Month: August 2021
TimeRivals

Time Rivals Weekly Dev-Log #5

Welcome back to the Time Rivals Weekly Devlog! This week at Studio 316, we added some new sounds and effects to some of our characters, have some stories to tell about the Tranzfuser competition and have been working on the Time Rivals Steam page!

The Rivals

Sound Off

Our designer Joe has been working on implementing new audio across all characters to add some life to each character’s unique attacks. Audio has been a little bit of a problem in Time Rivals history – back in the prototype phase, we had issues with sounds coming from a rock we later came to nickname ‘The Rock’ for how often issues occurred with it. Hopefully now we shouldn’t have any such problems, and you’ll be able to enjoy the sounds of Time Rivals without issue.

Here’s some clips of the sounds for each character!

We’ve also been balancing out our characters. Last week Shutter was one of the strongest Rivals and Matron one of the weakest: this was because Shutter’s SMG spread was very small and his damage was strong, meaning that in the ranges where it was hard to keep him away with precision weapons it became almost impossible to get away before he could burst you down.  The Matron, on the other hand, had too little damage on each shard fired – only 20 – and couldn’t spray and pray in the same way Shutter could, requiring precision. On top of that, her shard detonation ability was a typical cooldown instead of always being an option in case you missed a shot, which made it really frustrating to miss as you wouldn’t always be able to explode the shards for AOE damage. Now both characters have been adjusted accordingly, and we’ll see who ends up the strongest in this week’s internal playtest!

Steaming Up

Our programmer Jamie  has recently implemented Steam into Time Rivals to take advantage of steam lobbies to work with our AWS matchmaking system! This will allow players to invite and join friends in their lobbies before jumping into a match. The matchmaking system will take into account the type of game and map you want to play, and take you and your friends from the lobby and pair you up with other players looking to play that exact game, eliminating the use of empty servers, or game waiting times! Trust us, the screenshots of the system below are super exciting for us!

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Tranzfuser and Protoplay

Over the last two weeks we’ve been stepping up our production as we continue to work on Time Rivals as part of the Tranzfuser competition. This has meant doing some stressful pitches to industry professionals (which Joe handled amazingly well) and working our way up to the Protoplay event, where we’ll be properly showing off Time Rivals and starting up even more regular Time Rivals content including our Steam page. That’s right, Time Rivals is coming to Steam! 

During the protoplay event you’ll even be able to get involved in an early playtest for Time Rivals, featuring all four characters on the base roster and with our first map. You’ll be fighting just as you will in the final release, throwing Clone Pods and using abilities to defeat your Rivals on the battlefields of time. We look forward to seeing you there!

See you next week for more updates!
TimeRivals

Time Rivals Weekly Dev-Log #4

Welcome back to the Time Rivals Weekly Devlog! This week at Studio 316, we have our final Rival and some of the more necessary things in game development to talk about – optimisation, gameplay fixes and the inner workings of the game.

The Rivals

Lightning in a Bottle

Our final Rival to be revealed is Nova, and the first, ironically, shall be last. Nova was the first Rival we prototyped for Time Rivals, and her gameplay has been ready for quite a while because of it.

Nova is the leader of a cyberpunk gang, having been adopted into it and rising to power after being rejected from a human experimentation facility as a child. The experiments done on her gave her control over electrical fields and allow her to  project lightning bolts from her hands with the aid of her special gauntlets.

Her gameplay is designed to be slightly more accurate and long-ranged than Shutter’s spray and pray SMG gameplay, and her special ability is to drop a lightning field that will slow and damage anyone who walks through it.  

Here’s Nova’s concepts, and some gameplay in progress! Note that Nova’s model is old and will be replaced with a newer one to match the updated concept!

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Full House

And with that, every Rival we want to have in the base roster has been revealed in some capacity! Check out how they look in-engine! (remember people – still a work in progress!)

Quality of Life 

We’ve been making little changes to the individual Rivals to make our gunplay feel that little bit better. Jamie has been working on adding some sway to weapons to make them feel that much more natural. It does come with its own bugs and issues though…

As for Shutter specifically, we’ve been improving his SMG’s spread and responsiveness.

