Progress

General

• Most of the progress this past few months has been focusing on implementing keroair and all the new bugs he brought along with him. Keroair’s design required adding some new features to the system, and as always that came with some new desyncs that have been particularly tricky to debug. As more characters get added, this process should smooth out since we’ll have to add less each time, but this one has definitely taken a bit longer than we’d have liked.

• That being said, this newsletter will mainly focus on Keroair and his design in game, as well as showcase some of the new things we’ve added to the combat system like “Flow”. Keep in mind that the art is still in progress here so animations/models/vfx are subject to change!

Keroair’s General Design

• Keroair is a high aerial mobility, glass cannon Mythren that likes to keep its foes at a distance. It doesn’t have many mix-up opportunities, but the few it does have are quite potent for setting up powerful, high damage combos. Keroair excels at ranged combat and staggering its projectiles, always keeping the opponent on the backfoot and off balance. Keroair is a quick and elusive threat while in the air, but his grounded movement is limited through the gaps between his hops.

Keroair “Jabs”

• Keroair’s jabs are a bit on the slow side, but have a lot of knockback and work well when you’re stuck on the ground and need to create some space. While these are useful tools, his heavy’s are definitely where his projectile strength lies.

In the air however, Keroair’s jabs setup for larger combos through extended range, and the ability to bounce opponents off of the ground. The last aerial jab also makes for a nice finisher to create distance.

Keroair Heavy

• Keroair’s heavies are his bread and butter. He has a series of 5 heavies in a row, with the last one being a large projectile with a lot of damage and knockback. These are used to keep opponents away, and in general make for good combo and pressure tools. These are what keroair will probably use unless an opponent gets too close.

Keroair’s Special

• Keroair’s special is a tornado that he places on the ground. He can press special again to fire the tornado in the direction he originally placed it, but if he’s in the air it will come back towards him. If special is not pressed after a few seconds, the tornado will fly in the direction it was setup towards. The tornado grows larger as its building up, so choosing when to fire it can have an impact on combo setups.

Keroair Skills

• Skills are the primary use of “Flow” which is a resource used from Trainer to mythren that allows them access to powerful skills. These are generally very versatile, and allow you more freedom in your combos and movement. The video below will showcase Keroair’s skills since going into detail would take up a large part of the newsletter, but you can think of some use cases after seeing them in action!

Note that we’re still playtesting and tweaking things in the combat, so things will definitely change, but hopefully this gives you a good overview of keroair, and some of the things we’ve been working on.

In the next newsletter we’ll be breaking down another combat design, and as always thanks for your support!

Other

• Aidan wrapped up moving into our new movement system. He has been editing the scripts to make sure everything flows smoothly and working on getting the shaders working right. When we moved the prefabs over, it did not transfer the scripts correctly, so we will have to rebuild it. The custom toon shaders we made are throwing errors on the new versions of unity and need to be upgraded to the newest version of the Universal Render Pipeline.

• Hallie has been working on finalizing concept art for the training equipment.

Community

[Rivals of Aether 2]

• Rivals 2 is the sequel to the hit indie fighting game, Rivals of Aether. they've been working on this game behind the scenes for the last 3 years and need your help to get it across the finish line. With Rivals 2 their goal is to create the next generation of platform fighter. One that both satisfies the masters of the genre and is fun to play for newcomers. Rivals 2 is taking all of the lessons they learned with Rivals of Aether, and expanding their horizons with new modes, mechanics, and even better online support.

Their kickstarter will be ending in just 5 days, if you want to show some support now would be the time!