Road to Battle Royale ?

Many updates since the last blog post are present! Inventory & Pick-up system have been implemented. Deathmatch mode is already in place. New map available. And much more!

Pickups and Inventory

Pickups

Pickups are here!
You can now pick up, drop and exchange items with your teammates, and/or loot the dead bodies of your opponents.

For now there is a limited selection of pickups available (only guns, ammo and health kits), but this will grow as we implement more weapons and features.

Some pickups can be picked up automatically just by running through them (e.g. ammo), and don't require an inventory slot, but some need to be explicitly interacted with, using the interact key (E), to pick them up (e.g. guns, health kits, etc).

Spawners

Pickups are usually spawned by spawners, that are scattered throughout the maps.
Rule of thumb is: the more risky or hard-to-get a spot is, the better the pickup type will be.

Spawners can create only one or multiple items at the same time, and usually respawn a new item after a certain time period (could be random or set to a specific type or item).

Inventory

The new inventory system allows the player to store items in order to later use or consume them when required.

You can store up to 5 items at a time, or more if they are of the kind that can be stacked.

Stackable items take only an inventory slot (up to a maximum limit), and may be consumed individually.

You can drop an item from the inventory by pressing the drop key (X).

Items that were dropped from your inventory retain the characteristics (such as amount of rounds) from before.

When you get killed, all the inventory items are dropped to the surrounding area, and can be picked up by another player (or yourself).

New Weapons

There are new weapons available, and you can now switch between them.

Each weapon has different characteristics (reload time, fire rate, caliber, etc), which should provide nice variety and more strategy options than before.

For now only the following bullet-based guns are available:

Pistol

The pistol fires a small caliber round, but has a pretty fast fire rate and reload time.

For now, it only supports the semi-automatic mode, but burst and fully auto will come next.

Revolver

The revolver fires a large caliber round that does great damage, but is slower to reload and holds way less rounds.

Shotgun

The shotgun shoots different pellets at the same time, which can be devastating at close range, but gets unreliable at greater distances, since the pellets scatter in random patterns.

Sub Machine Gun

The sub machine gun fires small caliber rounds, but at a very fast fire rate.
Small caliber bullets are usually more readily available than the larger types.

For now it supports only the full auto mode, but burst and semi-automatic will be available soon.

Assault Rifle

The assault rifle fires medium caliber rounds at a very fast fire rate, making it one of the best weapons in the game, if you can find the appropriate ammo for it.

For now it supports only the full auto mode, but burst and semi-automatic will be available soon.

Sniper Rifle

The sniper rifle fires a large caliber round at a great muzzle velocity that does great damage, but is slower to reload, and supports only one round at a time.

For now there is no scope mode available, but we will implement it soon, which will make it even more lethal!

Damage System

The damage is currently a combination of the ammo type (bullet, laser, plasma, etc), the ammo caliber (small, medium and large) and the body part where the hit landed (external limbs, internal limbs, torso, head, etc).

We're thinking about adding some other multipliers to the mix, such as muzzle velocity, so that high powered weapons (such as the sniper rifle) can make more damage than other weapons that fire the same ammo but at a slower rate (such as the revolver).

Archetype System

The archetype system allows you to play with the items that you've purchased or earned by playing the game, instead of a generic version.

A Pickup can be unbound, meaning that it has just spawned from a spawner, or bound, if dropped by another player.

When a pickup is unbound, the item that you get when you pick it up is selected randomly from the collection of items that you own, and mounted on the character.
If you don't own any item of that archetype, then a generic version will be shown.

The stats remain the same, only the aesthetics change so, for example, all assault rifles have the same characteristics, be it an AK, MX44, etc.

If you're worried about losing your item, don't worry, it is perfectly safe.
If you get killed and it gets picked up by someone else, it doesn't change ownership, it's just a representation of the archetype during the duration of the game session.

This may change when we implement the Arena mode, but that would always be optional.

Animations and IK

New animations have been added, in order to support the new items:

Unfortunately this is not yet using the new Motion Matching technology, but it will at some point in the future.

We've also added support for holding different weapons with different grips and barrel length, using Inverse Kinematics:

Better Aesthetics and Performance

We've converted all of our assets and shaders to support the new Universal Rendering Pipeline, which allows for a ton of new capabilities and performance gains, that should make the game way more performant on all platforms, even though it's not yet fully optimized.

We've also worked on a ton of bug fixes and other minor improvements, too many to list here, which should also benefit performance and improve the user experience.

New Skins

We prepared five new character and four shield skins. The character skins are a result of our collaboration with social media influencers. We hope you like all the skins. They will show up on the store soon, so please look forward to that!

luishimaru Character

This skin features a goat mask and luishimaru's logo.

Mecha B Character

Mecha B is a robot piloted by B, the main character from Bitcoin and Friends animated series.

Wolk Character

Wolk is an esports caster, so we made his skin wearing a suit, a bowtie, and a headset.

cryptocomix Character

Cryptocomix requested a skin in ninja armor.

