Community Newsletter: September 25, 2020
over 3 years ago – Sun, Sep 27, 2020 at 07:46:27 PM

PROGRESS

• The development team has been busy implementing  large portions of the game’s user interface, including party customization for kinfolk and their abilities. They’ve  also made great strides in the systems that initiate and end gameplay, including an initial login screen, starting new matches, resetting the game state between rounds, and spawning a new party member after your currently active party member is KO’d. We say it a lot, but it’s really feeling like a game now!
  
   
• We've also continued steadily implementing new abilities for all the Kinfolk that will be in the Combat Arena. The animations and visuals for each of these abilities are individually tuned to fit each Kinfolk that uses them, so that combat feels intuitive and satisfying.

• The QA Team is firing on all cylinders! Long standing bugs are being rooted out and fixed by the dev team faster than ever. While there will no doubt be new issues discovered by the community once the alpha is live, we hope to have all the major bugs squashed before then.
  
   
• The tree models for the forest arena have come a long way these past two weeks! We tried some new methods for the modeling that look very promising! We’re getting started on adding them into the terrain now.
  
   
• The scenery for the Ruins arena has passed a new stage of completion! We’re entering the final stages for this arena, and it’s coming together beautifully!
  
   

COMMUNITY

• Production is continuing on-track for the Awburn plushies! They now have attached tags with our logo, and we’re really excited about how official it looks!
   

• In order to receive your plushie, you’ll need to make an account on our website and fill in your address info. Be sure to use your email associated with your Kickstarter account!

• Our website has received a plethora of new update:
  
  
   -We added the gifting functionality! Now it’s possible to do everything from giveaways of game packages to sending a copy to friends and family. You’ll find this button on the bottom of each package in your account inventory on the website, but be sure to read the warning text before you press send to make sure you get all the details right.
  
  
   -There should be fewer situations where you can accidentally lock yourselves out of accounts or otherwise having your details “disappear”. Many of the situations which would previously create a separate account before have now been fixed to use the old account.
  
  
   -Squarespace’s connection to the account system has been improved drastically. Expect future purchases to show up quicker and with more consistent accuracy in the account system.
  
  
   -We have internally worked on a lot of tools to unify the account system with your in-game preferences, team list, and statistics. While currently only our internal QA can use this feature, expect to see more on this as we get closer to the alpha! Our goal is that the account system provides a unifying identity for you both in-game and on the website, cleanly and effortlessly synchronizing data between the two.
  
   
• A huge thank you to Ruffled Rowlit for joining us last week for Kindred Talks 7! We had a great time hanging out with everybody, as always. If you haven’t listened in yet, we highly recommend that you check out the video here!
   

• For our next Chill With The Devs stream, we’ll be playing Among Us! We hope to see you there Friday, October 2nd at 3pm EST on our Twitch channel.
   

Thanks for checking in! We’ll see you next time, on October 9!

Community Newsletter: September 11, 2020
over 3 years ago – Sat, Sep 12, 2020 at 10:10:25 PM

PROGRESS

• The development team has been beefing up the combat system! This includes implementing new base classes for attacks such as CallDownBase, SelfSpawnBase, BeamBase, and VolleyBase. At this point we have roughly 3/4ths of all attack base classes complete.
  
  -Projectiles have received several core improvements, such as allowing multiple in-flight projectiles from the same user, more realistic ranged combos, and allowing different speeds for projectiles.
  
  
  -Dodging now grants invincibility frames, and displays a white VFX. We’ve also added transition animations to characters for various state changes (walking to running, idle to walking, idle to running, etc.)

• We’re making great strides on the user screens (loading screen, main menu, character loadout, and ability selection). We’re also working on the functionality that will allow users to save their settings in the settings menu.
  
   
• We’ve improved our Build system to make it more predictable and fault-tolerant. In the same vein, we created a build that allows our sound effects artist to test the sounds more efficiently!
  
   
• All three arenas have seen some major progress these past two weeks:
  
  
  -The Ruins set piece models have been placed in the arena! We’re pretty happy with the layout, it really ties the place together.
  
  
  -The river has been adjusted and tested to account for depth in the player area- no drowning Kodokis here!
  
