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[Abdurrahman]

We are excited to share with you some new updates for the arena design of our game. We have been working hard to create different themes for our arenas, which will add more variety and fun to the gameplay. These themes will also be helpful for marketing, as they showcase the different aspects of our game.



The first theme is the shop town theme. This is the one you are already familiar with. It features wooden buildings, shops, and signs. The shop town theme looks like a Western city, but we might change that. It suits the name of our game, and we will have a vendor (a seller that you can buy weapons from during combat), and it fits this theme perfectly.




The second theme is the crystal mines. This is another new theme that we have been experimenting with recently. It features dark tunnels, glowing crystals, metal structures, and pits. The crystal mines theme is darker and mysterious, adding more challenge and tension to the gameplay. We are considering open areas where players can fall off the map, but we are still determining. We want to use our tornado mechanic, which can pull players toward water or other hazards. If we have pits instead of water, the tornado will also not work because the tornado container will fall into the pit (check the tornado in the items showcase https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=73729.msg1455218#msg1455218).
We have improved the crystal mines theme by adding some water in the background, which looks nice. We are satisfied with the final results.



The third theme is still in progress; we will reveal it later. We hope you like our new updates, and stay tuned for more!

[Abdurrahman]

We created a website!
Maybe it is too early to create a website for our game. But I wanted a custom-made wishlist, and the website was made to serve that purpose.

The reason we need a mailing list is that I want to start marketing the game by posting on Social media (mainly Twitter and Reddit)

Please check out our website and give us feedback.

If you want to be the first to try the game, join our Mailing List here:

[Abdurrahman]

We came up with a crown item in our game, a risky item that makes you a target for more coins, but you get the coins if you survive. But we do not have a crown model, so we used the next best thing:
Andrew Price blender donut.

Nothing says royalty like a glazed pastry on your noggin



(this was a tweet that I did)

[Abdurrahman]

Hey, fans!
I know you've been dying for an update!
We've been working on a significant weapon update. We finalize the weapons. Mechanically testers liked the weapons and these will be our final weapons.

We made the final concept for them.




and then we modeled the weapons




We are creating Golden Weapons next. which are an upgraded version of the same weapons. stay tuned.

[Abdurrahman]

We're back!
We stopped development for a long time (3 months) with little work.

However, we achieved a few things during this time.


First
We have two fully playable mechs.
The Minigun Mech, and the Flame thrower Mech.


Second
We are also almost done with the vendor: He serves as an in-match Vendor, where you have to risk your life to buy something from it or -even better- Upgrade your current weapon to a golden weapon!



Last
Golden weapons are more powerful versions of the same weapon. They don't just add stats... that is why I will post about the Golden weapons separately, as well as a post about the mechs we have.

stay tuned!

[Abdurrahman]

The chicken has been around for some time, and we have introduced the huge chicken.

Chickens are just-for-fun map events that occur by random chance; we call them "map variations," and we will have a ton of these (more about variations soon)

Normal Chicken
The "normal" white chicken works just like the stun items in the game. We currently have random stones you can throw to stun your opponents, potentially allowing you to secure an easy kill. Stun items can be thrown over covers. That is why they are a defining feature of the gameplay and an important skill to master in the game.


The only difference is that the chicken can walk around. The chicken doesn't provide anything significant to the gameplay, but they serve as a hilarious internal joke. I did not create the chicken because we need a stun item that walks. They work as a humiliating item. Throwing the chicken on someone gets stuck on their head until the end of the round. When you kill them, the chicken screams a funny voice, and on top of that, they will appear with a chicken on their head instead in the screen between rounds, giving you a safe space to enjoy mocking them.

An ordinary lost player.

