Sumo Update #10 - Pre-Beta Polish

For this update, we’re pivoting to getting things polished and ready for an early access release candidate. Lots of bug fixes, balance changes, art polish, gameplay improvements, and more controls options.

New Features

Mouse Controls - The game’s UI and character controls now support Mouse and Keyboard rather than just Keyboard-only. Gameplay Mouse Controls Left Click can be used to Dash to the cursor location, and Right Click can be used to activate your character ability to the cursor location. Jump can be activated with middle mouse button or either Mouse 3/Mouse 4 (usually the first two thumb buttons on the left). Characters with channeled abilities will continue to use cursor location instead of keyboard turning if Right Click is used to activate. WASD is still used for character movement. Both forms of controls are automatically active and will seamlessly switch mid-game - try for yourself whether using mouse clicks or space/R for dashing and abilities feels better for you. Remapping controls will likely not come for awhile still. UI Mouse Controls All components of the UI are now usable with mouse-only. If mouse input is your preference, you can load up a match with AI opponents and get into a game without ever pressing the keyboard. Additional human players cannot be added with any other method than pressing start on additional connected gamepads.

Art Updates

Took a minor pass at the character shader, removing the contrasting gradient front-light, and reducing the thickness of the black outlines on characters. The goal of this was to make the characters feel more consistent with environment updates that took place this update. Naps has a new accessory - a pink flower attached to her head. Naps’ clones now no longer display either her earrings or the flower, and are 15% smaller than the real one, making clones easier to identify. If Naps is defeated and takes possession of a clone, the flower and earrings reappear, and she returns to normal size. A new wave of mixed and mastered sound effects have been added, replacing a bulk of the previous sound effects. More are on the way, and after all have been added, an overall volume mastering pass will take place. Until then, apologies for some sounds being louder than they should be. Opening ceremony nameplates are now dynamically scaled, so the text of a player with a long Steam name won’t run off of the backdrop paint splash. The current build number of your client is now displayed in the lower left corner of the main menu. The main menu background art now fades in on load rather than immediately clipping in, making for a better transition from the studio logo intro. Railway Rumble now has two train crossing warning lights on either side of the arena, giving a bit more heads up and an audio cue when a train has spawned and will be hitting the play space soon. All maps environment art polish - Added atmospheric fog and a light anti-contrast filter to give more focus onto the characters. Classic Map environment art polish - all-new foliage models have been added that divert away from the low-poly look, with animated grass and trees being blown by an ocean breeze. Added rocks to the beach, added some more mountainous islands in the background, and updated the water texture. Railway Rumble environment art polish - grass, rocks, and cacti have been added to the area where the Train appears. Lighting has been updated for the closing ceremony canyon scene and some additional foliage added to the top of the canyon. Water texture slightly edited to be a bit less transparent and less blue. WaterWorks environment art polish - Part of the surrounding rock landscape has been removed, allowing sight to a horizon and trees in the distance during the opening and closing ceremony. Metal pipes and valve assets have been added, and the main dangerous pipe has been updated with better textures and detail struts/connectors. Small waterfall rivulets have been added falling down the surrounding rock walls. Removed the treasure chest from the closing ceremony, it was out of place with the rest of the theme. Sumo in Space environment art polish - Reduced the brightness of background stars, updated lighting for the closing ceremony. Toned down and made partially transparent most of the particles associated with Chuf & Naps’ abilities to prevent them from being too obscuring. Changed the ambient character rolling sounds to more naturally wind down when a character steps off of or jumps off of an arena, rather than instantly clipping out.

Gameplay Changes

Using a Quick Dash to bump into another character now causes that character to receive additional physics force, twice as much as a normal bump. This gives more benefit to attempting a risky offensive bump. Rocky’s Boxing Glove ability no longer takes the same amount of time regardless of distance to travel to the end location (formerly resulting in slow punch-dashes when travelling only a short distance). Added a strong physics force to the front of the trains in Railway Rumble, making them fling characters in the way, moreso than what would normally applied by the physics system. Railway Rumble’s trains now continually spawn faster and faster for each train spawned, rather than the spawn rate only increasing when some of the platforms faded away. This causes the final phase of the arena to get much more hectic and dangerous, even getting to the point to where both train rails have incoming trains next to each other. Very careful maneuvering, including diving off of the rails to avoid a double-train and jumping back on, will be key to winning Railway endgame.

Balance Changes

Violet’s windup time for her ability has been reduced to 0.75 seconds (from 1.5 seconds). Pixie’s channel duration for her beam now lasts 2 seconds (down from 4). Zenryu’s area-of-effect targeting decal now moves 25% faster. Spectre can now move while channeling his ability. Channel duration reduced to 1.2 seconds (from 1.6). Intangibility buff duration reduced to 3 seconds (down from 5). Naps’ clones can no longer jump. They are restricted to Quick Dash only. Slightly increased the amount of height gained from a Jump.

Bug Fixes

Fixed all characters no longer being able to maneuver in air (including Spectre not being able to move at all during his intangible phase) Fixed collision issues causing small edges in the circles of the Classic map, causing small bumps and ridges when characters Quick Dash across the map. Cleaned up extraneous foliage appearing below the world in the Classic map. Fixed the Opening Ceremony camera having black bars at the top and bottom of the screen in all maps except for Classic. Fixed an issue where if a player left an online lobby, they would not be able to rejoin that same lobby. Fixed some visual artifacting that could happen with the UI transition animations, leaving little bits of an old UI still on screen for several seconds instead of fully wiping to a new screen. Fixed several issues with Rocky’s Boxing Glove not colliding properly with other pawns. Fixed an issue with Rocky’s Boxing Glove having collision as it is rearing back in the channeled animation for the ability. Fixed an issue with Spectre’s ability-end visual appearing whenever his model was spawned. Fixed an issue where Spectre’s intangibility did not make him lose collision with Railway Rumble trains. Fixed an issue that caused Railway Rumble trains to spawn at an inconsistent rate. Fixed an issue that caused characters in the score screen ceremony to not show certain visual effects, such as Boom-Boom’s eyebrow flames. Fixed an issue where the front-most character in the Score Screen would not be the ultimate winner of the game, only when a player reached the maxed points required to win AND sudden death was not triggered AND that player did not take first place in the current round, which ended up showing the wrong end-game victory panel for the player who really won the match. Fixed an issue where spawned Naps clones wouldn’t get cleaned up at the end of a round. Fixed an issue that caused Naps’ ability projectile-splash-on-impact VFX to be switched to green last patch. Fixed an issue where repossessing a Naps clone after dying as the real one would cause the Dash cooldown UI to not reset to its correct original position. Fixed additional local players and connected network players being able to add and remove bots. Only the host (or player 1 in local games) can do that now. Fixed a visual issue where Rocky’s Boxing Glove would sometimes teleport to the center of the map after connecting with a player. Fixed a visual issue where all falling rings after the 1st one in the Classic Map would not flash bright red just before falling. Fixed an issue where Sumo in Space’s background stars would raise in brightness over time. Fixed an issue where Naps’ earring physics would break during the score screen while floating in the background in Sumo in Space