The Steam Fighting Games Fest is online! We're celebrating with a whopping 70% off the Core and Collector's Packs for Fantasy Strike! Now's the best time to dust off the old arcade stick and grab all of those fighting games you've been eyeing over the years. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie developers during the sale by gifting your favorites to your friends!

[ 2024-07-15 19:31:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Sirlin Games is a part of the Steam Autumn Sale! Save on the Fantasy Strike Core/Collectors Pack, mainstays Yomi and Puzzle Strike, as well as the digital early access edition of Yomi 2 that were currently hard at work developing! We're also doing a tabletop sale for our physical games! You can check out all the details at our blog post, here.

[ 2023-11-21 19:23:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Its time again for the Steam Autumn Sale! From November 24th until December 1st at 10am PST you can save 34% on the Core and Collectors Packs for Fantasy Strike. More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version: The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes. The Collectors Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect. Also, dont forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; theyre 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale and have a safe and healthy holiday season!

[ 2021-11-24 19:59:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Spooky times are here again! From October 28th - November 1st you can save 34% on the Core and Collector's Packs for Fantasy Strike, our colorful, modern, free-to-play fighting game. More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version: The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes. The Collectors Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect. Also, dont forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; theyre 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters. Already own all of these games on Steam and youve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlins Patreon page, where were giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at whats next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If youre a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content. We hope you have a safe and healthy Halloween this year. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies, too.

[ 2021-10-28 17:11:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is just a small hotfix to gamepad issues that started last week.

[ 2021-09-27 19:54:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is a pretty big update on technical and aesthetic levels. Aesthetically, weve changed the 3D shaders as well as the actual 3D models for several characters to improve their graphics. Weve also added new costumes for Grave, Jaina, and Setsuki to the in-game store. Weve updated our game engine to a version of Unity thats three years newer than the version we were using and this allowed us to fix some long-standing technical issues with Xbox controllers as well as with fightsticks on Linux. We also added a new feature on Steam that allows you to assign which controller is player1 and which is player2 (especially important on Steam because of how we allow the keyboard to be both player1 and player2). Finally, there are some long-requested balance changes in this patch too.

NEW GRAPHICS

--Graphics upgrade for many characters and costumes. Enjoy a new look for Grave, Setsuki, Rook, and more! We have adjusted the shading style used on our characters. When using a cartoony style, there are often a few distinct shades of darkness in shadows. Before, we had the issue that the boundary between these areas (like between a shadow on the skin and a non-shadow part of the skin) was irregular and grainy looking. Worse than that, when the character is in motion, the boundaries between shading zones would swim around and appear watery rather than the hard lines youd expect. These errors are all gone with our new shaders. In addition to that change, we also changed the actual shape and sculpt of some characters so they look even better with the new shaders. Heres an example with Grave:
Notice on his chest the crisp, hard lines of shading on the new version and the grainy, blurry regions of shading on the old ones chest. Notice the highlights on the new ones hair that makes it pop and shine, compared to flat, blah-ish shading on the old ones hair. The new ones face (and chest) have been re-sculpted to be more stylized too. We also extended his tattoo further onto his chest because it just looked cooler. Rook is another example:
Rook suffered especially much from the problem of grainy, blurry boundaries between shading zones that would swim around when hes in motion. Thats all gone now and his shadows and highlights look a lot more deliberate. The modeling of his vines has been greatly improved as well. As you can see above, the old vines were a bit of a mess in that they seemed to penetrate his body here and there, looked low poly in some places, and didnt have shadow between the vines and his body. Now the fines are clearly separate from him and have pretty great shadows. Heres another example of Rook in his gameplay stance:
Wed also like to highlight the visual changes to Setsuki for you.
Setsukis hair was always a problem for us. We were never happy with the way it was modeled, but couldnt really figure out what to do until now. As you can see, its a lot less bananas now, and more stylish. Her crazy hair colors show that she wants to have a style, so styled hair is just a better fit here.

NEW COSTUMES

Three new costumes available for purchase (on a rotating basis) in the in-game store: Grave Dojo Champion, Jaina Midnight Archer, and Setsuki Stealth Ninja.


Remember that weve taken the unprecedented step in the fighting game genre of making the gameplay of ALL our characters FREE in online casual matches, online ranked matches, practice mode, and 1p vs AI mode. We hope you support us by buying a costume here and there so that we know it was the right choice to take the risk of making the gameplay for all characters free.

NEW FEATURE

--[Steam] You can now set which controller is P1 and which controller is P2 as you enter appropriate game modes. Theres a new screen to move pictures of a controller into those slots. On Steam, we intentionally make the keyboard both player 1 and player 2. This makes it really easy to go into practice mode and set up various tests where you control both characters at the same time. Until now though, a single controller on Steam has always been locked to player1, which forced a keyboard player to be player2 (remember, the keyboard can always be p1 and/or p2). The new feature we just added finally lets a single controller be player2, so the keyboard player can be player1 if they want. The feature is so robust that it even supports having extra controllers plugged in. For example, imagine you had two PlayStation4 DualShock controllers plugged in, and two fightsticks also (so a total of four controllers). Now, you can go into versus mode, then choose the two DualShock controllers as p1 and p2. Then you could back out, go into versus mode again, and choose the two fight sticks as p1 and p2 from then on. This allows a group of friends to easily swap controllers during a session without having to unplug/re-plug anything.

CHARACTER CHANGES

GRAVE

--Grave's ground super slightly pulls back its pushbox during the few frames before the cinematic hit, to avoid edge cases where the pushbox incorrectly prevents the cinematic hit. Example: vs Argagarg's neutral A, which slightly extends its pushbox such that Grave's ground super can't cinematic-hit it for no apparent reason, when it can easily cinematic-hit idle Argagarg from further away.

VALERIE

--Fixed a bug with her fA attack, which wrongly made her invulnerable to throws for some frames.

GEIGER

--The 15th frame of ground C no longer has a white highlight, because only the first 14f are invulnerable.

DEGREY

--Ghost has 1 second longer cooldown between uses. --Ghost no longer breaks armor. (Onimaru now has some hope using his ground C against DeGrey. Rooks Landslide and C-throw are now better against DeGrey too.) --Ground S has 3f more startup, 5f -> 8f. Now if he blocks Onimarus fA attack and Onimaru cancels that into B, DeGreys ground super parry will not be active in time to hit it. (And if DeGrey tries to parry between the fA and B, Onimaru can press B again to hit DeGrey with a 2-damage Spirit Fire.)

MIDORI

--Midori's empowered throw (when he glows yellow, after a parry) is no longer allowed to grab-and-instantly-destroy Quince real-illusions (illusions in Two Truths mode). It just looked too weird.

QUINCE

--Fixed a sound bug with Quinces C (Dodge the Question) that made the initial split have no sound unless you did the f+C version. --Super cooldown increased from 10 seconds to 12 seconds. His fall to the ground after doing air C (mirror) is reverted to the slower fall that it was during his pre-release testing. --His back+A (Truth Geyser) can no longer juggle as much. Only one additional juggle hit is possible after it now, and it can no longer bounce victims who were already bouncing. The most practical effect of this is that Quince can no longer do 3 damage against victims who are somewhat cornered when he lands bA x 3 (only 2 of those will hit now) or bA, B, A (the final A punch no longer hits). Developer comments: Quince seemed a bit too good, especially over time as players got better at taking advantage of his strengths. These nerfs still leave intact most of why hes good, so they are kind of minor, but leave opponents with a little more leeway: more time between his supers, more time to act after his air C, and avoiding taking a third point of damage in some combos.

ONIMARU

--His back+A sweep has more pushback so that when you cancel to C (Divide and Conquer) on block, it no longer forces the opponent to block three times total, which guard broke them. --Reverting Onimarus nA hitboxes to the older version that was not great anti-air. It still has reasonable hitboxes to hit a jumper, but not dragon-punch-like immunity that hes had for the last few months. The point of this change is so he has to save his super more for anti-air, rather than being free to use the super for reaction punishes only.

BOSS RUSH

--Rook's "Landslide Plus" now hits twice, to match regular Rooks Landslide now hitting twice. --Setsukis Starlight Sparkle is no longer completely unblockable for no reason. --Fixed a bug from a few months ago on Argagarg's "Fish are Friends" powerup (Rushing River now summons two goldfish rather than just one). It now actually summons the second fish. --Valerie's CMYK "Black" attack is now allowed to correctly turn around when doing a double-crossup when Valerie also has the Quick Specials powerup. --Lum's f+B cartwheel plus "Quick Specials" no longer uses Lum B's rolling recovery when it lands for no reason. --Lum's Random Toss (improved air C) now throws both a melon AND an item, rather than just throwing an item (so its much stronger).

MISC

--New language available: Russian. --Fixed a bug with the right side (player 2 side) of character select, that caused normal maps to be inverted for some costumes, such as Graves master costume and Quinces default costume. This bug has been around for years, and we finally solved it. It made the affected characters look slightly wonky on character select when on the right side of the screen, meaning some of their contours and shadows were inside out. --Fixed a bug with the right side (player 2 side) of character select that caused Valeries blue eye to be rotated incorrectly. --Fixed a bug on character select that caused Valeries real-time shadows (such as shadows on her face from her hair) to look low res and pixelly. --[Steam] The Mac versions main menu now correctly blurs the background, so the aesthetics now match other platforms.

[ 2021-07-06 22:24:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Lets get the summer started off right with another Steam sale! From June 24th until July 8th at 10am PST you can save 34% on the Core and Collectors Packs for Fantasy Strike. More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version: The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes. The Collectors Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect. Also, dont forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; theyre 34% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters. Steam sales are the best time to grab those games on your wishlist or gift your favorites to your friends. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale! Well see you online.

[ 2021-06-24 17:45:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

Happy Holidays everyone! Its time for another Steam sale. From December 22nd until January 5th at 10am PST you can save 34% on the Core and Collectors Packs for Fantasy Strike. More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version: The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes. The Collectors Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect. Also, dont forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; theyre 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters. Already own all of these games on Steam and youve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlins Patreon page, where about twice a month were giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at whats next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If youre a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale and have a safe and healthy holiday season!

[ 2020-12-23 19:13:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

This month there are lots of bug fixes, some balance changes for Quince, and the new ability to see how many gems (virtual currency) your account has on OTHER platforms than your current one. (By the way, gems dont travel across platforms, as per Sonys requirements, but the items you buy with gems DO travel across platforms with your account.)

PlayStation 5

The game now works on PlayStation 5! It is as cross-platform and as cross-buy as we could possibly make it by Sony's rules. (See the FAQ here: http://www.fantasystrike.com/crossplay)

QUINCE

--Quince's Dodge the Question (ground C) is no longer invulnerable during its first 2 frames. This allows you to pressure him when you get a knockdown and he cant get away so easily. --Quince air B no longer can cancel to air C mirror on hit/block. Reverting this buff from an earlier patch, he doesnt need it. (He can still do air C mirror after air B ends, just not cancel into it.) --Quinces back+A no longer ground bounces when used as anti-air so that back+A into forward+C no longer combos. The 2 damage anti-air was a bit much compared to what other characters can do anti-air, especially considering how great and huge the hitbox is for back+A. --Fixed a bug that allowed air S to cancel to air B on block. It can no longer cancel to air B. When it did, it prevented Quinces illusion helpers from appearing.

MISC

--In the store screen, you can now see the amount of gems you have on other platforms. --When you search for a player in the friends screen or for a Friend TV filter, the search results are now sorted alphabetically, same as your friends list. ---Fixed the practice mode dummy recording failing to correctly playback some moves, notably Setsuki's hold-C Starlight Tumbler. --Fixed Lum turning blue when Onimaru strikes Lums dice with Spirit Fire (B then B). This move is supposed to turn the opponent blue briefly (for fun, with magical energy), but not when you just hit dice that are far away from Lum. --Fixed Quince-reflected items from Lum's Slots of Items being reflected too many times. --Fixed mini-Lum and mini-Rook being visually duplicated when they get destroyed by an opponent's projectile or strike. (Graphical bug only.) --In Survival mode, Quince and Onimaru now have their own "jump-in" voice, rather than Grave's. --DeGrey's wig in his master costume is no longer way too bright. --Fixed some missing rim lighting on Quince's default costume. --Fixed an abrupt camera movement at the start of Grave's forward throw. --Fixed a few incorrect UI texts in non-English languages such as Choose a friend! on the Friend TV screen of Fantasy+s replay theater feature..

NINTENDO SWITCH

Nintendos patch approval process is significantly slower than other platforms, so it will always lag behind other platforms in fixes. We feel that Nintendo should allow instant patching like other platforms in order to increase the software quality of games on their platform. The following are now fixed on Switch, but were already hotfixed weeks ago on PS4 and Steam. --Fixed a bug in the in-game store when you attempted to add more time to your Fantasy+ membership. This bug caused some membership options (such as buying 1 more month of Fantasy+) to show up as owned so you couldnt buy them, and could also crash the game. ---Fixed having the wrong input settings (like up-to-jump) during practice mode dummy playback. This would break the dummys ability to playback jumps if player1 and player2 had different up-to-jump settings. --Fixed a blackscreen (hang) that could occur in Ranked Mode online. --Fixed a bug where the friend list screen could never go to pages of your friends beyond the first page. --The player search results screen and Friend TV friend search now sort players alphabetically, like your friends list already did.

[ 2020-11-26 02:23:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

The holidays are almost here, so its time for the Steam Autumn Sale! From November 25th until December 1st you can save 34% on not just the Core and Collector's Packs for Fantasy Strike, but also all quantities of Gems in the shop! More details on what you get over the Free-to-play version: The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes. The Collectors Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect. Also, dont forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; theyre 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters. Already own all of these games on Steam and youve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlins Patreon page, where about twice a month were giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at whats next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If youre a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies during the sale and have a safe and healthy holiday season!

[ 2020-11-25 19:22:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone and happy holidays from Sirlin Games! Be sure to check us out on the Steam Autumn Sale, but also please join our dedicated community in nominating Fantasy Strike for the Steam Game Awards' "Labor of Love" award. We've been working hard on Fantasy Strike for many years now though Early Access, our Steam/PS4/Switch launch, and now again through our free-to-play transition back in July. We're still working on making Fantasy Strike the best fighting game it can be, and we hope you're having as much fun playing the game as we're having making it. Please go support all of your favorite games this holiday season! Enjoy the sale and we'll see you on the servers!

[ 2020-11-25 18:07:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Spooky times are here again! From October 29th - November 2nd you can save 34% on the Core and Collector's Packs for Fantasy Strike, our colorful, modern, free-to-play fighting game. More details on what you get oveere the Free-to-play version: The Core Pack gives you access to several game modes: Arcade mode, Versus mode for local play (including standard and team battle), Survival modes (including 4 sub-modes), and the over-the-top Boss Rush mode where you assemble a deck of powerups against increasingly crazy CPU characters. The Core Pack also lets you send direct challenges to friends in both standard and team battle modes. The Collectors Pack gives you all of the above PLUS 13,500 gems, one year of Fantasy+ membership, the High Roller costume for Lum the Gambling Panda, and the exclusive "Party Time" KO effect. Also, dont forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; theyre 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters. Already own all of these games on Steam and youve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlins Patreon page, where about twice a month were giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at whats next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If youre a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content. We hope you have a safe and healthy Halloween this year. Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies and dont eat too much candy!

[ 2020-10-29 21:01:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

his patch is live now on all platforms.

NEW FEATURES:

Dummy Recording

You can now record and playback actions of the dummy character in practice mode. The default controls are pressing in left thumbstick button to record, and the right thumbstick to playback. (You can change these controls on the button config screen.) While using this feature, handy on-screen icons show you whether youre about to record, are actually recording, or in playback mode.

Gifting Items

You can now gift items bought with gems to other players. This includes cosmetics such as costumes, alternate intro animations, etc, as well as Fantasy+ membership. The checkout screen for these things includes a new option to send as gift. When you choose that, you can pick anyone on your friends list to send it to, and you can also search for players who are not on your friends list to gift to. When you receive a gift, you get a new icon on the main menu that will tell you about it. Note that before this patch you could already gift the core pack to other players, and you still can. Gifting of the core pack will not work if either player is on PlayStation 4, due to Sonys rules, but this new gifting feature (of things bought with gems) is useable fully cross-platform, including with PS4 players.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Ground supers 2-damage hitbox is barely taller so that it doesnt sometimes fail to trigger the cinematic against Rooks Landslide when the move is very close and seems like it should trigger it. --Fixed a bug with Graves ground super introduced last patch that could cause the 2-damage cinematic to sometimes deal only 1 damage if it hit an opponents armor move. Now the cinematic sequence is back to always dealing 2 damage. ROOK --Rooks Landslide (B attack) adjusted. The hitbox has slightly worse priority vs jumpers. Also, the first hit has fewer active frames, 17 -> 7f. (This also means the startup is increased 21f -> 25f.) Pushback is barely less on block, so that Geiger and Setsuki can now throw punish it on block like all other characters can. SETSUKI --Divekicks hitstun/blockstun reverted back to 22 / 20f (from 19 /16f in previous patch). --Air C has 4f more startup. --Super cooldown time increased 11s -> 13s DEGREY --Removed real-time light on DeGreys bA ground punch and B,B tyrant crusher. Yeah it looked nice, but its a performance hit to ever use real-time lights and the framerate drop was especially noticeable on Switch. ARGAGARG --Argagargs opponent is no longer cured of poison when Argagarg picks up a Lum cherry or cake. Also, Argagarg no longer loses his bubble shield when he picks up a Lum cherry or cake. ONIMARU --Onimarus neutral A attack has higher priority as anti-air (especially so it can hit DeGreys jump A). --The parry (B then C) can armor break so that after Rook blocks your B (from less than max range), you have some answer to him doing landslide other than retreating. --The parry (B then C) no longer triggers his parry's attack when Onimaru picks up a Lum cherry or cake. --The visual effects of the ghost heads during the B,B attack have been moved forward to fix an alignment problem from last patch. (No gameplay change.) QUINCE --When AI real-illusions are out (Patriot Mirror has hit and Consent of the Governed has summoned illusion Quinces) and they get hit by the opponent, they get resummoned after 2.5s of inactivity instead of staying off forever. --Air super no longer auto-corrects to face the opponent (after you jump over them), since no other supers do. --Fixed a problem with Quince that triggered whenever you played consecutive games with him where he starts on the same side of the screen (for example, you play 3 games in a row, and all three you are p2 side Quince). Each consecutive game with Quince would stack more computations behind the scenes regarding his illusions. This reduced framerate each game, was the source of online desyncs, and also could cause your air super (which summons extra illusions) to have only very short-lived illusions that disappeared much too soon. --Fixed a bug where the round timer would pause when any Quince illusions were on the screen.

EVENT MODE

Event mode (turn it on/off in the game options) has always been a feature, but weve recently cleaned it up. The purpose of this feature is for in-person events where you might not have or want to use internet connectivity. This mode hides several internet-related things that players might click on to avoid as many problems as possible in that sort of setting. It has always (and still does) changed the main menu so that it starts with play (meaning local play) and removes online play entirely from the menu. --Fixed a bug that has been going on since our free-to-play patch, where the main menu in event mode was showing the store icon. It now correctly shows the tutorial and watch icons, like it used to. --Fixed a bug in event mode where trying to do an online thing (such as navigating to the friends list) could crash the game. Now it doesnt crash and instead shows a popup saying that online features are disabled in event mode. --In event mode, the main menu still says EVENT MODE in the lower right corner. Now it also says ONLINE FEATURES ARE DISABLED right under that, to make it even more clear whats going on.

MISC

--All four survival modes now give the player +2 starting hit points. --In Cruel 10 survival, when you face metal Quince, the announcer no longer says Metal Boss! three times as loud as it should. --In practice mode, the character-specific tab (with options for choosing Lums random item, staying in Midoris dragon form forever, etc) now has small portraits of the appropriate character next to each line item. (A bit of polish to help you quickly see who the line item is for.) --In menu screens, the outlines on character graphics are thinner than before. These outlines were always a bit too thick on menu screens, we finally adjusted them. --Geiger's pocket watch on character select and VS screen is no longer offset to the wrong position when he starts his "selected" anim while still sliding in from offscreen. This means his pocket watch is no longer in the wrong position just before you face him in arcade mode. Its also no longer in the wrong position on the 2p character select screen when you quickly go from another character to Geiger then press Accept twice. --[Steam] Fixed a crash in the button config screen when you place the P1 cursor on a keyboard key, then press P2 keyboard left or right. --When you use a macro (such as B+C) to do a move, there always was and still is a slop factor of a couple frames so you can press B then C or C then B (rather than both on exactly the same frame). This means you can see a frame or two of that move before the macro of B+C is recognized. Now, if the frame or two of that move was an armored move and if that move actually gets hit (so the armor did something), you will no longer be able to get the macrod move from that input. This has very little effect on anything, but it does prevent Rook from using the A+B throw macro if he pressed B then A and had the B Landslide (armored move) get hit on that specific frame. He can no longer absorb that hit then throw with the A+B. --Fixed the ranked score screen failing to start the countdown for the next match when you're in master league.

[ 2020-10-15 20:21:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Theres a lot of fixes and changes in this patch. The main technical improvements involve fixes to crashes, disconnects, and blackscreens, especially after ranked matches. There are some new options for the practice mode dummy to automatically do actions after getting up from a knockdown, blocking, or getting hit. And there are a lot of balance changes, especially buffs for Rook, Onimaru, and Quince. Quince also has a long list of visuals cleaned up.

New Features

--Dummy actions. You can now set the practice mode dummy to press any button after it leaves blockstun or gets up from a knockdown, rather than just a throw or its fastest attack. Also, there is a new option to have it press a button of your choice after it leaves hitstun as well. --[Switch and Steam] (Already in the previous patch for PS4) Added a new feature to button config to unset a button by holding either left or right for a couple seconds. For example, if the Jump function is assigned to the X button, highlight that then hold right. The X button icon will slide off the screen, resulting in no button at all assigned to Jump. On Steam, there are two columns of buttons (one for a controller, one for keyboard). Hold right from the right column or left from the left column to unset a button.

