Hello and welcome to Update #4 of Puppet Masters! It has been a few months since the last one and ALOT has been added to the game, too much to cover in one post even! I will mostly be highlighting the biggest pillar that has been added so far and that is Parties and the team fights that are now possible because of it! Players can fight against enemies and battle against each other in groups of 2 or 3. A ton of other visual details have been added as well including custom puppet animations. Here is a video clip of a 3v3 fight vs some wolves!
The first thing you'll notice is the UI has undergone a major overhaul to accommodate for group play! Both teams have their HP bars shown in the bottom corners of the screen with their corresponding hotkeys for targeting them above their health. The top number represents the current HP of the player, the bottom number is total health. With parties, a targeting system had to be created. Players can change friendly targets at anytime by pressing Z, X and C, enemy targets are changed with 1, 2 and 3. Eventually all combat functionality will also be possible with just mouse interaction in order to prepare it for mobile.
The turn panels at the top now indicate the order that turns are taken in. Turns alternate between the red and blue team then go from left to right order on the platform. If a player or enemy is dead then the next one over takes their turn. I have a turn re-ordering animation complete but buying the time for the animation to play has been a little bit of a challenge. The turns remain even between teams no matter how many are dead so that there is an opportunity for "comebacks" by giving the surviving team members extra turns. 1 player vs. multiple enemies will also be possible eventually, it should make for memorable moments as long as people can stay on top of their dodging!
This is the new social menu, players can press the hotkeys '3' or 'O', or click the UI button, to open it up. All players on the server are on the list, the invite button next to their name is displayed as either a green checkmark if they can be invited, or a grey X if they cannot be invited because they are already in a party. Once the invite is sent the receiving player is presented with the options of "Okiedokie" or "Renounce" to accept or decline the invite. Once a party invite is accepted the list of players in the party will appear on the left side of the screen and the leader is the person with a crown next to their name!
Only the leader can invite new members and engage in fights. Some more rules will eventually be figured out on how to let individual members choose to engage in separate fights or be excluded while hanging out in town. Rewards and experience at the end of a fight scale with the party size in order to incentivize cooperative play. If players are in a group of 2 then 1 guaranteed piece of bonus loot drops and parties of 3 get 2 pieces of bonus loot. Experience for both the deck ring and puppet gets increased by 5% for each additional party member. So if you want to make the most of your time be sure to group up with some friends!
(Bug Disclaimer: looks like there was a bug and NPC DoF blur got left on in this clip)
That is the main highlights of the new party system and the expansions to the combat for the larger group sizes! At a glance it is apparent that there are many other improvements to the game such as the new card redesign which includes some spicy new numbers and the existence of PVP in the arena. These features will be covered separately in the next couple of blog posts, both are under going some pretty big reworks in the next few weeks that should greatly improve the balance and progression of the game.
Thanks for reading this! I plan on resuming these twice monthly blog posts every Sunday following each playtest as the game rapidly approaches launch. Come by my stream anytime you want to check on the progress and come join the Nuldrums discord if you want to participate in playtests. We recently broke 100 members and are continuing to grow, there are channels for everyone to share their own games and art of all kinds, I'm always down to see what everyone is working on!
- Trikeri
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