Balloon Blast update for 1 May 2021

New Knife Fire System

The fire system has been overhauled. The knife movement has been smoothed on clients. Prior to this update the knife would jitter considerably on clients but now it's buttery smooth.

General Changes

• Removed mini map. People weren't really using it and it felt weird and out of place. If there's demand I'll work it and see about re adding it.
• A draw condition. Draws were very unlikely but they did happen. Now a draw results in an actual draw condition. Prior it would give the win to blue team since they were first to get checked in the win check functions.
• Rotation speed scalar removed while charging. Prior your rotation speed would scale with however long you were charging your shot for. Now it's a set value immediately after starting the charge.
• Did a lot of network optimizations, in general gameplay should be smoother.
• Updated translations
• Max fire range has been reduced by 30%. It was far too easy to camp double point zones and snipe people as they were approaching.
• Decreased the distance at which you could pickup your knife.
• Pressing escape will now clear all HUD elements and rebuild necessary ones.

Bot Changes/Fixes

• Bots are generally far more aggressive.
• Bots will now have a 50/50 chance to target players who have popped their balloons.
• Bots will now retrieve their knife before returning to spawn.
• Bots now have a 1 in 3 chance of continuing to chase players once they (the player) leaves the double point zone.
• Bots now have a 1 in 3 chance of continuing to chase players after their (the bots) balloon has been popped
• Fixed a bug that could cause a bot to switch between going to spawn and the double point zone in rapid succession.

Some New Sounds

• A knife pickup sound.
• A knife swoosh sound as it flys passed the player.

Fixes

• Fixed a scoring bug that could cause a team to gain extra points if there were too many bots on the opposite team.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a fired knife to fall through the ground.... Mostly.
• Fixed a bug that could cause a knife to not despawn after pickup.
• Fixed the warning beeps if a player doesn't have a balloon after 70 seconds. The sound will now destroy itself properly and will now stop if a player obtains a balloon during the sound.
• Made all clients display whether they have a knife or not more consistent.
• Fixed jump pads causing some FPS drop.
• Fixed a bug that could cause joining clients to not get a gameplay UI.

Thanks again for all your support! For those of you who bought the game check your knives for a special skin. Thank you!

-Leland <3