Elementyle

Hello again. It’s been a while. Sorry about that. Let’s get straight into the new stuff.

The current update under work will result in the release of 16 new pieces in addition to the 20 already existing pieces for a total of 36. This large update has involved a number of behind the scenes changes but one of the more player facing changes is the way players queue for matches and select pieces. The old system had piece selection in its own dedicated menu with the queue on the main page. This separation was cumbersome and wasted a lot of space.

The new structure will update the Play button’s functionality to launch the new Play Menu which holds all the piece selection components from before in addition to a new controls section. The new controls, Set Tier Group, Queue Type, and ELO Bracket affect the matchmaking process and available pieces for play.

Set Tier Group determines which pieces are available to use, making matches more fair as players will have access to the same groupings of pieces. At this time, for testing purposes, all pieces for all sets are available without restriction. In the future, pieces will be locked behind a progression system.

Queue Type, currently locked to Open, will be used for different queues once Leaderboards and Piece Progression have been added.

ELO Brackets determine the range within which you can be matched with other players. When Play Rewards are added, the ELO Bracket will modify the rewards granted. Larger brackets will result is less rewards. The current ELO Brackets are:

• Standard: +/- 10% ELO
• Casual: +/- 20% ELO
• Exhibition: No Elo Cap

In addition to these new controls, the Computer Queue controls have been modified moved to the Play Menu. These controls will give players a lot more control over the queue and matchmaking experience while setting the framework to add more features in the future.

Another change to this system revolves around piece selection. Previously there were a number of steps in the piece selection, saving, and changing process. The new system will be much more flexible for usability. Below are a few points on the changes for this system.

• Every set and tier have their own configurations stored. As pieces are selected or deselected, the configurations will change and automatically sync with the server.
• When a given tier/set configuration is invalid, the client will inform you and disable the queue button.
• While in queue, piece selection changes will be disabled.
• In place of the check mark being used to denote selected vs not selected, pieces will now be de-saturated when not selected.
• In place of the exclamation mark being used to denote saved vs unsaved, this symbol will only be used for set icons when the selected configuration is invalid (not enough pieces selected).

There are a lot of changes to make on this menu, and a lot of time is being spent making sure things work and feel better than before.

If you’d like to see more about these changes and what’s coming for Elementyle, check out the live streams on Twitch and YouTube. Additionally, new video dev logs are being worked on to cover more of these topics and changes that are being made regarding both the front-facing changes and more back-end technical updates. Thank you for taking the time to read this. Have a great day!