Lost after getting chickened:


Having the chicken created a mini-game where sometimes you might go out of your way just to try and get a "chicken kill" on someone who did it to you.
----------------
Huge Chicken
The huge chicken is rare. Currently, it has an 11% chance of appearing in a round. And it will significantly influence how you position on the map. It has high health and can be used as a cover (sometimes it gets in the way)

And on top of that, when it dies, it drops a roasted chicken that fills your health by 50HP, causing the players to chase it down sometimes instead of fighting the opponents. And far players will consider shooting twice because it might serve the enemies if the chicken gets killed near them.

[Abdurrahman]

We are very happy to announce that we have reached the 50% mark (At least). Estimating how much is left is really hard. This is our first commercial game, and so much is changing. But if we rule out multiplayer, I think we are even past the 50% point.

I am preparing for the Steam launch next, which can take a lot of work. There are no "systems" left to implement, But it is time to add some content and to polish, polish, and more polish!

[Gibberish]

Looks impressive

[Hassan Khallouf]

Hello everyone, it's been a FULL YEAR since I last posted about the AI updates.
I had to stop the work on AI in favor of so many things, but one of them was the online multiplayer, I wasted so much time in that rabbit hole, then came back to AI, it still took me very long time to find a proper way to implement it.

Finally, I have finished working on the bots today, they serve their purpose for now, people can test and try the game when they don't have anyone to play with!, the AI still needs a lot of improvements and it's definitely no match for the average player, we will improve it over time hopefully, but it's not our focus to make the AI very strong, and it's not the point of the game at all.

I want to share with you 2 main points on the AI, the unity structure, and the general algorithm.

Unity Structure:

you can go back to the post I made more than a year ago to see how it all started, however, I tried so simplify things, no need for trees or any sophisticated tools.
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=73729.msg1453276#msg1453276


The brain component is 2 parts, the logic pipeline and the shared logic and sensor.
the pipeline as you can see is a series of pieces of logic that execute in order, and they share the information using the brain component and get events from it, as an example, when an enemy is nearby, the brain will inform the interested logic parts.


How does the bot generally behave ?
You can see from the previous image that the bot works in simple steps, it decides who the current target is, decide where it should move based on the current aggression level, and the shooting logic takes care of when to shoot by checking if the target is in sight or not.

the most complicated part of this whole thing is the movement part, say the AI wants to hide, what is the best hiding position ?

The general algorithm is based on islands, the AI scans the entire map at first and saves all islands, and will keep track of the islands changes based on walls destructions.



The AI will create boxes around each island of blocks, and based on how aggressive/defensive it's, it decides which island to use as a shield or as an attacking point

It's a lot of Vector math to decide what point is the safest based on all enemies locations, or based on where it wants to attack.

I hope this was interesting, I wanted to share my struggle for the past few months.

[Abdurrahman]

We’re excited to announce the latest update to our game: Golden Weapons!



Normal weapons.



Golden Weapons


These weapons are not only stronger than the current weapons, but they also change how you use them. To upgrade your weapon to a golden one, you must go to the Wartender, who randomly appears out of one of the boxes. The vendor gives you two options when interacting:

Wartender.

One is to buy a new weapon, and the other is to upgrade the current weapon to a golden weapon. But be careful, as buying from the vendor is risky, and other players will target you more easily while you stand still.



The golden weapons (and buying + collecting gold in general) add a new layer to the game without complicating it much. They are easy to understand if you know the game. Now, you need to decide about how to spend your gold.

Will you use it to counter players who used the Pit (sewers) and got a free weapon? Or will you collect more gold to buy a Mech to destroy everyone and show them who’s boss? How much will you risk to secure the kill and get the gold?

Golden weapons are not just "damage," of course, and they change how your strategy around playing the same weapon. Here are some examples.

--------------------------------
Combat Shotgun: the normal shotgun can be charged, and you can release all the shots at the same time.
Golden Combat Shotgun. It becomes an automatic shotgun with an extra shot.


---------------------------------
Energy Sniper: you need to charge the sniper to 3 or 4 shots to make bullets go through walls.
Golden Energy Sniper: You have only two shots

---------------------------------
Sawed-off shotgun: a straight forward 2 shots shotgun with a wide spread.
Golden Sawed-off shotgun: concentrated fire (that is faster and stronger) to damage the enemies more easily.



