Community Update - Modern Ballfare v3.5

HELLO, CALL OF BEAUTY FANS!

This started out as several seperate updates focusing around community requests. But just like in true Indie-Game-Dev fashion, the changes and improvements grew and grew and grew! So we've just wrapped 'em all up together instead. In summary, this update features a whole bunch of consistently requested features such as: Controller Support, Key Rebindings, flags from around the world and history, as well as a heap of bug fixes and improvements called out by you!

NEW FEATURES

Okay, so, some bad news first... The plugin we were using to help us keep track of the Steam leaderboard entries fell down, fell down pretty hard, and would keep falling down in a way that could cause the game to crash a lot. So we had to rip that out and make our own system. This means that hooray the game will crash a lot less, buuut it does also mean we have had to reset all the Steam leaderboard stats. This kinda sucks, and we are sorry about it! This won't affect any of the your saves (xp level, unlocks, etc) though, only the server side data like total kills, deaths, and things like that.

To make it up do you - who am I kidding; we were already making these things for you already - we have all these awesome new features:

Key Rebindings!

You can now remap (nearly all of) the keyboard and mouse inputs to be whatever you want! So now if you have a fancy pants keyboard with accented letters you can now use those instead.

Or if you just personally hate me and the control layout I worked so hard on you can use your own! :P

Partial Controller Support

You can finally use a controller!! They only work for match gameplay; meaning you can move, aim, attack, use skills, etc - but you can't use a controller to navigate the UI for the time being. You can't rebind the controller inputs either yet, but there are a few settings for tweaking how it feels.

I know this looks like normal gameplay and the buttons still show keyboard keys, but this is footage of me playing with a controller, I promise!! In fact, all the gameplay footage in this update is of me using a controller.

Discord Announcer Bot

To help players find matches and add an extra layer of transparency, a bot will post notifications in our Discord server when matches are hosted. Demonstrated in this image by the lovely Alsacer:

You Can Now Spray

When throwing your poop at the wall just isn't enough, you can now spray it over the wall too ;)

Added A Crash Catcher

Although we've spent a great deal of time fixing crashes and optimising the game as much as we can, there is always going to be some crashes that sneak through. This is where the Crash Catcher comes in! Once the game has fully booted any crash after that point should be caught and then you'll be presented with a screen that gives you some error codes. If you then report those codes to us we have a much better chance at making the game even more bulletproof!

We don't have any footage of that, so here's an unrelated and mega-compressed gif:

NEW BALLSKINS

Picked from community requests!

• Principality/Kingdom of Montenegro (Smoki / SvrakaSaGrane / YourLocalGypsy)

• San Marino (ÆK47)

• Kingdom of Armenia (Dr Wondertainment)

• Qing Qynasty (Milk Tea)

• Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (Srebrny)

• Tibet (Milk Tea)

• Kalmar Union (Sword_Head)

• Catalonia (NECO ARC GAMING)

• Bulgarian Empire (Pug)

• Tsardom of Russia / Russian Tsardom (OwlKitty_SoccerChamp)

• Pride (Thisnamesucks)

• Aaaaaand a very special Srebrny flag for Srebrny!

NEW ACHIEVEMENTS

All artwork is hand-drawn by our lovely community!

• Balls VS Zombies (By: deb)

• Yet Another Day In Hell (By: alex006)

• Oh, I’m on fire now (By: Dootzy)

• Welcome Back To Hell (By: Alsacer)

• Balls Rising (By: Srebrny)

• Pump n' Dump (By: Alsacer)

• The Next Memecoin (By: Alsacer)

• Ya'know, I'm Something Of A Badass Myself (By: Alsacer)

• Ding! (By: Srebrny)

• WHO are you (By: EAK)

• HOW could you! (By: T-14 Armata)

• Happy Second Birthday To Me (By: Sword_Head)

• I Love Negotiations (This one doesn't have any art yet, if you want to get involved then join our Discord and draw your favourite ball!)

