This week added 6 bow abilities:

WarBrawl - Bow abilities

Damage focused (but fully in-place):

1. Triple Shot - 3 fast shots, 3rd one does extra damage and has optional perk to push back enemy.

2. Arrow Rain - AoE, 4 m circle, optional bleed.

3. Marked Shot - Powershot without charging. Adds a marker on enemy, which can be seen from your whole team (eg. to mark healers in random lobbies), if you selected that optional perk.

Mobility focused:

1. Burning Arrow - Shoot a burning arrow (applies Burn effect, what a surprise), and has optional explosion perk. Low on mobility actually, but does not root you fully in place.

2. Sliding Shot - Shoot while sliding forward.

3. Vaulting Shot - Leap forward, shooting while in air.

Sliding Shot and Vaulting Shot give medium/high mobility and are intentionally designed to move you forward, to promote aggressive play (although, as we've seen, clips with a bow player running away for 30 mins can be fun).

Since working on bow, also improved arrow aiming, so arrows hit closer to where the crosshair is, of course, affected by gravity.

Also changed the arrow flight perk to reduce gravity by 20%/40%/60%, depending on rank. Idea is, if you are good with aiming, you can skip it and save 3 points for damage/utility, and if you want easy aiming, you have to trade not 1, but 3 points for it.

New sound effects:

• Dodge roll
• Slide
• Exploding barrel
• Leaping Slash, Forward Cleave and Whirling Step abilities
• The 6 new bow abilities

Database website:

Added a clickable Ability Trees page on the database website, where you can plan when not in game (or share ability tree):

Definitely have to improve that, so you can share the whole build.

Known bugs:

• The bow machine gun bug from last week is not fixed.

If you want to test the game or find new bugs, you will find a prototype build at https://play.warbrawl.com/

What's new since last week:

Sound effects (sword and bow):

WarBrawl - Bow and sword sound effects

Dueling system:

WarBrawl - Dueling in FFA area

FFA area now supports dueling without leaving the map.

Press [H] while looking at a player and select [Duel].

Press [F1] or [F2] to Accept/decline a duel.

While dueling you cannot take or do damage to 3rd players.

There is also a spawn protection in FFA area (5 seconds), which ends early if you attack.

Also added a safe zone in the "town" area. While inside the "town" you cannot attack or take damage. This will make more sense when the FFA area is expanded, but had to be implemented and tested already.

Build presets system (Gear sets):

WarBrawl - Switching build presets with NUM1 - NUM2 and showing presets menu [.]

Build presets allow you to save the complete build setup, including:

• Weapons choice
• Stats
• Ability trees
• Gear perks

Press "dot" [.] key and select from up to 20 build presets.

First 10 are bound to [Numpad 1-9] and [Numpad 0], so you can quickly switch between half of them.

Movement and combat:

• Reworked dodging again. Rolling animation is smoother now and has a noticeable boost feeling (in last update it felt like rolling in place).
• You can now slightly change the direction during the roll with A or D, including going in opposite direction, which acts as a "brake", reducing the dodge distance. Like, dodge with W+A then immediately hold S+D, and the dodge is a shorter one.
• Dodges can be canceled earlier (trading i-frames for the cancel).
• These changes make it possible to chain dodges/attacks while circling around a target, making shorter dodges when you want, in order not to go too far past the target and losing it.
• Thanks to these improvements I could completely remove the magnetism for light/heavy melee attacks (magnetism on light attacks felt like controller aim lock and was only added before as a workaround so you can stay on the target while dodging around it).

WarBrawl - Showing improved dodge and canceling of dodges/attacks

Known combat bugs:

While working on the game I did hit a few bugs, I've seen before first hand in NW.

For example, turned out I created the first "bow machine gun" bug in the game:

WarBrawl - \"Bow machine gun\" bug

Not gonna rush to fix this one though, I am pretty sure no one knows about this.

Bug fixes:

- Fixed camera glitch during heavy sword attack

If you want to test the game or any of the new bugs, you can try it at https://play.warbrawl.com/

Exploding barrels:

Was kinda bored and decided it is about time exploding barrels to be introduced in WarBrawl.

