Hey everyone! As we get closer to the games launch more and more of the updates are going to be focused on aspects of the game that the players can actually interact with. The days of working on code infrastructure are nearly behind us now! With that in mind allow me to introduce you to the first new feature highlighted in this update: 4 player co-op! Now, co-op has always been in the game in some form since day 1. But with this most recent update the game will be much more balanced/fair/enjoyable experience when playing co-op now. I spent a lot of time tweaking the numbers for each of the difficulty modes, for each number of players to create something I think a lot of you will really enjoy. This ties in to some of the other features we will talk about below. If you have an criticisms  or critiques about any of these changes please let me know as all feedback is welcomed :-)

"Heat" is a score the game tracks, displays, and uses to determine the number of stars received on completion of a level. Players will start the level will a full or nearly full heat bar. Your score "Heat" will slowly decrease overtime. The only way to keep this bar up is to destroy enemy Tanks. Additionally, if you take any damage that will also decrease your Heat. With the Heat score aside, you can also see that this meter tracks your time and also displays the difficulty of the level your currently playing. This may be good for speed runners or livestream viewers as it's now much easier to get a sense of the state of the game. The notches displayed on top of the heat itself act as indicators of how many stars you would receive if the level ended. If you end the level with your Heat to the far right you will receive three stars, if you end in the middle, that's two stars, to the left and that's one star. You get the idea. Before we were only using time as a means to determine how many stars you receive. But now, because taking damage decreases the bar,  players may have to be a bit more skillful in order to get that all encompassing three star.  

As we move closer to launch, another important thing I need to keep in mind is the player experience. Quality of life upgrades may seem small and insignificant on their own, but add up enough of them together and you can really improve your game's overall experience. I will use the three highlighted changes displayed above to give you an idea of what I mean. The first quality of life upgrade is a player number. This Teardrop is only displayed for a second or two after the level begins but it will go a long way in helping players identify where they spawned once things get going. This is also useful if two players decide to play as the same Tank, Before there was no way to know which one you were. But now, at least at the very start of the level you'll have a means of doing so. The second quality of life upgrade has to do with the destroying of Tanks. Before, when a tank was destroyed it would launch up into the air and then once it hit something it would create cloud of smoke and disappear. At first glance that may not sound so bad, but keeping the tank around after it had been destroyed introduced some technical problems. On top of that it as very satisfying for the player.  Now when a tank is destroyed a explosion type ring and smoke cloud is formed to really sell that impact. additionally, the Tank is flung up into the air like before, but this time it fades away into nothing-ness. This also helps to declutter the players view. As dead tanks just don't stick around as long. The third quality of life upgrade featured in this post is a height indicator. Like the player indicator, this feature isn't show all the time. It's only shown when the player reaches a certain height above the ground below. The reason I implemented this is because when players would get thrown really high into the air it was sometimes challenging to determine where exactly they were in the level. The isometric camera angle isn't doing us any favors here. At least now players will be alerted to when they are dangerously high and may need to perform a mid flight dash to recover.  There are many more quality of life upgrades to this update, these are just a few. But hopefully I've convinced you of their importance to the players experience. 

Toy Tanks will continue being developed at FULL STEAM AHEAD! I look forward to sharing with all of you some new and exciting features that are soon to come up. Thank you all for your support, Happy Holidays!

- Rodney