Online Fixes

--[PS4 and Switch; note this was hotfixed on Steam on August 27] Fixed a disconnect / crash / blackscreen that could happen at the end of a game within a team battle during ranked play. When you finish a ranked match, the score screen shows your three characters (doing pushups, etc) and if you left this screen quickly, before those characters loaded, the game would get into a fragile state where future ranked matches you played could end in a disconnect. This is why some players experienced this problem more than others--slower computers loaded those characters more slowly so there was a larger window of time to get into the bad state, and if you were very fast at leaving that screen, you could get into the bad state more often. --You can now gift the core pack through the friend search results screen. This allows you to gift the core pack to players who are not on your friends list. This still cant be done by a PS4 player or to a PS4 player, due to Sonys restrictions. --On the ranked results screen, the countdown time now correctly stops when you choose an option (such as ready or change character). --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a rare bug where you could start a ranked game, as player2 as the wrong character (then immediately desync). This could even make you play as "Dummy". --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) When a game ends, the save operation for creating the replay file happens faster now. (Note that this save happens whether you have a Fantasy+ membership or not, and that even if you dont, you can still view the replay of the game you just played.) This optimization removes a slight pause you might experience at the end of a game. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) You can now report offensive usernames through the search results screen. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) When you purchase items with gems, then lose your internet connection, you still had access to them, which is good. But if you closed the app then relaunched it while still having no internet connection, you would need to connect once to the server to have access to those items again. Now, you no longer need to do that. If you ever had access to items bought with gems on a given device, the items will be always be there, even across restarts, and even without ever connecting to the internet again. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a crash that could happen from being in practice mode, then playing a ranked game, then (crash could happen as the game would try to return you to practice mode afterwards). --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a case where the server would sometimes fail to check your ping correctly, which could then result in you getting matched with people with bad pings. This was more likely to happen to players who played for more than 1 hour in a session, but was possible to happen before that too. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a case where you could be in the queue for online matches according to the UI on your screen, but secretly you were not in the queue and would never get any matches. You could leave the queue and rejoin it to fix this, but now when this situation arises, the UI will not show you as being in the queue. Instead, youll get a popup saying to try joining the queue again. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a case where "View friend request" from the pause menu would do nothing, when chosen right after denying a first friend request.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE

--Ground super has much less horizontal range for triggering the 2-damage cinematic. This should be a juicy hit for close positioning, not a thing you do from very far away. --Fixed a rare bug with the ground super failing to trigger the 2-damage cinematic when it hits on its second active frame while breaking armor. --Jump A, startup increased. 5f -> 8f. --Neutral A, +3f recovery. +4 / +2 on hit / block -> +1 / -1 (it doesnt need to be plus on block.) --Hold B (large projectile cloud) dissipates 4f sooner. Active frames 43 -> 39. --Air B whirlwind no longer knocks down, and pushes the opponent farther when it contacts. (Hitting with this mixup no longer knockdowns to loop an attempt to do it again.)

JAINA

--Jump A has 1f higher minimum height before it comes out, and it also waits 2f longer before starting to travel downward. (Its now easier to get out of repeated divekicks, about a 4f larger gap between them than before.)

GEIGER

--Jump A startup increased. 8f -> 12f. --Geigers throws no longer let either character be pushed by forces such as wind or rivers. This mostly affects boss rush mode where the thrower and victim would get noticeably out of sync during these effects.

DEGREY

--DeGreys throws no longer let either character be pushed by forces such as wind or rivers. This mostly affects boss rush mode where the thrower and victim would get noticeably out of sync during these effects.

MIDORI

--Dragon Midoris throw against a victim with 1 hit point will now trigger the KO on the second hit of the throw, rather than the first, so it has more visual impact. It now matches his human form throw in this way. (There is no gameplay effect here).

SETSUKI

--Dive kicks all have less hitstun / blockstun. 22/20 -> 19/16. The main point being that air C (blocked), cancel to divekick (blocked), jump and repeat forever has a 4f larger gap than before, to give people more chance to get out. --Jump A divekick has 4f higher minimum height and starts traveling forward on its 10f rather than 7f. This particular change only applies to jump A, not any other kind of dive kick (not jump then back+A for the shallow version, not C,A, not air C then A, etc). Setsuki has very good anti projectile tools already, and she really doesnt need to be able to jump forward and divekick over projectiles so fast that the entire jump + attack is significantly faster than the total length of time zoners spend throwing a projectile. This move is still good at getting past projectiles and possibly hitting, but not so good that its oppressive.

ROOK

--Landslide (B attack) now hits twice and does 2 damage total. Because the first hit hits so much sooner (21f startup rather than 38f), its a lot more useful. The two hits normally combo to each other on hit, even if the first hit hits a jumping opponent. --All of Rooks hurtboxes during his hit reactions while standing are now more consistent. This fixes a few cases where moves would miss him even though it looks like they shouldnt. For example, Lum hitting Rook with either jump A or jump B, then trying to combo neutral A when he lands now works as it should.

ARGAGARG

--Any moves that pause the round timer now also pause the poison timer. This fixes Degrey/Grave/Setsuki parry supers, so the initial screen freeze doesnt continue to tick poison. Previously, it was the 2nd move/screen (the start of the actual cinematic) that only paused the poison timer, so they could die by poison during the first screen flash.

ONIMARU

--Neutral A is now much better at hitting jumpers. Also, on counterhit against a jumper it will knock down (similar to Argagargs back+A) and can combo to B for a total of 3 damage in that case. --Forward+A has a slightly taller hitbox in front. --Martial Law (ground super, level 1) has a taller hitbox thats a lot better at hitting anti-air, making it a better get off me move. --Tactical Slice (B attack) has 2f longer projectile immunity. The reason for this change is to make it much easier to go through Graves powered up wind-projectiles. (The 2f makes quite a difference there.) --Fixed an input issue with Rising Sword (air C, then C again). The problem was for players who use the B+C macro for supers. After the air C lands, you might want to start charging up the ground super at the earliest possible moment. Before, pressing B+C here would cause Rising Sword (from the C press) to happen unless you held B+C very early (before the hit-pause of the air C ended). Now there is a much bigger window of time where holding B+C really will start charging the super here. You can start holding it up to 15 frames after hit pause ends and it will still work without triggering a Rising Sword. --Fixed an edge case with Rising Sword where if you did air C over and passed Setsuki, whiffing, then she walked into you as you did Rising Sword, she could get so close to Onimaru that the hitboxes for the attack would whiff. Now the pushboxes of Rising Sword prevent that. --Air B can be done slightly lower to the ground than before. --The ghost heads summoned from air B stay on the screen slightly longer, so that they better match the hitbox. (No gameplay change here.) --Divide and Conquer (C attack) hits 2f earlier so it matches the graphics better. Gives 2f longer hitstun/blockstun to compensate. The faster startup means that A,C is now a combo. The reduced startup also makes it slightly easier to anti-air with. --Spirit Fire (B then B) is faster. Frame stats: 26 / 28 / 26 -> 23 / 28 / 13. So it has 3f faster startup and 13f faster recovery. Its now -20 on block rather than -33, and given how far away you can space yourself after, you can be pretty safe. --Fixed a bug where sometimes Onimaru could not do the dash from his B stance while his own robots from his air super were on the screen. (The dash is performed while in the stance after the B attack by tapping forward, forward or back, back or jump+forward or jump+back.)

QUINCE

Quinces illusions are intentionally confusing (thats the point!) but we felt he had too much visual clutter surrounding his illusions that made them confusing in a bad way. These changes are just to his visuals to address that: --Deleted all poof visual effects when illusion moves disappear. --The illusion from the lunge punch (hold fA) disappears sooner, so that you no longer see the illusion stand up at the end, since that added visual clutter. --The illusion from air hold-B disappears a few frames sooner when it lands and blinks as it disappears. Also, the brief animation it plays when it lands is now correctly hooked up to Quince, rather than wrongly being a glitchy looking animation that was intended for Grave. --Neither the real air B nor the illusion air B trigger an enormous pillar of ground dust anymore for no reason. Ironically this huge dust cloud from the ground only triggered when his move did NOT touch the ground, but now that dust pillar never triggers during the move. --All of quinces dust from jumping has been deleted. This especially got in the way when illusions from his air super jumped around. --The visual effects are now smaller after the diagonally down kick of B,B lands. The gray smoke in the center is much, much smaller so that you can still see characters in the middle of the effect (between the yellow energy spikes). Also, during the illusion version of this move, the illusion Quince disappears sooner (before standing up) so he doesnt create visual clutter by changing poses as he recovers. He also blinks as he disappears. --The illusion that stands in place from B,B now stands there longer before disappearing (so that the opponent cant react to it starting to disappear and always block the crossup). It also now blinks as it disappears. --The illusion Quince during the C attack becomes transparent earlier so that during hitpause from the real Quince, you see the illusion fade rather than two solid Quinces on screen at once. Its easier to tell whats going on this way. --The white visual effects glow from the C attack are now 25% smaller. They were really huge, and it was too disruptive covering everything to have two of those (since the C move spawns two) plus potentially even more if you have extra illusions from the air super. --When the C attack hits, the hitsparks are much smaller and no longer cover most of the screen. --When Quince does a forward or back throw, the illusion Quince that appears right away is now initially transparent, then becomes solid, rather than being immediately solid. This makes it more readable that an illusion has appeared. Then at the end of the throw, the Quince that becomes an illusion now becomes transparent earlier, then blinks to disappear, so that thats more readable too. Also, the hitspark that happens in the middle of his throws is now smaller so that the victim isnt covered up so much by effects, helping you see more of whats going on. --Doing the B kick, then immediately C teleport no longer causes the illusion from the B to wrongly disappear (the visual effects did not disappear, but Quinces body in the B illusion mostly did). The reason this is important is during the Two Truths mode from the ground super. During that, the mostly-invisible B illusion could actually HIT, and it looked strange and buggy. Now that illusion looks as it should. --When you hit with the ground super Patriot Mirror, the short animation for entering Two Truths mode no longer has the illusion Quinces misaligned. They now correctly merge into his body, and they also start transparent and transition to solid as they merge, rather than starting out solid. The whole thing is more readable now. --The first few frames of Quinces forward and back throw are now the correct frames of animation. Before, when his throw connected, he accidentally popped back to an idle pose and started his animation from there. The start of the throw feels smoother now. Before, the visual pop coincided with the second Quince appearing on screen, so it felt extra jarring. --During the Two Truths mode from the ground super, throwing the opponent (forward or back) no longer causes Quince to pop for one frame to a wrong location in a wrong pose. --During Two Truths, all the many subtle visual fixes to illusions now apply to the real illusions too. Before, the real illusions were mostly solid all the time, rather than having transitions with transparency to help you understand whats what. And in cases where the non-Two Truths version of an illusion faded away before we saw a distracting recovery pose, the Two Truths version had to have the entire recovery pose still. Now, all the nuances to help illusion transitions look better apply to Two Truths mode as well, but with some new careful exceptions. Exceptions: the Two Truths ground B illusions (diagonally down kick) and C teleport illusions stay fully opaque while they are still able to hit (opaque longer than their non-Two Truths counterparts), and then become transparent, then disappear once they can no longer hit. So now, the differences in transparency between illusions during Two Truths and otherwise are there to help you read the situation, rather than being different for buggy reasons.

Other Quince changes:

--Slight framerate improvement for all moves with illusions, especially doing hold-fA repeatedly. --Slight framerate improvement when hitting Quinces illusions with attacks during Two Truths mode. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Slight framerate improvement any time Quince is on the screen at all. --Truth Geyser (back+A) is now dramatically better. It hits in a pillar that is as tall as the screen and can now be used to hit opponents who jump out of your mixup after they block your B kick. Against those jumpers, you can combo back+A into forward+C for 2 damage total. Also, the hitboxes during startup of back+A have been slightly fixed so that it better low-profiles (ducks under) incoming attacks. --Neutral A punch is faster. 10/9/16 -> 9/9/13, so it has 1f faster startup and 3f faster recovery. This means its -3 on block rather than -6, so it can no longer be thrown guaranteed after its blocked. Also, this move is much better at hitting jumpers now due to hitbox changes. --Lunge punch (forward+A) has faster startup, 16f -> 13f. --Fake lunge punch (hold forward+A) no longer has a stray hurtbox out in front of the real Quince for a frame. Also this move no longer causes Quinces hurtboxes to move forward the first few frames. --Its now possible to cancel the air B kick (on hit or block) into the air C mirror. You could already let the air B kick finish then place the mirror, but now you can place the mirror much sooner in that sequence, which allows you to attempt to start some pressure immediately after air B is blocked. --It is now possible to delay the attack from the C teleport up to 30 frames by holding C. If an opponent jumps in response to you pressing C in such a way as to try to hit both your options, delaying the attack can help. --The minimum height allowed for the air super is no longer an exception that allowed it to come out very early in the jump, but instead uses the default minimum height. (Was frame 7 of the jump, now is frame 11.) --The air supers startup cinematic now has energy effects in the background for the whole duration of the cinematic, rather than being pure black for the second half of it. --The diagonally down kick of B,B no longer has wrong hurtboxes. Before, it had the hurtboxes for its final frame during the ENTIRE downward motion of the move, but now it loads the correct set of hitboxes that match his body. --Quince says hello/welcome/greetings a bit less when he does his B kick. --Throwing Quince during his Two Truths mode no longer pauses his Two Truths meter from draining.

MISC

--For Fantasy+ members, we slightly adjusted the RankedTV and FriendTV interface for filtering for specific matchups so that you can now filter for mirror matches too. (Note: the best mirror match is Lum vs Lum.) --Performance optimization. About 3% less CPU load whenever you cancel one move to another during hitpause. (Hitpause happens when you hit the opponent with a move, or when they block a move.) This savings is especially relevant during online play, where the more CPU resources you have, the smoother your rollbacks will feel. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a bug in button config that started with the f2p patch where going down twice after arriving on this screen would put the cursor in an invisible spot. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Reduced the jump height of all Boss Rush enemy power ups that uses a jump height increase. This prevents things like Setsuki becoming too high and staying in the air and being completely unhittable. --Fixed some objects such as Graves sword disappearing during various win poses. --[Steam] The replay UI no longer wrongly shows a PS4 square button while you are using keyboard controls. --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Valeries painter costume now has correct on fire graphics (was missing the orange inner rim light). --[Switch] (Already in the previous patch for PS4/Steam) Fixed a crash in boss rush mode when Midori picks the Dragon Claws powerup, then transforms into a dragon. --[Steam: Linux] Fixed 11 of the 12 character spotlights video playing in the watch menu. Before, all 12 failed to play on Linux. Now they all work except Setsukis (missing sound), which will be fixed in a later patch.

[ 2020-09-10 21:00:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is a small update with fixes to several technical issues. The update only affects the Steam and PlayStation 4 versions of the game. (The next patch will include these fixes in the Nintendo Switch version as well.) --[PS4] To play the game online on PS4, you no longer need a PlayStation+ subscription (Sony no longer requires us to require it.) --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed a crash that could happen from being in practice mode, then playing a ranked game, then the crash could happen as the game would try to return you to practice mode afterwards. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed a case where the server would sometimes fail to check your ping correctly, which could then result in you getting matched with people with bad pings. This was more likely to happen to players who played for more than 1 hour in a session, but was possible to happen before that too. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed a case where you could be in the queue for online matches according to the UI on your screen, but secretly you were not in the queue and would never get any matches. You could leave the queue and rejoin it to fix this, but now when this situation arises, the UI will not show you as being in the queue. Instead, youll get a popup saying to try joining the queue again. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed a case where "View friend request" from the pause menu would do nothing, when chosen right after denying a first friend request. --[PS4] Fixed the trophy "Hex of Murkwood: Stack poison 3 times as Argagarg". (It tried to award the trophy to the victim, rather than to the Argagarg player. Oops.) --[PS4] You can no longer wrongly receive trophies by watching replays. --[Steam] the loading screen with the dragon icon is back, when launching the app. The free-to-play patch accidentally replaced this with a black screen. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Slight framerate improvement any time Quince is on the screen at all. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Valeries painter costume now has correct on fire graphics (was missing the orange inner rim light). --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed a crash in boss rush mode when Midori picks the Dragon Claws powerup, then transforms into a dragon.

[ 2020-08-26 01:17:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Weve updated the Fantasy Strike matchmaking servers with several fixes. These fixes are in effect right now and do not require players to download a patch (because they are all server-side fixes). Heres whats fixed: --The servers performance has been optimized, meaning it can handle more players without getting overloaded. --Fixed several problems with the matchmaking algorithm that only arose with our new much higher number of players in the queue. Its correct that if the server cant find an opponent of similar skill level for you in casual play or player of the same league in ranked play that it will then expand its search. The problem is that, ironically, when a lot of players are in the queue it was much more likely to expand the search for no good reason. Now you will (on average) find much closer skill matches than you did since our free-to-play launch. --When getting in the matchmaking queue, you will now have a minimum wait time of 7 seconds (rather than 0 seconds). This ensures the matchmaking process has a chance to run its course, rather than instantly give you an iffy skill match while other better matches just werent quite computed yet. --Fixed a bug that could give you the same opponent over and over in the matchmaking queue, even when other suitable opponents were available. --Fixed a bug that could cause the ping check with your opponents to fail. If you were the victim of this bug, you would likely get a bunch of bad 1-bar connections to opponents, even though opponents with much better connections were available. --Fixed an issue with Friend TV (for Fantasy+ members) that caused it to often wrongly claim there are 0 available replays to watch. --Fixed an issue where the server generated log files so big that it would eventually force the server to restart every few days, which then locked out matchmaking for a few minutes each time. --Fixed the visual display of the double XP bonus for Fantasy+ members. These players really have been getting double XP all along (which helps characters get to level 20 so they can wear master costumes) but the score screen has been wrongly showing non-doubled XP values. Now the displayed XP is correctly doubled.

[ 2020-08-14 04:09:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

(While we know these are the Steam forums, we include notes on changes to all platforms, for the sake of completeness. Especially because fixes to online disconnects and crashes on PS4 and Switch improve crossplatform play on Steam.)

MAIN FIXES

--[Switch] Having the core pack now lets you challenge any player on any platform to a friend match, even a free player. Free players on Switch can now be challenged by anyone on any platform who has the core pack. This brings Switch in line with how the other platforms already worked. --[Switch] Fixed a crash that happened right at the end of games, after you had played X number of games previously. This crash could be temporarily warded off by deleting your save file, but is now fully fixed. --[PS4] Fixed both a frequent source of disconnects AND crashes right as a game ends, which was especially disruptive to ranked matches (because you have to get through best 3 out of 5 games to complete a ranked match). --Fixed a desync that could happen in online games with Quince at the start of matches. Affects all platforms, and on Steam this problem would show a "GGPO Assertion Error" when the desync happened. --When you start watching a game as a spectator and you specifically join when your friend is on the character select screen, this disrupted the connection and could disconnect the players. This problem only started after our free-to-play patch, but is now fixed.

OTHER ONLINE FIXES

--The friends list is now sorted alphabetically. --The on/off switches for joining the casual and ranked queues are no longer backwards looking. The button now to the left while off and slides to the right when on. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed another rare source of disconnects that could happen between games of a team battle. --Increased the amount of time the server will wait before declaring an inactive connection in order to prevent some spurious disconnects. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed a rare bug where you could start a ranked game, as player2 as the wrong character (then immediately desync). This could even make you play as "Dummy". --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] When a game ends, the save operation for creating the replay file happens faster now. (Note that this save happens whether you have a Fantasy+ membership or not, and that even if you dont, you can still view the replay of the game you just played.) This optimization removes a slight pause you might experience at the end of a game. --[PS4] Accessing the My Replays and Favorites screen (both available to Fantasy+ members) is ridiculously more responsive now. Before, trying to access these would give you a black screen with no loading indicator and you would be stuck there for a length of time proportional to how many games youd played. This could be as long as 158 seconds(!), but now can only be as long as 1.5 seconds. Also, if you go to these screens, then later go to them again before restarting the app, they have close to 0 seconds loading time. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] You can now report offensive usernames through the search results screen.

CHARACTERS

QUINCE

--Somewhat improved the framerate when Quince is on the screen. This especially applies to if any of his illusions are on the screen. In addition, it fixes a drop in framerate that could happen because of illusions, even after those illusions went away. --Fixed a bug that caused the diagonally downward kick of Quinces B, B to do 2 damage during his supers two truths mode, rather than the 1 damage it should do. --When Onimaru or Setsuki parry your Patriot Mirror super, it no longer counts as a hit that triggers your two truths mode.

ONIMARU

--Neutral A, proximity block distance reduced. (Used to trigger the opponents blocking animation more than half screen away, accidentally.) --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] During the cutscene when the robots are summoned with the air super, the robots now appear at the correct brightness, rather than looking too dark.

VALERIE

--Fixed a visual bug that could cause her to sometimes have her paintbrush in the wrong hand during gameplay.

ROOK

--[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] During Rooks victory pose where birds land on him, the birds now land at the correct height, rather than floating above him. This fix especially improves the alignment if youre using his Tree Rook alternate costume.

MISC

--[PS4; will be added in a later patch on Switch] Added a new feature to button config to unset a button by holding either left or right for a couple seconds. For example, if the Jump function is assigned to the X button, highlight that then hold right. The X button icon will slide off the screen, resulting in no button at all assigned to Jump. --Slightly improved memory garbage collection overall. While this doesnt increase framerate, it does prevent framerate from dropping in the form of occasional brief spikes of bad framerate. While this is a global improvement, the optimization applies to Quince at least an order of magnitude more than to other characters. --In Survival modes, you heal 2 hit points, rather than 1 hit point after beating an opponent. (Except for in Cruel 10, where you already healed 2, and still do.) --In Survival and Daily Challenge modes, our last patch introduced a problem that caused gameplay to pause for up to 1 second (depending on platform) right when the body of your last opponent disappeared, and another long pause a few seconds later. All these long pauses are now fixed. --Fixed a crash in Survival mode that happened when destroying remaining mini-Lums after a full-sized Lum was defeated. --The default volume level is now set to 50 out of 100 on all platforms. Previously, PS4 correctly was this way, but Steam and Switch wrongly defaulted to 100 out of 100 volume. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Fixed a bug in button config that started with the f2p patch where going down twice after arriving on this screen would put the cursor in an invisible spot. --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] When you purchase items with gems, then lose your internet connection, you still had access to them, which is good. But if closed the app then relaunched it while still having no internet connection, you would need to connect once to the server to have access to those items again. Now, you no longer need to do that. If you ever had access to items bought with gems on a given device, the items will be always be there, even across restarts, and even without ever connecting to the internet again. --[PS4 and Steam] If you own the founder's pack, core pack, or collector's pack, you no longer need to connect to the server once to use the features associated with that pack; it's checked offline. (Switch already checked pack ownership offline.) --[Steam and PS4; will be fixed in a later patch on Switch] Reduced the jump height of all Boss Rush enemy power ups that uses a jump height increase. This prevents things like Setsuki becoming too high and staying in the air and being completely unhittable.

[ 2020-08-10 18:23:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fantasy Strike is now free to play. The term free to play has a wide range of meanings and were excited to tell you that were not talking about one character is free, please buy the rest for $5 each. No, we mean all characters are free.

All Characters Free

Specifically, you can play all characters in online casual play, online ranked play, offline practice mode, and offline single match mode against AIcompletely free. Also we are also adding two new characters: Chancellor Quince and General Onimaru. Everyone gets these characters for free, too.