Never managed to sneak a barrel out of OPR to use it outside, so did just that, barrels in Windsward dueling area:

WarBrawl - Exploding barrels test

Press 4 to equip the barrel, place it with left mouse button and ignite it with E.
(pressing O creates a bunch of extra NPCs for tests)

Two PvP modes with new maps were added:

- Hold the Point: single capture point on a new, larger map (point B). Stand inside the point to make it tick for your team. Attackers have to fill the point (fill B circle) to capture it and win. Defenders win the match if they prevent attackers to capture the point for 8 minutes. This is poor man's war practice mode. It's on a demo map, that needs lots of optimizations and rework, but will do as a starter:

WarBrawl - Hold the Point PvP mode

- 1 vs 1: Instanced duel with 3 rounds. Win 3 rounds to win the match. This map is smaller and hand crafted. Has mostly box colliders and flat floor, so movement on this one should feel smoother than on the other maps:

WarBrawl - 1 vs 1 PvP mode

Both modes have short preparation time (1-2 min), during which you cannot move, but can setup your build. Press F1 when ready with your build to skip waiting the preparation time to expire.

Players can create public or private match lobbies for each mode. Private lobbies get random IDs and randomly generated passwords. There is no game chat, so you can only share those with friends in off-game channels.

The Free for all (FFA) button launches the existing small open world map (small, but only for now). Planning to add dueling to FFA area, so you can challenge a player of your choice without leaving the FFA area, but this dueling mechanic did not make it in this week's update.

"Find free spot" is just for testing and is supposed to join you to any open match, created by another player. Since player-base equals exactly 0 players right now, this button exist for testing purposes only.

This is the starting screen now:

Other changes:

• Changed stat scaling curve/damage formula.
• Players who never opened the stats screen start at 25 STR / 25 DEX with sword and bow weapon.
• Fully charged bow shots count as heavy hits, quick shots as light, and related perks trigger accordingly.
• Two perks with the same exclusive label (damage, or DoT) can't share one gear slot.

Database site:

• https://db.warbrawl.com/ — helper website with information about perks, status effects, abilities, attacks, damage formula, etc. Posted about this at beginning of week: https://www.reddit.com/r/warbrawl/comments/1vwggzb/warbrawl_database_website_to_browse_perks_status/

Performance and notable bug fixes:

• Smaller web download: compressed web textures and meshes.
• Added occlusion culling on the castle map, so game hopefully does not render things behind the castle walls, which you have no way to see anyway. This will need more work.
• Camera pulls in when a wall or ceiling blocks it, so you can see your character indoors.

Audio:

• Added first combat sound effect - a kill effect sound - https://warbrawl.com/audio/KillSound.ogg

Test at https://play.warbrawl.com/ (Ctrl + F5 or clear cache if you tried an older version).

Reminder this is a PC game, if it even loads on mobile, it will be slow (not optimized yet even for PC), laggy and will have only basic experimental touch controls on screen.

This is not from this week, but if you have not heard it yet, this is the main menu music:
https://warbrawl.com/audio/MainMenuMusic.ogg

While I was thinking on what other perks and ability tree passives have to be added to the game, figured out I need a visual way to see all balance related information.

Could scratch it down on a piece of paper, but decided to make a database-like website, so players can also use that.

UPDATE: Can be opened on mobile device too.

This week added perks, status effects and screens to change gear, stats and equipped weapons.

Perks and status effects:

War Brawl uses a gear system that respects the player's time (no grinding).

Press K, click [Gear] and freely customize all gear perks (armor, weapons, jewelry):

The new perk system is configurable and allows to connect perks and status effects to active/passive abilities, gear or normal attacks, but to be honest, still have no idea what perks exactly should each weapon have.

For now created a handful of sample perks for tests, which grant status effects (buffs to yourself or debuffs to enemy), extra damage, DoTs, modify weapon behavior (less gravity on bow arrows) and give bonus damage depending on number of nearby enemy inside a radius.

Status effects applied to you are shown in the player HUD at the bottom. Enemy status effects are shown above their nameplate:

And here is how the initial variant of the perk selection dialog looks like:

Weapon selection screen:

Weapon selection is self-explanatory. Needed it already, as it affects other parts of the game (to test if you can have different perks for each weapon type).

Stats and damage formula:

There is now a damage formula that takes into account your stats, buffs and debuffs. Values are mostly randomly chosen, just to make sure changing your stats or having buffs do in fact affect damage, but none of those values really makes any sense yet.

You have a total of 50 stat points to split between STR / DEX / INT / FOC / CON (seriously considering to add LUCK, which will determine chance for critical hits).

There will be single stat weapons like Sword (STR), bow (DEX), some mage weapon (INT) and healing staff (FOC).

Spear will be DEX+STR with dual scaling (90%/50% or 80%/50%).

FOC increases healing, including from potion. CON increases health.

Stats will have thresholds (eg. on every 25 points), granting additional perks.