On The Next Episode…

This week’s devlog was short and sweet. Now that we’ve shown you all our characters, now it comes down to us polishing them all up to perfection, and creating the kind of scenarios and gameplay that’ll keep players enjoying Time Rivals for a long time after release. We may not have any new Rivals up our sleeves, but we can’t wait to show you how our current group develops! Next week we’ll have more gameplay clips, some insights on how we plan to balance things out, and news on playtests: it’ll be one you won’t want to miss! 

See you next week!

 
TimeRivals

Time Rivals Weekly Dev-Log #3

Welcome back to the Time Rivals Weekly Devlog! This week at Studio 316, we’ve worked in all corners of the Time Rivals world: character, map, systems and more. Let’s jump right in!

The Rivals

Darkness Calls

Last time we had a devlog we showed you our speedster Shutter – now it’s time for a Rival a little slower and more methodical. The Matron is a macabre and creepy machine discovered by the Showrunner in a mysterious monolith buried in the Arctic. 

Taking the form of a nun and draped in dark garb covered in strange and occult symbols, the Matron hovers over the battlefield and uses a group of unique sharp black shards to attack with. These ‘dark shards’ can either be used to impale opponents and deal direct damage.

Her ability adds a little extra depth though – any shards that the Matron misses will embed into the ground or walls and can then be detonated to create small AOE damage bursts. Consider wisely how you use The Matron’s dark shards: for one on one combat or to lay traps that you can detonate to kill clusters of enemies?

Here’s a refresher at how her shooting mechanics work in-engine! 

 

Our 3D artist Rob has been at work creating the Matron’s model, take a look at how the frightening machine will look when you face her in the Arena!

Introducing the GooBot

Matron aside, remember Goobert? Designer and artist Jamie has been continuing to develop Goobert in-engine, creating his signature goo gun and ability. His goo gun sprays puddles of corrosive, toxic goop over the Arena and deals damage over time to any Rival stood in it. These puddles grow the more goo is added to them, and the larger the puddle, the longer it’ll take to vanish.

This means Goobert is excellent at denying the opponent area control and blocking off sections of the map, perhaps to ferry them into an ambush by Shutter or a Matron explosion. His primary weapon is backed up by his ability, one we’ve fondly nicknamed the GooBot. The GooBot can be placed down by Goobert and will slowly rotate on the spot, its field of view indicated by a glowing cone in front of it. If it sees you, get ready to run! 

The GooBot will track you down, following you up stairs and around corners, determined to get close enough to detonate and unleash a large pool of goo that will also briefly slow you down. This means chasing a Goobert can be risky, as he can use the GooBot to get a quick advantage in battle if he has it charged – or deploy it more strategically to ambush enemies off of points.

Check out Goobert and the GooBot’s gameplay below! 

Clone Wars

The Clone Pod is the most important piece of equipment for a wannabe Rival. The Clone Pod is what’ll give you the opportunity to use spawns strategically and turn deaths to your own advantage, so it’ll be up to you to engage with Clone Pods and form your own unique tactics for outplaying other Rivals.

The Clone Pod can be thrown and ricocheted off of walls and hard surfaces, tossed through windows and over buildings, and will always activate as long as it lands within the playable space. When it lands it’ll display a small hologram of the Rival that placed it to alert friendlies and enemies to who could be appearing there any second. 

Here’s a look at the Clone Pod toss and how it looks ingame!

On Location

We recently purchased an asset pack for our first level to help us get it looking good for playtesting. Check out the effect below! In time, we’ll be creating our own assets to fill the level with a certain Time Rivals twist, but until then we’re more than happy with this!

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On The Next Episode…

Next week we’re hoping to have gameplay for every character done and dusted. We’re running an in-house playtest tomorrow, playing each of our unique Rivals and seeing who comes out on top. Which Rival do you think will take the crown, and which dev? (me, obviously.) 

See you next week!

 

It is pronounced “Three-Sixteen”

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