To learn more about the gameplay of these new characters, check out their character spotlight videos, narrated by our game director, David Sirlin: Quince Spotlight Video Onimaru Spotlight Video This is something we wanted to do all along. We know that its a huge benefit to the playerbase, not just in that they can play for free, but also in that it attracts a ton more opponents for everyone and helps vastly expand the community. The problem for us was always that in order to make the game free-to-play, we have to develop a bunch of other stuff to actually sell. Well, we did that. And weve been careful to keep the game completely competitively fair in the process.

Thing You Can Buy If You Want

There are three broad types of things people can buy. First, the core pack: this gives access to five additional game modes: Arcade Mode, Survival, the awesome powerup craziness of Boss Rush, local versus, and online friend matches (founders who already bought the game already have and will retain all these modes). Next, theres a lot of new cosmetics. Players can buy (sensible!) alternate costumes as well as alternate (non-gameplay) animations such as intros and win poses. Finally, theres an optional subscription called Fantasy+.

New Cosmetics

Fantasy+ (optional service)

First, Fantasy+ gives you access to our new replay system. We tried very hard to give this feature awesome UI and usability. You can save replays of your own games, watch replays of others, and you even get four new channels in our Netflix-like video screen that are all devoted to replays.

Next, every character has a special Master Costume thats like their ultimate progression. These costumes cant be bought in the item shop. They are only available to Fantasy+ members, and even then, only if you are level 20 or higher with that character. Fantasy+ members also get an XP boost to cross that threshold faster. (XP does not give any gameplay advantage.)
Finally, Fantasy+ members get their names in green in the game to show their support. Every time you see someone with a green name, you know they are supporting more development of the game. To everyone who already bought the game, we want you to know that you lose nothing and you gain 2 free new characters to play. We also want you to know that for other people to have all the game modes you do, theyll have to buy the core pack. And that our founders already have 60 additional costume colors that free-to-play players dont have.

Get Ready to Dive In

Dont miss the huge wave of new players that will come with this change. Get in on the game now. While its designed to be a deep game for experts, its also the perfect second game for everyone in the FGC because you can learn the basics so quickly and get right to the strategy. It also happens to be a great game for anyone wanting to try out fighting games for the first time. For experts, we have a one-year anniversary tournament coming up on Saturday, July 25th and we challenge you to see how well you can do in this simple-seeming, but brutally difficult game. Welcome to the community! Discord chat: discord.gg/FantasyStrike Twitter: @FantasyStrike Patreon: www.patreon/sirlin (new tabletop games in development now!)

Bug Fixes and Other Patch Notes

CHARACTERS

Rook --Jump forward/back A (the splash) has smaller defensive boxes on his feet, so that he can more easily jump over projectiles with this move. --Air C has narrow defensive boxes on the back part of the move, so that he can more easily jump over projectiles with this move. --C throw has slightly more range. About the same range as the old throw range plus walking forward for 3 frames. Valerie --Fixed a bug with some of her hit reactions that caused her hand to spin her paintbrush around in a strange way. Setsuki --When doing Starlight Tumbler (C button) then doing her air super in the middle of it, the B+C command to do the super now has the same slop factor as all other supers, rather than requiring B and C to be pressed on exactly the same frame. (Simply jumping and doing air super already had the standard slop factor, this fix only applies to doing air super specifically during ground C.) --Fix: Setsukis air parry super now correctly triggers against Argagarg's bubble shield pop. DeGrey --Sometimes wall bounces (most notably DeGreys counterhit B,B (Tyrant Crusher)) would seem to not work. This is when the wall scrolled over a microscopic amount right as the opponent touched it. Now it bounces when it looks like it should. Midori --Fixed Midori back throw not doing damage to Rook. --Fixed a bug with Midori ground super involving a kara cancel. It is correct that when the B+C macro is enabled, pressing B then 1-2 frames later pressing C (or vice versa) cancels the very beginning of the special move and starts the super move. The bug was that Midori could do this after cancelling from a normal move. For example, A cancel to C then 1 frame later press B should NOT perform the super. Thats a stupid kara cancel trick thats disabled for all other characters, but was accidentally possible here. There is some advantage for Midori to use this, which would force everyone to enable this macro for competitive reasons if we kept the bug. Geiger --Fixed the exact same kara cancel bug with Geigers ground super that was explained above about Midoris. This had no practical use for Geiger, but its fixed anyway. --B (and hold B) gears no longer knock down opponents who get hit while jumping. They land on their feet. This prevents him from getting a 2-damage combo when hitting in this situation and prevents his air super from being able to juggle for 3-total damage all the time. --B (and hold B) have +3f recovery. --Time Stop (ground super) now automatically ends with a Flash Gear attack, rather than in neutral. This means a successful Time Stop will net him 1 damage total, rather than 2 damage. Lum --Fixed a bug with Lums fireworks which for the last few months has caused them to track LUM rather than the opponent when the players switch sides after the rocket is summoned. In practical terms, this made the fireworks do nothing in this case, rather than be very powerful as they are supposed to be. The fireworks now work correctly again, the same way they worked for years before this bug was introduced a few months ago.

Tutorial Fixes

--When Midori demonstrates his yomi counter, it will still work (rather than do nothing) if the player 2 controller is doing inputs. --Fixed a bug in a recent patch that prevented the tutorial dummies in lesson about throws from doing yomi counters when they should. Youre supposed to strike these dummies anyway, not throw them, so it was minor. But now if you try to throw them, they yomi counter correctly so you learn that thats what happens against opponents who let go of their controls. --Fixed a bug with the tutorial dummy who must be beaten by jumping S that accidentally allowed it to sometimes also be beaten by ground B.

Online Fixes

--[Windows] When you get an online opponent ("Here comes a new challenger") and the game application isn't in focus, we now flash the taskbar button for the game once, to attract attention. --Fixed a bug that caused invites to watch to not show the name of the player inviting you, which somehow broke 17 months ago. --Fixed an issue with players profiles that caused their best boss rush to show incorrect data. --Fixed an issue where characters in menus and gameplay appeared as pure black silhouettes. This could happen as a result of online play loading wrong lighting settings when a game ended.

Misc. Fixes

--Walking left and right now feels more responsive. This does not affect gameplay in any meaningful way, just the feel. When you stopped walking forward or backward before (meaning you let go and returned to neutral specifically), we used to have a short transition of about 6 frames. This transition period was NOT recovery, so you could block instantly, yomi counter instantly, etc. But if you just let go and waited, your character would appear to keep walking for those frames. Weve eliminated that and now rely only on animation blending to make it look good. The net result is walking and stopping will feel more responsive, yet not allow you to do anything faster than you could before. --Characters in a blocking pose now continue to have a slight animation if they stay in the blocking pose for a while. Before their animation would freeze if they blocked for a while. (Very minor, doesnt affect gameplay.) --When the music volume is set to 0, the music is now actually silent, rather than very quiet. --[Steam] Fixed a bunch of UI elements disappearing if you launch the game in a very tall aspect ratio (heavily letterboxed). --[Steam] While the VS screen is loading, pressing Tab to get to your friends list then clicking on the profile icon would cause you to be stuck on your profile screen. Now fixed. --Fixed sometimes being unexpectedly thrown into a "Single match vs CPU" after quitting another 1P mode such as arcade mode. --[PS4] If you boot the game while holding down a direction on the gamepad, it no longer messes up your directional after that. --Fixed bug where projectiles would spawn with the wrong offset after side-switching when a previous projectile is still on the screen. For example, Geiger air S (Cycloid Revolution), opponent switches sides, then Geiger does B (Time Spiral) and the Time Spiral would start offset from Geigers character. --When opening the button config screen, the input focus now starts on the "Done" button rather than on the first assignable button (Jump). That means going to button config then immediately pressing the back button will now leave the button config screen, rather than set that button to be jump. --[Switch/PS4] The button config screen now lets you go to a separate panel called other controls that allows you to remap the buttons for frame step mode (to turn it on/off) and frame advance.

[ 2020-07-21 15:35:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Give the gift of fighting games to your loved ones this holiday season! From December 19th - January 2nd you can save 34% on the Steam version of Fantasy Strike, our colorful, modern take on the fighting game genre. Easy to learn but difficult to master, Fantasy Strike is a great starting point for not just newcomers to the genre, but also veterans looking for something new that emphasizes strategy and great decision-making. Also, dont forget to check out our other games, Yomi and Puzzle Strike; theyre 50% off during the sale, too. These are the digital versions of our strategically deep tabletop games that directly inspired Fantasy Strike, taking place in the same universe and featuring the same cast of characters. Already own all of these games on Steam and youve already gifted them all to your friends? Check out David Sirlins Patreon page, where about twice a month were giving our Patrons a behind-the-scenes look at whats next for Fantasy Strike as well as new developments in our tabletop gaming series. If youre a longtime fan of our titles, the Patreon is the best way to support us while also gaining access to some awesome new content. We hope you have a fantastic holiday season! Be sure to support all of your favorite indie companies this week. We all really appreciate your support, and we hope to see you on the servers.

[ 2019-12-19 21:01:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update is live on all platforms right now. (While we know these are the Steam forums, we include notes on changes to all platforms, for the sake of completeness.)

FULL CROSSPLAY

Fantasy Strike now has full crossplay amongst all its platforms: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, and Steam (Mac / Windows / Linux). That means when youre in the casual or ranked online queues, you get the benefit of a larger playerbase across all platforms. You can also directly challenge or spectate any player from your in-game friends list, regardless of which platform either of you are using.

ONLINE FIXES

--Fixed an issue that broke the menu UI when the poupup for "The opponent has quit the match" appeared while you were playing local team battle. The problem could also happen when playing ranked online in bronze league. --Fixed an issue during friend matchs team battle. If the opponent disconnected during the roulette screen specifically, a popup would tell you (good), but then youd be stuck on that screen forever (bad). --[Switch] When opening the main menu for the first time, then choosing Play Offline, the game no longer tries to connect to the server. It also no longer displays a signup screen for Nintendo Online in this case, because youre, well, playing offline. --Fixed resuming survival mode after it's interrupted by an online game. --When playing Single Match (vs an AI opponent), then getting interrupted by an online match, then returning to Single Match, it now returns you to the same AI opponent character you were playing before. --Fixed a visual issue with the round win icons (the blue circles) during online games. When online rollbacks happen, the animation of getting a round-win icon could wrongly play twice for no reason. This did not affect anything substantive about who won, it was just a visual glitch. --[Switch & PS4] Slightly reduced the CPU strain of rollbacks in matches with pings worse than about 160ms. This means framerate should a bit better in this case. --Fixed a spectating issue that could cause the spectator to disconnect when trying to spectate a friend match after the players had chosen to rematch. --Fixed spectators wrongly seeing the fake FantasyTags "Player 1" vs "Player 2" when starting to watch a friend match game at the character select screen.

CHARACTERS

Setsuki --Hold C (Starlight Tumbler) when whiffed now has 12f more recovery when it lands. --C, C (the Flying Fox move to hit jumpers) now has 9f more recovery when it lands. --Air S parry used to fail against DeGreys ghost, but succeed against Argagargs poison fish. Now the opposite is true: it works against DeGreys ghost (which is a projectile, so its supposed to work) but does not work against Argagargs poison fish (which is a weird exception move that passes through everything and gives no hitstun, and it felt wrong to parry it before). Midori --Midoris human and dragon form both have a slight fix to their normal throws. These throws now impose the same air recovery arc against all characters, rather than an arc that varies based on the victim's jump's Y acceleration value(!). Everyone now flies in the same arc that Grave does when getting hit by these throws. --Dragon's ground C and air C throws now correctly preserve block damage like all other throws. This means if the victims has a hit point thats flashing from possible block damage, then they get thrown, their next remaining hit point will now correctly retain that same kind of flashing. Argagarg -Argagargs fA recovers 1f faster.

MISC FIXES

--The AI can now be fooled into blocking crossups the wrong way sometimes. The lower the AI difficulty, the more likely it will be fooled. Tighter crossups fool the AI more often. --Fixed Daily Challenge crash when you win "too fast" and the incoming opponent was not finished loading. Mainly noticeable on consoles. This only happened on Daily Challenge, not in Survival. --Fixed a case where you could stay stuck on the Boss Rush powerups screen if you mashed buttons during the transition to gameplay. --Fixed an issue introduced in the previous patch where Grave and Jainas projectiles could give them super meter for no reason if they collided with the opponents projectiles. --[Steam] Fixed a menu issue that occurred when you paused the game, then double tapped Esc. This resulted in showing the pause overlay while the game was not actually paused. --Fixed an issue that caused music to be turned off by default on a fresh install. This problem was accidentally introduced in the previous patch, but is now fixed. --[Switch and PS4] The Polish language is now available in language settings. --Fixed a crash that happened when mashing the cancel button on the opening cinematic when the game is launched for the first time. --[Switch] When choose Local Play, then choose one of the submodes to actually play, if two controllers are not available, the game now opens the controller sync screen to let the player connect a second controller. It was still possible to connect a controller in this situation by pressing the Home button and going to Nintendos controller setup screen, or by detaching/attaching JoyCons, and so forth, but this way its simpler for everyone. --Set some ground moves' voice-overs were accidentally set to start playing on frame 1, rather than frame 3 of the move. Now that they are set to frame 3, this prevents them from wrongly playing in the case where the player did a J+A or A+B throw macro, where we only saw the first 1 or 2 frames of the A move. The moves with this sound fix are:Grave fA, Setsuki A, Geiger A, Argagarg bA, Argagarg fA Enjoy the new enhanced crossplay amongst all platforms!

[ 2019-12-11 21:44:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update is live on all platforms right now. (While we know these are the Steam forums, we include notes on changes to all platforms, for the sake of completeness.) This month, we have lots of bug fixes for you, all aimed at making things work even more smoothly. There is a new feature for music that allows you to sit in silence in the menus while waiting for an online match, but then still have music when you actually play. Also, Setsuki has one balance change, that fixes an accidentally-too-good thing about her air C (Flying Fox) that shes had for the last few months.

ONLINE

--If your Master Rank changes when the tournament ends, the score screen now shows the change correctly. It used to wrongly show your same rank on this screen only (and update everywhere else) if your rank changed. --After spectating a ranked match, you now correctly see your own player data on various UI screens such as the rank shown in the online play menu. Before, youd wrongly see the data of the player you previously spectated. --Now we actually show the correct player names on the character roulette screen when spectating a friend match involving a team battle. --In the rematch menu for casual online matches, if you choose Next opponent, your opponent now immediately moves on, rather than waiting for the full 10 second countdown to finish. We now realize this bug has been happening for the last 10 months. Now fixed. --[Switch] Fixed a serious bug accidentally introduced last patch that occurred when playing a second (or more) ranked match per session. When you did, the character roulette screen would sometimes suddenly send you to the main menu, ending the match, or perhaps send you to a black screen forever if your opponent suffered the sent to main menu bug. (Note, this was hotfixed already on Steam/PS4, but Nintendo Switch patches take up to 20 days for approval so for that period of time, the Switch version had this serious problem. Thankfully Valve and Sony allow for immediate patches.) --When your previously-sent challenge gets accepted *right after* you would start a casual online or ranked online game, during the short "Here comes a new challenger" animation, we now drop the challenge and continue with your queued online match. The queued match got there first. This fixes you getting stuck in a black screen, your casual online opponent having their online match interrupted as it starts, and your friend match opponent being set in a silent bad state where mysterious bad things happen.

MISC

--New music option. In addition to music on or off, there is now gameplay only. When this is set, there will not be music in the menus, but there will be music in gameplay. An example use of this is idling (in silence) in the menus while you wait for an online match, while getting to hear music during your actual match. --Setsukis air C (Flying Fox) has a little more upward force. This fixes an issue accidentally introduced many months ago that allowed Setsuki to do air C towards the opponent, let it finish, then do it again (the same direction) and be so low that she cancelled the rest of the move by landing and ended up at +12 on block. In much older builds, she would pull up at the end which made her unsafe, rather than land instantly. This change restores it to more like it was meant to be. Note that if you want to make the opponent block air C, then have a lot of frame advantage, you still can. Just do air C -> A (divekick). But this sequence triggers only one point of flashing block damage (from the air C), rather than two (from air C x 2). Alternatively, you can STILL do air C -> air C and end up at frame advantage, but only if you do it from a precise, far away distance or if you do it from close on the way down from a jump. Either way, you can no longer repeat that sequence as a lockdown. --Fixed a bug with the tutorial dummies in the section about combos. When you press B to combo a projectile into them, if you happened to hold B for a certain number of frames, the dummy would have no hitbox and the projectile would pass through. Rare because of the specific timing involved, but now fixed. --Fixed buggy controls for the top-right menu when on the 1p character select screen (e.g. Arcade Modes character select). --[Steam] Fixed a bug on the friends list screen where dropdown menus could appear partially off screen at certain resolution settings. --[Switch] When using detached joycons, pressing the analog stick in no longer calls the Friends screen. --[Steam] Fixed a category of bad states when you use a secondary monitor and attempt to use a fullscreen resolution that's not supported for that monitor. (Instead of getting stuck in a loop of either refreshing the list of resolutions every frame (merely breaks the resolution dropdown UI), or remembering an incorrect resolution for next launch, or actually setting an incorrect resolution every frame (disaster!), the game now accepts the resulting lower resolution than what it attempted to set.) --Fixed a memory leak with arcade mode. This particular issue also caused the game to crash if the leak happened, then you later entered arcade mode again. --Fixed a crash that could happen when DeGreys ghost deals block damage that wins the round (meaning, when the opponent loses their last hit point to this block damage). --Fixed a camera bug introduced last patch where the camera would not scroll up enough when both characters jumped. Now reverted to how it always was. --Fixed a camera bug introduced last patch having to do with moves that briefly lock the camera in place. This issue was barely noticeable in most cases, except for Setsukis B ninjaport kick/throw, where the camera issue was very noticeable and buggy (too jerky).

[ 2019-09-11 21:33:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update is live on all platforms right now. (While we know these are the Steam forums, we include notes on changes to all platforms, for the sake of completeness.) Weve been busy fixing as many issues as possible that came to light after our launch last month. We fixed a lot of problems that could cause either crashes or hangs during online play, fixed lots of little user interface things, and improved controller support on Steam. We also set the - (minus) button on Switch to instantly bring up the friends list (very useful, but Steam players can already access this with the Tab key) and did a small balance change to Rooks Thunderclap.

MISC

--Rooks back+A Thunderclap can cancel to specials in the case where the Thunderclap destroys a projectile. It could always cancel to specials on hit or block, and for about a year we wanted it to also cancel to specials when he claps a projectile, but we had technical problems with that until now. The point of this slight balance adjustment is to help him get in just a bit more against projectile characters. He can clap and if it destroy a projectile, then he can use B landslide to approach. In this case he now gets to skip the recovery frames of the Thunderclap. --Fixed two memory leaks. In each case, playing the game would, over time, slowly take up more RAM until you restarted the game. These two memory leaks could each eventually cause crashes, especially on Switch and PlayStation 4. Now fixed. --When you throw a dummy in the tutorial, all the dummies on screen no longer flicker briefly for no reason. --Fixed a minor bug with armor (blue) highlighting in Boss Rush mode that affected throw confirms and moves that trigger a cinematic sequence. An example of what this fixes is Rook taking "All special moves gain +1 armor", then getting his C-throw hit twice (down to 0 armor, losing the blue outline), then confirming the throw and regaining the armored blue outline for no reason.

CONTROLLERS

--[Steam] Added several more controllers to the games auto-detect database. (Controllers that auto-detect just work when you plug them in; controllers that arent in the database still work but require an extra step where youre prompted to press each button in sequence the first time you try to use them.) --[Steam] The popular Logitech F310 and F710 gamepads now auto-detect as Xbox brand. These controllers already auto-detected before, meaning you didnt have to do any kind of manual setup to tell the game which button is which. The new thing is specifically that the games help text will be set to Xbox button graphics when using these controllers without you having to manually set the help text type in the game options. --[Steam] Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause double inputs on a controller (do one input, but the game registers that you did two). This bug could happen the first time you set up a new controller and would fix itself after restarting the game. Should be fixed all the time now. --[Steam] Fixed ANOTHER bug that would sometimes cause double inputs on a controller. This happened when the game auto-detected a controller but didnt have information for the controllers analog stick. Not having that info is fine, the controller should still work, but this bug caused the profile to fill in the missing data with whatever the previously loaded controller profile had for analog sticks. This bad data caused the double inputs to happen. --[Steam] Fixed a bug that could corrupt your controller and keyboard settings. When you got into this bad state, some of your buttons could mysteriously seem to not work. On Windows, this required that you edit the registry to fix. --[Steam] Fixed a bug that made the game not recognize controllers anymore (usually until restarting the game) after you plugged in and unplugged a series of 5 or more controllers.

USER INTERFACE

--[Switch] The '-' button (minus button) now brings up the friends screen, just like the Tab key does in the Steam version. --You are now able to access the friends list screen during all team battle UI screens: character roulette, tournament bracket screen, and score screen. This lets you more easily check who is spectating you during team battles online. --[Switch] The help text for cancel online matchmaking is no longer in the wrong place on the screen. --[Steam] The matchmaking search box and cancel search box now show the correct platform of button help. Before, for example, it was possible to have your overall UI showing PlayStation buttons but this one place in the UI to accidentally show Xbox buttons. --[Steam] When the option "Help text icons" is set to "PlayStation", "Xbox" or "Switch", all images will show that brands icons, not just button help (so now this includes the Moves List and Button Config screen too). --[PS4] When you try to add a friend in-game, the pop-up with text entry is no longer auto-filled with YOUR FantasyTag by default. This made you have to delete the text there before entering the name of your friend, but now correctly defaults to a blank text entry field. --Fixed a visual bug with button highlights on the rematch screen and score screens. On these screens, if you chose some option (for example leave queue) then later went to that screen again, the thing you picked last time (such as leave queue) would wrongly appear highlighted. This means it was possible to see two highlights at once: the real one and a phantom one from your last visit to that screen. Now fixed. --Fixed "best boss rush run" in the player profile wrongly showing the sum of your previous boss rush attempts. Now really shows the best runs stats. --[Steam] The "Return" keyboard key now actually works in the rematch screen when playing as player 2 online. --Fixed the Boss Rush powerup screen's powerup cards incorrectly displaying on top of overlays like the friends screen or the "here comes a new challenger" overlay. --The "Show FPS" and "Ping Display" options now get correctly saved. --Fixed some navigation issues on the friends list screen.