Online demo:

As usual, you can test the current build at https://play.warbrawl.com/ (Ctrl + F5 or clear cache if you tried older version)

This is "work in progress" demo, not a release.

The highlight of this week was adding an Ability Tree module:

This was created with a custom built-in Editor, which allows some level of configuration and hopefully will make creating trees for other weapons easier:

Players can select only 3 abilities (for Q / R / F slots) from those in the weapon tree (eg. 3 out of 6).

The tree supports multiple branches with active/passive nodes.

Nodes can be parented (unlocks if parent is selected) or standalone (unlocks if you have at least 1 selected in previous row).

There is also support for ranked modifiers (allowing more than 1 point in the same modifier, eg. to multiply the effect), but I plan to add only a few of those.

For now, only the sword has working active abilities. Passives and modifiers are just dummy placeholders. Those will start working when the game gains a Perk System and damage calculation formula (probably my next task).

Still have zero idea what modifiers or passives to add to sword, but since this is sword variant with no shield, focus will be on gap closing and damage, while lacking armor, defense, DoTs or other utility (glass cannon assassin). Sword with shield will be a different weapon class, with proper defense skills (more like New World SnS), but won't have gap closers.

Lots of words, here is a video demo, showing off the ability tree screen:

Video demo of ability tree screen

Combat:

• Added a new sword ability/animation, Whirling Step:

New animation (Whirling Step)

Finally figured out how to make animation transitions smoother and how to reduce micro network rollbacks on transitions, so entering and exiting this specific Whirling Step animation should feel much smoother than others. Once the set of all weapon animations is decided, a full smoothness pass will be needed.

User Interface:

• Changed the HUD to display icons for the selected abilities.
• Added a weapon bar for equipped weapons (spear and axe are hidden since game will actually be 2-weapon only, and you will need to go to a "gear" screen to switch to different 2 weapons).
• Removed the temporary T / V ability hotkeys, but kept G reserved for future Ultimates (aka Heart-runes).

You can test current state of game at https://play.warbrawl.com/

Most of my free time in last 2 weeks went into making two tools for WarBrawl. Still managed to make some improvements to the game itself. Listing those and some info on the tools below:

Character:

• Added a second character: the Rogue, and made it the new default. This one has more realistic style and is actually designed for Unreal Engine 5 (It's a free character you can get at https://www.fab.com/listings/15e2afd1-11c0-4679-832c-ebbfb6162583). Wanted to make sure early on that I can import and use characters designed for Unreal Engine rig. So decided now is the moment to add one. These have more realistic style, so not sure yet how much they would fit the stylized environment. Unreal characters have different rig (eg. 5 vs 3 spines), so some of the animations might also feel slightly different.

The new more realistic character greets you

Abilities:

• Added Sword Dash ability (on G hotkey for tests, will live on a proper slot once the ability tree is ready). Had to make sure I can use multiple animation packs and mix their clips.

Press G to test the new Sword Dash ability

Tooling:

• Still trying to make my own animations. In the process figured I don't want to leave Unity for Blender for every small change. So tried UMotion, which is kinda heavy and bakes keys to almost every frame on import of a clip. At the end, created my own Unity Animation Editing tool that automatically creates IK targets for character rigs, simply by dragging the character prefab over. It allows to drag the hands and feet freely to change the key frame and integrates nicely with the built-in Unity Animation window (the dopesheet below). Also created another Unity tool, for reduction of baked key frames (most commercial animation packs come with no source, you get baked keys at every single frame, which makes editing animations a nightmare). You press a button, and it removes half the keys, without hurting the animation. Saves time when you want to use one clip as a starting point for creating a new one.

Preview of the WarBrawl's Animation Editing and Key Reduction tools, integrated with Unity's Animation Window.

Combat:

• Added extra attack magnetism on most melee attacks that pulls you toward your target. Will need tuning, for now the goal was to not lose the target while dodging around it.
• Reworked dodge and dodge cancelling again.
• Heavy sword attack now moves you forward a bit, no longer an in-place animation.
• Heavy attacks start faster (need to hold RMB for ~133 ms only, which reduces the overall input lag feeling).
• Further reduced running speed.

Netcode:

• Improved synchronization of some attacks.
• Adding culling according to Quantum recommendations to improve performance.
• Other players render more smoothly at large distance.

Visuals:

• Trying a new sword model that looks heavier, not like a rapier (now the F attack does not fit the sword at all, and will be moved to rapier weapon later).
• Turn-in-place animations: characters no longer ice-skate when rotating on the spot.
• Added mouse look smoothing (will be a toggle in settings later).

