Skyfear | Commits

Last updated Jan 29 2025

What is this?

Tasks that have been completed in Skyfear’s development, broken down into the months they were completed in. This document is updated about once a month, but sometimes later. The purpose of this document is to provide a resource for players to see the game’s development and for their own information and assessment. Please see Release Cycle for more information about game updates.

Want to play experimental builds?

If you own a copy of Skyfear, you can switch to the experimental branch by switching your Steam installation to that under ‘Betas’. (How To Activate Betas)

Note: It is strongly reccommended that you make copies/backups of your save data before switching branches.

March 2025

Build 261

GP added to online stat string construction
Regolith ambient sound slightly mixed better
Wintertide waterfalls sound lowered slightly
Crown network relevancy range increased & added more Force Net Update events
Several spores underground have had their positions fixed
Walking in air bug fixed
Magpoint’s description improved
Pterosaurs will now be silent and freeze when menus are open
Fixed scale of images in Spores How To screen
Increased single player earnings multiplier from 79% to 90%
Increased custom ruleset earnings multiplier from 29% to 59%

Build 260

Server password-to-access dialogue fixed (event was just unhooked for some reason)
Several console print statements removed; more to go
Eden’s mysterious sky-leaves rendering glitch fixed
Fixed/renamed a few buttons with out of date terms
Storm’s lightning brightness reduced slightly
Storm’s rain particles reduced slightly
Volume and frequency of pterosaur screams reduced
Slightly decreased overal global post processing contrast
Melee animation getting stuck fixed
Melee range increased from 600cm to 900cm
Melee damage fixed; uses full 500 damage now instead of a radial falloff
Forced check if rolling when Take flight or Land is called, only continue if not rolling
Removed forced velocity addition in the Z direction when meleeing
Increased FOV option range from 80-100 to 70-140
Added option to bots setup: Chatty on/off, enables or disables bots chatting

Game launched on Steam! Build 259

Finished adding all skins, eyes, to unlocks data & placing spores
Fixed out of date map/mode lists for generate new battle
Fixed out of date wording on some spore elements
Removed print strings from several areas, need to do more
Fixed an issue where branches were creating and loading the wrong save data
Wiped online data
Moved data code back to 1, full ecosystem reset
Built function to estimate server ping based on available information, when the AdvancedSessionsPlugin doesn’t have a valid ping
Rebuilt and reimplimented death animation
Rebuilt and reimplimented running animation
Rebuilt and reimplimented walking animation

February 2025

Tested and fixed some walking movement issues
Tested and fixed some server travel issues
Fixed a spore delivery issue
Added Instance TTS to debug view (time to service in ms)
Removed testing elements from maps
Fixed claw mesh issues
Fixed some vertex-weight issues on character model
Added 7 new eyes
Added 15 new skins

January 2025

Added animation and sound for melee
Finished Vote to kick feature
Improved sound effects on spawn and match intro
Added Code of Conduct to Help menu and Server browser screen
Reset Battle resets all PlayerState values, including now community/conduct features
Finished LAN branch build path and build affects on UX
Updated Release Cycle
Updated Content Guidelines
Updated Code of Conduct
Server browser network will now say LAN if LAN branch, Network status if Main/Expr
Added server and player count to server browser.
Added ping to server browser results.
Finished Report Player feature.
Finished Commend Player feature.
Finished Mute in Chat feature.
Brought back geysers in the Lairworld.
Finished Guardian Points impact on XP and Material delivery.
Resized Grid (map) geometry.
Culled/organized all notes to push back anything that isn’t absolutely critical for launch.
Cleaned up/disabled physics assets on character – UE4.21’s physics asset features at the time were very underdeveloped. might make everybody’s life easier if it just stays untouched until a better solution is found.
Cleaned up some runtime warnings being thrown from SeaLevel and Weather casts occurring too early sometimes
Rolling on ground now launches you into the air and puts you into a roll, transitioning you to flight automatically after. A quick get-away move.
Added ‘light up rocks’ to Eden, Hollow, & Chasm
Renamed ‘Dust’ to ‘Material’. This is final.
Verified there is no level cap - for now
Increase lifetime of ability frag collection emitter, looks better this way
Total level and guardian points (gp) displayed on Career screen
Created and implimented guardian point actions, actions that add/subtract conduct points.
Added ‘guardian points’ - a value that measures your conduct in mutliplayer.
Added ‘total level’ - a value that is a sum of your Spirit, Force, and Bleed, for simplicity in certain features or conversations
Added more encouragement texts
Created ‘LAN party’ branch
Kill confirmed widget repositioned
Particle ‘stick’ fx adjusted to stay longer
Fixed/finished debug “test menu” to make sure it nullifies any XP or rewards from the current battle
Reduced camera sway and increased body sway – responsiveness and snappiness feels improved, without impacting the smoothness of flight
Reworded a few in-game menu buttons
Improved save icon indicator visibility and text, and added to more places in the game loop where it should’ve been
Improved ‘lore’ text for maps
Added more server information to the in-game scoreboard screen
Adjusted default audio mix, music volume lowered
Improved/added to map and game mode texts
Added more loading screen text
Updated build branch type enum: Main, Expr, LAN
Updated/build number text functionality/format
Fixed some issues with XP delivery
Improved mixing on several sound fx
Adjusted default health and magic regeneration rates
Perk system re-work designed, but needs further assessment
Made ability frags slightly more visually distinct
Removed “MVP” section from scoreboard as it is not working properly and the cause cannot be found – plan to re-impliment or do something better with this later.
New map under construction…
Adjusted wording/names of some menu buttons