ONLINE PLAY

--The matchmaking server sometimes broke and stopped actually doing matchmaking, but gave players no indication that this was happening (there could just appear to be no opponents sometimes, even if there were lots of people attempting to play). The main problem there is now fixed and in addition, a new process on the server automatically restarts the server to fix matchmaking just in case it somehow silently breaks in the future. --Starting a Daily Challenge removes player from casual and ranked matchmaking queues. (You can only do it once per day, and you were always intended to do that run without being interrupted by an online match.) --When you play Boss Rush while in the online queue, if you get an online match then get returned to Boss Rush afterwards, your Boss Rush run is no longer broken. Before, this situation would allow you to pick an extra powerup, which broke the UI and caused other problems. --When playing any single player mode, then playing an online match via a friend challenge, you now correctly resume to the single player mode afterwards. Before, the ability to resume your single player mode broke depending on how many times you entered "Standard" or "Team Battle" modes in the friend match UI. (It only worked if you entered a mode exactly once, but broke if you entered zero, or more than once.) --When playing any single player mode, then playing online in a casual or ranked match and choosing "Change character", youre now able to actually resume your single player modes progress. --Fixed a crash that could happen when you quit an online game on the character select screen. --Fixed a crash caused by characters ground shadows(!) that could happen when interrupting gameplay to start an online game. --Fixed a crash on the team battle character roulette screen that happened if you lost connection to the opponent while on this screen. --Disconnect timeout for online games increased 10s -> 15s. This applies to all platforms but is mostly to fix some edge cases in the Nintendo Switch version. --If you create a new online account, then immediately go into online ranked mode and happen to get a bye before your first opponent, the tournament bracket UI no longer breaks. --Fixed a crash that could happen when returning to the main menu after a match ended from an online desync. (There shouldnt be desyncs anyway; a desync specifically means a problem in our game, as opposed to lost connection with the opponent which means a problem with your flaky internet connection. That said, if a desync does somehow happen, it no longer can crash the main menu.) --Graves wind summon (air C) has been optimized to use far less CPU. While this affects all platforms, including offline and online play, we list it in the online play section because the biggest problem the wind summon caused was a framerate drop during online play in the Nintendo Switch version. So while all modes and platforms benefit from this, online play in the Switch version benefits the most. --When the friend you're spectating disconnects from the server, you now correctly stop trying to watch them. --Fixed a spectating issue when watching ranked matches of bronze players specifically that could glitch out the spectator. --Fixed a crash that could occur when spectating any ranked match. --When spectating a ranked match, if theres a connection problem on or just before the character roulette screen, youll now time out after 15 seconds and return to the main menu. Before in this case, youd be stuck on the roulette screen forever. --When spectating any match, there is a more lenient disconnect timer (2 seconds -> 5 seconds). This makes spectators less likely to disconnect whenever the slightest thing goes wrong with the connection.

[ 2019-08-27 05:03:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Fantasy Strike has now launched on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Steam (Windows, Mac, and Linux)! Thank you to our Patreon patrons for supporting us for so long as well as everyone who played the game during Steam Early Access. In celebration of our launch, here is a cinematic trailer featuring the Fantasy Strike characters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK2sx6Z1hsI You can read the patch notes for the launch version here.*** Join our Discord chat at discord.gg/FantasyStrike to find opponents, discuss strategy, or just hang out. Check out our media page for, screenshots, video, gifs, logos, even a printable handout thats great to use at events. Wed like to call attention to some exciting and innovative features. Our lead designer has a long, complete rundown here, but heres the bullet points.

• Depth vs Complexity Preserving depth with only a fraction of the complexity
• User Interface for Friend Matches One-click challenge / spectating, rare or unique in fighting games
• Netcode Pushing the technical envelope
• Frame Advantage Visual Effects The first fighting game in history to do this
• Frame Step Mode Possibly unique in its implementation, high value feature
• Instructional Videos Rare inclusion within the game itself
• Ranked Mode Builds Tournaments On-the-fly pushing the envelope on this rare feature
• Team Battle Format Unique implementation in the history of fighting games and has very good properties
• Yomi counter mechanic A new form of throw-escape
• Single Player Content Just a few notes

Again, check out the whole article about these features here. Were super excited to finally launch. Well see you online!

[ 2019-07-25 20:51:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

After over four years of development, Fantasy Strike launches today on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Steam (Mac / Windows / Linux)! This update brings out of Steam Early Access to full release, and is live right now.

BOSS RUSH MODE

Our new, biggest single player mode is now available.
Boss Rush is where we can stop worrying about making things competitively fair and just let you do ridiculous things that are fun. You fight a series of eight (CPU-controlled) boss characters, and they get increasingly difficult. Part of that is their AI becomes smarter, but they also get crazy powerups like bombs dropping from the sky, dragons flying by, rivers with dangerous fish washing across the screen, and so on.
In order to deal with all that, you get powerups too. Before each fight, you pick one of three powerups. And before half the fights you get to pick a second, really powerful gold powerup from a random set of three. All of these are cumulative over the course of your run. So youre building a deck of powerups and you get to think about synergies and combos amongst them.
The mode is like a rogue-like in that you keep your deck until you lose. If you lose, we throw your deck away and you have to start over with a new run. Can you make it through all eight bosses? Playing as every character?
In testing this mode, we found that it was more fun when your super moves still mattered against later bosses even though they have a lot of hit points. Some powerups give you bonus damage to supers, but in order to keep super moves more relevant for everyone as you gain various other wild powerups, you always get +1 damage on supers starting at the 4th boss. And then +2 damage on super for the next boss, and +3 for the next, etc. This stacks with any powerups that might also increase the damage of your super moves. Some super moves dont deal damage in Fantasy Strike, such as Geigers Time Stop or Midoris Dragon Form transformation. For these, we added new properties to these supers that just happen in Boss Rush. Midoris Dragon transform roar now sends out a damaging shockwave in addition to him taking on the new form. And Geiger throws out a series of Time Spiral projectiles in addition to the usual powers of Time Stop whenever he has bonus super damage.

New AI

AI opponents in all single player moves are greatly improved. Rather than playing almost totally randomly, they ramp up in sophistication as you progress through arcade / survival / daily challenge / boss rush modes. In addition, you can pick if you want generally Easy / Medium / Hard AI in arcade mode and in single match mode.

RANK RESET

As part of the games launch, everyones ranked play stats have been reset. Profile data of pre-release has also been reset so everyone has a fresh start. This marks the beginning of Season 1 of ranked play. Seasons will last 3 months, after which ranks are reset, but starting with Season 2 youll get an initial boost after the reset based on how well you did the previous season.

CINEMATIC TRAILER

The Fantasy Strike cinematic trailer now plays automatically the first time you launch the game. The trailer is also available to watch any time in the Learn tab on main menu.

CONTROLLERS

There are now several new convenience features for game controllers in the Steam version. --The first time you do any input on a plugged in controller, now one of two things will happen: 1) Fantasy Strike looks up in our database if it knows about your specific controller in your specific operating system. If it does, then your controller will just work without you doing anything, or even knowing that anything had to happen. 2) If your controller is not auto-detected in this way, then you will be shown a setup screen with a picture of a PS4 controller (but ANY type of controller will work, not just PS4). Here, you press each button on your controller in the sequence prompted so the game knows whats what. Note that this is unrelated to button config where you set if you want X to be jump and so on. Rather, this step tells the game which physical button on your controller is X. --If you have to do step 2 above, youll only have to do it once for that controller. After that, the game remembers your previous setup. Also, in future patches, well add your controller to the database that all players benefit from. So over time, more and more controllers will just magically work with no setup step at all. --Improved hot-swapping of controllers. Before, if you plugged in a controller, then unplugged it, then plugged in a second controller, that second controller could wrongly be set to player2. Now, it will be set to player1 when its the only controller thats plugged in. Furthermore, this problem also sometimes caused controllers to be assigned to nonsense, non-functional slots such as player 3 or player 4 at which point you controller would no longer work until you restarted the game. This only affected players who plugged and unplugged several controllers per session, but is now fixed for everyone. --In-game help text now supports keyboard, PlayStation 4 button icons, Xbox One button icons, and Nintendo Switch button icons. The in-game help text automatically displays the correct kind of icons based on the controls youre using at the moment. There is also a new feature in game options that lets you lock the help text to a particular type. An example use-case of this is that perhaps you have a 3rd party Xbox One controller that is not auto-detected, so you do the manual setup step. It works fine, but you would like the game to display Xbox One help text to match the buttons on your controller. Now you can set that.

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

Improved CPU performance by yet another 12-14%, plus an additional 6% in practice mode specifically. This comes from about 8 different cases of improving efficiency in facial animation, hit reactions, particle systems, and more. Youll see higher fps and less strain from rollbacks online because of this optimization.

ONLINE PLAY

--Fixed a multiple black screen crashes when resuming a single-player mode after an online match. --Fixed a black screen crash at the start of a ranked online game when you lose connection to the opponent. --Fixed a crash during online play (a GGPO assertion) having to do with incorrect handling of particle some effects. --When you quit an online match voluntarily (pause -> Disconnect), you no longer get disconnected from the server a few seconds later. --Fixed a spectator issue during ranked games that could cause spectators to kick each other out, or disconnect the players game. --Fixed spectators seeing three characters for one player (!) when they join spectating from the ranked score screen, or after they let the ranked score screen countdown run out. This would of course immediately desync the spectator. --Fixed a visual bug when ranking up from Diamond league to Master league. The score screen would wrongly show you an infinite loop of increasing ranks, but now correctly handles the transition to Master league. --Fixed a UI bug in the following sequence: play online, have someone spectate you, go to your friends list (which defaults to showing you who is watching you), then resume play and have them stop watching you, then go to your friends list again. In this case, your friends list wrongly defaulted to showing you a blank screen of who is watching you. In the case where no one is watching you, going to your friends list now correctly defaults to showing your actual friends rather than the blank whos-watching-you tab. --Profile screen: When selecting "All Seasons", Daily Challenge shows your best run rather than the nonsensical value of the sum of all your runs.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Fixed a bug that caused Graves super to do 3 damage, rather than 2 damage, in the case when it was done exactly 1 frame before Rook inputs his own ground super. --Corrected Grave's air super to be highlighted green for f1-21, which is the correct parry window, rather than f1-23 which included 2 green frames for no reason. VALERIE --Fixed a small animation error in Valeries knockdown that caused her to slide too far away, then pop to a closer position. This was visual only and didnt affect gameplay. SETSUKI --Fixed a visual bug at the end of Setsukis forward throw which caused her wrists to rotate 360 degrees nonsensically. --Setsukis B teleport kick now has a white highlight during the frames where you can see her on screen, but she is invulnerable. There is no change to gameplay here, the highlight was just missing before. GEIGER --Fixed Geiger's watch sometimes being desynced from Geiger's "selected" animation in the VS screen. MIDORI --Dragon B and Dragon air B (the body torpedo moves) have slightly worse hitboxes. Its a very small nerf from the front. Also, ground B is more vulnerable to being attacked from above, but is still very good. And air B has 14f landing recovery on hit or block. This change is to encourage a wider variety of moves in Dragon Form than just using B over and over. LUM --The mini-lum item used to appear with Lums default costume colors for a few frames, then it took on the correct colors of Lums costume. Now, mini-Lum has the correct colors that match Lums current colors on all frames. --Lums animation smear colors now reflect the color of his paws rather than his fingernails. --Air Bs smears now match the yellow highlights on his paws. Those yellow highlights are also now a brighter yellow.

FRAME DATA DISPLAY

The following fixes do not affect gameplay. They are all fixes to the information display of frame stats in practice mode, and to the information display of frame advantage visual effects in all modes. --Fixed a bug that was causing incorrect frame data to display for active frames of these moves: Jaina S, Grave S, Setsuki S, Rook air S. --Fixed an error in the frames-to-landing prediction code, which had a wrong order of operations within a frame when forces on the character changed. This could cause frame stats for jumping moves to display errors in frame data sometimes. For instance, if Grave jumped straight up, then pressed B at a certain time, the display would wrongly show 0 active frames but now correctly shows 4 active frames in that case. --Fixed an off-by-one-frame error in the frame advantage display code for airborne moves. This caused most airborne moves to have -1 displayed frame advantage relative to the truth, and also caused the display 1f of landing recovery rather than correct 2f of landing recovery. --Fixed an error in the landing recovery prediction code, which still thought that default airborne moves had a landing recovery of 1f, rather than 2f. This caused most airborne moves to have +1 displayed frame advantage, basically canceling the previous problem's effect on displayed frame advantage. Though these two errors cancelled each other out, how about having no errors instead. --Fixed frame advantage visual effects for all knockdown moves. The previous patch introduced a problem where knockdown moves would wrongly show a circle of the same size as whatever the LAST frame advantage effect you did was. Now it correctly shows the largest sized circle (most frame advantage) for knockdown moves such as Graves C, etc. --Dragon Midoris neutral A now shows frame advantage effects at all. They were accidentally omitted before. --Human Midori now shows frame advantage effects at all in the case where he does neutral jump A, then steers it left or right. The steered version of the move used to wrongly omit them.

MISC

--In the Linux version, the videos in the Learn screen (character spotlight videos) now work at all. --On the character select screen, selecting, then deselecting a character now correctly destroys the particles that the selected animation might create. This fixes the issue where you could make Valerie's paintbrush glow super brightly if you kept selecting and deselecting her, and same for Jaina's bow. --Fixed a lighting issue on main menu characters where the seeing a win pose after a match then returning to main menu could cause the main menu character to be lit too dark and from the side. --Fixed the Survival score screen always wrongly showing default costume color. Now it shows the costume color you actually played Survival with. --The announcer now says Congratulations! after winning a team battle. --The team battle roulette screen has minor audio improvements. The shuffling sound effect transitions better to the character locked in sound effect. Also, in the case where theres only one character left on each side, so no shuffling happens, it no longer wrongly plays a shuffling sound effect. --Pausing the game is now disallowed during the 30 frame fade in from black. This saves you from being in black or way too dark state if you mash pause as a match starts.

[ 2019-07-25 09:31:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now. This month has lots of bug fixes as we polish things up during this beta period. The biggest fix is to a problem we had with spectating online matches. Sometimes, spectating a match would cause a disconnect for the players actually playing the match. That should be fixed now. Also, theres a spiffy new energy background on the two-player character select screen now.

ONLINE

We have great UI for watching a match online. Just click the eyeball icon next to any friend in your in-game friends list to watch them play. (You even automatically follow them as they play online games across casual, ranked, and friend-match modes.) This is great for streamers because you can easily do commentary on other peoples matches. Unfortunately this feature has been somewhat crippled by a technical problem that sometimes blew up the match you were trying to spectate. We believe this is fixed. Please give us feedback if you still encounter this problem. --Fixed an occasional crash when clicking "Leave Queue" on the ranked score screen. --When you get an online match while in the local versus mode character select screen, we now show the correct characters for your match in the VS screen, not the two characters you happened to have selected on the character select screen. --Fixed incorrect handling of facial animation during rollbacks in online play. This would notably leave DeGrey's win pose with a bad facial state after doing a Yomi Counter, then winning.

UI

--Theres a new purplish energy background behind the two-player character select screen. It has neato colors and a bit of oomph once you pick the characters. This replaces the old orange lights background. --On the Daily Challenge score screen, "Retry" and "Change Character" buttons were invisible, but they were still accessible by navigating with a keyboards arrow keys. The buttons are now correctly deleted from that screen. --You can no longer call the gamepad setup overlay (hold 2 buttons) on the versus screen (which is for loading the match) or the "roulette" team battle screen. In each case, were just moments from starting a match and it causes too many problems to setup a controller right at that moment. Even worse, players often accidentally summoned this screen just before their matches started. --After playing Survival Mode, then returning to the mode select screen, back would wrongly take you back to the score screen from your previous survival run. Now it correctly takes you back to the main menu. --Fixed an issue where the character on the main menu would sometimes have accidentally too-dark lighting after playing an online match.

CHARACTERS

JAINA --Fixed alignment on her ground supers hit reaction. Some characters appeared much too high or too low during the cinematic, but now are at the correct heights. (This probably looks simple but it was a lot of work to fix these alignments.) VALERIE --Fixed a slight checkerboard pattern on her skin that was happening on some computer hardware. --Valeries practice routine animation (where she does pushups) no longer wrongly shows the shadow of her paintbrush going through the floor. MIDORI --In Dragon Form, you can no longer "reversal jump" out of the human form revert when getting up from a knockdown while your dragon meter is empty. Youre now forced to revert before you can jump. --The Dragons Yomi Counter no longer has the graphics for the acid spit going the wrong direction. ARGAGARG --Argagarg's C -> back+C goldfish now correctly deals block damage. --Argagargs practice routine animation (where he does pushups) no longer wrongly shows the shadow of his staff. He doesnt even have a staff during that, so it was pretty weird to show the shadow.

MISC

--Fixed a bug that incorrectly showed blue armor highlights starting on the first frame of any move with armor, even if the armor only actually started on some later frame. (For example, Rooks C throw.) --Fixed a bug where 0-damage hits of multi-hitting moves could "break your armor" when you're at 1 hp. For instance, this could cause your Dragon C's armor to fail against multi-hitting Lum Slots, Midori flurry punches, or Lum cartwheel, when you start your Dragon C at 2 hp. The first hit would bring you to 1 hp, then the second hit for 0 dmg would cause your armor to fail.

[ 2019-05-17 01:22:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now. This month we really tightened up Fantasy Strike from a software development standpoint. The gameplay is already in place, but we want everything about it as a piece of software to be as smooth and polished as possible. We massively reduced the games file size, reduced loading times (they were already fast!), fixed some bugs with online play that we accidentally introduced last patch, as well as fixed several other bugs. Also of note, in order to make Jaina run well enough on the upcoming Nintendo Switch version, we had to completely redo the graphics for her flame arrows as well as the cloth system used by her skirt. In both cases, I think we pulled off the same kind of trade-off as last months performance improvements: in order to make it run faster, we also had to make it look better.

FILE SIZE

The game now uses 3GB less disk space. There has been no change to the size of the character spotlight videos, so if we exclude those and just look at the file size of the rest of the game, its now 34% the size it used to be. A little of this improvement is from deleting assets that werent actually used in the game. A little was from reducing the size of some textures that were enormously too big for no reason (e.g. a small rock you can barely see having huge textures that dont even improve that rocks visuals.) Most of the improvement is from additional compression applied to all textures. Textures were already compressed in a way friendly to video cards, and now they are also compressed in a second way thats friendly to your hard drive.

LOADING TIMES

If you have a fast computer, you already had very fast loading times in Fantasy Strike. Consoles have SIGNIFICANTLY slower loading in general, so in preparation for launching on consoles, we have sped up loading times even more. --Launching the game is maybe twice as fast as before. We really want you to reach the main menu as fast as we possibly can get you there. --Hovering over a character on character select has that character appear on the screen faster than before. For example, on the Survival character select screen, hovering over Jaina should have her appear something like 10 times faster than before. --We have a background loading system speeds up character loads even more. After you load a character in menus once (that is, see that character at all in menus), that same character will load even faster every subsequent time in menus. Furthermore, even the FIRST time you encounter them in menus will be the very fast version as long as you wait a bit after launching. For example, if you idle on the main menu, or set your buttons, or poke around menu screens, etc, we pre-load characters behind-the-scenes so that the first time you load them in menus will be the extra fast version. --Loading of characters on the versus screen (the one with the orange background) is greatly sped up. For example, if you select Jaina in Survival mode, once the versus screen is shown, her character slides onto the screen something like 100 times faster than before. (Yes, really.) --When playing Arcade mode, the wait time before the first story scene is shown is much faster, probably 5 or 6 times faster than before. --All stages load slightly faster too.

ONLINE

Last months patch unfortunately introduced several desync problems with online matches. That means matches would suddenly end because youd get out of sync with your opponents. These problems were caused by some speed optimizations we did that didnt work well with online play. Weve fixed the problems without reverting the speed changes. --Fixed a desync related to projectile positions. --Fixed a desync that frequently happened after a character was hit out of the air and landed on their feet. Fixed a desync related to DeGreys ghost. Actually, its more like an intersection of three desyncs in one. Our March performance update accidentally hit the online workings of the ghost pretty hard. Sorry, fixed now. --Fixed a rare bug that could sometimes cause the game to hang for multiple minutes on launch while trying to connect to the server and failing. Possibly more likely on Mac. MEMORY MANAGEMENT --Fixed lots of cases where character assets were not getting unloaded when we no longer needed them, which meant that they stayed in memory for much too long. --Fixed lots of cases of assets being double loaded. That is, two copies of the asset being loaded for no reason. Together, these changes somewhat reduce the RAM requirements of the game, which is especially helpful to the upcoming console release.

CHARACTERS

JAINA --The animation on her skirt is now controlled by a completely different system. The reason for this change is so that it can work on the Nintendo Switch at all. The skirts motion is generally more deliberate now, and this new system also prevents the bad states the skirt could get into before, such as being stuck crumpled up or folded in on itself. --When on the p2 side (facing left), Jainas costume now correctly mirrors. It was always supposed to do this because her armor protects her front side as she shoots her bow, but for the last 3.5 years weve been unable to do this mirroring specifically because of how her skirt worked. The above change to her skirt tech now allows us to mirror the whole costume on the p2 side as it was always supposed to be. --Jaina now has new graphics for her flame arrows. They now look a bit better, more like they were originally intended, and they require much less processing power than the old arrows so they will work better on the upcoming Nintendo Switch version. Also, the graphics for the new arrows make the visual difference between level 1, 2, and 3 ground B shots even more clear than before. VALERIE --Skin shading is smoother now. SETSUKI --Skin shading is smoother now. Palms are no longer kind of dark for no reason. Lips are no longer really huge. --Fixed a bug with the last 3 frames of her air supers parry attempt. Those frames didnt correctly parry attacks, but now they work the same as all the other active frames of the move. DEGREY --Fixed a visual bug with DeGreys ghost, introduced last patch. After using the ghost once, her animation would no longer update. She would only pop between static poses as she moved around the screen. Now works correctly again. ARGAGARG --Fixed a glitch with his ground shadow when jumping over some characters. --Improved collision of his whiskers to no longer penetrate his body, especially during main menu idle and gameplay idle (does not affect gameplay).

MISC

--Character spotlight videos have been updated. Fixed several references to moves that had changed function over the course of development. --Fixed a bug where the where the main menu stage would render with the wrong lighting when you returned to main menu from various modes. --Numerous fixes to the animations of characters doing pushups after online and survival matches. They no longer clip through the ground in various ways (Midoris beard, Jainas hand and skirt, Lums belly, etc.) and they have ground shadows again, too. --Fixed a lighting issue on defeated survival opponents. When they are laying on the ground before disappearing, they now have correct lighting, rather than sometimes appearing dark, other times not. --The loading time between survival opponents was already instantaneous on good computers. On lower end computers, there might be a slight pause (fraction of a second). Weve sped this up, maybe twice as fast as before. --The blocking section of the tutorial has an extra sentence in the yellow text box telling you that you have to hit back the dummies after you block their attacks. --Single Match mode now actually gives you a random stage when launching the match, rather than keeping the menu stage. It was always supposed to be random, but a last-minute bug before last patch caused you to get the same stage every time. --The notification box that slides in on the upper left saying You have 2 friend requests or whatever is now correctly sized so that the text always fits inside.