Skateboard Shields

We wanted to create a few skateboard skins. We will make them usable in the game as shields. You can grab your at gear.satoshis.games. We hope you like them.

Satoshi Coin

We created a Bitcoin coin model previously. "What about Satoshi?", I hear you ask. The wait is over, because we already made a model for them. Look forward to seeing them in the game!

Fixed Skins

We fixed this issue. The issue was triggered when equipping a head customization asset that doesn't completely occlude the top of the head (like headsets). This would cause part of the character's head to disappear.

The affected skins were Mane, Naka, PhilipIV, Infinity Hitman, Warlock, Olga, Bandolera, Bando, Miss Glock, Druid, Monster, My Blue, Geisha, Grandma, Avicenna, Jane, Charka, Elizabeth II, Forest Guardian, Goblins Wife, Laika, Lauren, Alisha, Mary, Gang Thugy, and Trezor Agent.

A big thank you to everyone who reported this issue. If we missed a character, please let us know.

Skins Redesign

As you may know, Light⚡Nite has been using 3D assets from the Unity store that have an art style similar to the one we are targeting. This was done to speedup development until we can allocate resources to build the assets in-house. We have started this effort a while back, and we would like to share our progress.

New Style

We wanted to make a unique low-poly style for Light⚡Nite. The style we selected combines simplified shapes with slightly cartoony proportions. We kept the male and female versions as similar as possible while keeping the visual distinction to continue using the same collision shapes for male and female characters and maintain fair game-play. The renders below are for the base male and female models. While the base models won't show up in the game, they are the very important foundation that guides the creation of all character-related assets.

New Skeleton

Another thing we wanted to improve on was the skeleton. We tried to keep the proportions of the skeleton as realistic as possible while not breaking the cartoon-style of the characters. This was done to make motion-capture animations work out of the box with minimal edits. This is a thing that we struggled with when working with our current asset library. For example, the render below shows the gun pointing slightly upwards instead of correctly pointing straight ahead.

The render below shows the base character in a shooting pose. Notice how the gun is perfectly aligned from all angles.

Converted Skins

We also started converting skins to the new style. The following renders show some of the characters that were converted. As you can see, we're trying to add our own touch while staying faithful to the original theme of the skins. We're also trying to improve the skins as much as possible. This is important to note, because this may affect the value of the NFTs that represent the skins.

Converted Attachments

Converting the character skins won't be complete unless the attachments/wearables are converted too. We started working on this as well. Some of the assets we converted are shown below.

New level: Hospital

A new and very different battlefield: a ruined hospital, very much different from the last level. In this place, made for both Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, you will be able to get into the buildings, jump between them, or get into the lower stores and surprise your enemies.

The levels are being made in a way that allows them to be integrated in the upcoming Battle Royale map.

User Profile

If you click on your name in the main menu, you will go to the user profile window.

Here you will be able to take a look at an overview of your character: your stats, your medals, classifications, rankings of other players... The data is categorised by game mode to make it easier to find what you're looking for. Additionally, you are able now to visualize your performance in previous games in the Game History tab.

As you climb in the rankings and improve your skills, you will be awarded with medals that display your status, and you will be able to qualify for the upper leagues.

New Game Mode: Team Deathmatch

This mode is self-explanatory, right? Classic Deathmatch between two teams of up-to 8 players on each team fight to the death under a fixed time limit. The team with the most kills wins.

Friends

Users can now add and have friends in the game. You can finally stay in touch ;)

Improvements in Lobbies

There has been many changes in the way players connect in the lobby. Apart from a new lobby for the Team Deathmatch mode, now you can see the current and maximum number of players, their names, and their pings. In Team Deathmatch, there's also an option for you to select the team you want to be on.

The option to host custom games has been added with several parameters to tweak, as well as a room finder. We hope this makes it possible for you to play the way you want, with who you want.

Battle Royale on the Way

In this sneak peak of the Battle Royale map, you can see its vastness and the amount of detail it will have. Unfortunately, the map and Battle Royale mode are still in development, since we were busy building the base systems that are required by the Battle Royale mode. Please stay tuned, because it won't take long to take off!

Miscellaneous

Many many small tweaks have been done to fix or to improve parts of the game, including the long requested aim sensitivity, attachments fixes, level adjustments, optimizations in the levels and in the underlying game processes, sound problems, crashes, and a myriad of other things... There's still much to do, but so is our drive to gradually fix them and do the best we can for this game.

Closing remarks

As we're nearing the date of our public beta launch, everything is ramping up to a production-ready release, even though there is still a long way to reach the feature set and level of quality that we anticipate for the final product.

With the arrival of the-much-sought-after Battle Royale game mode, coming soon, and a few more features down the line, we will eventually reach feature-lock status, and then it'll be a matter of polishing, polishing and polishing! ?

One can say that our work will never truly be finished, as this game will be continuously improved, even after the official launch date, as we continue to add even more features while extending the existing ones, always using your feedback as a guiding light.

Hop in to our Discord server and make your voice heard!