No death when falling (and other gameplay improvements), emotes, impact effects [Prototype Update 0.0.21P] (Patreon)

Hey Davigo Friends,

We did some play-testing last week in the Discord (thanks all who joined!). It was very informative and shone some light onto gameplay issues we wanted to sort out.

No more falling to die

That's right, the warrior no longer dies when they get thrown off the level. 👀 

Instead, the warrior will take damage and return to the spawn point when they hit the killzone. Their health will be reduced by a set amount (currently 15%). 

We don't exactly know yet how we'll contextualize the damage/respawn (dying when falling off kinda "made sense"). But either way, this is one of the final issues we were having trouble balancing with the new health systems.

Giant boundary

Some maps, like Greyblock, for example, are designed to work for VR players with small playspaces. These levels are intended to be played standing-only. However, VR players with large playspaces can take advantage of the level layout to overwhelm the warrior.

Now this is fun for the VR player but not-so-much for the PC player, so we're putting a boundary back in. 

But don't worry, large-playspace folks, we do want to create levels designed to take proper advantage of the extra room. First, however, we need to balance this with the needs of the PC players.

Warrior emotes

Ever want to wave or point and laugh at the giant? Now you can.

We tossed a few emotes in for the warrior so they can be a bit more expressive (almost as expressive as big G). Currently we have wave, point, sit, and break-dancing emotes. Use the D-pad on the gamepad, or the 1, 2, 3, and 4 keys on the keyboard to activate them.

New effect when rocket hits giant shield

Defending against incoming rockets with the giant's shield will result in a new impact effect!

(Yes, this was secretly put into a revision of the last build late last Friday, but now it's official) 

Miscellaneous

• Grayblock is now updated to revision 20
• Game settings are now set to one life for each player-type

That's it for this week. Have a great weekend!

Cheers,
Daviteam

Full Changelog:

• New feature: Emotes! Warrior can now perform emotes by either pressing the 1-4 keys on the keyboard or any direction on the gamepad's D-pad.
• Added a boundary to Greyblock that constrains the total area the Giant can move around (the total area is quite large, only preventing players with very large playspaces from walking to the back of the stage and overwhelming the Warrior).
• Added an option called Warrior Killzone Damage. When this value is less than 1 and the Warrior is knocked off the level, they will take a set amount of damage and respawn back on the stage. (When this value is set to 1 they will be immediately killed, as before.) Default value is 0.15.
• Defaults for game modes now allocate a single life to both the Warrior and Giant. Warrior default health has been increased accordingly.
• Rocket ride sound effect has been improved.
• When the Warrior is holding a bomb and the fuse begins to run low, it will burn slightly slower and play a small warning effect. Once the bomb is thrown the fuse will again burn at a regular speed.
• When the Giant is holding the Warrior and damages them, the Warrior will now automatically be dropped from their hand.
• Refined Greyblock's layout.