?

A：Because a game with 1 player per team can theoretically take up to 17 rounds. Even at 3 minutes per round, it can take up to 50 minutes of game time. 8 teams has a median time of more than 20 minutes. The reason for changing the default to 4 teams is that we want to have shorter games, with a median of around 10 minutes and a uppper limit of 30 minutes or less.


Q：What will you do about cheaters？

A：Our developers are considering adding an anti-cheat programs, but all anti-cheat will negatively influence game performance. We have added the a report button and we will have a support team to deal with cheaters.


Q：Can I play solo against AIs？

A：Yes. Just create your own lobby and add AIs.


Q：Will the game support Steam Deck？

A：Look！




Q：I don't think split screen is a good choice because it provides a narrower view.

A：It's a compromise made to accommodate larger maps. Also, without split screen, all local players will not be able to rotate the camera independently. This is a status quo in game development: we have to make compromises. We will try to improve the split-screen experience in the future.


Q：Personal opinion, could the UI maybe be designed a little cuter?

A：I have informed our designer about this. This particular designer has been doing UI for mobile OS before, that mobile company has since went bankrupt...... It's like a failed Thor fighter jet designer, unemployed and came back to design plush toys, it takes some time, hope you can understand :)

Maps

[h3]0. Game Modes[/h3]
Party Animals will have around 12 maps at launch and will continue to update new maps afterwards.

Maps will be divided into three game modes: Last Stand, Team Score, and Arcade (final names are yet to be decided).

Last Stand was the most popular mode during Demo. It plays a bit like a Battle Royale, where players fight to be the last one standing.

In Team Score, your team need to perform specific tasks to earn points, and the team that reaches the score limit first or has more points by the end of the game clock wins. Some of the maps in Team Score play like Capture the Flag: you need to take the special items home. The rest of the maps in Team Score play more like a ball game, where you need to take things to your opponents' base.

The Arcade mode is essentially a collection of maps that don't belong to either Last Stand or Team Score. Arcade maps can be selected in Custom lobbies, but they will not show up in Quick Match.


[h3]1. Last Stand - Blizzard Warning
[/h3]
Fighting next to small campfires in freezing temperatures. When a blizzard comes, anybody not close enough to a lit campfire will be frozen into a block of ice.

The campfires will dwindle over time. Be careful not to stand too close either.




[h3]2. Last Stand - Black Hole
[/h3]
Fighting beside a black hole generator.

Players need to grab heavy objects to avoid being sucked into the black hole.




[h3]3. Team Score - Need for Speeding Train
[/h3]
Players need to carry lumps of coal into the fire engine to speed up the train. The first team to cross the finish line wins.

Do not pull the hand brake. It will quickly slow the train down.




[h3]4. Changes made in team size
[/h3]
We have changed the team size in Last Stand from 8 solos to 4 duos. Previously, you only need to fight everyone you see, but now you also need to work with your teammate to eliminate the others.



You can freely change the team size in custom lobbies. The options are 8 solos, 4 duos and 2 squads. This setting is only available for Last Stand, not Team Score.

The purpose of this change is to encourage more teamwork, to prevent players from avoiding actions, and to decrease the average play time of a game. The 4 duos is the default option. We believe this gives the best balance between teamwork and fights.

Playing with Friends

Playing online with others was the most popular way to play Party Animals in the 2020 Demo. However, at the time, our relatively rough network system caused many problems. It was difficult to find a friend or a lobby of your choice. There was no way to communicate in the game either. There were many other issues as well.

In the past two years, we have added and improved many features of the network system. The goal is to make it easier for players to fight and talk trash enjoy the game with friends.


[h3]0. Friend System
[/h3]
Players are now able to add friends with in-game IDs, and invite them to join a game. If a person is already your Steam or Xbox Live friend, they will automatically appear in your Party Animals friends list.




[h3]1. Chat
[/h3]
You can use the chat in game to both chat with strangers, and chat with friends.

Players can talk to their friends from anywhere in the game, including in-game. There is a chat box similar to an IM tool, which will store your conversations in the current playing session only.



For strangers, players can talk to each other whenever they can see each other. Your messages will pop up on top of either your character or your avatar. You will have to literally be able to see a person in game, in order to see their messages this way.




[h3]2. Quick Match
[/h3]
Quick Match is implemented so that a player group of 1 to 4 people can form a team, and quickly join a fair game against others. A player can invite up to 3 other people to form a team and jump into a game together. Your teammates will be on the same side as you when you enter a quick match. If you wish to fight amongst your friends, you can invite them to your custom lobby instead.

When a match is found, players in the same session will have the opportunity to vote for one of three random maps as the upcoming game map.




[h3]3. Custom Game
[/h3]
Custom lobbies can now be sorted, searched, and filtered to find the lobby of your choice. We have reworked the lobby list to make the refresh and search more efficient.



Through custom settings, players can have the option to experience more versions of gameplay. You can change settings like team size, player HP, Stamina, and banning weapons, etc.. You can play around with the settings yourself, and even change the game into 'one shot kill'. Besides, the lobby owner is now able to change all the lobby settings, like maps or team, during a game, without having to exit the current game first.




[h3]4. Custom lobby owner
[/h3]
Custom lobbies are now modified to be more similar to traditional video games: the lobby owner acts as a host for computing and network re-distributions. The lobby will be dismissed when the lobby owner exits the lobby.

