Mokens League Dev Update: #2

5 min readJul 14, 2022

Hi Mokeners, welcome back to the second “development update” about Mokens League.

As we mentioned in the first development update, our goal is to keep the community updated about the work in progress and get feedback so we can iterate over it.

Let’s talk about what’s important, The Game 😎

The development team worked to add the following improvements:

AI for our Mokens: Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most complex topics in computing, and it is not an exception in Game Development.

AI can be as simple as a bunch of conditions and results, but it has no upper limit. Our goal was to make the characters smart enough to follow a formation adding the least complexity that we could.
A good AI, if simple, is double the good 😉.

For now, we can create formations and assign them defense or attack behaviors, but in future developments the player will be able to select multiple formations for each game and switch between them while playing, further increasing the player agency on the AI and giving the strategist players the edge they need to play games as they wish.

Goalkeepers AI: Since implementing the Goalkeeper, the game has become much more fun and balanced. Before, you could shoot from anywhere, and there would be no one there to stop the ball from going in.

Now though, you need to be more strategic, get closer to the opponent’s goal, and aim your shot very well if you want to get past the keeper.

So, what does he do? :

Covers the goal
Tackles attackers
Blocks shots
Passes the ball to teammates
Jumps up to catch high balls

There is still some work to do, we haven’t implemented its animations yet, and it needs a bit of tweaking and balancing. But the game is looking better, more fun, and complete every day.

In-game Camera VFX: A soccer game has a simple requirement for the camera: show the field and follow the game (which is the ball, usually). But stopping there would be a big mistake, as there is a lot a camera can do for the game to be more visually appealing and show the best moments of the game in the best possible way.

As for now, we have 3 cameras (they can be changed during the game) with different tilting, all of them following the ball. They have acceleration and deceleration, making them not stop abruptly and easy to play with.

When the game starts, the stadium is presented with a camera that shows exactly what we want, and the same when a character scores a goal. Also, there are several impactful situations, like kicking the ball with a charged kick, in which the camera does a shake to improve the feeling of force behind that kick. And this is just the tip of the iceberg: camera play is as vast as in filming, and we have a lot of good moments to show! 🎉

Work in progress. May not represent the final game.

Shooting Mechanic VFX: We are working in adding a new curves VFX for the ‘shoot on goal’ mechanic.

Mokens animations and in-game integration: Our technical artists keep improving and creating new animations for our Mokens!

Local multiplayer: The decision of making Mokens League PC First opens up a lot of options for improving the product quality. One of the unexpected opportunities that this fact gave us is the possibility of having two players on the same PC at the same time and playing in the same match. This was and it still isn’t a feature we planned for the game, but is a useful tool to do the testing in the office. We can isolate bugs easily, test features, tweak numbers and talk about it while having the same experience, exactly. And who knows if this might become a feature out of the office: that’s what testing is for! 😁

Stadium and Props: The art team worked hard on how the new stadium looked.