#hellsplumber

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I’m sure you’ve noticed in previous posts that player characters have simply faced the direction they’re firing, regardless of which way they’re moving. Luckily this was just temporary until I figured out how I wanted to have them aim. I’ve worked on it a little and come up with this! It’s far from complete but it should give you the basic idea of how they’ll aim.

If you’re not shooting they’ll run around like normal, but if you fire they’ll rotate their upper bodies to aim at their target. 

It feels a lot more natural than constantly facing the way you’re firing. This is the case for lighter single-handed weapons, at least. Gattling Guns and other heavy weapons won’t leave you with as much manoeuvrability.

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Again, sorry for the lack of updates! Along with being busy with things in the real world, the project hit a snag in the Multiplayer department which brought progress to a crawl for a while.

But this doesn't mean nothing has happened. In fact, it’s been a long time so quite a bit has! So I'm going to keep things organized.

Online Play:

After finally finding the issue that had been holding me up this entire time we successfully connected two players over the internet!

This has been enough to prove to me that the networking solution I'm currently using is up to the job and lots more progress with online play should follow.

Login Screen:

Since the last update I ditched the minimalistic design of the login screen to something more colourful since that’s what the game is about, right?

Characters:

I've also added some inverse kinematic features, giving physics to the characters tails and properly placing feet on uneven surfaces as you can see below. This may seem like an entirely aesthetic change but their tails play a vital role in gameplay.

Mini-Games:

I want to ensure there’s plenty to do with your hard-earned in-world money, other than shopping. So I’ve been working on a few things for an Arcade!

Firstly is a claw machine game. It’s likely that you’ll be able to win accessories for your character or home from it.

Another is a simple gacha machine, capsule machine or whatever you call it! This will be another chance to get rare accessories.

Other Stuff

I've done some work on another weapon model which I’ll reveal once it’s complete, but it’s back to working on multiplayer for me right now. See you later!

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Sorry for the lack of posts, I’ve been having trouble with my .gif creator and Tumblr’s upload limitations. 

Here’s a couple of login screens for Aquars Beta! I’m not sure which I’ll use, so feel free to let me know your preference! The top one is the most recent resign, using simulated 2d fluid physics. I’ll probably add a few more layers for depth in the future.

The bottom one is the older one, with a simple scrolling background featuring a few in-game team colors.

I’ve been thinking about combining the two, but that may be a little graphics-heavy for a login screen...

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Worked on some UI today. This is an early version of the weapons menu in the Practice Area of the weapon shop.

It slides in from the side and out of the way so you can freely change weapons while trying them out. Eventually the weapons will be tabbed into categories for easier browsing. There’s also a little currency tab in the top right that displays when outside of battle.

All of the weapons are automatically added to the menu by the game (which was way more difficult than it should have been, Unity...), which keeps things nice and simple when it comes to adding new weapons!

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A few progress shots at last!

I've done a LOT of work on the weapons systems recently, the most notable of which is what I call “Aim Compensation”. As liquid weapons aren't quite like real bullets, Aim Compensation arches your shots to make sure they hit what you’re aiming at rather than falling short of the target due to gravity.

The rest of the work has simplified the how the weapons work, and pretty much automated the process of adding new weapons.

The menu in the top left is for debugging only, but it shows the game pulling all the available weapons from it’s files and automatically adding them to the UI, allowing you to switch between them on the fly. This is the basis for how the weapon store will work.

And with the weapons system completed I was finally able to get around to adding weapon damage and health! As you can see in the gifs, each weapon now deals it’s own amount of damage.

To top it all off I was able to fix some major bugs that would have made things impossible down the line. Gun shots were only visible to the players that shot them, and shots weren't colliding with Skinned Mesh (other players).

All in all, things are going well!

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The future’s bright!

I've been working on a few environmental props such as AC units and signs. These are small pieces that will make the hub world (second picture) feel more realistic and alive.

Graphics wise I've redone the lighting so Day and Night both look realistic and redone the paint shaders.

On the coding side of things, a lot has happened. We now have a patching system that keeps the game up-to-date by pulling and installing patches from a server. We also have a login system so you can play from anywhere and keep your levels, items etc.

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I was working on the sound effects for the Canadian Gatler and decided to switch the spin-up sound with a song. Mine Turtle by LilDeuceDeuce to be exact.

I MAY replace the discs with records/vinyls and let it be the Splatoon equivalent to the Dubstep gun...

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Well this totally happened on my Twitch stream today. Rain Maker is the most intense Ranked Battle mode yet! 

When I’m not working on games I’m playing them over there. Needless to say, I’d appreciate any follows over there!