This arrangement will provide better network responsiveness when players are geographically closer to the host, but the opposite is true if they are far away as well. The ping value in the custom lobby list makes it easier for players to find a lobby that suits their network conditions.

Our goal is to use a peer-to-peer network distribution system to reduce the demand for potato servers, so that we can accommodate more online players. Due to the complex reallife network environment and Party Animals' relatively high demands for the network quality, we are still trying to decide which type of network server structure is most suitable for the actual situation. It will take a long time to provide a better network experience, and our engineers will continue to test and optimize the network performance.




[h3]5. Split the screen
[/h3]
In the Demo, multiple local players are playing on the same screen, which makes it difficult for two players to see their own animal characters when the characters are too far apart.

We are now splitting the screen apart for up to 4 local players. Player 1 can use keyboard and mouse. The other local players must use a controller. On Xbox, you will need at least two controllers to activate split screen.



These are all the content we have for you in this dev log. As mentioned above, we will continue to showcase new maps and gameplay in the next issue. If you have any suggestions or ideas, please let us know in the comments.

P.S. we are thinking about giving out some special rewards for our Demo players when we launch. Any suggestions?

After the open demo in October 2020, we haven't announced any progress on Party Animals for a long time. Many players have asked if the game is still in development and when it will be released. We can feel the anticipation and anxiety of our players. So starting this month, we'll be releasing a little more information about the game's progress and answering some questions from players.

The first answer is that the game is still in development and the target release date is hopefully within 2022, with possible delays due to quality and compliance approvals. What I want players to know is that I want the game to be released as soon as possible (after all, this is the only source of income for the game studio), but quality is still the first priority.

In 2022, there are three times as many people directly involved in making Party Animals as there were in 2020. In the beginning, when the number of people was small, project management required only a few colleagues 'talking things through'. You could even say that not much project management was needed back then. However, when the number of people reached a certain size, communication and process problems led to a significant decrease in efficiency. Also, since the game studio is in Shanghai and everyone has been working from home for two months, this is a new efficiency challenge. We will now use more frequent meetings, tools, and processes to improve efficiency and development schedule issues.

Anyone who has worked on a larger project will know what I'm talking about. "Production Hell" describes this particular phase, a term Tesla Motors uses when expanding capacity. The same problem CDPR, Rockstar, and other established studios encounter when they are working on a brand new project to expand their staff ... even though they are already very experienced. I hope you can understand that this can be a phase that a game development team has to face. We are now gradually improving the efficiency of the game production as we start to work better as a team and the production process improves.

CHARACTERS

In the past two years, in addition to adding more maps and more characters, we have redone almost everything inside and out. Animal furs, map appearances, physical system, sound system, UI system and so on. The goal is to provide more gameplay, better game performance and immersion. I'll discuss these details in more detail in future Dev Logs.

Today I'd like to start by looking at what we've done regarding characters in the past two years.

There will be quite a bit of content regarding characters, so we're going to devote two posts to this topic.


[h3]0. NEW CHARACTERS[/h3]
We had 11 cute little animals during the 2020 demo, and you may have seen some of the new ones in last year's E3 preview, such as the bull, the moose, the pig, the tiger and the gorilla.



Our concept artists have completed more character designs and we are currently making 3D assets for these new animals. The ultimate goal of Party Animals is to include all the animals we know in this animal universe, which will probably take a long time, so we plan to keep updating these animals for a while even after the launch.



We have conceptualized and finished much more characters than these ones here. We will keep you updated in the character production process.


[h3]1. CHARACTERS THAT MIGHT NOT BE INCLUDED[/h3]
Some characters will not be available to players because of their aesthetic style or because they are incompatible with the current character system. Some examples are Penguin, Godzilla, and Toucan as they are shown below. You may still see them, for example, as spectators in certain scenes. When a better solution is available in the future, they might reappear in the list of playable characters.




[h3]2. REVAMPED AVATARS[/h3]
Previously, due to time constraints, our artists did not have much time to devote to detailed avatars. Now we have completely revamped all the avatars for each character, spending most of the time on the furs, with the goal of making the fur feel more like a small animal than a stuffed animal. Below is a comparison of the 'before and after' of Nemo and Carrrot.





We are also reworking the official website, so you can download these cute little animals as your desktop or your social media avatars.


[h3]3. DID YOU BRUSH YOUR TEETH TODAY?[/h3]
The revamped animals have mouths now, and in certain situations you can see their teeth and tongue inside the mouths. For now, mouths will open up when the characters get knocked out. If you have any suggestions on when and how to further utilize this feature, please let us know.




[h3]4. COMMUNITY SUGGESTIONS[/h3]
We've received a lot of submissions from our Discord, and they're all super cute, and we've compiled them into a Steam post as well：

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1260320/view/3293832755470730999
Our concept artists have decided to add some of these animals to the game, such as this shark.



If you wish to participate in giving us character suggestions, feel free to do so in our Discord server: https://discord.com/invite/partyanimals

We have also received suggestions regarding character skins. For example, this Samurai Nemo skin, which is very cool. We will have another dedicated Dev Log talking about the character skin system in the game.



These are the contents of this Dev Log, which represents the current state of our development, but does not guarantee that what you see today will be in the final game (the legal department made me say this).

We'll discuss other aspects of the game's current state in the next Log.

We're not sure if you want shorter Logs with more frequent updates, or longer Logs once a month. Please comment and let us know what you think.