Hello Gladiators!

I hope the heat of the summer is not preventing you from a good battle in the arena, because the new update is finally here and with a ton of improvements and gameplay changes! ːsteamhappyː

Weapon Grip Improvements

• You can now grab swords or knives depending on the direction of your hand.
• You still can use double trigger to switch between those two positions (very useful for sticky or lock grip modes)
• For a more spectacular gameplay, I strongly recommend using the "hold" grip. This is the default grip mode now :)
https://gfycat.com/PersonalUnhealthyAmphiuma

Stabbing completely revamped!

• Stabbing is now much easier than before. I reduced min stab speed to 125 (from 200), and increased min angle from 20 to 35.
• Stabbing a human enemy on their chest or face will instantly kill them if you are close enough to them (<170cm)
• Weapons will stick to the body and spawn a blood spurt when you stab them.
• While the weapon is stuck to the body, you can move the enemy (They are physically attached!).
• Added specific sound effect for stabbing.
https://gfycat.com/MassiveNeatBrahmancow

Grabbing!

• Now you can grab enemies and hit them while you grab them!
• You can also throw them away, but you need to use both hands. If you try to throw them using only one hand they will automatically detach.
• Grabbing is only allowed on human enemies for now.
https://gfycat.com/PlaintiveOffbeatKoi

Weapon throwing improvements

• Revamped throwing calculations, force and rotations of all weapons to make them more predictable.
• Reworked knives throwing from the ground up.
• Knives now stick to flesh like arrows and can be recovered from enemies even while they are still alive.
https://gfycat.com/SandyBlondBubblefish

Slow motion improvements

• New slowmo SFX! (desaturation of all colors except red, and background blur to focus on nearby enemies).
• Slowmo will now auto-activate if you parry enough enemy attacks. You can still manually activate slowmo.
• Added option to disable manual slowmotion.
• Added option to disable automatic slowmotion.
https://gfycat.com/GrizzledHauntingAfricanharrierhawk

Improved Crowd!

Yes, we can finally say good bye to our beloved Amiga64 guys! :D
• Added more realistic 3d models.
• Added new gates to the colosseum.
• Optimized Colosseum stands polycount
• Made crowd face textures clearer.
• Skeletal meshes only tick when rendered. (Improves performance)
• Removed bones from fingers (Improves performance)

AI Improvements

• AI blocking improved! Enemies will now try to block the most pressing threat and respond better against two swords.
• Dodging
• Gladiators and sword masters will now try to dodge your attacks.
• AI Dodging behavior becomes more frequent on higher difficulties.
• Enemy kicks now push you away from them. This is especially dangerous in Day 4, as they can push you into the water.
• Unconscious enemies now take a random time to get up (between 2 and 3 seconds). This gives you more time to stab them or grab them while they are on the floor.
• Hits to helmets will only stun enemies if you hit them with the sword edge and with enough force (10 vs 5 before).
• Improved skeletons arm hitboxes.
• Improved reposition to attack to properly detect distance to player camera and always is triggered if you get too close to the enemy.

Day 4 Improvements

• Added two wooden boards hanging from the last ladder to provide cover from the archer.
• Fixed water particles continuously spawning after enemies falling into the water.
• Applied gravity to enemies in the water.

Improvements

• Made easier to behead gladiators. Relaxed a bit the angle and hit location requirements.
• Hold + Trackpad is now the default mode for new players.
• Added smooth turn as an option.
• Added speed slider to smooth snapturn.
• Added arena selection in the training mode. For now you can choose between the training arena and the colosseum. I plan to add the rest of the arenas in the next updates.
• Reduced Minotaur attack speed by 10%. Still working on this one though, not finished!
• Added a new option to make the helmet visible while you are wearing it. It´s OFF by default.
• Made easier to get close to the enemy. Reduced 20cm the safe distance to enemies to make it easier to get to them.
• Increased the minimum distance to register a stab instakill to 170cm.
• Added grab sound to bodies and weapons.
• Chaperone bounds now indicate forward direction, this makes it much easier to orient yourself in VR.
• Improved physics of bodies when falling to the floor.
• Added 50 angular damping to heads to make them more stable when they are dead.
• When you kill an enemy, he will always spawn a weapon if you are bare handed.
• Spectator and mirror screen performance improved. It still decreases the overall performance of the game, but the effect is less severe than before.
• Legionaries got a better (and lighter) shield! Working on making this one available at the market too.
• Grabbing weapons on the floor is easier now. Grabbing radius increased to 30cm ( from 20).
• "Only tick montages when not rendered" option applied to mesh crawler and crocs. This allows to have more enemies on the screen.
• Day 5: Changed skeletons for sword masters in stage 1.
• Added new section in the options menu to group combat settings.
• Added option to disable extra blood on strong hits.

New Weapons

• New Scissor! Available at the market for 15.000 gold (deals 45 damage). Special thanks to https://www.skipperrandd.com/ for this amazing model.

Fixes

• Fixed archer firing right after being killed.
• Fixed stones not doing damage when wielding them.
• Fixed duplicated hands when opening the menu and grabbing a knife.
• Fixed skeletons and mummies getting duplicated sometimes in the second stage of the Challenge Arena.
• Fixed enemies on the boat falling to the water day 4 before boarding.
• Fixed food falling from the boat.
• Fixed error that would register a double trigger if pressed in both controllers at the same time.
• Fixed arrow blood spurt not being attached to the body sometimes.
• Fixed recently spawned arrows not dealing damage.
• Fixed AI not aligning properly to player position when circling you.
• Fixed Hold grip would automatically swap weapons by just touching another weapon.
• Fixed text description of the arena menus.
• Fixed bug that would send 0 as a valid result to the chariots leaderboard.
• Fixed arrows still doing damage after they hit something and being completely stopped.
• Fixed cell´s music volume not being affected by settings.
• Fixed tiger attacking with a wrong orientation sometimes.
• Fixed quadruple clicks needed to reverse the grip when the weapon was initially grabbed reverse gripped.

This update is the first of a series of updates that will improve the combat engine and prepare the game for its official release from Early Access during Q4 2018. The work is now going to focus on improving two-handed weapons, making each weapon unique (special abilities, different values for stabbing, slashing and bludgeoning, and using any part of the weapon to inflict damage), the work on Day 7 and much more :)

As always please let me know what you think, if you find any bugs, suggestions, etc. here, in the forums or in our discord channel.
https://discord.gg/63PBXdQ

Thanks!