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[Gwinnell]

Release #18

Hello Tigsource!

Take off your hard hats, flat caps and snapbacks. It's time to don some ARMOUR! Yep, Friendship Club just introduced a brand new Armour Mode, and many other smaller (but just as cool) things.



How does armour work?

Playing with Armour on means players can be hit by two bullets before getting eliminated. However, it doesn't mean players have two hit points! Armour is not affected by the dash attack. In fact if two players dash into each other with armour on, they both lose their armour. It's more like having a protective shield.

Why is it so cool?

It might not sound like much, but it drastically changes the gameplay -- matches become longer, and the meta game gets ramped up significantly.

Players with armour try to stay out of melee combat as there's the potential there to lose their advantage. Play styles also become more reckless as players know they need to get multiple hits in order to pull off their awesome victories.

Essentially, Armour introduces more ways to totally humiliate your friends, and that's what this game is all about.


First pass of the armour. Not as cool, right?
 
What about those other cool things?

There's a lot in the full changelog below, but here are the best bits.

• Bullet sounds are now affected by the game speed. Turbo Bullets also have new, more impactful sounds.
• 5 new interactive paintings in the Timmy's House arena!
• Dash cone animation now plays *super smooth* regardless of game speed.

As always, let us know what you think and follow the game's progress by subscribing to this thread.

Cheers!

Full Changelog:

Code:

• Armour gibs!
• Armour hit points / health system implemented.
• Armour sounds implemented.
• Added stats screen graphics to preproduction.
• Disabled story screens.
• Added broken gun gibs. (People thought you could pick up guns!)
• Pressing the Start button while in options now returns players to the previous game state.
• Left bumper now longer goes to Advanced Modifiers.
• New font used on end-game drop-down overlay.

Art & Animation:

• Armour pass 1.
• Armour pass 2.
• 5 paintings animated for Timmy's House arena.
• "Quickdraw" timer for The Wonky Wagon updated to include shards of wood.
• New dash animation done in Spine.
• New furniture to include in Timmy's House arena. TV, 2x armchair, desk lamp, 2x floor lamp, globe, others. (not yet implemented!)
• Updated Finger Of God holes in the floor.
• Armour "hit" effect added.
• Piano and Bar in The Wonky Wagon recoloured.
• New "floor lights" for Nana Rickett's in The Wonky Wagon.
• Icons for Assassins and Armour modifiers.

Audio:

• Sound effects for dash changed when players are wearing armour. These are unique to each character!
• Sound effects for being hit by bullet while wearing armour. These are unique to each character!
• Bullet sounds are now affected by the game speed.
• Turbo Bullets also have new, more impactful sounds.
• Added a compressor / limiter on the master output to prevent issues with levels and make it sound lush.

Misc:

• Set up Git for the game project (finally)!
• Set up Git and FTPloy for the website deployment.
• Tom finally bought a standing mat for his standing desk.
• Updated descriptions of Game Modes.

[/list]

[Gwinnell]

That armour update was a good one right? ...right? Here's some more things we added last week.

Unlimited Ammo

An Unlimited Ammo toggle into the advanced modifiers. This is exactly what it sounds like! It's very manic, and is equal amounts game-design breaking, but some people might find it fun, so why not? Sometimes 8 bullets just isn't enough...

Watch out Canardinal! Chud has unlimited ammo! (Vine)

Hardcore Mode

Next up, a new a Hardcore toggle. Hardcore mode is the result of stripping the game back and removing a lot of visual hints. Player scores in the avatars are removed, there's no gun reticule so you cannot see how much ammo your opponents have, and there is no dash cone overlay so it's harder to attack someone at just the right moment. We can potentially go further with this idea, removing team hats and the rest, but for now we just want to hear what people think! 

Anything else?

Yup! It's a bunch of smaller things, really. We've added sounds to the new paintings from the last release, we've fixed up Relaxed Play a bit, we've updated modifier descriptions, we've changed fonts in certain places throughout the game, and more.

Paintings with sounds! (Vine)

There's other stuff too, but it's all under the hood. We can now trigger sound events from our animation tools, we did a bit of concepting for another new arena, we did a bit of concepting for new guns, we worked on updating the win-screen for team play... There's more, and as always can be seen in the changelog below.


Charging up!

That's it! Have fun, and until next time, stay friendly!

Full Changelog

Bug Fixes:

• Finger of God kills now spawn the correct armour gibs.
• Team hats now appear on top of armour. Always.
• Fixed Relaxed Play freeze bug that happens at the end of a game. 

Code:

• We now show the speed at the bottom of the screen in expo mode.
• Added debug keys for character select. Hit 1, 2 and 3 to move characters onto rugs quickly. 
• Implemented new options screen.
• Implemented Hardcore modifier.
• Implemented Unlimited Ammo modifier.

Art & Animation:

• Improved icons for Armour modifiers.
• Removed shadow from Finger of God spawn animation.
• Updated game fonts to include < and > glyphs.
• New options screen! 

Audio:

• Integrated first FMOD sound events to be triggered from Spine keyframe markers (pictures in Timmy's house are now made of numerous sounds, meaning they stay in time with animations at all speeds).
• Experimented with applying game speed to manipulate reverb settings (nothing added now, but will be in future).
• Set-up keyframes in quickdraw animations - now awaiting new sounds to be designed and added
• Reorganised VCA routing in FMOD so that ground gibs (tables etc.) have a small amount of reverb added to them (room sounds will have reverb, character sounds will be dry by comparison - gives seperation and sense of immersion)
• Experimented with bullet-ambience (an event that creates a gentle hum depending how many bullets are in the map and is to control other sound groups volumes and possibly effects)

[Gwinnell]

Holla! Following on from that last post (and all the others)... this one seems rather small in comparison.

New Statistics

We've added a few more statistics to the end-game stats / tasty pies screen.

• Stars
• Furniture destroyed (gif)
• Bullets fired (gif)

The main take-away from that list should be that you can now see which of your friends has been smashing the place up the most. If you didn't get that, go back and try again.





The one other potentially cool feature - but also particularly standard - is that you can now hotplug controllers. This just means you can plug controllers in after the game is running, and it will know that the controller exists. One small step towards a more seemless experience.

Right-o, that's everything. Have fun with this release, but most importantly, stay friendly!

- Ashley

You can say things to us in these places, amazing huh?! Twitter, Facebook or really spoil us and use the comments below.

Full Changelog

New things:

• More in-game statistics! More juicy pies.
• You can now (sort-of) hotplug game controllers.

Art:

• Updated custom in-game font to have accent characters. This will be useful down the line when we localise the game.
• Icons for unlimited ammo, hardcore modifier, furniture destroyed, bullets fired.

Code:

• New Gamepad configuration helper. If you gamepad doesn't work with Friendship Club, go here!
• Added support for Rock Candy (PS3) controller and another (more generically named) gamepad.
• Moved Stencil shader into ARK2D library.
• Touch control functions are now loaded in dynamically. Friendship Club doesn't use touch controls, but our first game Toast Time did. This would have caused you problems if you tried to run Friendship Club on a Windows Vista machine.

Misc:

• Our press management system now automatically tracks game coverage from websites, blogs and YouTube channels.
• We can add coverage items in manually and remove false positives.
• We also include a "thanked" field to make sure we do not become horrible people.