[ 2019-04-12 04:07:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

Weve done massive performance improvements. In order to make the game run faster, we had to make the tradeoff of...also making the graphics look better. The game runs about 250% the fps it used to--yes really. About 2.5x as fast. This is totally insane and we hope you tell someone about it. There are now only two graphics quality settings (standard and high) rather than four settings, and the new lowest setting looks better than the old highest setting...while running faster than the old lowest setting. Here are some graphics comparisons, showing the old lowest setting compared to the new one:



In order to achieve this, we replaced the games lighting system with a new one that runs much faster and looks much better. We hand-tuned every stage to look as good as possible with this new system. In addition, we use a new method to draw character shadows on the ground. These shadows are now more accurate and run 600% faster than before. In addition we further optimized CPU usage to reduce occasional frame rate spikes where the CPU suddenly has to do a large task on certain frames. Last patch we reduced this as well and we did even more optimization on that in this patch.

NEW MODE

Theres now a new 1p mode called Single Match. You pick your character, the CPU character, then play one game against their AI, then automatically return to character select afterwards.

SEASON RESET

The second pre-launch season has ended. It lasted about 3 months. Your rank is now reset to the lowest possible (bronze E), but you get bonus stars based on your best rank last season. You get one bonus star for each RANK up you achieved. For example, if your best rank last season was Silver C, then youll get 7 bonus stars immediately at the start of this new season (the 7 rank ups you achieved were to Bronze D, then C, then B, then A, then Silver E, then Silver D, then Silver C). Also, the crown markers showing which survival modes you beat are reset for this new season.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --New sound effects when the air parry super successfully parries, so thats sounds more exciting. Also, the sounds at the end of this move when the lightning dragon is shown now work better in the case where the move causes a KO. --Graves projectile clouds no longer get too dark on some stages. JAINA --Jainas back+A kick has 4f less recovery. (Still slightly minus on hit or block.) --The sounds at the end of a successful ground super now work better in the case where the move causes a KO. ROOK --Rooks C throw armor highlight now correctly turns off when he gets hit during the attempt. --Added armor to rooks combo C throw (back+A -> C) to match his regular C throw. SETSUKI --Slightly improved shading on several alt colors. The shadows are less dark on bright costumes. LUM --Changed the shading on Lums fur to remove (possibly weird) shadows on his face. This also much improves the shading on his belly during gameplay, which used to have a large horizontal shading artifact. --Lums walk-in intro no longer has an animation pop at the end where his feet are suddenly in a different place. --Improved graphics on Lums cloud, more cartoony and matches Graves clouds. --When Lums coin hits an opponent or the ground, it now blinks as it disappears. (No gameplay change.) --Fixed a visual bug where Lums slot machine would wrongly appear at the top of the screen during the startup cinematic for his ground super. --Replaced the slot 2 costume with a more interesting looking color set. MIDORI --While in dragon form on the 2p side, we think(?) we fixed the issue where sometimes his wings vibrate rapidly for no reason. (This is just a graphic fix, does not affect gameplay.) ARGAGARG The following are bug fixes for bugs accidentally introduced in the last update: --Argagarg's fA can once again punch under an Argagarg blue fish, rather than always lose to it at any range. --Argagarg's fA can once again punch under a Geiger gear, rather than always lose to it at any range. --Argagarg's water wave will once again NOT negate Geiger's gear.

MISC

--Fixed the profile screen not showing the "time played" section correctly for a master-ranked player. --Fixed master rank computation and display, to fix the bug that sometimes multiple master rank players could appear to have exactly the same rank (e.g. two different players each displaying as the 2nd best player overall). --Player levels over 100 now display a star for each 100 levels, plus a number. For example, 234 now shows two stars + 34. --Better handling of networking checks when players try to get into the online matchmaking queue. In cases where the server is missing some information from the player, rather than silently fail, as if your button press to get in the queue did nothing, it now tries to get the necessary information to put you in the queue. If it cant, it now shows a popup error message about what happened. --Fixed "ghost spectators" that could stick around in your spectator list even after they stopped spectating. --Raised volume of "Shadow Boss" and "Metal Boss" voice lines in Survival Mode. Also raised the volume of the announcer saying "Draw" a little bit. --Armor moves (the ones with a blue highlight) now have a special sound effect for the armor. --Menu sounds now have subtle whooshes on the main menu, mode select screen, character select screen, and ladder screen. These are especially for players who have the music off, so that the sound effects are a bit fuller. --Fixed the friends screen showing incorrect dropdown options for a friend that you just added through a friend invite during this session (screen was accessing the "sent request" for the friend request by accident, thinking it was a challenge or watch request). --Fixed a crash that could happen when very rapidly going back and forth between the main menu and practice mode character select. (Why are you very rapidly doing that over and over?) --Fixed a crash that triggered when you voluntarily disconnected from an online ranked match. --Theres now a fade from black when gameplay starts as you enter practice mode and at the beginning of round 1 in all modes. (There already was a fade from black for rounds after round 1.) --When quitting gameplay and returning to the main menu, the main menu background stage is now the same one as the gameplay stage you were just on, rather than a random one. This allows menu graphics to load faster any time you quit from gameplay to main menu. --When choosing change character and returning to the character select screen, the characters load even faster than before. --Reduced loading time of the tutorial. --The story sequences in arcade mode load 10x faster than before. --In all stages with grass, leaves, plants, etc, those things now slightly sway over time, rather than always being frozen in place. --New spiffy images for all stages during stage select. (The previous ones were looking pretty old!)

[ 2019-03-09 09:52:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Time for another Steam Sale! Starting today and ending on February 11th, you can save 20% on Fantasy Strike, Yomi and Puzzle Strike, as well as their respective DLCs. This time around, Steam is taking an additional $5 off of your first order of $30 or more, so be sure to toss one (or all!) of our games into your first shopping cart. Take advantage of these great deals and well see you online!

[ 2019-02-04 19:22:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.

Disastrous Matchmaking Problem Now Fixed

For the last year and half, an insidious matchmaking bug has killed our online population, and we have only recently discovered this and deployed a fix. The problem is that if you would be matched against certain kinds of bad connections, the match would not be made (thats good, you wouldnt want to matched then anyway) but you would be secretly removed from the matchmaking queue, while appearing to still be in it on your screen (oh no!) and you were given no indication that any of this happened. In other words, a single player with a bad connection could poison the well by causing more and more currently online players to no longer be able to find matches (until they restart the game). Those players would all think they are waiting for matches, but actually they werent. They would then wrongly believe no one else was even online. This belief would cause them to give up, which then ACTUALLY caused fewer people to play online. It seems that this didnt happen all the time (hence it being so hard for us to pin down), but enough that it really tanked our online population. This issue is NOW FIXED. Separate from the matchmaking situation, the underlying netcode for online play is extremely good in Fantasy Strike, and has been for a long time. So its extra heart-breaking that this matchmaking issue may have prevented some people from even realizing that. Please invite your friends back to the game and try some casual or ranked matches this week, in honor of us now having fixed this matchmaking bug.

Facial Reactions

Last patch, we said that we added facial reactions to the game, meaning when a character is hit by something such as Graves super or Jainas yomi counter, etc, that the victims face is actually animated. There was a problem with this tech and we quickly disabled it via a hotfix immediately following last months patch. This time, the facial reactions really are in the game.

CHARACTERS

VALERIE --Valeries yellow attack (both neutral and forward versions) have 1f faster startup. This is the attack you get by pressing either B or forward+B after you do the B,B (cyan -> magenta) sequence. --Valeries neutral yellow attack is -6 on block instead of -12; the forward version is -13 instead of -12. --Valerie Cs first hit now hits 5 frames later than before, though the 2nd and 3rd hit and total move duration are unchanged. Developers note: the purpose of the above changes is give more of a reason to do the neutral (non-crossup) yellow attack after doing the B,B (cyan, magenta) sequence. After doing B, B, you can end with either a C or a third B, but the C choice was very fast and only -1 on block, which is pretty good. The C is still -1 and still good, but doing it now gives the opponent more time to attack before the C reaches them. Meanwhile, doing the B (yellow) ender is still fast, and actually 1 frame faster than before. That is just barely fast enough to beat throws now during its startup, like the C already does anyway (the C beats throws because its off the ground). If the opponent blocks the neutral yellow C mentioned above, youll be at -6, which is better than the -12 you used to be. Youre probably safe because of the pushback. Theres a tradeoff now in that the rainbow ender ends at -1 on block (good), but its slower startup means more things can possibly beat it. The neutral yellow ender is fast enough to beat all normal attacks and normal throws when done after B,B, but its -6 on block. Thats worse than -1 on block, but better than before this patch when it used to be -12. This leaves the crossup yellow ender. Its 1f faster so that its startup matches the non-crossup version, and it has 1f more recovery so that it can be hit back a bit more easily when blocked correctly (for example, Lums forward+A punch can now hit it back after he blocks, but barely couldnt before). SETSUKI --Fixed a bug that could cause the kick ender in Setsukis B attack to auto-correct when it shouldnt (turn around suddenly to face an opponent who got on the other side of it). This same fix might also make her hold-B throw face the direction it should in rare cases where it might have thrown the wrong way. --Setsuki's B teleport kick no longer completes the dash part for no reason while time is stopped from Geigers Time Stop. GEIGER --Slightly improved the shading on his face, and changed his overall skin tone to not be so shiny, which used to result in his hands looking too plasticy. DEGREY --Fixed graphical issues when DeGrey appears in menus where his clothes intersected his body at the waist and shoulders. --Fixed DeGrey's ghost suddenly popping to a different position on the final frame of his winpose. MIDORI --Removed a stray 1f of invulnerability when Midori reverts to humanform on the ground, at the very start of the vulnerable recovery. LUM --Fixed a graphical tech issue that made his eyeballs sunken too far into his head.

MISC

--Performance improvement. Depending on the speed of your computer, you might have experienced intermittent framerate spikes. For example, even if you can maintain 60fps, every so often it might drop to 40fps or something for a fraction of a second, then back to 60. Weve greatly reduced this issue, such that these framerate spikes are less frequent and less severe if they do occur. --Fixed a crash that could happen in survival mode if you beat an opponent really fast after they enter the playfield. --Slightly improved the load time of the score screen at the end of survival mode (its fast anyway). --Fixed Survival Results screen to be a blue background instead of accidentally being white. --Updates for text in the in-game move list: DeGrey's f+A "Overhead kick" -> "Elbow lunge" Grave's air B "Hurricane" -> "Whirlwind" --The voice over in survival for the announcer saying Metal Boss and Shadow Boss is now the same voice actor as the rest of the game. Also, a more dramatic take of him saying "sudden death round" is in. (Sudden death round happens in ranked and team battle when both players need one more round to win and they then have a draw round.) --Adjusted the sound mix. Story voice over is louder now (was getting lost against the music before), the versus screen fanfare music is a littler quieter so it matches the rest of the game, and the announcers various lines also better match the loudness of the rest of the sounds. --The CPU opponents now have a better idea what their own thrown ranges are and will not attempt to whiff normal throws outside of that range. It was especially egregious for Argagarg, Rook, Midori, and Dragon who often whiffed their throws over and over from far away for no reason. Also, the CPU will no longer try to throw airborne opponents or mash the throw button while airborne. --Fixed an issue where pressing accept to start watching a character spotlight video had a short window of time where pressing accept again would put you in a buggy state. --Deleted the tiny squirrels from Midori's stage because it gives +2fps on Dojo (the worst fps stage) on both medium and high graphics on computers roughly the strength of a PS4. --During the tutorial, you can no longer enter frame step mode. --When exactly two controllers are plugged in, the help text throughout the game no longer constantly reverts to keyboard mode for no reason. --Fixed a bug where victory poses (such as Jainas, Graves, Rooks) could sometimes show their secondary objects (sword, bow, birds) moving around in the wrong place, disconnected from the character. --The profile screen was wrongly showing NUMBER of Daily Challenges attempted, but now correctly shows the best result youve achieved this season. --On the move list, fixed the position of the word "Super" when the resolution is different than 1920x1080. The lower the resolution, the lower this word would accidentally appear on the screen. --When selecting "Online" in Main Menu while trying to connect to server, if the connection fails, a pop-up now appears (instead of nothing).

[ 2019-01-29 03:49:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

'Tis the season to save 40% on all of our digital titles, including Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike! The Steam Winter Sale lasts from now until January 3rd, so be sure to grab one of our games for yourself (or a loved one) this holiday season. We're also selling Yomi and Puzzle Strike on iOS for a massive discount as well. Take advantage of these great deals and we'll see you online!

[ 2018-12-20 19:52:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike islive right now. This month, theres a new profile screen, facial animations for characters hit by cinematic moves, and lots of bug fixes.

Profile Screen

Theres now a new profile screen, accessible by clicking the icon in the upper right of the main menu. This screen shows you how much youve played each character, your XP, rank, and progress in 1p modes. You can see the profiles of friend by clicking on them in your friends list and choosing view profile from the dropdown menu. You can also see profiles of any player searching for them on the add friend screen. Thats helpful if youre searching for a particular friend, and several similar-sounding results come up. Looking at their profiles can help you figure out which the person youre really looking for.
--When you have more than level 100 in XP, you now get a bronze star under the level. Level 200+ gets two bronze stars, etc. At level 600+, rather than 6 stars, you get a single silver star, and so on.

FRIEND SCREEN

--You can now see the rank of your friends on the friends list (as in how good they are at ranked mode, not a rank of how much you like them). You can also see rank of each player in the search results on the add friend screen. --When navigating through the friends list, going left to previous page had the correct behavior (selecting the player in the last column) but going right to next page didn't select the player in the first column. Both work the same way now. --When you select a player on the friend screen, the highlight position now updates instantly, rather than 1 frame later.

GAMEPLAY

MIDORI --Dragons B torpedo is no longer throw invulnerable during the startup. (Was never intended to be.) --Dragons C forward-moving throw no longer causes opponents to go into a blocking pose if they are holding back. (Was never intended to.) ARGAGARG --Slight adjustment to vulnerable boxes during B projectile startup so his head is a little less vulnerable. --Slight adjustment to the vulnerable boxes as his arms extend during f+A so that it better matches the animation (slightly less vulnerable, but still pretty vulnerable). --When you pop Bubble Shield, you can no longer always easily combo a normal attack right after for a second damage. Its possible in edge cases to do it still (which is fine), but in general you cant get the extra damage. It was never intended that Bubble Shield always do 2 damage, so this is a bug fix. --If your character has horizontal velocity from something, like a pushback force from a projectile, that velocity no longer gets instantly cancelled if you got into proximity block, such as when a second projectile is thrown. This is a tiny thing that has no significant gameplay effect, but it works a bit more as youd expect now.

ONLINE PLAY

--Fixed a bug when letting the countdown run out on the score screen after a casual online match. If you were previously in the queue for both ranked and casual, letting the countdown run out used to return you just to one queue, but now correctly returns you to both. (It already worked correctly if you clicked ready.) --Desync fix: When you change your input config mid-match (up to jump, throw macro, super macro), it's immediately sent to the online opponent, rather than causing a desync. --When you open the button config during netplay as P2, we no longer accidentally overwrite the P1 side (which are your real local inputs) with the online opponent's settings. (Oops.) --Ranked Score screen: Now, if you press back or escape during the ranked score screen, it will skip to the final state (after all stars were granted/removed). If "Ready", "Change team" or "Leave queue" buttons are pressed before animation finishes, it will skip to the last state and wait a couple seconds before leaving the screen.

MISC

--All character now have facial animation during reacts to cinematic moves, such as getting hit by yomi counters or supers. --Removed the debug options from screen from the game, now that were gearing up for release. --Fixed a bug that sometimes caused a phantom button icon called 7 to appear in the practice modes input display when you pressed T or G if those keys were unassigned to game functions. --In practice mode, when you switch between pressing "left" and "right" within a single frame without spending at least 1f in the "idle" direction, the input display now correctly displays the new direction input. --When you switch languages, the text of the main menu characters epithet (such as Wind Warrior for Grave) now actually displays text for the currently selected language. --Fixed the sky in the Fox Dens stage so it doesnt show a giant missing area straight above, which was visible during certain cinematic moves such as the Dragons C throw. --Fixed a bug after Daily Challenge, where mouse clicking on the Escape | Back tooltip sent you to a buggy state. (It already worked correctly if you pressed the escape or back keys on the keyboard or gamepad.) --In the local versus character select screen screen, fixed character voice line overlapping with itself if character was locked in, then back was pressed, then character was locked in again quickly. --When you choose "Skip Opponent" in Arcade mode, that opponent won't be crossed-out in in the ladder screen. You have to really beat them for their name to be crossed out. (From a suggestion on our forums, thanks!)

[ 2018-12-18 02:54:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dont miss our huge sale. From November 21st (at 10am Pacific Time) to November 27th, you get 40% off just about everything Sirlin Games sells. That includes: Tabletop games at sirlingames.com. Use the code FANTASY40 when checking out. Check out our top sellers here. Keep in mind that some products might sell out before the sale period ends, sorry! Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike on Steam (as well as their associated DLC and soundtrack). Yomi and Puzzle Strike on iOS. If you're looking for a fancy gift, we suggest Pandante (either regular or deluxe), as it's joyful experience for both non-gamers and experts. Or, you could try anything else! Fantasy Strike on Steam is our newest and prettiest game. :) Enjoy!

[ 2018-11-21 18:54:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now. This month, we updated Geiger, DeGrey, Midori (Human and Dragon Form), Lum, and Argagarg to our new hitbox system. This was a huge amount of effort, though from your point of view, it will have a mostly intangible effect of making hits with those characters feel a little more solid. Various edge cases where moves missed when they shouldnt (or vice versa) have been fixed and the hitboxes are generally more precise. We also reset online ranks for a new season (as a test of seasons), and we focused on fixing a lot of bugs, especially issues that affected online play.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Neutral A knifehand attack was accidentally changed from 8/8/8 frame stats to 7/6/7 frame stas for no reason last patch. Now reverted to the correct 8/8/8 speed. ROOK --Thunderclaps vacuum force is no longer 2x too powerful for no reason against all air moves other than jump-straight-up. It functioned correctly vs opponents jumping straight and opponents on the ground, but opponents who had any forward or backward movement in the air got 2x the suction force accidentally. VALERIE --Valerie has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Valerie struggles a little more when throwing him. GEIGER --During Time Stop ground super, fixed a stray single frame (after the start where the camera moves around, and just before he starts actually walking forward) where the opponents inputs were valid. The way ALL supers work is that during the cinematic for their activation, the opponents inputs are locked out for all frames EXCEPT the first 8 and the last 8. Geigers ALSO had one extra frame for no reason that didnt lock out inputs. This extra frame meant that opponents who expected the Time Stop, waited for it, then started mashing throw the entire time to throw at the end of it, would accidentally input during the single bugged frame and could end up throwing the wrong way and whiffing. Now, the only time you can realistically throw the wrong way is if you pressed throw during the FIRST eight frames, which is not a bug because that means Geiger baited you to throw at a wrong time (you didnt react to his Time Stop in that case, but rather tried to throw right as he did Time Stop). Once you see the Time Stop start, you can now react by mashing however you want, and all of it will be ignored by the game except your inputs during the last 8f of the Time Stop. --Geiger has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Geiger struggles a little more when throwing him. DEGREY --Real hitboxes for all of DeGreys moves. Notes on that: --Air super has 2f invuln instead of 1f. Also, is higher priority. --fA has more pushback, but this is just to make it work similarly to before when it had wonky pushboxes. Also it has less throw invuln so it matches the animation better. --B->B tyrant crusher is no longer throw invulnerable. --B->C justice kicks are now throw invulnerable during the frames they are off the ground. --DeGrey has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, DeGrey struggles a little more when throwing him. --Fixed a bug with DeGrey where he could lose the ability to hit the opponent with various moves (A-A, ground C, air C) after winning a round with a counter-hit Tyrant Crusher (B->B) that causes a wall bounce. --Fixed a graphics issue that wrongly showed several dark polygons on the cape on DeGreys shoulder; it was especially visible on the character select screen. --Reworked sounds for ground super now that the ground super pauses on the parried hit before cutting to the cinematic. The sounds better support the action on-screen now. MIDORI --Real hitboxes for all of Midoris moves, both in human form and Dragon form. --While Midori is in his empowered state (glows yellow, happens after you successfully parry a strike), his walk forward no longer accidentally shows an animation of him walking backwards. Theres no functional change here, its just that the graphics showed a confusing thing before. --Midori has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Midori struggles a little more when throwing him. LUM --Real hitboxes for all of Lums moves. --Its now possible for opponents to hit Lums (super) dice out of the air as they fly across the screen. Opponents could already hit and destroy the stationary dice, but couldnt destroy dice flying across the screen until now. We tried to set the dice this way months ago but had technical difficulties doing so, but we finally sorted it out. Its not always easy to hit the dice though because moves with low priority might end up getting hit BY the dice if you try. ARGAGARG --Real hitboxes for all of Argagargs moves. --Argagarg has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Argagarg struggles a little more when throwing him.

ONLINE

--The first season has ended. After release, seasons will be about 3 months long, but were resetting it now as a test. Your rank is reset to the lowest possible (bronze E), but you get bonus stars based on your best rank last season. You get one bonus star for each RANK up you achieved. For example, if your best rank last season was Silver C, then youll get 7 bonus stars immediately at the start of this new season (the 7 rank ups you achieved were to Bronze D, then C, then B, then A, then Silver E, then Silver D, then Silver C). Also, the crown markers showing which survival modes you beat are reset for this new season. --Frame advantage visual effects now work correctly with rollback. In the previous version, a technical error caused them to be a little more flickery than all other types of effects. --Fixed a bug in Ranked mode which could sometimes cause a certain character wrongly appear twice on a team. --Fixed a bug that could cause some Master rank players to be the 0th best. The best possible rank is really 1st and the next best is 2nd etc. --Fixed a bug that could sometimes cause the server and your client to disagree on the results of your ranked match (e.g. the server counts it as a loss, but your screen accidentally could show a bracket screen where you won). --Fixed a bug that sometimes cause you to be matched with yourself online. --If two players are matched for a Casual or Ranked game, but they join the queue again before finishing the match, they won't try to connect to each other again immediately. It means their connection failed at some point, so they will first try to match with other players before trying again. --Fixed long FantasyTag names overlapping level / platform info on ranked team battle screen. --Expanded the online "presence" state so it's more descriptive. Before, the three possible states were "Offline", "Playing Fantasy Strike", and "In menus". Now, it says which game mode you're playing, or "In menus". --From the search results screen when trying to add a friend, clicking on one of the search results then choosing View Steam profile" for that player will now actually view their Steam profile, rather than doing nothing. --If you do not currently have an active internet connection, or if there is some problem connecting to our servers, we now mark various features with a disconnected icon if they require an internet connection. If you attempt to access an online feature while in this state, the game will try to reestablish a link to our servers, and if it cant, a popup will say that it cant connect to the server. All of this is functionally similar to before, its just more clear whats going on.

