Community Newsletter: October 4, 2024

Progress

• We’ve implemented a good chunk of our new in-game UI for multiplayer and networking activities. This UI can be accessed at nearly any time during gameplay and currently has 3 tabs:

  • Match Making

    • Lets you choose a specific game mode, queue up, and send invites.

    • A public matchmaking button which allows you to instantly queue up for a match of the selected game mode.

    • A private matchmaking button that opens up UI to easily invite the most recently logged in players, any online friends, or allows you to manually type in the name/tag of a player to invite.

  • Inbox

    • Allows you to accept/decline invites to matches, and in the future will also be used to invite for co-op play.

    • Allows you to manage friend requests from other players.

  • Friends List

    • Allows you to see a list of all your friends, manage them, and see when they were last online.

• The UI visuals in the video above are definitely still a work in progress, but being able to go from playing by yourself to starting an arena battle, all through the in-game UI, is a big step toward our next public release.

• After extensive bug testing, Windmill is very near parity with the current live account system and will probably be deployed this next sprint.

• NPCs are working properly in multiplayer. This included fixes to NPC target selection and ability aiming so that NPCs are capable of fighting host and remote players.

• We re-implemented round state UI used to visualize details about the current state of a PvP match, like player names, how many rounds each player has won, time remaining in the current round, etc.

• We also implemented arena boxes. These are storage boxes that hold 4 Kinfolk each. When joining a PvP match, a player can designate if they will use their currently equipped team, or a specific arena box team.

• We recently finished work on the visuals for a non-arena location that will be accessible in the Beta. You can see a small peak of this area in this twitter post from earlier this week!

Community

• We’re going to GDEX this year! Come see us in person at our booth from October 25th through the 27th at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Talk with the devs about Kindred Fates, enter a raffle for a free plushie, and even play an early version of the upcoming Combat Arena Beta with us! This version will also include some brand new content that has yet to be revealed.

  If you can’t make it that weekend, don’t worry, we’ll also be attending TORG, also at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, from November 1st through the 3rd.

  Hope to see you there!

Lexicon

The full lexicon can be found here.

• Host: (In P2P multiplayer) The player whose device manages the game world and sends data to the other player, making sure everyone is in sync. Also referred to as the server.

• Input: Any button press, mouse click, etc. that a player does to tell the game what to do.

• Local Client: The player who is experiencing the gameplay with their own inputs (ex. controlling a character with keyboard presses). When you are playing the game, you would consider yourself the local client.

• Networking: The process of sending data between machines so that people playing a multiplayer game together experience the same things at the same time.

• NPC: A non-player character.

• Remote Client: (aka Remote Player) Any player whose data is being networked across the server to simulate a character's actions. In P2P multiplayer, this is the opposite of the host.

Thanks for checking in on us! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on October 18.