New Physics, Graphics, and a Demo

We've been pumping hours into just about every aspect of Rocket Balls (other than the derpy gun and name). Since it's introduction, we've updated visuals twice and made UGE improvements to the behavior, UUUUUGE! Let's start with visuals, shall we?

We're going to ignore the fact that we need a gun right now and just take a look at the basic textures:

• New menu screen
• New blue and red floor textures
• New wall colors
• New goal ball textures and cool light properties (red glow on red side, blue glow on blue side)
• New bullet texture with weird glowing crystals
• General revamp to the camera for clearer and cooler everything

Here is the comparison:

Menu - Old vs New

Textures - Old vs New

In addition to the visual updates, we've made adjustments to the controls and player physics. The player is now twice as tall, which really changes a lot. Visually you can see the map much clearer and you can get more vertical with your jump. Also, we've added a double jump system that makes navigating the map much easier. Additionally, we made some big changes to the gravity behavior. Previously, gravity effected all objects equally. Having the player float as slow as the balls got annoying, especially when you are suspended after a double jump; sometimes it would feel like you were just waiting to land. Now we have per object gravity multipliers and the player is pulled down about twice as fast as the balls.

Another feature we added was Growing Goals. The goals now resize to just barely fit the largest projectile for each team. Because of this, you'll want to conserve your shots. Additionally, your projectiles can be returned to your own goal to be destroyed and your goal will then resize accordingly.

That's all for now folks! We think our changes are improving the feel of the game, but we don't want to take our own word for it. We're looking for feedback all the time. Feel free to Download Rocket Balls Here and let us know what you think. We're still working on our networking system, so please bear with us, as this is a Single Player Only build. Finally, we are working to get some AI completed so you can play this without having to wait for us to finish our networking. We're hoping to have the first demo ready in 2 weeks time (read 2 months time). We'll see how things go. Until then...

Happy Rocket Balling!

P.S. I am getting better at shooting the high goals, or maybe not.