Thank you to everyone that sent their wonderful art for us to use!

TWEAKS

Re-worked, improved, or reinvented game features!

• Added further performance optmisations to Winter Valley to help make the game a bit smoother when on lower graphics settings (For example the dynamic snow is now disabled when the graphics are set to Low in the Options. For users like 'V0ID').

• We've changed the way the game sets the default screen resolution when you first boot the game. So now new players should have a mildly easier time getting in and shooting balls instead of fighting graphics settings.

• Spitfire skill can now lock on to bot enemies.

• Tweaked the rocket launcher in Balls From Hell so it no longer pushes friendly characters when they are caught in the blast radius.

• Flipped Poland back after the flip schenanigans from a while back...

• Updated a bunch of visuals on the zombie ball characters in preperation for the upcoming Zombie Update ;)

• Added a slight knockback to players that get parried.

• Revised core bot melee behaviours (e.g. the way they engage enemies, attack, and block).

• Added more bot melee rules tied to the difficulty. For example now the higher the difficulty the better they are at blocking melee attacks!

FIXES

Fixed embarassing parts of the game that crashed, broke, or otherwise looked balls!

• Fiiiiinally fixed an issue where the UI screens could get stuck off screen if you navigated too quickly like the pro you are!

• Fixed an issue where the Gameplay Settings wouldn't persist across game sessions.

• Fixed an issue where the framerate could drop significantly when respawning.

• Fixed an issue where you players couldn't block bot melee attacks

• Fixed an issue where the server browser wouldn't display servers when you first enter the screen.

• Fixed an issue where the jetpack sometimes wouldn't display on characters when equipped.

• Fixed an issue where the Pinata map would sometimes display with incorrect object colouring.

• Fixed an issue where the chance of a Golden Pinata was dramatically reduced.

• Fixed a bunch of spelling errors throughout the UI.

• Updated a bunch of UI descriptions to be a smidgen more helpful.

• Fixed an issue where the Winter Valley landscape in the Host Game screen could cause game breaking errors.

• Fixed an issue where the explosion marks in the maps wouldn't display correctly.

• Fixed a bunch of issues around colour of name tags for friend and foe characters. So now it is more likely to show enemies with red, and friendlies with white name tags.

• Fixed an issue where terrain from the previous map was sometimes incorrectly present during Pinata Time.

• Fixed an issue where the equipment cooldown could get stuck.

• Fixed an issue where the Main Menu could display a weird thick line in the background in some locations.

• Fixed an issue where some UI titles could disappear if you died with the menu open.

• Fixed issues where the player could sometimes get stuck without a weapon when spamming skills. I think this can still appear occastionally in Hacker Mode when you go absolutely nuts.

• Fixed an issue where the Windows Taskbar icon could display incorrectly.

• Fixed an issue where the match kill limit wouldn't display correctly when using the Cycle game mode.

• Fixed a bunch of issues on BunkerTown to reduce the amount assets 'pop' on view distance threshholds.

• Fixed an issue where purchasing the 'BillyBigStick' perk in Balls From Hell wouldn't immedately apply the weapon scaling to the equiped weapon.

• Fixed an issue where some zombie abilities wouldn't display their activation particle effects.

• Fixed an issue where players could sometimes kill themselves with melee swings.

• Fixed issues around zombie flying enemies and how they would incorrectly teleport around the map.

• Fixed an issue where you could purchase the 'Second Birthday' perk twice in a row, causing you to have the first known instance of a double birthday!

aaaaaaaaand as per usual, probably loads of other things that we forgot to track and add here too :)

If you made it this far, congratulations, we still love you, and wish you a Merry Christmas! ❤️ The Modern Ballfare Team

If you have any suggestions, questions, or find any juicy juicy bugs that need a good ol' squish then please get in touch at modernballfare@gmail.com or by joining the Discord server: https://discord.gg/xbseaXmM65