Development Log #45

Welcome once again to the weekly Development Log for Lionhearts, an up-and-coming project on Steam created using Unreal Engine 5.

Lionhearts: Melee is closer than ever to being released to our Kickstarter Backers as we prep the final pieces of polish, optimization and cleanup for release.

Firstly, NPC behavior has been improved. NPCs will no longer continue attacking an opponent once they are dead. NPCs now also move onto new targets if they are not targeting anyone.

Bow combat has also been significantly polished. We have fixed arrow fire direction being affected by the player character. Hitboxes to allow for shield to block arrows - this has worsened hit boxes in relation to melee combat, so a new solution is needed. The bow crosshair has been polished and we also smoothed out the shrink animation when charging. Lastly for the bow, we've provided a color change feedback for when an arrow is nocked

The Favor Tree has been overhauled, and progression is now automatic (you no longer need to select a new tier since there is only one pathway for the purposes of Melee). Our team has fixed some Favor Tree icons being white, implemented new Favor Tree assets and improved the overall look, feel, and navigation (panning and zooming) of the Favor Tree. The Favor Tree also now displays the favor cost of each tier, as well as what you unlock for each tier.

On the melee combat front, Guard Break is now possible when Parrying at 0 Block Defense. The team has improved the reliability of attack/block direction changing and fixed the crosshair direction sometimes not matching your attack/block direction. On top of this, we've improved the feel of the camera and mouse lock. The camera can now freely rotate about the character when not in mouse lock. The camera is now centered over your weapon as opposed to your head when combat locking.

Additionally, parrying now only takes half the amount of Block Defense damage as opposed to a block and we've fixed the hit marker effect only and always (no matter who is in combat) playing on the server host.

Continuing on, we've added a way to detect other characters as teammates. We've also fixed gaining favor from killing a teammate and being able to tab target a teammate. Team damage is now reduced by half.

Crouch is now toggled by pressing "Ctrl" instead of "C" (as combat lock now uses "C"). Crouch is now also disabled during combat (un-crouch when equipping, prevent crouching if a weapon is already equipped).

We've fixed non-wall arena objects not colliding with weapons, and the loadout UI occasionally not displaying loadout images. We've also added feedback for server browser refresh/search.

Lastly, some quality of life improvements to stamina. After 2 seconds of no movement (WASD), stamina will regenerate faster, and we've added a subtle crosshair change when moving to indicate a lower stamina regen.

Thank you for reading!

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