We hope you enjoy this new update and look forward to hearing your feedback!

[Abdurrahman]

Hello everyone. We've been getting ready to make an announcement trailer and are trying to polish a lot of the current features. The trailer needs to show all the main features of the game. I don't want to look lacking.

So recently we added a new map theme, but more importantly, we made the pit a bit more interactive!

As mentioned before, the pit is a crucial part of the game because it gives the center of the map more value. It allows the player to throw his weapon to gain it back in the next round, giving him a significant advantage over everybody's pistol.

It used to look like this: (this is a player throwing his weapon in)


The new pit looks like this:


In addition, we created a third map for the game, following Chris Zukowski's advice, your steam page needs to show at least 3 different enironments, otherwise the shoppers might assume the game is low on content.



The third theme is the Jungle, now of course, the final version might have different maps per-theme, but for the trailer + the steam page, I just wanted to have 3 themes ready.

[Abdurrahman]

It is a simple yet important thing. We added a new effect to the revolver bouncy bullet.

Old


New


I think this effect is especially important because it does few things (other than the nice visuals)

1. It gives you feedback on how the bullet traveled, which can improve your aim and position.
2. It is perceived as "scary" and might make your enemies panic or change position.
3. It also gives all the players extra readability of the situation.

[kason.xiv]

Looks fun. Love the name lmao, reminds me of how I joked about making a Mario Party rip-off called Pario Marty.

[Abdurrahman]

Looks fun. Love the name lmao, reminds me of how I joked about making a Mario Party rip-off called Pario Marty.

Haha. I would love to play Pario Marty 

[Abdurrahman]

While working on Mechs, we removed the good old Smash ability for the new 'Heavy Dash'.
The heavy dash allowed for better positioning which is the core of the game, and it gave the player the choice to use it offensively or defensively.



I like the Smash, it looks cool 

But this is the right thing to do...

[Abdurrahman]

Unhappy thoughts about the Steam Page...
We wanted to release our Steam page for months. I did not know how much work it needed. I am trying to contact every possible guy who MIGHT retweet the announcement trailer. We're making the trailer, The Steam capsule, and the info. And they seem never to end. I still need to make a press kit and write a press release(and I don't know how).

I can't help but feel stressed.

To end on a positive note, the entire team is learning a lot in the process.

I am also happy to announce my YouTube devlog. I'll be sharing a lot of in-depth thinking about the game design thought process (mainly). But I will also discuss other topics, including technical, production, and marketing. So stay tuned!

[Abdurrahman]

as I mentioned previously I am starting a new devlog series. Happy watching!

[Abdurrahman]

The long-awaited Mechs are ready!
We tested them, and they are a lot of fun; usually, it drives other players to target them in Free-for-all. But that doesn't make them any less fun! They feel like a mini-boss.

So far, we only have two mechs, and they still lack some sounds/effects. We will be working on that soon. Currently, our main focus is the release of our Steam Page.

-------------------
The Destroyer: a tanky walker with a mini gun.


The Flanker: an agile hover with a rocket launcher.

[Abdurrahman]

New Devlog

Making a Party Game that keeps players coming back - Devlog #1





In this episode, I talk about the game goals and the goals of my youtube channel.

[Abdurrahman]

We loved the chickens, so we added more!
.
.


Now, we have three small types:

Normal Chicken: The old stuff... it lets you stun and humiliate your opponents.
Golden Chicken: Anyone who kills a player with a golden chicken on his head will get a lot of coins! Making that player a target.
Toxic Chicken: Toxic Chickens walk around spreading (what else?) toxin. If you dare grab and hit a player with it, He will slowly die of the toxin!




Chicken Round!
The chicken round is a special round that might randomly occur. It combines all the chicken types for maximum chaos! The first time we tried it, the Toxic chickens killed all other chickens, we fixed that and now it only kill the big chicken.