Yesterday we released the third alpha of Alita: Unbreakable Warrior. Since from the first alpha to the second one there have not been many changes, we will compile all of them in this blog post. We are proud to announce that the gameplay is finally stable and the game does not crash in the middle of a combat, for example, as it used to happen. The only known crash happens when the play button is pressed very fast after the main menu has been loaded, but we will fix it in the next build. Besides this, this is the last build in which we were allowed to add new content, so we have implemented a lot of unfinished stuff, like the second level and the final boss.
Combat:
- Improve our own Steering Behaviors (correct movement and avoidance)
- Use different Steering Behaviors depending on the situation
- Enemies Frustum Culling when they spawn and die
- Improve the AI (not very intelligent but not very silly)
- Improve the combat (interaction between Alita and the enemies)
- First implementation of the boss
- Alita can die
- Skilltree
- States system
Effects:
- Add more ambient sounds
- Improve characters’ audios (e.g. left and right step)
- Implement narrative’s audios
- Volume control
- Add shadows under the characters
- Smoother camera follow
Map:
- Second level mockup
- Model and texture the terrain for the second level
- Model and texture the valve, some bridges, some rocks, and more props for the second level
- Avoid repetitions of buildings in the first level
- Some doors close and do not open until all the enemies have been cleared
- Implement the narrative of both levels
- Implement the valves puzzle in the second level
- Add cinematics
UI:
- The texture of the mouse cursor changes depending on what is hovering
- Main menu
- Pause menu
- Each enemy has its own lifebar
- Floating damage animation when Alita hits an enemy
- Enemies drop items when they die
- Alita can pick items dropped by the enemies
- Inventory
- Equip and unequip items
Other:
- Fog shader
- “Behind walls” shader
- Blood disappears with alpha
- Flash when an enemy is hit
We will release the next build on the 05/19/2019. As you may be expecting, during the following weeks we will finish the started stuff and start polishing everything that we have added in the game so far. Iteration will be key in achieving a nice balance in the game, so we will be releasing a lot of builds with different settings in terms of tweaking parameters. We will also have some testing sessions to gather feedback about the game and be able to iterate it and iterate it until we achieve something fun.