Hello friends!
Long time, no update! Before diving in, we just want to thank you for your patience. As a very small team, we wear a lot of hats — from design, art, engineering, networking, and testing, to social media management, content creation, and webmasters with a blog that we sometimes push to the furthest backburner.
To have members of our community interested in the goings-on of development at a more intimate scale is something we’re really grateful for. And it’s something we want to continue cultivating and growing. So thanks again for sticking with us, even during the more quiet months!
Without further ado, here goes with a mega three-month wrap-up!
The Great 2020 Refactor
We’ve been quiet, but it’s not for lack of progress. We’ve been busy migrating the entire project to a new engine version and codebase.
We know that “refactor” is not exactly a word that gets crowds cheering, so we’ll spare you the most technical and boring details of this massive but important effort. So here’s the short-and-sweet summary, and what it means for Highpoint right now and in the future:
- The majority of the game’s programming is now written in C++, which gives us much finer control over the way the game behaves and operates, and also “unlocks” a lot more of Unreal Engine’s amazing capabilities for us (and you!)
- We optimized the flippin’ technobabble out of the game, meaning it now runs a heck-of-a-lot more efficiently and consumes way less network bandwidth than before
- A lot of the game’s code is significantly simpler compared to before, which means it is now easier for us to maintain and build off of, and less likely to generate bugs for you and your friends
- Many of the individual systems we’ve created, like the customization system or the emote system, are now way better organized and easier for us to create content for — which means more and better content for you, and sooner!
- And of course we fixed approximately 1.46 billion bugs
With the refactor now pretty much complete, we’re excited to start moving forward again on a lot of cool new features and content. And we’re especially excited about resuming regular playtests to try out this new stuff — playtests that will gradually include more of our amazing community members like you!
Dynamic, Physics-Based (and Partnered!) Emotes
We’ve added our second emote, and established a new baseline of interactivity for emotes going forward.
The Bow Emote, while classy, was more a proof of concept for us — press a button, see an animation happen. Simple, but effective!
The new Hug Emote uses completely new functionality. ‘Lighthearted Physicality’ is one of Highpoint’s core principles, and we want our emotes to share that principle as well. We want players to have the agency to use emotes when and as they please, and in ways that feel dynamic and expressive.
When it comes to creating new emotes, animation comes first, and is usually pretty straightforward. In this case, we used a target “dummy” as the recipient in our animation. It was a cylinder named Bilbo.
We didn’t need to be perfect with posing. Since we’re using live physics on our characters to help bring them to life, they nicely interact with the bodies of the other player characters once we tune the numbers right.
The engineering aspects come next. For this emote, we wanted to introduce a totally new “two-phase” process: first, you start the hug (phase one), and transition to an open-arms state where you can move around the field looking for a friend to hug. You can hug anyone — teammates and opponents, and from any angle. They also don’t even have to hug back (but, c’mon, they definitely should). Once you nestle up against a friend, the actual hug begins (phase two), and much adorableness is enjoyed by all.
We had a blast making this emote, and it is the benchmark for how we want to approach new emotes going forward: nothing static or canned, something that feels customizable in play, something you can do with your friends, and something you can laugh about when the result isn’t what you were expecting!
Plus, now that we have support for both single-phase and two-phase emotes, we’ll be able to more easily add more emotes of either type in the future! (If you have any suggestions for what we should add in next, let us know!)
Hot Bot Sports Academy
We converted Highpoint into a Romantic Visual Novel game for a day.
Though we were keeping busy with other things back in March, we knew April Fools was right around the corner, and we had an itch to have some fun with some niche game genres. We’ll probably never develop a dating sim or visual novel, so we felt that “making one” for April Fools was our chance to dip our toes in and play!
This all pretty much speaks for itself, so here’s a couple additional pieces of media. We had a lot of fun with this silly mini-project and were so glad to see it resonate with so many of you. Enjoy!
Work In Progress
Here’s a sneak peek at some things we’re working on that aren’t quite ready for the big-time.
It shouldn’t surprise you that we have a huge list of notes, to-dos, and upcoming features. One of the first things we’re tackling on the gameplay side of things is our endzone-to-goal sequence.
After some broad testing, we felt we could improve this endzone sequence, specifically the audiovisual feedback during the “capture/activation” phase. Some new players previously missed the 2D radial progress meter in the center of the endzone, or otherwise didn’t seem to understand something was happening in the endzone at all — and so they would carry the ball past it before it was fully captured, and even attempt to score before the goal was ready or in range.
To refresh your memory, or in case you’re new (hi!) — players need to hold the ball in the opposing team’s endzone for 6 seconds before it becomes “active” (or “captured”) and raises itself (and everyone on top of it) upward toward the goal. This is a period of giddy tension, survival, and confrontation.
We’ve realized that we can do a lot better at communicating the “stay in this area for 6 seconds” requirement without needing to explain it explicitly, so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re still working through concepts but we wanted to share some progress with you.
Our first test borrowed from one of our themes, emphasizing that the endzone needed to “charge up” before lifting to goal. But the motion and glow of the particles were far too distracting during play.
We continued to iterate on the progress meter, eventually expanding it out of 2D space and into 3D. We realized that adding some volume to the meter improves readability in general, especially for players at the boundary of the endzone or closer to the goal. Players can still move and pass through the new meter’s “holographic projection,” and it’s much easier to see than our prior version from every angle.
We getting closer, but we know there’s still plenty of work to be done. Rest assured that we’ll share more updates with you about this redesign as we get further along!
Farewell For Now
Well, that’s the entire mega-super-post, all wrapped up! Thanks for reading!
Furthermore, we really want to thank everyone in the community, and recognize our recent growth and thank everyone who has shared us and helped us get to where we are. Since February, we’ve more than doubled our follower count and have recently welcomed a bunch of new friends from the Rocket League and Smash community. As always, your support means so much to us, and we plan to share much more with you soon!
Much love! Stay safe and healthy! 💗
—The HIGHPOINT Team