Alpha 1.21 - I know kung fu

Developer commentary:

First of a couple updates focused on fulfilling Kickstarter rewards! The first two are both kung fu styles. Kung fu styles are generally difficult to translate to game mechanics, since modern kung fu is usually focused on form and performance rather than combat application. There also isn't a lot of detailed English material explaining techniques beyond surface-level overviews, let alone their historical evolution and usage. This is not even to mention that a lot of unarmed kung fu forms have their roots in weapon based forms, resulting in a lot of movements with little to no tangible unarmed combat application. How I ended up approaching this was to try to focus on gameplay-defining passive abilities, while taking a bit less inspiration from their actual movements.

First up is shequan, or snake style kung fu. This style is about coiling up, building up power, and then unleashing it. Snake style often sticks very low to the ground, so its passive has a large charge speed bonus while completely crouched, but at the cost of completely removing your movement speed. The intention is to feel like a snake, poised to strike. Another thing I'm pretty satisfied with is the particle effect that indicates the current charge of its passive, where they look like little snakes circling the player.

The other new style is changquan, or long fist kung fu. This one is about large, powerful, long range movements. One of its most defining traits is how acrobatic its performances are, and I decided to give it some incentive to actually use its acrobatics outside of just mobility by giving it a temporary power boost after using its aerial.

Fun fact about changquan: it's actually existed in the back of the game's code for a very very long time, but it was never really anything more than an enum with an frontflip/backflip animation that was non-functional from a gameplay perspective. Anyway, I repurposed a bit of that animation code for changquan's aerial, otherwise it would have taken even longer than it did, and it already took about 2-3 dedicated days of work for the animation and functionality alone.

Anyway, not much else to say right now. The next few updates will be Kickstarter reward and story related, and I expect that the final update of the alpha will be "Tower Mode", which will be functionally similar to Arcade, but it will operate more as a series of gimmicky challenges instead of randomly generated infinite waves.

-Dan

-New fighting styles:

-Shequan (snake style kung fu)

-Charge up a multiplier for your next attack up to 1.5x at max charge (indicated by the intensity of the particle effect)

-While crouching, it charges at full speed and takes 2 seconds to max charge. Standing fully up charges it at 1% speed.

-Cannot move while crouching.

-Changquan (long fist kung fu)

-Forward jump is replaced by an aerial

-After finishing an aerial, you get a temporary buff which increases damage and speed.

-You can extend the buff by swapping between landing punches and kicks.

-New moves:

-Snake strike

-Long range arm strike, thrusting your entire body forward.

-Double snake strike

-defensively drop to a low stance, turn, then strike with your arms in both directions.

-Snap kick

-Low damage kick, with only 50 damage compared to the roundhouse 80.

-However, is much faster and hits slightly higher, allowing head kicks on targets that are not fully standing up.

-Palm Strike

-low damage, high knockback punch

-Split Strike Kick

-High kick to the front combined with a palm strike to behind.

-Palm strike does half damage, but has the same knockback as the kick.

-Gameplay changes

-Enemies now can hit each other with melee attacks.

-Stomp speed increased

-Base ragdoll time increased by 50%

-Lower leg damage multiplier reduced back from 75% to 50%

-Made minor/physics updates for roundhouse kick, high kick, low kick, push kick, knee

-Adjusted flying kick again

-Blocking now includes legs for every style, but muay thai's is still stronger

-Added a 0.05 second keyframe pause on the strike animation of most moves

-Reduced dummy movespeed by half

-Reverted arcade mode to give a reward every round instead of every other round, but also increased difficulty

-Story mode enemy spawn groups remain large, but spawn intervals between groups has been increased greatly

-Arcade mode is locked until the tutorial is beaten

-Story mode is locked until arcade mode level 5 is beaten

-Added experimental "teammates" you can spawn in the sandbox mode.

-Visuals/UI

-Renamed "Training Mode" to "Sandbox Mode"

-Sandbox mode now has a "Clear all enemies" button

-Replaced the cat notification with a generic icon (I have been meaning to do this for a long time, but I forgot until now.)

-Updated adrenaline shot visuals

-Hit and block particle effects slightly more randomized

-Updated controls to make them more clear

-Fixed legs being too thin when stretched further

-Added more relevant information to the tutorial.

-Removed instructions page, since it was outdated and also time consuming to keep up to date.

-Bugfixes

-Fixed some issues with limb thickness when being stunned/ragdolled

-Fixed some upper leg collider issues

-Fixed enemy present limb bend direction not matching its enemy future

-Fixed character current HP not displaying in the map screen

-Fixed present enemy limb thicknesses not being updated properly

-Fixed some animation issues with enemies being stunned where they would flicker and not start their walking animation after being un-stunned

-Fixed the jab in the jab combo being too slow since it used the combined jab/hook timing

-Mod icons now showing the correct level

-Fixed arcade mode enemy spawn behavior not stopping after exiting back to the main menu

-Parrying attacks now properly reduce balance damage

-Perfectionist no longer resets if you parried the attack

-Enemies no longer sometimes desync their facing direction and what direction they think they're facing

Alpha 1.21.1

-Adjustments

-Stomp damage scales with size

-Set ragdoll time back to original 100% duration from 150% duration

-Removed horse stance punch availability from high front sector and nerfed energy cost

-Gunner boss has larger gaps between bursts and now has a 15s reload time

-Adjusted anti-clustering movement to make it less jittery and also decreased the spacing to 75% of what it was.

-Added "Clarity" tracking, which is currently functional but disabled until some playtesting is done.

-Walkspeed now scales with size

-Walk animation moves feet up a bit more

-Bugfixes

-Fixed issue with present enemy spazzing out with turning infinitely

-Fix or heavy reduction in limbs moving extremely far in the opposite of intended direction during an animation

-Anticlustering works properly with target finding, instead of always being based on the player

-Stomp speed now properly scales with character speed

-Fixed base y position being broken if knocked down mid-aerial