  
  -Tree models for the forest arena are underway! These aren’t quite your average trees, so we’re working especially hard to get them just right.
  
   
• We’ve added upgrade functionality to our website account system! If you want to add to your current package, you now have the ability to do so! We plan to add the gift-giving function after we’ve made more progress on the necessities for the Alpha arena. If you have a desperate need to send a gift before then, feel free to reach out to [email protected]!
  
   
• Last but certainly not least, a new QA tester has joined the team- none other than Rob and Andrew’s dad, Rob Sr.! We’re all thrilled to have him on board.
   

COMMUNITY

• In last Friday’s installment of Chill With The Devs, Rob, Andrew, and Neev faced off against community members in Pokemon Showdown! As always, you can find the video on our secondary Youtube Channel.
  
   
• Our next stream will be Kindred Talks 7, with someone very special to our community- Ruffled Rowlit! You can tune in to watch live on Friday, September 18th at 3pm (15:00) EST on our Twitch channel.
   

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you next time, on September 25!

Community Newsletter: August 28, 2020
over 3 years ago – Sat, Aug 29, 2020 at 03:46:03 AM

PROGRESS

• Combat testing is really ramping up! When testers play the game, the server now chooses one of the three combat arenas to load into.

• All 3 arenas now have terrains in various stages of development!
   

• The design team is planning out the combat UI design. We’re trying to keep things minimalist while still making sure all the information is easily understandable at a glance.
  
   
• One of our concept artists unfortunately had to relocate due to the wildfires in California. She has updated us that she’s settled in and able to start on her next concept piece. The entire team is thankful that she’s safe.
  
   
• The development team is continuing to implement new attacks, built off of existing attack base classes such as MeleeBase, SkillShotBase, SpawnBase, and HomingBase to name just a few. They’ll continue expanding the variety of available attacks all the way until the alpha arena’s launch.
  
   
• The game configuration screens are now in development! This includes screens for matchmaking, settings, and party customization. We expect them to be ready for internal testing in the next few weeks.
  
   
• We have upgraded to the latest version of Unity's NetCode and everything continues to feel responsive -- a big relief since this was a big change for NetCode.
  
   
• As of this newsletter, the first version of our website's user account system is live! You are now able to create an account on our website and manage information about your pledge(s). Click here to get started! Be sure to check your account inventory- If you notice any discrepancy, please let us know at [email protected] or send us a support ticket on our Discord. We’re currently working on adding upgrades, and plan to have them implemented within the next week. We also know that users are excited about a gift-giving feature, so we hope to release that before the alpha combat arena.
   

COMMUNITY

• The Awburn plushies have officially started production! The next steps will be the final   manufacturing completion date, as well as the first off the line quality check. We’re hoping to begin shipping in late October!
  
   
• Last week on Kindred Talks 6, we sat down and talked to our newest developer, Joey! You can find it on our YouTube channel if you missed it.
  
   
• Our stream next week will be Chill With The Devs 6! This time, we’re working with the discord mods to decide how best to entertain you! Keep an eye out for an announcement on our Discord and Twitter for more information.
   

Thanks for checking in with us! We’ll see you next time, on September 11.

Community Newsletter: August 14, 2020
over 3 years ago – Sat, Aug 15, 2020 at 01:49:50 AM

PROGRESS

• We’ve seen huge improvements in the performance of our servers over the past two weeks. The devs have optimized code that was previously bogging down server speed as they added players to a match. They’ve improved the networking code as well, making it much more reliable when the network drops packets. They also fixed a critical issue that was causing inputs to be dropped frequently. Multiplayer is starting to feel pretty darned good!
  
  
• Concept art for the overview of each arena is nearing completion! 2 of the 3 pieces are all the way finished, and the final one is expected to be finished within the next few days!
  
  
• The design team has mainly focused on creating the terrain for the Ruins Arena. It’s been a more in-depth process than we initially expected, but we’re learning a lot about how we can improve the terrain for the full game!
  
  
• This week, Kayla returned to our team after a fellowship with another studio. Just in time! Now that we have a sizable stockpile of 3D Kinfolk models and some set piece concepts prepared, both of our modelers have shifted focus to creating set pieces for the various combat arenas. The animation team has also finished all the animations required for the upcoming alpha!
  

