December 2024 Recap (and a little surprise...)

Welcome back to another monthy recap post, or more specifically the last blog post for 2024. Today we will not only talk about PaintSquad's development, but also cover what we have planned for 2025. Please keep in mind that everything shown in todays blog post is from a very early stage of development. It's very likely designs, icons, UI elements, assets, stages and other elements will change before PaintSquad 3.0's full release next year.

A milestone in PaintSquad's development

Let's begin with our biggest achievement of not only December, but 2024 as a whole: We've finally arrived at the most crucial part of PaintSquad's rework which consists of re-implementing all of PaintSquad's existing features and linking them up with all of the new systems we've been working on in the last year and a half. But before we get into the details, let's take a look at what PaintSquad currently looks like:

That was a lot to process at once, wasn't it? Let's break it down piece by piece:

Let's begin with the new user interface: We've decided to get rid of Minecraft's default HUD and instead replace it with a more intuitive custom UI that both incorporates PaintSquad's new visual style into the game while also only displaying the most important information relevant to the player. Another change also includes displaying which buttons need to be pressed to perform a certain action. For example, a button icon with the letter "Q" is shown right next to the sub weapon icon. Although the button icons are only placeholders at the moment, we intend on designing the new HUD in a way that also respects remapped controls.

Speaking of buttons: Since PaintSquad's old controls were very complex and caused a lot of confusion for new players, we tried to simplify them as much as possible. As such we mapped both of the most important actions (throwing your sub weapon and using your special weapon) to hotkeys instead of inventory slots, eliminating the need for switching between item slots during combat entirely. While this was technically already possible in a previous versions of PaintSquad, it wasn't very reliable and caused issues in certain situations. However, since we can't add any other hotkeys without the help of modding, both of the items that are used for accessing the super-jump and chat command menu remain in the hotbar for the time being.

Although changes like these seem trivial on the surface, it's actually surprisingly difficult to freely place text and sprites on the screen at fixed positions without the use of modding. This is where our shader development tool "Spectrum", which we have covered in more detail in our September 2024 Recap, comes into play: By replacing some of Minecraft's core shaders with custom code and utilizing custom fonts, we've created a new user interface that both looks & performs better than anything we've created up to this point.

While we're on the topic of performance, it's probably also a good moment to mention that we're closely monitoring how every change we make affects both the game's frame rate and bandwidth usage. Additionally we're also taking care of making as many resource-intensive game elements optional as possible, making the game more accessible for players with lower-end systems.

Anyways, let's get back to the gameplay footage we've just watched: Those of you who have been paying attention will have noticed that we have added a new stage object to the game. These treadmill-like objects can be used to quickly launch yourself from platform to platform. In essence they're pretty similar to ink rails, but with the key difference that they only allow movement in one direction and don't need to be activated with ink. Also, they don't just launch players, but also bombs, so be careful when you're near one of them in the enemy's base.

Another thing to mention is that we're trying to move as many notifications out of the game chat as possible. The new HUD plays a huge role in this regard, moving certain indicators into less obstructive parts of the screen.

A look behind the scenes...

Let's talk a bit about some of the changes that have happened internally. PaintSquad's most important game mechanic, the "swim form" has been rebuild from the ground up. By taking advantage of our new model animation system "Puppeteer", we were able to make both squids and octopuses appear more lively by separating the model into several "bones" and animating them based on movement. However, since this change comes at the cost of performance & bandwidth usage, it's entirely optional and can be disabled in an in-game settings menu.

Aside from these visual changes, we've also managed to fix a lot of issues that kept popping up in earlier versions. Most notably, squids and octopuses now properly stick to the ground when swimming down slopes, stairs and slabs. Swimming up walls now works more reliably and we also made tons of changes to improve the flow of switching between human and swim form. We've also managed to slightly reduce input delay, making the new swim form controls feel more responsive.

A huge chunk of work has also flown into creating PaintSquad's new weapon system. Since we're expecting a lot of balancing changes during development, we've made the decision to make the new weapon system entirely data-driven. The idea is to separate all weapon-related features into small modules, called components. This makes it possible to change the behaviour of all existing weapons without having to restart the server. Additionally, all weapons of the shooter category have received a new crosshair design and first-person firing animation to further improve the overall look and feel of the game.

We've also made several adjustments to PaintSquad's architecture to make everything more modular. Most notably, we're now using a component-based system for game objects to make complex interactions easier to implement. Additionally we've also decoupled the client entity from the player game object on the server. This change is especially important for situations where players take control of a different game object, for example by using special weapons like the Sonic Wave or Baller.