MISC

--The team battle screen before each match now animates faster, meaning a shorter duration overall. --Team Battles now correctly resolve mirror match colors. For example, if you put Grave with color 4 on your team, the opponent is now unable to put Grave with color 4 on their team. It used to wrongly allow this in some situations. --Jumps. If you initiate a jump (meaning reach the first frame of pre-jump) with a command to jump forward or back, you will now actually jump forward or back, respectively, regardless of what inputs you do during the rest of pre-jump (you used to be able to input, for example, jump forward then a couple frames later before you leave the ground, change it to jump back). In our old system, sometimes players intended jump forward, but accidentally got a jump straight up, and this should address that. --In practice mode, the frame step help text in the upper left corner of the screen now shows button help for controllers OR keyboard, depending on which mode youre in. This was accidentally disabled before for controllers, and it only showed help text for keyboard. --When characters are in a spinning-through-the-air hit react, they now have a spinning sound effect. (For example, if you hit with Degreys B-> B Tyrant Crusher when its not a counter-hit.)

[ 2018-11-14 01:03:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Were getting in on the Halloween fun with a 25% off deal for all of our digital titles, Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike! This deal includes 25% off both Shadows expansions for Yomi/Puzzle Strike and the soundtrack for Fantasy Strike. Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike all feature the same characters from the same universe, carrying their signature playstyles across totally different genres! Love dominating your foes as a fearsome dragon in Fantasy Strike? You can do that in Yomi and Puzzle Strike, too. Enjoy the thrill of damaging yourself for powerful effects in Puzzle Strike? Jaina does the same thing in the other games, too! Youd better act fast though; these spooky deals only last until Thursday, November 1st. Buy one for yourself or as a gift for a friend!

[ 2018-10-29 18:18:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Game Director David Sirlin talks about the ranked mode in Fantasy Strike. He covers the tournament structure that ranked mode uses, the team battle format of the gameplay, and the point system used to adjust your rank. https://youtu.be/U3_QbZtTHfg

[ 2018-10-04 20:48:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now. This update is especially exciting for expert fighting game players. The highlights are:

• We’re unveiling our ranked mode.
• We’re unveiling a new feature never before seen in a fighting game: visual effects on every hit that tell you who will recover first and by how much.
• Our practice mode has always had dynamic frame data and frame step, but now it’s presented in a prettier, more clear way. Also the frame step mode can now be used by game controllers, and it can be accessed instantly, without even going into the menus.

Ranked Mode

Our ranked mode is unusual in that it uses a tournament structure, and the gameplay itself uses our team battle mode, which doesn’t work like team battle modes in other games. Here’s a video from our lead developer about the ranked mode. Ranked play takes place in automated 8-person tournaments. The brackets are built on-the-fly so that it doesn’t slow down matchmaking. The matchmaking is not the usual “try to give you a 50-50 win rate” style. Instead, it’s like a tournament: you’re matched with a random player in your league, and if you win, you’re matched with someone else who won. If you win three times in row, you win that tournament. Each of those opponents is likely to be harder than the last, so there is an exciting texture to your opponents being more skilled as you, until you lose and reset to a new tournament. The gameplay uses our team battle format. You pick a team of three characters and play a best 3 out of 5 series of games with your opponent. Each game, play a new randomly chosen matchup. You'll go through all your characters before repeating. Must win with all 3 of your characters to win the match! The way this mode works ensures there’s a lot of variety. You'll play an even spread of many matchups, rather than playing only the most unfair matchups, which is how it would work a standard counter-pick system. In our team battle though, it’s not about counterpicks. You’re best off picking your three best characters and enjoying the wide variety of matchups you’ll play with them. Our point system is as simple as our lifebars: you get 1, 2, or 3 stars for winning, depending on if that win was the first, second, or third round of the tournament. You lose a star when you lose a match, unless you’re in bronze league. And once you reach diamond league, you no longer get a star for winning the first round of a tournament (but you still lose one for losing), which makes it very difficult to rank up through diamond. If you do, you reach a special master league that ditches the star system entirely and just straight up shows your actual ranking amongst all other master league players.

Visual Effects for Frame Advantage

Hold onto your hats because this is something that has never been in any fighting game before, ever. Really. Visual effects on every hit that show you if you recover first, or if your opponent does, and an idea of the magnitude too, based on how big the effect is. This is a very important concept in fighting games, but it's always been invisible until now.
You're likely to learn a lot by playing with these new effects. Try Setsuki's slide from far, medium, and close ranges. It's very safe / slightly safe / minus frames at those different distances. Valerie's B can be plus or minus frames depending on how you hit with it too. DeGrey's B -> A is very safe! His B -> B is really unsafe and his B -> C is unsafe too, but less-so. Now you can actually see all this all the time. Here’s a few other examples of the frame advantage effects in action: Attacks showing frame advantage Projectiles showing frame advantage

Practice Mode Improvements

Here’s the new display of frame data in practice mode:
Remember this dynamic frame data, meaning it’s computing the frame advantage on the fly, depending on exactly how you hit. The frame advantage numbers take into account if you hit early in your jump or late, if you hit with the very first active frames of an attack or the tail end, etc. Also new in practice mode is a new UI for frame step mode that now allows controllers to use it. Just press L2 while in practice mode and the game will pause and turn frame step on. From here, you can press R2 to advance one frame, hold R2 to advance many frames continuously, and you can also hold various attack buttons, then press R2 in order to perfectly execute moves as you frame step. You can also do all this with keyboard, and default controls are listed at the top of the screen. You can change these buttons to anything else you want in button config, just switch to the “other controls” tab there to do it.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Grave fireballs no longer go through the opponent when done from too close. --Grave hold B fireball is no longer invulnerable at the end for no reason. --Grave air super and ground super have real hitboxes now. This allows the ground super to occasionally armor break Midori’s Dragon’s C throw, rather than never. This situation won’t be fully fixed until Midori is upgraded to our new hitbox system. --When Grave throws the opponent, his animation no longer slightly floats downward at the end. --Grave has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Grave struggles a little more when throwing him. JAINA --Jaina’s head hitbox is now marked as “high” rather than “mid” in all frames of all her ground moves. This is to make block/hit effects look correct. For example, when she blocks Rook’s thunderclap, the spark now appears correctly near her head rather than incorrectly by her knees. --Jaina has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Jaina struggles a little more when throwing him. ROOK --Jump forward/back A has a smaller vulnerable box on his feet, more how it used to be, so that he doesn’t have such a hard time jumping over projectiles. --Air C has 14f more recovery when it doesn’t touch the opponent directly. This is because before, doing it over and over so quickly felt out of character for a big rock guy. If it knocks them down, the victim’s knockdown time is now 14f longer, so that the resulting situation is the same as before. (But if they jump to avoid the knockdown, Rook is more punishable now.) --Thunderclap (back+A) now sucks in the victim a little bit, even from fullscreen. This changes quite a bit and especially helps him vs projectile characters. Also, there are new visual effects to convey this new property. VALERIE --Fixed a hitbox bug with the recovery of her ground super. She has some invulnerable frames there that are correctly marked with a white highlight, but she could have additional invulnerable frames for no reason in some cases. This fix makes it possible for DeGrey to block her super and hit back with his back+A ground punch, for example. --Her neutral A doesn’t knock air opponents as high anymore. For a long time, she could hit air opponents with air A,A, then land and do neutral A, then threaten to cross-up or not with yellow (B). Then we fixed a bug with gravity on juggle hits a while ago that made this technique not work for her anymore. We’ve now specifically adjusted neutral A’s force against air opponents so the technique works again. GEIGER --Delayed Time Spiral (hold B) now has 7f more startup. While this is a nerf, the power level isn’t exactly the point. It’s more that in some matches, Geiger was better off doing the delayed version almost all the time, when it’s really supposed to be “sometimes”. Also, when his opponent guessed that he’d do the delayed version, it was a little too hard for some characters to actually hit him. --When Geiger throws the opponent, he no longer slightly floats downward at the end. --Geiger has a new animation for throwing Rook specifically. Rook is extra heavy, so as a bit of polish, Geiger struggles a little more when throwing him. SETSUKI --All setsuki’s moves have been updated to our new hitbox system. You might not notice, but this makes things subtly work better in various edge cases. Also, while we’re at it, priority is a lower on ground B’s first hit, and a little bit lower on divekicks and Flying Fox (air C). --Super refill is now 11 seconds rather than about 9.25 seconds. This will slightly reduce how often she can do her standard 4-damage combo in an effort to at least barely bring down her power level. --Air super’s invisibility now last much longer, 3.5 seconds -> 10 seconds. This helps the air super be useful enough that you’ll consider using it a little more, and also make it more realistic to sometimes parry a fullscreen projectile with it, specifically to activate the invisibility. --Air B (kunai), the projectile itself can now be hit by strike attacks to destroy it. Keep in mind that trying to hit it will often not work because an attack’s vulnerable boxes might get hit before its attack boxes happen to overlap the kunai, but it is now at least possible to hit the kunai out of the air. --The first of her B attack (when she’s invisible) no longer crosses up. It was never intentional that this move crossed up from close, and it was just too hard to reasonably block because of how fast it is and that she’s invisible during it. --Fixed a bug where sometimes Setsuki’s upward trajectory Flying Move (the one you get when pressing C on the ground then C again) would sometimes wrongly come out while jumping. DEGREY --DeGrey’s clothes now move with cloth physics again. They used to do that, but an update to Unity ruined how it worked, then a later update to Unity has allowed us to add it back in, this time with a little better motion than before. --When DeGrey successfully parries with his ground super, instead of instantly cutting to the cinematic where he hits you back, it now pauses with him highlighted green, so you can more clearly see the move he parried. This is how Grave and Setsuki's super parries work, so this change is just to make DeGrey's feel consistent with those (and it doesn't affect gameplay). MIDORI --Smoother animation transition when Midori goes from parrying an attack to his “I’m going to throw you” stance. LUM --Fixed a typo in the text that appears when you pick up Lum’s cake. Now says “+50% SUPER” rather than “+50 SUPER”. ARGAGARG --Using the B+C macro to pop the super bubble is now just as good as using the S button. Before, when coming out of the bubble summon animation you could instantly pop the bubble with S and also block, but if you used B+C in that situation you’d instantly pop the bubble but NOT block. Now, B+C to pop has two fixes that make blocking possible: 1) if you press B and C on almost but not exactly the same frame, whichever move you got one frame of will cancel, allowing you to block, and 2) if you press B+C and happen to hold the B (even just slightly), it will no longer cause the B fish to come out, ruining your block. Holding B usually makes a fish projectile come out at the earliest opportunity, but if the reason you’re holding B is specifically from a B+C super bubble pop, then it will not spit out a fish. (Release B and press or hold it again to spit a fish.)

MISC

--When your super meter fills up, there’s now a purple flash from your character’s eye to help you realize it happened. --All characters now have footstep sounds. This is especially helpful for blind gamers, as the footsteps work with stereo sound. --In survival mode, the “cruel 10” metal bosses now all have metal sound effects when you hit them, and it’s great. --In the move list, the character name in the upper left is no longer way too huge accidentally. --Going from "Solo" to the "Survival" submenu shows the screen fading in instead of instantly showing the new buttons. --In survival mode, if you win a round by time out, you now get healed as usual. --The survival VS screen (the one that has silhouettes on the right side) no longer accidentally shows particles of a character that isn’t even there, such as floating fire from Jaina or floating paint particles from Valerie. --After manually quitting survival mode, you will no longer wrongly "resume" it after an online match. --If you quit the tutorial when launching the game for the very first time since installing it, the main menu no longer fails to show a character. --If you’re playing local versus mode, then you get an online match, the vs screen no longer sometimes wrongly shows characters from your local match as if they are the ones in the upcoming online match. --When characters perform their win poses, they now do so from the center of the stage, rather than from wherever they were when they won. This prevents win pose animations from occasionally showing glitchy objects in front of characters when they were too near the edges of the stage when they won. --When playing an online casual match, the versus screen now shows platform icons for each player (Steam is currently the only platform though). --The armor break effect no longer makes hitpause shorter than usual on the victim (this was pretty noticeable for DeGrey’s B->B Tyrant Crusher.) --Normal throw attempts no longer auto-correct their facing for no reason when you cross them up. --Fixed a bug where the victim of a counterhit would be hit-paused for 1f longer than the attacker would be. Before, the frame data in practice mode didn’t match reality about who recovered first. The fix wasn’t to change the displayed frame data there though, it was effectively to make counterhit victims really recover 1f sooner (relative to the attacker) than before. --AI characters are now a little better at jumping out of special throws.

[ 2018-10-04 20:31:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there Fantasy Strike fans! Today's the day! Tune in at 3pm EDT at https://www.twitch.tv/opnoobsonline to watch our live tournament hosted by Attila of E4i and... myself! We'll be doing Steam key giveaways during the tournament as well so come hang out with us! Also, if you missed the signups for this tournament, we've already announced the next one on October 6th. Head over there to sign up now. We'll see you out there!

[ 2018-09-08 17:50:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey fans, Leontes here with a quick message: You may have noticed a small update this morning for Fantasy Strike; that's because we've added Linux to the list of available platforms on Steam Early Access! When we launch Fantasy Strike early next year, this brings the available platforms to Steam (PC, Mac and Linux), PS4, and Nintendo Switch. We can't wait to bring our game to as many new fans as possible, and we're sure you're all waiting for a way to play Fantasy Strike on your couch or on the go. Thanks for following along with our development. We'll continue our track record of releasing new updates to the game every month (we've got some great stuff to show you soon!) so stay with us!

[ 2018-09-07 02:50:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live on Steam right now. We're issuing this update ahead of our regular schedule in order to fix several critical bugs. And while we're at it, you get a new beautiful stage and some new visual effects, too.

NEW STAGE

Here's Argagarg's Murkwood Marsh. We especially like the fireflies and fog effects. :)

NEW EFFECTS

When you get counterhit (hit out of the startup of an attack), it's now even more clear that the counterhit happened: your character flashes red in addition to the hitsparks looking different. (Last month we added special hitsparks for counterhits). https://gfycat.com/CapitalOblongAphid There are only a few moves that can break armor in the game: DeGrey's Tyrant Crusher (B -> B), Setsuki's Ninjaport Kick (B), Grave's ground super, and Jaina's ground super. When these moves hit a character in blue armored state, that armor breaks and the hits will really cause a hit reaction. Now, there's a visual effect and sound effect to go along with that https://gfycat.com/ElderlySplendidFruitbat

MOST IMPORTANT BUG FIXES

Here are the bug fixes that we wanted to get to you as soon as possible: --Fixed a bug introduced last patch with performance in menus. When launching the game, there would accidentally be useless 3D cameras doing nothing that reduces fps until you reached a score screen via survival or online play. Each time you restarted the game, the fps problem would return. Now fixed. --Two patches ago, Unity introduced a bug in their engine that caused textures to become corrupted when you change the graphics quality settings. In our game, this caused buttons to have no text on them, and million other problems until the next time you restart the app. Unity issued a fix to this, which we incorporated into our game in the August update. Unfortunately, we now know that Unity's fix failed, as it only fixed the issue when running the editor that game developers use, not the builds that players use. Now, they have claim-fixed it again, this time in builds too, and we've incorporated that fix. So you can now change your graphics quality settings in the video options menu over and over to your heart's content. --Last patch, we increased the game speed by 8%. Pretty much everyone likes this (yay), but it did introduce some bugs in frame data. One is that all blockstun values in the entire game were set incorrectly last patch. That said, the magnitude of error was very small in most cases, and happened to be very large in the case of Argagarg's blue fish (B button projectile). Blockstun values are now correct. Also, several moves ended up with "off by one" errors that accidentally made them too good relative to how they worked before. We have manually fixed these. In other words, "daylight savings for frame data is now over."

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Grave’s powered up big cloud (hold B while wind is blowing) now has the same 22f startup as the non-wind version, rather than accidentally being 2f faster. --Fixed a bug where doing wind summon (air C) very close to the ground could result in your B and air B moves not getting powered up during the wind. --When Grave's wind meter reaches full, there is now a sound effect that plays (suggested by a blind gamer). JAINA --Jaina’s chest hitbox is now marked as mid rather than high in her idle, walks, turn around, block animations. This affects the look of her pose while she blocks some attacks. --Jaina’s ground super has correct hitboxes at the end, rather than missing them entirely. --Level 1 B shot has 6f hitpause now, rather than 0. During this hitpause there is now just a slight screen shake. Also, the hitstun and blockstun by are 1 less now, meaning in total it causes 5f more stun now. Not for balance reasons, more for making it feel stronger. Balance is probably ok since she was really unsafe up close anyway. --Air B freezes the opponent slightly longer on hit, for drama. --All Jaina’s flame arrow shots now make the victim turn red in “on fire” state, since it seems like getting hit by a fire attack should do that. ROOK --Landslide (B attack) is back to -4f on block, the same as before the 8% speed increase, rather than -3f in the last patch. It was not intentional to make it -3f, and that’s a big difference since it became safe vs throws last patch. --Rook's 3 frames of pre-jump animation now look correct. They were somehow missing before. This doesn't affect gameplay, just a cleaner look. VALERIE --Fixed a blockstun bug introduced in the last patch that caused Valerie’s air super disc to have blockstun so long that it was no longer possible to do mixups on an opponent blocking it (they would be stuck blocking it no matter what you did). Now back to the previous state where blockstun is very short, they can be mixed up, and they can do reversal attacks between the blocked hits too. --During the startup of Valerie’s air super, the skin of her knees no longer penetrates her leggings. --Her forward+A poke was accidentally +0f advantage time on block in the last patch. This was not intentional, and because that move has always been a little too spammy anyway, it now has more recovery, bringing it to -3f on block. GEIGER --Fixed a bug from our 8% speed increase that accidentally caused Geiger’s Time Stop super to have 13f too much recovery. Now it’s back down to 7f recovery, as was intended before. --Fixed Geiger’s watch being misaligned (with his thumb sticking through it) during his win pose, yomi counter, and ground super startup. --Fixed Geiger’s watch face so it’s no longer upside down whenever we see it. Also, separate from this, Geiger’s watch face is no longer incorrectly mirrored left/right when he’s on the p2 side. SETSUKI --B kick was accidentally made 2f too fast last patch, causing the two hits to combo much too easily. It’s now restored to its earlier combo-ability, where the two hits will combo if spaced correctly at max range, but will not just always combo no matter what. This accidental change made her way too good last patch, sorry. --Ground super now prevents meter gain for the victim during the super’s animation, as other supers do. MIDORI --When Midori successfully parries an attack, he has always entered an “empowered” state where he glows yellow and will automatically throw at his first opportunity. Now, in addition to glowing yellow, he also visually changes stance. The new stance implies “I’m going to throw you!” so that it’s even more clear what’s going on. https://gfycat.com/TediousYawningGalapagoshawk --When Midori parries with C, he no longer has a glowing triangle of green on his sleeve for no reason. LUM --Lum's ground super once again hits on the same frame he loses his invuln, rather than hit on the last frame of the invuln. This was an error that resulted from the 8% speed increase last patch. Even though this bug only shifted the hitboxes by one frame, it made a massive difference (by giving him a real reversal that ALSO summons 4 items) and was much too strong.

SURVIVAL

--Fixed a crash when going to survival character select, then to daily challenge character select, then backing out twice. --Character select screen: fixed “vs Everyone” portrait not being disabled correctly when starting an online match during a survival game. --After playing survival, if you didn’t get to the end, the score screen now has buttons for retry / change character / done, rather than just “done”. --Survival score screen: the buttons (retry / change character / done) now appear more quickly than before, so you can leave this screen more quickly if you want. --Survival score screen: If you’re in the online queue, the "searching for match" box doesn't overlap the buttons anymore. --Survival score screen: fixed alignment of title and FantasyTag names so the left edge lines up better with the word “Survival” above them. --Survival: All hits now whiff during the locked-inputs transition to introduce a shadow boss. This way, the player isn't forced to getting hit by a stray projectile. --Fixed Survival round win icons when you return from an online match that previously interrupted your survival progress. They’ll now show the correct round count. --Fixed Survival wrongly showing wins amounts for each player on HUD after playing more than 1 consecutive game. --The first metal boss in survival 10 now gets extra moves, like all the others. --Fixed issue where Setsuki's air super VO "I'm Gone!" was not having Shadow/Metal Boss effects applied to it when she was a Shadow/Metal Boss.

MISC

--There are now sounds for entering and leaving the matchmaking queue. --There's a new sound for when you lock in your character choice on character select (after costume color is chosen). --Fixed a bug with pushback against cornered opponents. Pushback was accidentally slightly too much. An example is Geiger hitting with back+A kick, then after that trying to do a 2-hit combo of A, C. Midscreen, the A did combo to C. In the corner, the pushback was too much and the C whiffed, but now it works the same in the corner too. --The team battle character select screen now has blank portraits on each side, showing that you will be picking 3 characters each. --Fixed a bug on the team battle character select screen that could cause the outlines for character boxes to be too large and wrongly appear multiple times. --Fixed a bug where weapons (Grave’s sword, Valerie’s paint brush) were visible and floating in the air for no reason at the end of DeGrey and Midori's win poses. --The frame advantage display in practice mode now shows correct numbers when the opponent is hit out of the air. It used to be totally wrong in these cases. --Minor improvements to Grave AI. He should now block meaty attacks more often (if at all), and has a chance to super against meaties. Mostly, he should now block more often, instead of just getting hit a lot. --Minor optimization of the Master's Dojo stage. Estimated +1 fps compared to before. --Major optimization of the Library of Justice stage. This affects low end graphics the most. On the "low" quality setting, estimated +20 fps compared to before. --We have disabled several visual effects on the Liar's Lair casino stage. While they looked nice, their performance cost is mysteriously high. For now, we think you'd probably rather have the stage run well, so we'll temporarily remove them until we can figure out how to optimize them better. This change gives an estimated +20fps or more on the "high" quality, with similar or possibly more gains on lower settings. --Organized the game options menus. Moved "Game HUD" and Event Mode to the "game" tab, and added a description of what Event Mode is. Moved "show FPS" to the video tab. Added a new "online" for online options. --In practice mode, fixed and improved many things about the frame advantage display, which is the number showing +X or -X (the number of frames you recovery before your opponent, or after). This number was incorrect in all cases when the opponent was hit out of the air, now fixed. We didn't used to show any data at all for projectiles, now projectiles also show advantage time. When two hits trade (both hit each other), the numbers used to be incorrect, but are now fixed.