December 2024

New/final application icon
Made ‘ENTER’ also used as text chat focus button, in addition to previously ‘T’
Collected new ideas/notes from various games
Adjusted ban screen to provide more useful/accurate information
Made sure publishing and main menu assets make the game’s scale and genre more clear
Added various flags to chat content
Added automatic reporting when chat flags are triggered
Improved text chat censoring and handling of strings
Fixed/re-implimented chat censoring options
Wrote a player Code of Conduct
Fixed an issue with spray attack collisions
Added more bot chat content
Conducted research regarding player/community toxicity
“Leave battle” button moved to bottom of the list in all variations of the in-game menu
Removed landing conditions requirement - you can now just tap space to land in all conditions. Previous implimentation to was to prevent exploitations that we never really ending up seeing, plus it was something that always had to be explained to players, and just felt off, and the latter implimentation is more enjoyable and responsive. So yeah.
New game mode: Instakill
In-game menu now has a listing of players in the current server, along with community related options: Mute, Vote to kick, Report, Commend
Fixed/re-implimented bug reporting in-game
Fixed/re-implimented text chat on/off option
Created assets for Practice Mode
Added new tab in Options menu for Debug features, only visible in Experimental builds
Debug feature: cheat menu (all XP and earnings will be nullified from the battle the moment this opens, even if you turn it back off)
Debug feature: show console logs on/off (this feature is ‘done’ but all console logging events have not been switched from Legacy Unreal to this custom feature yet)
Removed dirt mask post processing effect

November 2024

Tweaked/fixed horns positions on player model’s head
Finished fixing issues related to ending battles automatically when lives run out
Fix an issue with the game clock in spectator view when paused
Created a set of ‘common’ servers for generated single player matches (still experimental)
Secured approval from Valve to launch under Early Access
Fixed a bug with spine cosmetic previews
Store page updates
Redefined main menu button names/descriptions
Testing Unreal export of skeletal meshes
Updated all help/guide screens

October 2024

Performed a stress test on service component simulating 10,000 active players
Fixed issues with server browser player count
Fixed/finished implimentation of [experimental feature] single player sessions generated in the server browser
Improved server browser buttons / layout / animations
Fixed meteor brightness
Fixed issue where live limits being reached were not necessarily being considered to end the game early; now the game will automatically end if only one player remains with time left, so they don’t need to sit there
Added/finished bot chat [experimental feature]
Updated/fixed store page
Fixed/improved match kill feed text
Fixed in-game music. Now plays throughout battle with some delay between tracks
Made spore light taller for viewing at larger distances
Fixed an issue where sometimes a player name would be blank in the kill feed
Save data DNA now includes branch name
Improved teeth shader
Fixed waterfall loudness
Increased magpoint net relevancy square
Fixed level-up in Experimental branch not working
Improved roar and bolt fire animations
Changed amount of orbs that spawn from death now influenced by ability charge; the more your ability is charged the more orbs come out
Orbs now slightly slower, less travel
All axis based inputs now have a fixed max range that they are clamped to (for extreme cases)
Fixed issue where Magpoint would be stuck on ‘contested’ even when nobody is there, in single player
Spore eggs are translucent now: and have some visual asset inside to represent the contents inside. This gives the player more to inform their decision making, while not totally spoiling the surprise.

