FTB Reboot Update #1

Long time no see, hope you are doing well. Let's give you an update about what's going on with FTB and show you some progress regarding improving the stickman fighting game.

In short we were working on chats, friend lists and improving the duels and teams game modes.

Chats

In a huge competitive battle arena, especially with teams, it's good to have a method of communication other than just emotes. This way, people can more easily coordinate, make friends and so on. It, of course, introduces additional challenges like filtering toxicity and bad language. FTB is suitable for many ages because of its cartoony stickman style, and we want to keep it that way.

We added a chat per room so you can talk with fellow stickmen, but the filtering of toxicity and bad words is set to maximum. And of course, constant violations may be reviewed by us, and action will be taken accordingly. We hope this will provide an easy and safe method of communication with your stickmen friends.

The previously existing emote button now became the comms button which expands into two options: Emotes or Chat. Express yourself as you wish.

And of course, in addition to a chat per room, we also added a global chat! Remember the fun and cool concept from games like Clash of Clans back in the day? It will allow you to make friends, coordinate for a match or talk about bugs/strategies in general.

Friends

Imagine being able to see your friends in one place - who is offline, online, in a game, etc and send them a direct message to offer to play. You don't have to imagine anymore! We added a friend list that is accessible from anywhere in the lobby by double clicking an empty space. You can easily add and remove friends, accept requests, or start direct conversations.

Now, this is not perfect. You will not be able to view the list from inside a game - only the lobby. Also a small icon will appear near a player who sent you a new message, but only if you were online at the time.

But as we are not, you know, a social network, this should be sufficient to allow you to easily form teams of people and talk with online members. Tell us what you think! What features would you like us to include? Help us make your communication better!

Teams Game Mode

As promised in the FTB 2.7 devlog, we are working on improving the game modes. Recently, we dove into Teams. Before, it was just a jump and fight game mode like normal deathmatch, but without the ability to attack certain stickmen. That's all. Now we've enhanced it so it will actually offer a unique fighting experience.

On game creation, you will enter a waiting room, like in other game modes such as Competitive and Duels and will start the game when you wish. But in Teams, the game is open after the start, so players can keep joining despite the game being ongoing, unlike in Competitive or Titanic, where the game is closed.

Every game out of the 9 available zones, 3 will be chosen for Team Blue and 3 for Team Red. Each team will be able to spawn only in those 3 selected zones - so stickmen go to the fight together and coordinated.

Now, victory can be achieved in this game mode! It's not infinite like the normal game mode. There is a score bar for each team, and each elimination grants the team one point. The first team to reach the required points amount (currently 30) wins!

This should make the game feel more unique and based on teamwork in comparison to Normals, where you just jump in for a quick deathmatch. We think that by making these changes, we reached our goal for the Teams game mode to be a 'casual' mode, not requiring a commitment of time like Competitive but allowing you to feel the 'together' in the battle!

Duels Game Mode

In previous devlogs, we proposed to add a feature where each new zone would spawn a powerup, which upon collection, the stickman would become stronger. The goal was to reward the winning stickmen and encourage fighting instead of the strong guy constantly chasing the weak one because there is nothing to lose.

We discarded the idea. The reason is that we realized the winning stickman already has power by forcing the weak one to move or not move to certain locations, and may be able to block the loser inside lava. If we were to add such a power up, the losing stickman wouldn't have a chance.

But, we do want to encourage fighting and not constant chasing. For that we decided to use power spots in the zones. There will be more heal zones, bottlenecks, or the whole zone except for some parts will be covered in damage zones. Meaning, there are areas people want to fight to be in, and larger areas they fight not to be in. We think this will be enough to encourage action while not completely destroying the losing stickman.

Now regarding new zones. Previously, we had 7. We added 4 more, now totaling 11 unique duel zones, and each time a new random one is chosen to proceed with. With the new zones, we focused on what we just explained - giving specific areas you want to be in (a heal area, for example) and those you don't want to be in. Now duels have more variety.

Now that's about zones and encouraging fighting, but what about the fact that so many people fall into lava and die? It doesn't feel like a proper duel, as most casualties come from misjumping. While we want those actions to be punished, we don't want them to always be fatal. We added a new ability available for everyone in Duels near the Comms button: the High Ground ability.

Clicking the button will teleport you to the top of the highest current zone. To prevent abusing this too much for fighting, we added a relatively long cooldown (30 seconds). It will help noobs by providing a way to get back into the battle, and more skilled players who are confident they won't fall another way to outplay their opponents.

What's Next?

We started improving the Competitive and Titanic game modes. We won't share details yet because as our most competitive game modes, we need to plan everything well and changes may occur. Next we plan, likely, to improve the graphics of the arena! While we won't make Elden Ring quality assets, as the point of FTB is being minimalistic and cartoony (and also, skill issue), you can read that For The Battle started as a project during boring Android lessons - meaning on many assets I spent 5 minutes in the best case in Photoshop.

We will rethink improving some assets, adding effects, shadows, backgrounds that feel alive etc. It's time to think about how to make the game feel truly alive while preserving the cartoony, original and minimalistic graphics that make it special.

Tell us what you think! We expect the reboot to be a huge event considering all these changes, and we are glad that after so much time FTB eventually gets the attention it deserves to transform from a demo in production to a ready, high quality game.