shibagani48

Weekly report Oct 1/4, 2024

Added 2024-10-04 21:42:45 +0000 UTC

Hello everyone! Thank you as always for your support.
Let's take a look at this week's progress!

# Work Plan

The adjustment work towards the release has officially begun.

With the help of Lucky, we have created a list of items to be addressed.

The priority for proceeding with the work is understood as follows:

1: Obvious bugs that anyone can notice

2: Unimplemented features necessary for the demo release

3: Game balance adjustments

The goal of the demo release is to raise expectations for the project, and the priorities are set based on that.

The first type of obvious bugs includes things like the game freezing, characters getting stuck in mid-air, or menu settings not being saved. These are things that would disappoint anyone, regardless of their fighting game skills. Especially game-breaking bugs must not be left unfixed.

The second category, unimplemented features, includes things like the A and D gauges currently being developed, novel mode, and placeholder sprites. These features contribute significantly to the sense of content satisfaction and greatly enhance expectations for the project. However, since these features can be added endlessly, if we don’t impose some limits, the work will never end.

Although I would like to implement the novel part if possible, considering the year-end deadline, it is highly likely that we won’t make it in time, so its priority will be placed below balance adjustments.

The third priority, balance adjustments, involves things like toning down overpowered actions, improving awkward key inputs, and preventing infinite combos from being too easily executed.

While this is arguably the most critical part of a fighting game, online matchmaking won’t be implemented at the time of the demo release, so there are expected to be very few players for versus matches.

Players who can’t engage in matches will likely spend most of their time in practice mode, studying combos.

Infinite combos should be eliminated, but games where combos link together are far more satisfying for players than those where they don’t.

Currently, in Hell Versus, combos can be endlessly linked, which is outrageous for a fighting game, but experimenting with various moves in practice mode should be fun.

Therefore, in a sense, we will intentionally leave the infinite combo bug in the demo.

# A and D Gauge Implementation Begins

We’ve implemented a visual representation of the A and D gauges that were conceived last week.

In doing so, I reviewed the code I wrote in the past for the EX gauge. Unity has a convenient slider component for implementing UI elements like gauges, but at the time, unaware of this, I manually implemented the EX gauge.

Ideally, I would like to redo it, but since the code I’ve already written can be reused with simple copy-pasting, I took that approach.

The A gauge is the same as the previous EX gauge, but the increase and decrease conditions for the D gauge are planned to be implemented next week.

# Bug Fixes and Work on Unimplemented Parts

Based on reports from Lucky, I’ve fixed bugs that were deemed high-priority.

- Bug where the character stops mid-air when hit by a projectile immediately after taking throw damage:

The issue was caused by a frame where both the released flag and the hold state coexisted right after the throw.

While the projectile hit was only disabled by the release flag, the issue was resolved by also disabling it during the hold state.

However, ideally, a single flag should manage this, and the issue of the state shifting by one frame during animation transitions should be addressed.

- Camera shake and match time limit settings not being saved in the menu screen:

For some reason, the code to save these specific items was missing.

I have added it.

- Time-out process implementation:

While working on the above bug fixes, I remembered that the time-out process was incomplete.

- Bug where the character keeps walking without stopping if they are moving just before time runs out:

The issue was caused by the round result state skipping the process of accepting requests for the next action, which caused the request to return to the idle state to be rejected.

This has been fixed.

- Progress halting in a no-game situation due to a draw at the fourth round:

While the game transitions to a victory screen when a winner is determined, there was no case prepared for draws.

I’ve made it so that the same menu as the victory screen is displayed during the game screen.

# Request for Debugging Assistance

As we aim to complete the demo by the end of the year, frequent debugging work will be necessary.

If anyone is interested in helping with debugging, please contact us via Discord.

Additionally, we currently have no actual versus data. While online matches would make this easier, at present, only local matches are available. If anyone is able to engage in local matches easily, please let us know!

However, please refrain from redistributing the demo for the above tasks.