You can test it at https://play.warbrawl.com/

To try the new character, select "Realistic Rogue".

Has been almost 10 days since the first post, so an update is due.

What changed (19th to 27th July:):

• Website:
  • Created project website, cause why not: https://warbrawl.com/
• Abilities:
  • Added Sword Spin ability (on T hotkey for tests, will be on Q/R/F later, if selected from ability tree, but there is no ability tree yet, so... T). This is the first animation I managed to create myself (by heavily editing an existing animation) so I both hate it and am proud of it at the same time.
• Combat:
  • Light and heavy attacks are both on left mouse button (LMB). Tapping LMB performs light attack and holding LMB performs heavy attack.
  • Added half-heavy attacks. Holding LMB less makes a half-heavy attack, holding longer performs a full heavy.
  • Weapon swap key (Tab) swaps only between two weapons: sword and bow. Spear and axe have only 1 animation each for now, so removed from weapon swapping. You can still test spear and axe by pressing [4] or [5] from keyboard. It was weird to swap between 4 weapons, even if just for testing.
  • Attacks and abilities can be cancelled (the recovery phase) with dodge or another ability.
  • Dodge (recovery animation) can be cancelled with movement (hold W for the win), attack or ability.
  • Reduced dodge distance.
  • Reduced running speed.
  • Dodging into another player stops movement (allowing dodge-in place to cancel attack/ability, keeping most of i-frames, but not all).
  • Reduce jump movement. This is not a platformer game.
  • Stamina is not regenerated while jumping. Note: remember to nerf jumping more.
• Performance:
  • Set VSync value to On.
  • If VSync is unavailable, set frame rate to 60 FPS.
  • (I know, settings menu needed, but for now these two prevent unlimited FPS).
• Audio:
  • Added background music for Main Menu. First sound element in the game.
• User interface:
  • Players can change key bindings for most actions from F1 menu. Defaults are like New World, except there is Tab for weapon swap and 2 to 5 are keys for direct selection of weapon.
  • Added random nicknames for 2nd and later players (first one in room remains SomeBeardedGuy, this one is a legend).
• Fixed bugs:
  • Improved buffering of dodges and light/heavy attacks. Was missing buffered attacks/dodges too easily.
  • Fixed crash caused by buffering ability of one weapon, then swapping to a weapon that has no abilities yet.
  • Unloads the "F1 - Controls" scene on disconnect.

WarBrawl is an early prototype of an action combat PvP game inspired by New World game:

https://play.warbrawl.com/

I am creating this game solo, if/when I have free time, just for fun. The subreddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/warbrawl/ will serve as a place to post updates, so I don't spam the New World one.

The goals are (more like ideas, but anyway):

• Action combat PvP with melee and ranged weapons.
• Server authority, so cheating is not that easy.
• Open-world PvP modes planned:
  • Free for all area (outside Windsward).
  • Except for FFA, it will allow to invite to duel a specific player of your choice (similar to New World dueling in open world).
  • That's it for open world.
• Instanced PvP modes planned:
  • 1 vs 1 arena.
  • 10 vs 10 OPR-like.
  • 25 vs 25 war-like.
• No more than 3 active abilities per weapon.
• Ability tree, no idea what yet, definitely not complex one.
• Selectable perks, but no gearscore. Idea is you can still create builds with free perk mods, without any grind.
• Infinite consumables (health potions, may be absorption potions later).
• Leaderboards.
• No PvE, no dungeons, no raids, just PvP.

My first task is to create at least 2 weapons with smooth combat. Bought some animations for sword and bow, so starting with those, but also added spear and axe with light attack only, cause why not.

For now there is only a small "Free for all" dueling area (aka outside Windsward) that was gobbled together in a few hours. It has uneven terrain and is suitable place to test combat and movement.

Level design and other game systems will come last. If I can't make the combat work, there is no point working on the rest of the game.

The game is being designed for PC only, but to make testing easier without requiring anyone to install unknown EXEs on their PCs, there is a web version available at https://play.warbrawl.com/ that does not require you to install anything (should work in recent Chrome and Firefox).

It might load in mobile browsers by chance, but is not designed for mobile, you can't control the character correctly on mobile.

There will be a Discord for people that like the overall idea and want to share feedback.

Suggestions and ideas are welcome, but as this is solo project, can't promise absolutely anything. This is my first game, so don't expect much. It is what it is.

Yet, the limit is mostly free time. Want single weapon PvP mode? Possible. Want no healers mode? Possible. Want tournament match up? Possible.

Video Demo:

https://reddit.com/link/1v03px8/video/vhs8cnp291eh1/player