[ 2018-09-03 21:20:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there Fantasy Strike fans! We recently exhibited our game at the Evolution Championship Series in Las Vegas, Nevada. With the help of the talented Esteban Martinez (@thebesteban on Twitter) we've got another great recap video of our booth and tournament. Check it out! https://youtu.be/8ZotDA-cvbo As you can see, we had a fantastic turnout as usual and the game is looking better than ever. Sirlin made a flyer specifically to highlight all the improvements we’ve made since last Evo:
That’s a lot of new stuff! If you’ve been following along with our development, you’d know about most of these new modes and features, but it’s pretty crazy to look back at just how far we’ve come in just a year’s time. We’re getting closer and closer to the actual launch of the game, and at each showing we’re told that we’re looking more polished as the months go by.
Booth was pretty much this packed the entire weekend...
...and more packed as time went on. Last year, we had some extra time in the booth to run two tournaments, both capped at 32 players. Juan Faria-Jones won the early tournament, and the late afternoon tournament had a fantastic grand finals of LordKnight (Prominent Anime FGC competitor) and Snake Eyez (Renowned Zangief player across multiple Street Fighter titles) with LordKnight’s Valerie play edging out Snake’s Rook. This time, we decided to run one mega tournament at 2pm on Saturday. Before we knew it, we already had over 50 signups, and decided to cap the tournament at 64 so we wouldn’t be completely overrun (we only had 4 stations at the demo booth). Shortly after, we hit the 64-player cap and had a waitlist that would have resulted in 90 or so entrants! Juan Faria-Jones (aka "FinalAbe") ended up winning the tournament, defending his title from last year. CIRCA Nicky took 2nd and Solacracy and Bio Billy Bones rounded out the rest of the top 4.
Here's 1st place Juan Faria-Jones and 2nd place Nicky posing with their bead sprite mains. More about Nicky; he has been a fan of our game since he first played it last year at SoCal Regionals, competing in both of our tournaments there as well. He is one of the best Killer Instinct players and dabbles in other games like MKX, Injustice 2 and recently Tekken 7, so he’s an all-around fighting game player with lots of high-level competitive experience. He ended up winning Evo 2018’s Killer Instinct side tournament, and during his winner’s speech, he told the stream that Fantasy Strike had made him a much better KI player, and that they should all go play Fantasy Strike to practice good decision making and fundamentals. Thanks again for the endorsement, Nicky!

Here's Nicky falling in love with our game at SCR 2017. Speaking of Killer Instinct, we decided to check in on some of the other side tournaments at Evo and found that we had more entrants for our Fantasy Strike tournament than Killer Instinct did. We applied to be an official side stage game at Evo this year but didn’t make the cut, but our tournament numbers this year give us hope that there’s a community out there that wants to see more Fantasy Strike events at major FGC events.  
Here's Sirlin teaching Woolie Madden of the Super Best Friends the latest Geiger tech. A last note about release platforms. Right now, we're available on Steam and we're coming to PS4 and Switch early in 2019. In selling Steam keys at Evo, two moments stuck out to us. One was right after some players played an insane match of Lum vs Lum (random items everywhere!), they were all laughing and Sirlin said "How many Steam keys will that be?" Known they were checkmated by how much fun they had, they bought three. A bit later, there was a player who said his computer isn't good enough to run games, so a Steam key wouldn't help him, but he loved the game so much and wanted to support it that he bought TWO keys anyway. That was pretty heart-warming. We hope you'll all help us spread the word, help run Fantasy Strike at your own local events, and generally grow the scene. By doing that, we'll be able to afford more content and features, which we'd love to do. Thank you to everyone who stopped by our booth at Evo!

[ 2018-08-21 23:57:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live on Steam right now. We turned up the speed of the game, added four survival modes and a daily challenge mode, implemented lots more facial animations, new hit sparks for counterhits (when you hit someone out of their move), and lots more polish.

FASTER GAME SPEED

Get a little pep in your step: gameplay is now 8% faster. We have been testing this for a while internally, and with our patrons, and at the Evo tournament. People liked it, so there you go!

GAME MODES

We now have multiple single-player modes, shown above. We added arcade mode's illustrated, voiced story intros and endings two months ago. Now there's survival and daily challenge as well, explained below.

SURVIVAL MODES

There are now 4 survival game modes (up from zero, before). You can pick whether you'll fight a series 20, 35, or 50 opponents, or choose 10 "cruel" opponents who are extra strong.
In the first three survival modes, the opponents come at you rapid-fire. They have less life than usual, and when you defeat them, the next one instantly jumps in to fight you with no loading time or pauses at all. Every fifth opponent is a SHADOW BOSS. They have extra life, cool looking graphics, and sometimes extra moves and special properties.
The "10 cruel opponents" option has you fight a series of METAL BOSSES. All 10 opponents have extra health, extra moves, and special properties. Can you survive it?
These modes are difficult because you only get ONE lifebar. In other words, if you lose a single round, you lose the entire mode. You'll heal 1 hit point after defeating each opponent (or two hit points per metal boss), but it's still not much margin for error. If you get to the end of a survival mode, you'll get  a crown icon under that mode, signifying your accomplishment. Can you collect all four crowns? (In the future, these crowns will be reset each season.)

DAILY CHALLENGE

This is a new mode that you can only play once per day. It's basically an endless version of survival, so get as far as you can. At the end, the score screen will tell you how well you did compared to everyone else who tried the mode in the last 24 hours. If you do really well or really badly, then you should probably post that on Twitter.
Facial Animations We've added new facial animations to all characters except Grave and Jaina, who got lots of facial animation in last month's patch. This is most visible when they perform supers and yomi counters.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Grave's charged fireball shows "KD~20" for hitstun, rather than just "KD", because it changes hit type throughout the move. (It knocks down during the first frame, then changes to grounded-push with 20 frames of hitstun.) JAINA --Removed a stray hitbox during her knee that was way at the top of the screen. --Air C flame arrow has 6f landing recovery (rather than 2f like before) so that Rook has a better chance to Earthquake her. --Fixed an animation glitch with air C that caused jaina to flicker briefly to a wrong position if she did the move while jumping back or forward (rather than straight up). This fix doesn’t affect gameplay, and just makes the air C animation look more correct at the end. --After hitting with her ground super, the very end of her animation no longer instantly pops from her crouching to standing. ROOK --All his air moves are now upgraded to our new hitbox system. Also, his ground f+A kick was only halfway updated last time, and is now fully implemented in the new system too. --The “earthquake” voice line during air C is said earlier in the move now so the timing makes more sense. --Air C has slightly more recovery. In reviewing past builds, it seems to have been accidentally 2f shorter than we intended. --Rook now has special sounds when he’s knocked down, which sound more rock-like. --ALL of Rook's animations have been updated with new technical settings in our backend. They all look the same, generally, but this process fixed various small compression errors, cases of animations not perfectly lining up with each other, and cases where he slightly floated or wobbled here and there. These are mostly not things you'd consciously notice, but he might feel more "solid" overall now. VALERIE --Graphics for the B, B, f+B “yellow” attack now show the yellow paint trail lasting longer, to better convey how the hitbox works. --Paint trail for neutral A is now aligned a bit better with the brush. --Ground C rainbow now has less pushback, so that it works like it did a few months ago. Now (like back then), making Rook block B,B,C usually leaves you inside his throw range. --All of Valerie’s moves are now upgraded to the our new hitboxes system. (Developer’s note: this takes an incredibly long time, we hope you enjoy the intangibly more solid feel it all has, or maybe you won’t notice). Some attacks are slightly stronger or weaker, but not for balance reason, just for the sake of hitboxes making more sense overall. For example: --air C no longer crosses up and hits later rather than before the paintbrush really touches you. --B,B, neutral+B (or A, then neutral+B) no longer has a hitbox way behind her for no reason. Also, the hitbox of her actual attack in front of her extends farther forward, to where it looks like it would be. --The attack boxes for B,B now extend farther than before to better match the graphics (this is the most significant change gameplay-wise). --The first hit of Jump A is not longer as good as a crossup. --The second hit of ground A,A hits how it used to, but in addition to that, is capable of hitting a bit higher up so you could conceivably use it as anti-air if you managed to time the second hit correctly. SETSUKI --The first hit of her B teleport dash now has new visual effects that tell you it’s a hit at all, and it is now vulnerable during the 7f during which that first hit is active, rather than totally invulnerable. (The periods where she’s invisible before and after the first hit are still totally invulnerable.) This move being a completely invulnerable hit has been a little too noob-crushing and is often pretty hard to counter at the expert level either with some characters, so this gives it some counter-play. It is still very good, and a bit more readable what’s happening. --The recovery of her hold-B throw whiff no longer slides around for no reason. --Setsuki’s pushboxes are wider during idle, walks, blocks so that at point blank, Grave’s B and f+A do not miss her by hitting past her. GEIGER --Better-looking animation for neutral A punch (no gameplay change). --During the Time Stop super, Geiger no longer becomes vulnerable 2f before the cinematic ends. (He's still vulnerable during the short recovery after it ends.) DEGREY --The ghost no longer destroys Argagarg’s air super fish or Geiger’s air super gear (because it looked stupid). --The very end of his win pose no longer has a camera-wobble. --The frame data display for DeGrey's counter-hit bA (ground punch) in practice mode now says "KD" instead of "+4c" in the case where it counter-hits because on counter-hit, the move really does knock down. --When you highlight DeGrey on the arcade or casual online character select screen, the lower left corner of the screen no longer shows part of the ghost’s dress for no reason. --Fixed up the animation for neutral A punch so that it doesn’t slide, float, or wobble. MIDORI --The very end of the Dragon’s win pose no longer has a camera-wobble. --In practice mode, fixed a bug that caused Dragon Form to instantly end when you went into it. --Temporary fix to Dragon’s C grab pushboxes so that the move doesn’t whiff vs idle Geiger. These hitboxes will all be replaced for real later. --New Dragon voice over for "Dragonbuster!" and "Talon Swoop!".  More intense. ARGAGARG --Back+A punch, startup reduced 7f -> 5f so he has a better chance of hitting Setsuki’s divekicks. --The very end of his win pose no longer has a camera-wobble. --Goldfish (C then C) now has a sound effect. --Polished numerous reaction animations for Argagarg specifically. That is, when Argagarg reacts to getting hit by various cinematic moves, such as supers, yomi counters, and throws, he now looks and moves better. 

STAGES

--Fixed an issue on the left side of the Fox’s Den stage where some moves (such as the Dragon’s air C or ground C toward the left) that move the camera would show a large black object blocking part of the scene. --Added environmental sounds to Tavern, Fox’s Den, and Wall of Truth stages.

MISC

--When you get a counterhit (hit the opponent out of the startup of their move), the hit sparks are now different looking and reddish, so you can better tell that the counterhit happened. This video shows two normal hits (yellow sparks), followed by two counterhits (bigger, orange sparks): https://gfycat.com/TerribleCoarseHammerkop --In the menus, characters appear with a visual effect of whitish light rather than instantly appearing (for example, when you highlight different characters on the arcade mode character select screen). --Main menu has a link to our discord chat (now that we finally have a human-readable URL for it.) --Incorporated Unity's fix to controllers on Mac. Last month, Unity broke all functionality of using game controllers on the Mac OS version of the engine, and that problem is now fixed. --Incorporated Unity's fix to changing graphics quality settings. Last month, Unity introduced a new bug in their engine that caused graphics to become corrupted whenever users changed the graphics quality settings in-game, and that problem is now fixed. --Fixed an issue on some graphics hardware that caused horizontal black lines to appear sometimes, especially when the camera moves to different angles (during supers, yomi counters, etc). We are unsure if there is a performance hit or not for this change. To test it, go to options -> debug options, then change the setting for "ambient occlusion downsample". If that is set to "always off" the issue of the horizontal lines should be fixed. If you set it to "always on," check if you get better fps and please report this to us. An intermediate setting is "off (cinematics only)" which means during cinematics (whenever the camera moves its angle) then the problem of stray lines is fixed, but during the regular gameplay cam you might still see this artifact sometimes. We're very interested in hearing how these settings affect you. --When you face Lum in arcade mode, it’s now on the Liar’s Lair stage. --Fixed a bug in online matches that could give you the wrong opponent if you were in the matchmaking queue and then did a friend challenge. --Fixed an off-by-1f error in the frame advantage display for moves that secretly contain multiple animation files, such as Midori ground B, Dragon ground B, and Lum ground B. --In the tutorial, it’s no longer possible to “kill” Midori with throws during the block damage task. --In keyboard mode, on the arcade and quickmatch character select screen, the “costume” button no longer has a stray outline and now works correctly in mouseover state. --Fixed a bug where the “searching for opponent” box that appears on the bottom of the screen during gameplay (while you’re in the online queue) would wrongly stay on the screen in menus. In menus, there’s a different “searching for opponent” box at the top, and the game was wrongly showing both at once. --Removed the swords icon from "You have X friend requests" notification. (The swords are only for a challenge to play, not for friend requests.) --Fixed a bug where the game showed the wrong costume colors for your character if you played a character online, then happened to see that same character on the next time you went to the main menu. --Fixed a bug that caused the lighting on characters to pop to a slightly wrong state during cinematics on some stages. For example, Geiger's Time Stop super on the Tavern stage showed this wrong lighting during the startup of the super, but is now fixed.

[ 2018-08-21 23:36:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live on Steam right now. We have an exciting update this month for explaining how the game works! Here are a few highlights:

• An interactive tutorial that teaches the basic workings of the game.
• Tutorial videos for every character are in the game itself.
• A new stage.
• Better performance on Mac computers.
• A lot of bug fixes and bits of polish added here and there.

INTERACTIVE TUTORIAL

The tutorial explains the basics, so if you've never played a fighting game before, you will learn what's going on. If you're familiar with fighting games, the tutorial is still helpful because it explains things unique to Fantasy Strike, such as how block damage works, how yomi counters work, and details of some of Grave's moves like the interaction between his wind and other moves. The tutorial is short, only 5 minutes to complete it. It's all action. The first moment it starts, you can immediately move your character. There is no loading time during the tutorial to reach other sections; it all flows continuously.

TUTORIAL VIDEOS

All characters now have "spotlight videos" in the game itself. These videos explain the workings of the moves and tips on how to play them all. There's a lot of nuances you might not realize about Fantasy Strike, so these videos help you get a bit deeper into the game. We went out of our way to make an exciting screen to display all these videos. It's as if you're using a video streaming service and each character has their own tv show. The videos themselves show old, out-of-date graphics. We know this and we plan to replace all video footage with final graphics just before release. The actual information should be correct still. If you find any information that's out of date in these videos, please let us know about it in the forums (bug report section would be best), so that we can fix that when we update all the graphics.

NEW STAGE

Lum is a champion of the card game Pandante, and is a well-known patron of the Liar's Lair casino. The Liar's Lair is also featured on one of the cards in the human version of the game.

Mac Performance

The Mac version of the game now uses Apple's "Metal" API. You might experience better performance overall on Macs.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Grave now has facial animation on his moves, most noticeable during his yomi counter. --Grave’s yomi counter against an opponent with flashing life from block damage now preserves that flashing life on the next hit point, as all other yomi counters do. JAINA --Jaina now has facial animation on all her moves, most noticeable during her ground super. --Air C flame arrow falls 10f sooner so that her “f+A (knee), air C” loop has a bigger gap if you do it over and over. While it is intentional that her divekick, knee, and air C can be used as rushdown tools to give her a secondary plan apart from zoning, the timing of this loop made it a little too solid as a rushdown tool before. --Knee’s hitbox extends down more so that it doesn’t whiff against Setsuki so much. That’s a bug fix rather than a “buff”, and has the counter-intuitive consequence that it’s actually slightly nerfed on block in some situations. The hitbox extending lower means it’s more likely to hit on the way up, rather than the way down, meaning Jaina will less often end up plus on block than before. --Back+A kick recovers 1f sooner. When you block Grave’s sword, this kick is your only way to punish him at most ranges, but when you hit him with it, he could hit you back with his super. The kick being 1f less recovery prevents Grave from punishing her on hit. --After hitting with Jaina's ground super, at the end the sound effect of the victim landing is now timed correctly. --The ground recovery animation after doing an air B shot has been updated for smoothness of visuals, no gameplay change. --Jaina no longer slightly wobbles up and down during her ground B shot, and her front foot no longer slides back incorrectly at the end. This same fix might remove small errors in this animation as well. ROOK --Fixed bug with Rook’s air C that was knocking the victim down a few frames before it landed. Knocks down 4f later now, to match last patch’s change of making it hang in the air 4f longer. Also, the last 4f before it lands were missing hitboxes last patch, now they are restored. --Upgraded all of Rook’s ground moves to use our new hitbox system. VALERIE --Valerie’s ground super on hit or block (but not on whiff) used to have the recovery completely invulnerable for no reason. Now, the final hit of her super has some invulnerability whether it hits, is blocked, or whiff, and that invulnerability is marked with a white highlight and does not span the entire recovery. SETSUKI --Fixed a bug introduced last patch that caused Setsuki’s air super not to turn her invisible anymore after a successful parry. Now she does turn invisible. --Fixed a different bug with the air super that was not correctly pausing the opponent during the cinematic after a successful parry. --The last few frames of Setsuki's C->C ground recovery is no longer missing vulnerable hitboxes for no reason. GEIGER --Fixed the animation smear on his f+A poke so that the smear isn’t behind him for a few frames anymore. --Air C now has voice for “Drop Gear” --On the character select screen, when you pick Geiger, his watch now shows up as it’s supposed to, rather than being accidentally invisible. --Geiger no longer slightly floats up and down at the end of all his animations while standing. This same fix might remove small errors in all his animations as well. --Hold B (delayed Time Spiral) has a new visual effect for the time distortion. DEGREY --When DeGrey does a second Tyrant Crusher (B -> B) in a single combo, he says “Truth” for the first one and “Justice” for the second one. --The last few frames of DeGrey's A,A second punch are no longer missing vulnerable hitboxes for no reason. MIDORI --Midori no longer slightly floats up and down at the end of all his animations while standing. This same fix might remove small errors in all his animations as well. LUM --Improved the alignment of yellow highlights on Lum’s hands and feet during air B. ARGAGARG --f+A really set to 12f startup now (4f faster than before so that it usually can punish a blocked Setsuki B kick). --When Argagarg has Bubble Shield up, the bubble will now correctly follow his position during various cinematics. For example, it’s now in the right place during his yomi counter animation, when Rook throws him a normal / special / super throw, etc. (This has no gameplay effect.) --Using the B+C macro to pop the bubble, rather than pressing S, now works correctly. Before, it could accidentally allow the summon of a new bubble (if your super meter was full) rather than pop the current bubble. Also, the B+C command now has the same few frames of leeway as all other macro commands, rather than accidentally requiring frame-perfect timing. --Fixed Argagarg's winpose causing an animation-freeze on his opponent for a while on rematch. --When Argagarg is reacts to getting hit, such as by yomi counters, supers, throws, etc, he used to have a technical error that caused his mouth to fold up into his head. This is now fixed in all his reaction animations.

Known Bugs

We had to upgrade the Unity game engine to a newer version, and the engine itself has these two bugs. We're very sorry, but we must wait for Unity to fix them, as they are problems with the game engine itself, rather than our game code. [olist]

Game controllers no longer work at all on Macs (just keyboard controls work).

When you change the graphic quality settings in the video options between "High" and "Medium" or change it between "Low and Lowest," the graphics may become corrupted, and you'll have to restart the program to return to correct-looking graphics at your new quality setting. [/olist] We will do another update as soon as we can once Unity has fixed these problems.

MISC POLISH AND BUG FIXES

--When you block an attack that can deal block damage (cause your life chunk to flash), the block spark now looks different. When you block an attack that actually causes you to lose a hit point from block damage, the block spark looks even more different and there is a now a sound effect for this kind of damage. Here's what it looks like: https://gfycat.com/ReliableScholarlyBaiji --In practice mode, your super meter now refills much faster after you use it. Also, the refill is now fills up the meter in a continuous way, rather than filling it up slowly to about 15% then suddenly jumping it to 100%. --When you have Event Mode on, it now says "Event Mode" in the lower right corner. Event mode is accessible (to turn on or off) in the options menu under the debug tab. It's for running live events and makes the top item in the main menu be local play, instead of online play, and online play is removed while in Event Mode. It also adds a "demo" option to the main menu, where the CPU fights itself so that people walking by can see the game in action. --Story art in arcade mode: Added visual effects to the swamp in Argagarg’s intro. --Story art in arcade mode: Added paint splotch effects to Valerie’s intro, third scene. --All sounds now play in full stereo rather than “partial stereo” whenever the camera changes angles. That includes the startups of super moves, victory poses, yomi counters, etc. --Fixed an issue with the “fullscreen” option in video settings. Before, on 16:10 monitors it would fail to offer any resolution choices other than 640x480. --Fixed a rare crash that could happen during rollbacks online. --When you login, if you have more than one friend request pending, you no longer get a separate notification for each one, one-by-one. Instead you just get one message (with no sound) telling you that you have 37 friend requests, or whatever. --If you’re not a Steam friend with a user, but you are a friend in-game with them, it is not possible to message them through steam. In this case, we no longer have the “message” option in the dropdown box when you click on them. Before, that option would lead to a buggy, useless Steam message to “unknown user.” --When you click on any user’s name anywhere in the friends list (such as in the “friends” tab, recent opponents, friend search results, etc) you now have the option to see their Steam profile in the dropdown menu. If you want to message them, you can add them as a Steam friend through Steam’s U and then do so. --Fixed a spectator bug that would occasionally give you a black screen instead of actually spectating if a player was Midori. --Spectators can no longer click any buttons on the rematch screen. --Fixed a bug that caused your character to attack the wrong direction if after you get crossed up if your move happened immediately after your blockstun ended. --Fixed a bug during the first frame of super flashes (where the game briefly pauses) that used to allow the opponent’s character to sometimes do a move at full speed during this pause. --When you accept a friend request, the pause menu no longer wrongly still shows that you have that request waiting. --Environmental sounds for each stage no longer wrongly play during the vs screen before a match. They now start playing when you actually see the stage, after the vs screen is finished. --In arcade mode, CPU DeGrey now appears on the Library of Justice stage. --Library of Justice stage: visual effects such as Grave’s cloud projectile are no longer overly dark on this stage. --Snowy Mountains stage: slight improvement to how the stage looks when shown at odd angles during win poses. --On the button config screen, if you're using a controller and have a game function highlighted such that hitting the circle button will set that function to be circle, the help text at the bottom no longer wrongly says that pressing circle will back out of the screen.

[ 2018-07-26 07:43:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

Argagarg Garg is a wise and patient fish-folk who uses water magic. He is known for his pacifist beliefs. Learn about his gameplay in this video. You can find our other character spotlight videos here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHqSgX2GsNg

[ 2018-07-17 22:10:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there fans! It's come to our attention that many of you who purchased the game in the past few days have not been able to use the Quick Match feature to find online matches. This was due to an internal server error that has since been fixed. We're very sorry for the mixup, and we apologize to the many new players who picked up the game during the Steam Summer Sale only to find they couldn't play online! Please try again; everything should work as intended now. Thanks to the players who reported this issue to us in Steam/Discord. As always, the best place to get in contact with our dev team is through our Discord server, found here. See you on the server!