• Testing on the user account system has started! We plan to have this feature of our website available for everyone by the end of the month. Now that development on the account system is coming to a close, Joey is shifting gears to work on in game UI, kinfolk movement, the many abilities required for the alpha combat arena.
  
  

COMMUNITY

• The Devs and Discord Mods had an awesome time playing ARK for you guys last week! The all-Mod team took back their honor against the (mostly) dev team and won the community a few more coveted pieces of concept art!
  
• We’ll be announcing more about our next Kindred Talks stream within the next week; be sure to keep an eye on Discord/Twitter for more details!
  

Thanks for checking in with us! We’ll see you next time, on August 28th!

Community Newsletter: July 31, 2020
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 01:01:39 AM

We hope you enjoyed our community celebration earlier this month! Because of that, this newsletter will cover updates from the past month instead of the past two weeks.

PROGRESS

• As of this update, every kinfolk you’ve seen concept art for has been modeled in 3D! Animations are currently underway for Gladias and the King, and Slyphur’s animations have recently wrapped up!

• Work on the official soundtrack has started and we’re really excited about the progress! The menu theme is going to be a certified bop. There’s also been a lot of great progress lately on the games sound effects.

• Earlier this week, we officially welcomed Joey to our dev team! He’s been hard at work creating the website’s account system, and as he finishes that up he’ll be joining the other devs in writing code for Kindred Fates!
   
• We’ll be entering the testing stage for the account system within the coming week, and hope to release it soon!
  
   
• The design team spent a lot of time this week on sculpting terrain for the Alpha arenas. We hope to to treat you to some breathtaking views as you knock the breath out of your opponents!
  
   
• The development team has a variety of different abilities working, all of which are are now properly synced between the client and server. Party member switching has also been implemented and is synced between client and server too. In addition to this, the dev team spent a good amount of time getting Playfab to work properly, so that servers running in the cloud can host games.

• July has been an important month for determining the the combat arena’s estimated release. We’ve been planning ahead lately, and it’s become apparent to our team that releasing the Alpha Combat Arena in August would require us to cut some of the features we had planned. Rather than paring down the content in the first publicly playable version of Kindred Fates, we’d prefer to take the time it will require to finish these features. Specifically, more playable kinfolk, more attacks, and more arenas to play in.
  
   
• We’re expecting to release the Alpha by November at the very latest, but it could reasonably be sooner. We’ll continue to update you about the release date as it becomes more concrete. Thank you all so much for your patience. We promise it’ll be worth it!
  
   
• It’s come to our attention that we mistakenly left the Kickstarter-exclusive Founder’s hoodie in the packages on our website store. It was originally listed alongside other exclusives on the website as a part of our late-backing stage, and should have been removed at the same time. However, we’d still like to reward those who pre-order the game with a special cosmetic. Therefore, anyone who's purchased a copy of the game through any platform (including Kickstarter) will now receive an exclusive Forebears’ hoodie. This will be included in every purchase of the game until launch. This also means that those who backed and late-backed our Kickstarter will now be receiving both the Founder’s hoodie and the Forebears’ hoodie. We’re really sorry for the confusion; if you have any questions feel free to reach out to us at [email protected].
   

COMMUNITY

• The team has given the final pass on the Awburn plushie! We’ll be moving onto next steps very soon. We expect to be shipping them out in October!
  
   
• Great minds think alike! Some of our community members released a wonderful video celebrating the anniversary on July 3. Thank you all so much for celebrating a special day with us. It brought more than a few of the team members to tears.

• We had the best time talking with our artists Don Pablo and Cookie on stream last week! How did you like those animation bloopers? If you missed out on the fun, you can watch the stream on our YouTube channel!
  
   
• Our next Twitch stream will be Chill With the Devs 5: The ARK Rematch! The devs and Discord mods will be returning to ARK to play a round of capture the flag. This time, they will have 3 hours before the stream to build their bases, and then an hour and a half on-stream to duke it out! More information about the date and time will be released this week on our Discord and Twitter.