Its been an insanely busy month for us at Lunar Rooster, both on Sky Noon and setting ourselves up some events coming up this year. Big announcements time!
Unreal Dev Grant
We are honored and insanely grateful to receive an Unreal Dev Grant from Epic Games recently. We hope we can do right by the engine and brand as they have done so much for us over the last year with all kinds of support. Cheers folks!
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/epic-games-awards-over-200-000-in-new-unreal-dev-grants
NZGDC
We will be showcasing Sky Noon at NZGDC next week (September 7-8th) at the Bean Bag-End! If you are at the event, feel free to come have a jam or a chat!
PAX Australia
We are delighted to share that Sky Noon was selected out of over 100 games for the 2017 PAX Australia Indie Showcase, so we will be heading to PAX Aus in October (27-29) later this year! We hope to see you there.
http://aus.paxsite.com/indie/2017/08
Ability Crates
Now the announcements are out of the way, lets get down to the game dev.
Sky Noon crates are changing: Introducing the Ability crates. Sky Noon has always had random abilities, which alongside some other mechanics help create fast and dynamic gameplay. The original implementation of crates (a random ability and weapon from a single crate) created a few issues with players experience, low ability usage, player confusion and little player control over their current ability/weapon. By iterating on the crate mechanic we decided to give all abilities cooldowns instead of a finite amount. With this change we hope to make players more aware and active with their abilities. Alongside this we removed random abilities from crates moving them instead to their own ability crates. This gives players more choice by allowing them to pick up a new weapon or ability without sacrificing the other.
Ability Animations
We added an animation to the abilities being picked up from crates, as a visual indication of the players new ability:
Booster
Speaking of animations, the Booster ability now has one for use!
HUD Updates
You may have noticed from the gifs above, the HUD has received some updates! We’ve given a bit more focus to the abilities and weapons by placing them over the players hands, giving more screen space for the combat. The charges and cooldowns are reflected on the left side with the ability.
Custom Lobby
We’ve got a new Lobby! Step inside the Saloon and chill with your pals before the game starts.
That’s all from us for now, time to brush up some stuff for PAX! For those still reading, take a Desktop Wallpaper!
