Pre-Alpha Playtesting

Hey everyone!

I have reached the milestone for this year with Mayhem Arena!

The Main menu is now the way I want it to be, bar the camera angles and the like. The buttons and their animations are done. :P

There are also a lot of tweaks that I made within the gameplay:
- items now have a drop rate mechanic
- recoveries from blasts are not abrupt anymore (you will keep the momentum even after recovery)
- explosions are reworked
- camera shakes when you're close by an explosion
- HUD reworked completely

And quite some other things, which I either talked about as well, or am forgetting right now, because it is quite late whilst I type this out :P

Here is the YouTube video of my playtesting:

Hope you enjoy!

Consider subscribing to show me support! :)

I'm sorry for the low quality video. My laptop is pretty powerful, but I suppose running all of this when recording is too much for my old laptop to handle. 

As you can see, each map will hold a maximum of 8 fighters, AI and real people combined.

I was actually struggling playing this. Not because of framerates and such, but because this game is still tough for me (as I debug cheated to quickly debug all kinds of things :P).

Seeing all the explosions around you, and hearing the AI scream their statements constantly makes it, to me, really enjoyable. The ragdolling through the sky add some comedic effect to everything too.

All the items, AI, item generators and everything works so well with each other and it makes me feel really proud. If I can make the AI stop kissing one another, and added a jumping mechanic for them (I know how, just need to set it up) and make their actions feel really fluid, then a match will run as smooth as silk.

I haven't implemented Multiplayer yet, but I really cannot wait to add it! I am actually planning on adding that at the end of the deadlines I am currently facing with University. I will have to follow one of my courses again that is specifically about multiplayer, so that'll be covered soon enough. :)

Anyway, it is the Holidays pretty soon and I won't be doing much on Mayhem Arena for now. I will also have to work on some modelling for an university project, and animations for another university project. That deadline is nearing, as it is in January (R.I.P.) so that will be my main focus for now.

At least with the modelling and animating I might get enough experience to apply that to Mayhem Arena, and actually make some nice characters with nice animations for the game, which is desperately needed I'd say! :P

I'm also really happy to see in my version control, SourceTree, that I have just made my 95th commit. That is quite close to 100 iterations, and that is actually baffling!

I started developing this game begin March this year and it literally started with the default map of Unreal Engine all the way up to this point. I'm suffering from the same ailment that every developer has or will face, and that is for the project to lose it's "magic". I'm glad I haven't given up on Mayhem Arena, because even though some parts during development have been a big pain in the behind, the end product is really worth it.

I hope you who is reading these development blogs feel the same enthusiasm as I do. It is honestly quite hard to get myself to be known and out there, since the traction is very slow. I want to make this my living so I can provide for my family, so if you could share my work with as many people as you can, that would be extremely awesome and I will be forever grateful. :)

If you want to playtest this version of Mayhem Arena yourself, then you can download it through here!:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oj89sxi1qf93595/MayhemArena%20v0.3.zip?dl=0
I also found out you do NOT need a Dropbox account, so downloading it will be a bit easier I suppose!

I haven't got a feedback form set-up for you guys, but if you find something you want to share with me, or just talk to me, tweeting or commenting is a good way to approach me. :)

Make sure to read the README file in the .zip you've downloaded, the (newer) controls are explained there, with some playing tips & tricks. :)

I hope you have a happy holiday, and a great 2019 (which has to be the year this game will be released in!)!

~ Joris