September 2024

Reduced time to spawn spores when returning to Lairworld
Improved a few sound effects
Fixed some spawn points on Chasm that were messed up
Removed wind/airflow effect on ‘sprint’. This was the cause of some strange visual artifacts specifically on Eden, which made the game look very broken. Improvements to this effect were already planned for later, so I just removed the effect for now with the plan of re-doing it altogether later. As a result, the artifacts on Eden are fixed.
Improved ambient audio on all environments.
Brought back dirt masks in post processing. Might remove, might make it an option.
Fixed MORE issues with Cloak, when holding the Crown
Music is played during matches now generally
Made sure music plays on intro
Updated new save data creation per branch – now separate saves with different startup behavior
Create Exeprimental branch upload script/pipeline
On gamebuild tag, use universal build no. variable and build profile enum
On create save data, use build profile enum
Create/edit build profile enum variable
Create/edit universal build no. variable
Create warpath string format
Went over unlocks database and adjusted prices/details
Added ‘recycle’ of data to bots to help with handling changing of gameplay over time
Archived Epic’s physics asset documentation
Created upload scripts for exp branch
Added brand assets .zip to website
Created commit log asset
Created release cycle asset
Finished doc build scripts
Improved visibility/shadow effect on pterosaurs, bots, and players
Improved pterosaur shader, made it whitish gray
Fixed various bugs related to using Cloak ability
Re arranged Main Menu; Moved Loadout and Customization to main, moved Stats to Career screen
Cleaned up discord server and public URLs
Fixed various bugs on the customization menu
Created warpath data structure
Finished/fixed ability to select “None’ for tails, horns, and spines. Unlocked by default
Improved bots reaction to player attacks
Improved bots decisions regarding their interest over time
Renamed domination to “Magpoint” – to both distinguish itself more but also to be more accurate to the updated objective
Fixed/finished domination zone sphere blocking magic attacks
Removed ‘ticker’ in server browser. Will revisit this idea at a later date…
Cleaned up sys admin documentation in case I need help down the line
FAQ updates
Archived old discord channels
Created new spines
Created new skins
Created new eyes
Made sure clan tags are used in log statements
Cleaned up backend log messages formats and delivery
Fixed issues with ‘skin warble’
Fixed issues with death/respawning in the Lairworld
Fixed the math used in the Unnatural perk. That was bad. I was multiplying incoming damage by 0.2, not 0.8, in regards to its 20% reduction promise.
Revived feedback/request API resource & client menu
Store page touch-ups

August 2024

Added more options to single player post-game: Edit battle and go again, have game randomly generate a new battle, or replay same setup
Fixed player name entries no resetting when defaults button is clicked
Added clan tag option
Verified bots can win games by themselves
Cleaned up / finalized title screen
Added server domain bypass option for testing
Added pyrite information to help menu
Reconfigured testing server
Changed domination - one zone only, magic cannot travel through barrier
Improved domination zone art assets
Make domination zone larger
Fixed crown position on player model
Patched newly found security vulns based on news from providers
Cleaned up all websites file storage, files, delivery, to reduce bandwidth load
Created content guidelines
Fixed crown holding text
Added tooltip for player region select
Set region in server browser to use player’s profile region by default
Made sure ‘hitflash’ effect fully restored on any new shaders
Updated spores page in the help menu
Started removing old debug printings
Added “letter to the player” on first game startup
Updated shroud description
Improved shroud art assets
Made shroud chase the first player it ‘sees’, making it more useful
Improved dust icon
Changed list button selected/unselected colors, made a bit more consistent with what players are used to
Improved bot difficulty setting impact over every mechanic
Adjusted position XP delivery element on HUD
Add “[BOT]” tag to bot names to make sure that’s understood
Improved visibility of domination HUD elements
Lowered bots difficulty minimum in the settings
Geysers temporarily removed. Decided these will be restored at a later date after more deliberation and testing…