(Boring) Update

For our first major update, I give you...mostly boring stuff. The next update will be more exciting, but this is the kinda work that has to be done.

UX IMPROVEMENTS

Our biggest change here is that I've completely reworked the Interact system. You no longer have to look directly at the interactable entity. Now, interacting is based on distance only. I also improved the readability of the tooltip. Incidentally, this means Mages can interact with their Snowman quicker, which is a kind of buff.

• Switching Heroes in the Hub no longer respawns. It just happens instantly now. This was actually a very tricky change, but it's a lot more intuitive/smooth

• New gameplay option: invert Y-Axis

• The 3D Leaderboard now has a fallback font for special characters. No more squares/blanks

• Expanded the Auto-Target system to allow for self-casting. This will be used heavily in a new character (soon)

• Expanded the Auto-Target system to allow for Neutral targets. Like, for example...the Orb

• Improved the overall Matchmaking error system, descriptions, etc.

• Fixed a tooltip error in Archer's Longbow

• Ensured mouse is locked to viewport in more menu types

• Simplified the toast messages/errors system

• "Out of Stamina" sound is now local-only

BALANCE

Not much here, just some minor changes to Warrior.

• AdjustedHeroic Leapslightly increased range & speed
• AdjustedInterveneslightly increased range & speed
• AdjustedWar Bannerincreased duration

• Mortal Strike and 1H combo swapped their effects; Mortal Strike now causes Exposure, and 1H combo now causes Bleed

• Thunderclap no longer Stuns; now it only Disables

MISC

• Completely reworked the material hierarchy as it pertains to dithering. This took forever but had to be done. Now we can dither things on a Material Instance level, rather than via our master material setup, which is far more flexible

• Created some new Actor types for moving and disappearing platforms. Why? You'll see...

• Deleted a bunch of now-unused UI code regarding loading screens & spinners

• Refactored a bunch of logic surrounding the effects Purge and Cleanse

BUGS

• Fixed a bug where the Arena round reset damage was technically avoidable

• Fixed a bug where Shield was not decaying properly

• Fixed a bug where melee attacks that used a cylinder trace were sometimes incorrectly registering as back-damage

• Fixed a bug where binding a key to F9 caused a small hitch. This was taking a screenshot--thanks for pointing this out

• Attempted to fix a crash caused by a corrupted Niagara System (was not able to repro though)

• Fixed some visual bugs with Cleanse/Purge VFX

• Fixed some visual bugs with Updraft

BACKEND

• Fully upgraded our EOS wrapper + SDK. This is in preparation of parties & group queue--both happening soon. This was a huge pain.

• Reworked our backend so that all Heroes are granted to all players upon login. This was a necessary change as we have a new Hero releasing soon, and the old setup has been deprecated for a while. This is also technically a bandwidth optimization as there it means fewer backend API calls

• Rather than manually granting, Heroes now come with a default loadout (which for now is just a Wave emote)