So far we have designed everything in a way that allows us to split a single game in PaintSquad between multiple servers in the future. This helps to reduce input lag for player-controlled actions such as swimming in swim form or firing weapons. Although we haven't been able to perform any tests on this system yet, we're expecting a significant decrease in input latency for players connecting outside of Europe.

We've also been working on creating a new version of the in-game live map, also known as the super-jump menu. Efficiently displaying a visual representation of the painted areas of a stage while also providing players with the ability to super-jump to other players has always been a huge problem up until this point. However, for PaintSquad 3.0 we wanted to finally come up with a new system that provides players with a solution that is more intuitive to use. The good news are that we've found a solution for giving players access to a real-time overview of the stage while also making the process of super-jumping easier. However, since there's still a lot of manual tweaking required from our side you'll need to wait a few more weeks before you can see the reworked super-jump menu in action.

This concludes the most important developments for this month so far. There are tons of other changes related to the process of building and testing maps, but listing all of them here would go beyond the scope of this post. Instead we will likely cover this topic in a separate blog post in the future.

The good and bad news...

Although we have been making a lot of progress on getting PaintSquad back into a playable state, we sadly weren't able to finish the surprise we originally wanted to reveal this month. The main reason for this is that we ran into some unexpected problems while working on some of the new weapon animations. 

For example, imagine the case of a newer version of Minecraft offering a better technical solution for solving a certain problem compared to the current version. Although solving the problem is possible in the current version by utilizing a workaround, it would introduce additional complexity into the code base while also being less efficient. Additionally, we would also need to change the game's code a second time in the future to take advantage of new technical features.

This is pretty much sums up the situation we've run into earlier this month, therefore we made the decision to take the required time and update all of our systems to a newer Minecraft version along with some other internal changes before continuing working on the game's code. While this does mean that we're currently working with the latest version of Minecraft, it sadly shifted back the release date of the surprise we've originally planned for December back by a few weeks.

However, since we have now arrived at a point of development that puts us pretty close to being able to do the first few internal test battles, we are gonna reveal something else instead...

Beginning of a new era

It has been well over one and a half year since PaintSquad was last playable by the public. During this time, we've redesigned & restructured every single element of our backend infrastructure and game architecture. Although we've written hundreds of tests to ensure that everything runs as expected, none of the new code has been "battle tested" by public players so far... and that's where you come into play!

In order to spot problems and fix them before PaintSquad's full release, we've made the decision to host the first public playtest at the end of January 2025. This first playtest is scheduled to run 7 days and will feature four weapons, a mix of new and old music & assets and also all of the new & reworked maps that have been revealed in prior blog posts.

First playtest?

Since we want PaintSquad to reach its full potential, we also need to find the perfect balance between visuals, level design, balancing, controls, music and many other factors. As such, we're planning on hosting multiple playtests before PaintSquad 3.0's full release to collect as much feedback as possible. We will also record & live-stream some of the test sessions so that everyone can get a first impression of this new and improved version of PaintSquad.

Please also keep in mind that your save game from earlier versions of PaintSquad won't be available during playtests. Instead every player will have access to the same set of weapons, maps and game features. Additionally player stats, achievements and many other features won't be available during this period. Also, while we're on the topic of player data it's also worth mentioning that every player, that has played PaintSquad before the maintenance period started, will be able to choose between starting a new save game or importing their existing save game when PaintSquad 3.0 launches, but thats a topic for another time.

Once the playtest is over, we will conduct a player satisfaction survey to collect feedback which in return helps us to adjust PaintSquad for the next playtest. However, keep in mind that we will only show a fraction of the new content during these playtests since we don't want to spoil all the surprises we've worked on just yet. We will reveal more information about the upcoming playtest in a future blog post.

Closing words

And with that we have arrived at the end of the last recap blog post of 2024. We have worked on many different projects throughout this year and even though we've went through some difficult times we always found a solution in the end. But all of this wouldn't have been possible without your support. It doesn't matter if you are a player, former team member or contributor: We would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you from the bottom of our hearts for your support and patience along our journey. We promise you that 2025 will be the beginning of a new era in the history of Xenyria.

Our team wishes you a Merry Christmas and a fantastic start into the New Year. We hope that all your wishes for 2025 will come true. That's it for now, we will see each other again soon, but in-game this time!