Welcome to Alpha 4.5 - Update 25!

We are back from PAX Prime and it was a blast! So many people enjoyed playing FTD, and we got so much great feedback, just from watching players faces as they played :-)

Alpha 4.5 is mainly a polish update but we’ve snuck in quite a few changes and new features that we feel really help key aspects of the game.

Attack Cancelling

Based on feedback from players at PAX, we’ve implemented a system to cancel queued attacks. You can cancel an attack two ways:
-Dodge Roll at any point during the attack. It will cancel the next attack and dodge roll at the end of your current attack. If you don’t have enough stamina, the attack will still end, you just won’t start a dodge roll.
-Block at the end of an attack. Even if you had another attack queued up, blocking will cancel that attack.

This will hopefully make long combos slightly less punishing, since it’s easy to accidentally trigger a 2 or 2 stage combo.

Time Of Day Triggers

Triggers can now change the Time Of Day of an adventure. A single trigger can change the TIme Of Day and the environment effect, so you won’t need to use two triggers to do both. We’ve also changed the layout of the Trigger Inspector based on your feedback, hopefully making it a bit clearer and easier to understand.

Lots of usability stuff

In-person playtesting is always a great opportunity to test your game with new players, and demoing at PAX has highlighted a lot of potentially problematic areas that we might not explain or make as obvious as we could.

This is going to be an ongoing process, but we’ve made a lot of small tweaks and changes in this update to help alleviate some of the problem areas we saw at PAX.


Alpha 4.5 Change List

New

• Added attack cancelling with Block and Dodge Roll
• Added monthly and weekly creator leaderboards
• Added “Favourite Adventure” button to Game Over screen - marks the adventure with a purple icon on the world map (We will be using this data for more features in future)
• Added a small chance for Rain while at Home
• Added a small light to the character at night
• ACK: Added Red/Green colour options for Decals
• ACK: Triggers can now change the Time Of Day
• On first play on WIN and LINUX, we push game in native res, fullscreen

Changes/Improvements

• Added more on-screen help, particularly when using a controller
• Added a breakdown of class-specific loot types on the New Character screen (even includes some new upcoming item types)
• Fixed a lot of fog of war shimmering around large props like trees
• Enemies will now avoid pathfinding through water whenever possible
• Added some more loading screen hints
• Player now goes into fall animation when falling off things
• Enemies being attacked by multiple players will now switch targets more frequently
• Random adventure filter now switches from EASY to SURPRISE ME after the first download
• Removed colliders on some smaller props (mostly small plants and crystals)
• Made NPC dialogue text a bit larger
• Rock Golems now bleed white
• Tweaked texture on Mini-Golems to make them stand out a bit more
• Tweaked visual design of Select Character screen
• Door Key Icons now appear through Fog Of War
• Added an outline to some interactive objects (Chests and Home screen objects)
• (Controller) Input is now blocked while game is ending to avoid accidentally rating adventures incorrectly
• (Controller) RB+Y Button combination to swap weapon should now be more forgiving
• ACK: Changed layout of Trigger inspector. Instead of selecting “Change FX” and then selecting “None” to disable an effect, you can choose between “Don’t Change”, “Disable Effect” or “Change Effect”
• ACK: Can now use the word “Author” in Adventure names and Descriptions

Fixes

• Fixed enemy health bar disappearing in split screen if one player dies
• Fixed abilities not displaying enabled/disabled state correctly
• Fixed enemies not playing hit noises while on fire
• Fixed enemies spamming hit noises when electrified/poisoned
• Fixed neutral ratings not being recorded if adventure hadn’t been rated before
• Loading screen stats should no longer display stats that are 0 eg. “You’ve killed 0 skeletons”
• Fixed some UI hanging over the opposite side of the screen in Split-Screen
• ACK: Fixed decals not being the correct colour/size when being placed
• Fixed showing CLOSE button on class select screen when it's the first character