Week 7 Day 4 - Odds, Ends and Abilities

Today we nailed down a complete list of abilities.  Obviously this will change as we try new abilities out, but we want to get as many of these implemented as possibly by Alpha 2, or at least 2 columns of abilities.

	Light Role	Support (Builder) Role	Heavy Role
Attack-based Ability	Push (coned area)	Box Drop (from sky)	Push/Slam (area around player)
Defensive-based Ability	Blink (Straight up)	Create Wall	Steal Weight
Movement-based Ability	Roll (possibly ignore other abilities while rolling)	Grapple (like a grappling hook)	Ram (run forward and push other players out of the way)
Ultimate (and probably imbalanced) Ability	Rocket (large force on player it hits)	Destroy Platform	Ground Slam
Passive Ability	1/2 Dash Cooldown	Aura that lowers cooldowns for nearby players	Weight Gain

From the previous list of TODOs, we have completed the following:

• Pinging system that disconnects clients when they lose connection with the server
• The last player that 'dies' at the end of a game is properly destroyed when the game is over
• The mouse is now 'locked' to the window while controlling the character
• Solves the issue on Linux with the mouse escaping the edge of the window
• Solves the issue on Mac with opening the top OS menu when aiming upwards
• Characters now are instantly 'teleported' to the location they respawn to, rather than being pushed to that location

Minus the items that are directly linked to abilities, here are our remaining goals for Alpha 2:

• Hit detection
• Character-based scoring, rather than just Team-based
• Moving the camera to aim from the sides of the characters, rather than from the top.

As a final note, work was started on the Box Drop ability under the Support Role, however we are considering doing the Light and Heavy abilities as the 2 columns.  The reasoning for this is that those 2 roles are more easily understood to inexperienced testers.  It would also give a better idea for what to expect from the choosing of abilities for all other users.