We made it!

I am happy to announce Automaton Arena is now available as an in-development demo and early access build! I am so excited for everyone to finally get a chance to rumble around this arena!

Below are some helpful tips and information to get you on your way:

Default Controls:

Keyboard:

• Movement:  WASD
• Attack:  K
• Jump:  Space
• (Menu) Confirm:  K
• (Menu) Cancel:  L
• (Menu) Special:    Space
• Toggle Fullscreen:    F11

GamePad:

• Movement:        DPad
• Attack:            X
• Jump:            A
• (Menu) Confirm:    A
• (Menu) Cancel:    B
• (Menu) Special:    Y

Bot Specific Controls:

M1

• A humanoid bot that runs, jumps, and attacks how you would expect!
• Actions correspond to their control input name

BallBot

• Hold Attack to charge up an attack, and attacks when Attack is released
• Attack can be aimed in 8 directions via holding the desired movement inputs when Attack is released
• Holding Down while on the ground will initiate an Attack with a special trajectory!
• Pressing Attack after an attack has hit something or ricocheted of a surface will cancel out of the remaining attack!
• Jumping works similar to attack charging; Hold to charge then release

Cone

• Moves around surfaces via its treads. If you move against a wall or most surfaces, Cone will attach to that surface and keep going!
• Movement controls are relative to Cone's alignment to a surface!
• Use jump to detach from surfaces
• Holding down will allow Cone to enter a protective blocking state!
• If Cone is attached to a surface, hitting jump while in the blocking state will do a special drop attack!
• Hold Attack to fire off a volley of shots! These can be aimed in 8 directions, in the same fashion as BallBot
• Number of shots fired depends on current stats!

Helpful Hints:

General:

• You can navigate menus with movement inputs, or via mouse!
• Try pressing (Menu) Special after highlighting a menu item via movement inputs,    and it might reveal some helpful information! Try it on items and bots!
• Press (Menu) Cancel to back out of sub-menus and quit / end matches!
• Look into the options screen! You can do helpful things like change your display name,    sound/music volume, and control bindings!

Text Fields / Text Entry

• Click into text fields to type in them! (instead of the on-screen keyboard)
• Press enter or click out of them to end text input!
• Copy/paste supported!
• (Menu) Special toggles on-screen keyboard capitalization state
•  (Menu) Cancel acts as a backspace shortcut for on-screen keyboard

Using GamePads

• Pressing any pad input on the title screen will assign that pad to the primary player
• In the Match Lobby Screen, Pressing any pad input on an yet-to-be assigned pad  will prompt you to assign it to the primary player, or else to use it to add a new local player!
• In the Match Lobby Screen, the primary player can press (Menu) Special to be prompted to un-assign their pad
• In the Match Lobby Screen, additional local players press (Menu) Confirm to open their bot config menu,  and (Menu) Cancel to be prompted to leave the lobby
• Returning to the title screen will un-assign all pads (until they are pressed again)

Gameplay

• Bytes are your resource in this game. Use them to raise your bots' max level, or to develop new items, equipment, and bots!
• Higher level bots award more bytes upon defeat!
• Don't stress about bouts! The bytes you earn from tacking down each instance of a bot stay with you, even if you lose the overall match!
• Level up your bots' max level! (Be sure to allocate those new levels via CHANGE STATS menu!)
• Test out offlining stats! You can offline a specific stat in CHANGE STATS menu by setting that stat to zero. This raises that bot's max level as long as the stat stays offline!
• Have fun!

Loadouts

• Loadouts let you save all your favorite bot setups for quick swapping!
• Check out the 3 premade loadouts that all bots come with for some ideas of where to start!
• Be sure to update your loadouts as you level up!

Network Stuff

• TCP Port: 9160
• UDP Port: 9161
• Toggling a match's ONLINE state from TRUE -> FALSE -> TRUE can help fix some network issues (Returning to the title screen, the the lobby should help in the same way)
• Currently, players can only join an online match when the primary player is in the Match Lobby Screen
• When ONLINE is first set to TRUE, the game might appear to freeze for a brief moment. This usually passes in under 30 seconds at the worst
• When using the JOIN MATCH screen's FIND LAN option, the game will similarly appear to freeze (typically for just a few seconds, but up to 20 has been observed)
• FIND LAN should locate any ONLINE match that is connected to the same internet gateway / router
• Gameplay over network for non match-host players can currently experience periods of choppiness. We look forward to optimizing the netcode in the near future!

Thanks for Playing!

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