[ 2018-06-27 20:59:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Game Director David Sirlin talks about the simple, one-click method of challenging someone to play Fantasy Strike as well as the new one-click feature to watch friends play online. https://youtu.be/6MaRk7WCus4

[ 2018-06-20 21:51:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our friends over at opnoobs are running an online Fantasy Strike event on July 7th. It's free to enter, and you'll be able to win prizes for competing! It'll be a streamed event with live commentary, too. It's actually two tournaments run simultaneously; one North American bracket and one European bracket. E4i stands for ESPORTS 4INDIE and is the competitive division of the talent community known as The Overpowered Noobs, found at opnoobs.com. Basic Overview -Tournament begins at 7:00pm GMT (here's a WorldTimeBuddy link to help you figure out what time it begins in your time zone) -Free entry! -Two 32-player brackets, one North American and one European (start times will slightly vary depending on player region; will keep you informed about exact start time) -Double Elimination -Team Battle ((this mode requires picking 3 different characters and is best 3 out of 5 games) -Registration is open from now (June 20th) until June 27th, or until all slots are filled -After that, you can sign up for "The Bench", giving you a chance at a tournament spot in case a player does not confirm their spot or "no shows" on the day of the tournament -Prizes are still TBD The full list of tournament rules and regulations can be found here, and you can register for the tournament here with your FantasyTag and email address. We're capping each tournament at 32 players as sort of a stress-test for future online events. Hopefully if this one is run well, we can run even larger tournaments in the future, and open it up to more regions. Even if you aren't playing, come hang out in the Twitch chat on July 7th and cheer for our competitors. Hope to see you all there!

[ 2018-06-20 21:32:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live on Steam right now. We have a big update this month! Here are a few highlights:

• There are now story sequences (intros and endings) for all characters in arcade mode.
• There's a new spectator mode that works in a magically simple way.
• You now have options to manage who you face in quickmatch.
• There's a new username system of FantasyTags.
• A new stage.
• Balance changes, including a revamped Bubble Shield for Argagarg.

STORY

In arcade mode, all 10 characters now have illustrated, voiced intros and endings. We went the extra mile on these and created sound effects, music, motion graphics, and visual effects to make them come to life even more. Here’s a couple samples of how they look!

SPECTATOR MODE

You can now watch games other players are playing. As a reminder, if you want to PLAY AGAINST another player, simply go to your friends list (tab key is the shortcut on keyboard) and click the crossed swords button next to any friend to challenge them, like this: https://gfycat.com/actualelegantdwarfmongoose The new feature is that if they are already playing (so they aren't challengable) then the crossed swords icon becomes an eyeball icon. Click that and you'll begin watching, like this: https://gfycat.com/shypiercingaoudad When you're watching a friend, you'll automatically follow them across many games. They might be playing a friend match against one of their friends, then switch to a friend match against another friend, then they might get in the quickmatch queue to play random opponents. After you click the eyeball icon to watch them, you don't need to take any further action to automatically watch ALL those games. You'll continue watching their games until you leave spectator mode, or until your friend kicks you from the mode or logs off. Note that if you happen to try to start spectating in the middle of a round, you'll have to wait a few seconds until the start of the next round (not the next "game", we just mean a "round"). This is a very short wait because rounds are fast in Fantasy Strike. Another detail of the spectator system is that you can also invite your friends to watch you. For example, you might challenge a friend, then while you're on the character select screen before the gameplay starts, you might send an invite-to-watch to another friend. They accept, then you pick your character and start playing. To invite a friend to watch, just click on their name in your friends list and choose that option from the dropdown menu.

ONLINE OPPONENT MANAGEMENT

We’ve implemented two features to help you choose which opponents you’ll face in quickmatch online. Near My Skill First, you can now choose to only get opponents “near my skill” (new option) or “any opponents” (the only choice, previously). If you choose “any opponents”, then just like before, it will try to give you the best possible match. That means the best combination of connection quality and skill match that is available. It’s possible that the best skill match is vastly more or less skilled than you if not enough opponents are online. If you choose “near my skill” then it’s the same process, except that opponents very high above or below your skill are not even possible matches.
Please bear with us that we had to reset our skill level (and XP level) data last week, so it will take a little bit of time before the “near my skill” results get more accurate. Soon though! Avoided Players Next, we’ve implemented a new “avoided players” feature. This allows you to avoid getting matched with particular players in quickmatch. In your friends list (press tab to get to it quickly), you can now click on any player to mark them as avoided. This includes your “recent players” list of players who are not set as friends. Your friends list has a new “avoided” tab. From there you can see which players you have set to avoid, and you can stop avoiding them there too.

FANTASY TAGS

In preparation for cross-platform play, we no longer use Steam names in-game. Instead, when you first try to play online or access your friends list, you’ll be prompted to enter your new “FantasyTag”. This is a unique identifier across platforms. It means that you can add friends by FantasyTag without even having to know which platform they are on. (Note that the only platform right now is Steam, this is just preparing for the future.) IMPORTANT: You cannot change your FantasyTag once you choose it. At least, for now. We plan to later add (in a few months) a feature that lets you change it one time for free, and then the option to pay to change it after that. The intent is that you don’t change it, so it’s easier to tell who is who. Choosing a FantasyTag --FantasyTags must be between 3 and 16 characters. --Must start with a letter. --Accented characters are allowed. --Numbers are allowed. --Mixed capitals are allowed, barely (eg: HaMMerPanTs) --No symbols are allowed except for spaces, hypens, underscores, and apostrophes. --Any space used must be followed by a letter. Also, names should not be associated with hate speech, discrimination, or religion. They should not be obscene, impersonate Sirlin Games staff or other players, or be harassing, threatening, or disruptive to the community. So please use common sense and stay positive. When you try to “add friend” from the in-game friends list (press tab on keyboard for a shortcut to it), you will no longer be shown Steam’s UI. Instead, in our own UI you can type a friends FantasyTag. We then show you search results for various names close to the one you typed. Just click on the one you want to add as a friend.

NEW STAGE

DeGrey’s Library of Justice stage is now available. He has a couple paintings with red marks on them. Who are they and what’s going on there?

CHARACTERS

JAINA --Knee (forward+A), the last 2f of active frames are now recovery frames. --Ground super is 2f faster, 0+24f -> 0+22f (0 frames before the super flash, 22 frames after) --Upgraded all Jaina’s moves to our new hitbox system. --Adjusted animation smear on back+A kick so that it no longer smears during the recovery. ROOK --Fixed a bug with air C that caused Geiger and Argagarg to get up too quickly when they get knocked down by this move. --Air C hangs in the air 4f longer before falling, but also recovers 4f faster after it touches the ground. This is to make it a little easier to jump and counter if you know it’s coming. It also allows Rook to act 4f sooner relative the opponent if they get knocked down by air C, compared to last month’s patch. (Well, against Geiger and Argagarg, Rook can act 4f sooner + another 13f or so because of the bug-fix above, which was unrelated to any intentional balance change.) GEIGER --Changed the animation for forward+A poke to look cooler and more like his Yomi card. No gameplay change. DEGREY --Fixed a hitbox bug that caused DeGrey’s B->A (Daggerfall Thrust) punch to always miss vs a ghost-grabbed opponent. MIDORI --Dragon Form’s jump A. The second hit no longer has a huge hitbox extending way below his body. We adjusted these hitboxes when we added animation smears, but somehow a very large crazy hitbox got in the mix. Rolling that back, but this move is still very high priority. --Human Form’s jump forward A. Upgraded this move to our new hitbox system. Priority is lower than before but still good. ARGAGARG --Switched the commands for neutral A and back+A. Before, the faster anti-air options was on neutral, but now it’s on back+A so that it’s easier to block, then do that move at the last moment. --Back+A (the fast anti-air) is now active to hit 1f sooner (same total number of frames). --Neutral A (the long range diagonal anti-air) can now be cancelled to B and C specials on hit or block. --Forward+A (long range punch) has 4f faster startup, 16f -> 12f. This is specifically so it can punish a blocked Setsuki B kick at most ranges. --Bubble Shield (ground super) no longer pops automatically when you block. Now, you pop it manually whenever you want (while you’re on the ground) by pressing S again. You can do this when you are in neutral state (just standing there or walking) or in blockstun. Note that while it’s popping, you can walk forward and the hitting zone of it moves forward with you. --Bubble Shield no longer shifts between small bubbles and the large bubble surrounding Argagarg. Now it’s always the large bubble. Before, the small bubbles tried to communicate that Bubble Shield did nothing when he wasn’t blocking, but now it’s cleaner to always keep it the big bubble and always allow it to pop when you press S. --When you activate Bubble Shield then do air C, you can still press C again to get the super pop in the air. Now, you can also press S to do that same super pop. Also, after the air super pop, you can now do another air move before you land. It’s now possible to, for example, hit with air super pop then combo with air A before you land. --Fixed a small graphical error where Argagarg’s skin would clip through part of his pants on his hips.

MISC

--The connection quality indicator during online matches was accidentally hidden last patch, is now back to displaying properly. --Converted hitboxes for all characters’ idle animations, walks, and blocks (except Grave, which was done previously) to our newer system. While this doesn’t change that much from a player’s perspective, it makes attacks vs these states more precise. The hitboxes generally match the art well and they don’t bounce around during animations. They have straight, stable lines. This fixes various 1% edge cases that were buggy and would randomly causes some hits to miss before. Examples are Geiger’s neutral A punch vs Rook (who is blocking) and DeGrey’s B->A Daggerfall Thrust vs Midori who had the glowing yellow throw state (and who was standing still in idle pose). Both of these missed before due to irregularities in hitboxes, but both now hit as intended. Hit detection might feel a bit more solid now. --Landing recovery for empty jumps (meaning you didn’t do an air attack) changed from 1f -> 0f, and landing recovery for all moves that used to have 1f -> 2f. This is experimental. It means that jumping and not doing any move has some slight advantage, as it usually does in fighting games. --Fixed (we think?) an occasional crash that could occur during online play, that showed a “GGPO assertion” error. It was when a player received UDP packets out of order, we were not handling the older packets correctly. --When you get a draw game, the rematch screen now says “DRAW GAME!” instead of “D G !” --Hitsparks now appear in more accurate locations. Though it sounds like a small thing, it really helps the hits look better. Before, there were too many cases where the spark would appear strangely far away from the point of impact.

[ 2018-06-20 21:24:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live on Steam right now. The most exciting part of the update this month is our new "animation smear" visual effects which appear throughout the game. Here's some examples of the animation smears: https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/neglectedtediouscicada https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/pointlessshallowgiraffe We also improved the graphics for Valerie's "Wall of Truth" stage, did several minor balance changes, and fixed loads of bugs.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --Fixed a bug that caused Grave’s hair to sometimes become frozen in a weird state and that also caused the dark cloth around his hips to wrongly go inside his body during his sweep and during his practice routine after online games. ---Fixed Grave's yomi counter, when used as the killing blow, to no longer have the victim fly in the opposite direction that he hit them. JAINA --Added fire effects to her bow string during her intro at the start of a fight. ROOK --Air C (Earthquake) no longer clears Argagarg’s bubble shield or poison, Midori’s parry-empowered state, or Setsuki's air super's invisibility. --Air C (Earthquake) followed by ground C throw no longer causes the victim to be knocked down 10f too long. --Air C (Earthquake) has 13f more recovery. This is so predicting an earthquake gives you more opportunity to punish Rook, especially with Argagarg. VALERIE --Air super (Rainbow Disc) duration down 3.8s -> 3.0s. Blockstun way down from 22f -> 5f. Pushback on block and on hit is much higher now. It now knocks down on hit. Notes: The disc is no longer a true blockstring between hits of itself, so opponents blocking the disc can now actually be crossed up and hit for real if they block wrong, and it also means opponents can do reversal attacks between the hits of the disc. Valerie can mix them up even harder now, but they have a lot more counterplay so she has to be careful. Because she has a lot more chance to hit them for real after they start blocking the disc, it knocks down now to prevent her from getting 6 damage combos all the time. Also, her old method of getting 2 full points of damage on block doesn’t work so well anymore because the pushback is now enough that they have a chance to do something during it all. SETSUKI --Her C -> C version of flying fox has 6f more landing recovery. If you want really great frame advantage after her C, use A (divekick) instead. If you’re using C -> C, that should be to hit jumpers, so it shouldn’t also be so safe on block. --The first hit of her B has 1f less blockstun. This allows Argagarg to block it, then hit her with his neutral A if she goes for the special throw by holding B. --Fixed Setsuki's air super causing a "frozen physics" bad state on the opponent during the final teleport part. DEGREY --Changed ghost colors for slots 4, 5, and 6 so they don’t look quite so similar to ghosts in the other color slots. MIDORI --When he parries a strike with C, the strike he automatically does is now highlighted white to show that it’s invulnerable. No change in functionality, just more clear what’s happening now. --Fixed Midori's B and air B hitting on their final frame so that they actually play out their on-hit recovery move, rather than recovering instantly. DRAGON --Ground C throw sped up, startup frames 29 -> 24. --Dragon’s jump is now faster and travels farther (pretty significant). --Air C (Talon Swoop) no longer grabs opponents who are in the air (to compensate for the increased power mentioned above). --Air C (Talon Swoop) pushboxes slightly adjusted as a temporary fix. Two patches ago introduced a new problem that caused the pushboxes on this move to sometimes push the opponent away rather than actually grab them. This is now solved, but will be slightly adjusted again when we do a more complete pass on his hitboxes. --Fixed Dragon's B and air B hitting on their final frame so that they actually play out their on-hit recovery move, rather than recovering instantly. LUM --Dice have 1hp instead of 2hp. Though it was intended before that they take 2 hits for the opponent to knock them away, it was never intended that they had 2 hit points vs projectiles. Somehow we never noticed until recently. We’ll roll back to the earlier 1hp dice, they are still good enough to use. --On the 2p side of the character select screen, Lum is no longer too big relative to when he’s on the p1 side. --Lum’s glasses are no longer too low on his face, halfway inside his head. --Whiffed throws no longer "hit" Lum's own dice. --Fixed Lum's B hitting on its final frame so that it actually plays out its on-hit recovery move, rather than recovering instantly. ARGAGARG --Fixed Argagarg incorrectly being able to do air A (whiffed), B+C super. He could not do not air A (whiffed), then press S to get super, he could only do this during the macro command, which was a bug. --Added sound effects to his practice routine (what you see after playing an online game in quickmatch). --Bubble shield, then air C bubble pop now has far fewer active frames. It’s still very good, but before the hitbox lasted too long after the graphics were gone, so it was confusing. --Fixed a minor graphical problem with Argagarg’s chest that caused parts of it to appear black accidentally. --Taking damage from poison no longer clears another Argagarg’s bubble shield or poison, Midori’s parry-empowered state, or Setsuki's air super's invisibility. --His back+A punch has a slightly lower hitbox at the start so that it no longer whiffs vs grounded Setsuki or Valerie.

STAGES

--Valerie's Wall of Truth. Pretty significantly changed the look of this stage. Increased the texture resolution of the mural to fix compression artifacts on it. Moved wall closer to the characters. Changed perspective of the floor so the wall itself takes up more vertical space on the screen than the floor. Adjusted contrast and color composition of the stage so that it doesn’t have bright white, blown out areas. This helps the characters pop off the background more and just looks better anyway.

MISC

--Changed the flow of selecting a character with keyboard in Quickmatch and Arcade. Now, you can select both the character and costume color by only using keyboard and not having to use the mouse. --On the friends list (tab to get to it quickly), you can now "add friend" using just the keyboard, without needing to use the mouse. Also, you can use this button at all in controller mode now. --Fixed the bad highlight state (like Rook having the "armored" blue outline) on the last frame of win poses after online quickmatch games. --Fixed a desync that could occur during some win poses during online play. --Improved the handling of Xbox One controllers. When you hold two buttons on the main menu to set them up, it’s no longer difficult to set the trigger buttons. --Announcer now says the character name when you pick them. --Slightly adjusted positions of characters on the 2p character select screen. --Fixed air recoveries to allow reversal moves consistently, instead of sometimes allowing them and sometimes not, depending on the height of the air recovery. (Here a “reversal move” means a move done at the first possible moment after your air recovery ends.) --Fixed projectile clashes so that P1's projectile doesn't also hit P2's character on the same frame it gets negated by P2's projectile. Now the projectiles just negate each other, without also hitting the characters. This fixes some bad clash interactions that would favor P1, mostly melee range same-frame mirror projectiles. --Fixed the languages dropdown not correctly updating its base button's text when you change the language. --Fixed a crash in the friends screen when dealing with non-Steam recent players. --Summoning the friends screen with the Tab key now pauses gameplay in offline games. --Fixed a bug that caused a flicker of a background stage to be shown just before the score screen after online games. --Many more small bugs in menus were fixed.

FRAME DATA DISPLAY

We fixed many things on the frame data display in practice mode: --Fixed air supers from accidentally counting the entire cinematic as extra recovery frames --Fixed recovery-only moves being displayed as "0 / NA / 0", they're now displayed as "0 / NA / " (ex: Dragon air C landing, Lum B on-hit and on-block, Valerie B-retreat) --Fixed cinematic supers from accidentally counting the cinematic on-hit duration when calculating the frame advantage on block (Grave S, Setsuki S, Valerie S) --Fixed several "follow-up" moves so that we actually see their frame data (Lum B on-hit / on-block, Arg air C landing, Setsuki C landing, Valerie S final hit, Valerie B-retreat) --Fixed Lum air B's recovery frames display showing way too high values (the hits were out of order) --Fixed Rook air C's on-block frame advantage display.

[ 2018-05-24 00:24:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now. This is a small update, and the reason we're pushing it now is now is a fix to a REALLY bad bug with online play. Sometimes when you're waiting for an online match, a bug caused you to secretly not be in the queue at all. When you finally cancelled your search, the game would crash. The implication there is that a player would try to play online and even though there were many people online, they'd think no one was online so they'd give up. Then another player would be affected by the bug and give up to. This sometimes spiraled our online population downward for no good reason. Now that this is fixed, please play online again if you gave up before. :) We are sorry about this.

ONLINE FIXES

--Fixed a bug that caused you to secretly not be in the matchmaking queue when it looked like you were, then if you cancelled search, the game would crash. --Fixed the score screen after online matches getting into a bad state if you got a new match while still on that screen. --Fixed a crash that happened if you left the online queue at the exact moment that you got a new match.

CHARACTERS

JAINA --Dragonheart (C attack) hitbox slightly adjusted as a temporary fix. Last patch introduced a new problem that caused her pushboxes to sometimes push the opponent away during this move instead of actually hitting them. This is now solved, but will be slightly adjusted again when we do a more complete pass on her hitboxes. DEGREY --Fixed an animation problem with the ghost that has caused her hips to be always be locked in place, ignoring animation data. (It’s been this way ever since the ghost was first put in the game!) --Fixed the ghost’s movement during DeGrey’s intro where she would suddenly pop to a new position toward the end. MIDORI --Neutral A chop now uses our new "smear frames" visual effects technology. LUM --Fixed lots of small visual bugs where his vest would clip through his body during various animations. --The last frame of his win pose no longer has a camera wobble. ARGAGARG --The last frame of his win pose no longer has a camera wobble.

MISC

--The round win icon appears slightly later now. After the KO pause, rather than at the start of it.

[ 2018-04-05 00:50:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now. The main things in this update are a lot of bug fixes to online play, Geiger now capable of facial animation, and some more polish for Argagarg's various Bubble Shield visual effects.

ONLINE FIXES

--Fixed a desync that occurred after Rook knocked down Lum with air C then stood right next to Lum as he got up. --Fixed some overlays (i.e. Move List) being impossible to close when the opponent disconnects. --Fixed a desync online that could occur when one player had the options menu open. --Fixed visual effects flickering when Geiger does his Time Stop super, and also during some other super cinematics. --Fixed some underlying tech that caused visual effects to sometimes flicker during online play. --After online matches, the score screen no longer displays crazy values of XP that give you like 10 levels at a time. Also, XP values have been restored to their correct amounts (no longer include the buggy XP that was given out). --If for some reason you don’t receive the server’s signal about how much XP you should get after a match, the score screen no longer forces you to wait a full 10 seconds before leaving. You now get the ready / change character / leave queue buttons right away, even then. --When going from Arcade to QM, after the QM finishes it resumes Arcade correctly (it wasn't doing it when clicking "Ready" in Score screen). --Fixed a bug that could match you with online opponents even AFTER you left the matchmaking queue(!).

MISC

--Fixed a bug that occasionally showed your character in a blocking pose even while secretly you were doing other moves, such as walking or attacking. --Attacks that are classified as weak or medium now have slightly more pushback. --If you lose a match in arcade mode, there is no longer a countdown timer when choosing whether to try again or not.

CHARACTERS

GRAVE --About half of Grave’s hitboxes have been revised to our new system. You will probably not notice much about this. The point of it is that it fixes various small, edge case errors where occasionally moves whiff when they shouldn’t. It’s basically “cleaner” under the hood now, for half of his moves at least. The only intentional gameplay change here is his jump A, which now has a bit worse priority. (We don’t have a lot of anti-air attacks, so jumping attacks don’t need to be that high priority.) --Fixed a bug introduced last patch where Grave standing in idle had incorrect pushboxes, causing Setsuki’s air C to sometimes push him rather than actually hit him. --Revised Grave’s shading. Now smoother to avoid weird looking highlights that he had after his model was changed to have facial animation. JAINA --Skin shading slightly smoother. SETSUKI --Hold C throw has 12f more recovery if it whiffs. --Hold B throw has 10f more recovery if it whiffs. --Fixed (again) an issue that could sometimes cause Setsuki’s hold-B throw to face the wrong way. ROOK --Updated the animation for his ground super attempt to match the hitboxes. No functional change. GEIGER --He is now able to have facial animation. (The other 9 characters got this ability last patch, so now all characters are capable of facial animation.) This was a huge technical challenge and took a long time. --Now has facial animations for main menu and character select. DEGREY --New animation for B->B punch. (Gameplay is the same, just a cosmetic change.) --Adjusted the visual effects and hitboxes on forward+A elbow. This is just to make the hitboxes match the visuals better, and for the visual effect’s energy/dust to feel more polished. (It was a bit “wonky” before.) --Fixed a technical error on DeGrey’s coat that caused a visible gap between the top and bottom half of his coat, just below his belt. --Costume color 4’s shirt is dark red instead of bright red. MIDORI --Dragon Form now has voiceover. --Fxied a bug that let Midori use his empowered throw (when he’s glowing, after he parries) at impossible times during his blockstun. --The Dragon’s wings no longer vibrate crazily when he’s on the 2p side. --Fixed a bug that caused the Dragon’s B torpedo move to travel a much shorter distance if done one frame before landing. --Fixed a bug in practice mode that caused the character-specific setting for Midori’s empowered throw to do nothing. It now actually turns on the empowered throw state. LUM --Fixed a bug that made his (rare) mini-Rook item deal damage only on the first hit, rather than on each hit. ARGAGARG --Bubble shield’s small bubbles are now animated and orbit Argagarg. There's also a transition animation when the bubbles go between "useless small bubbles" and "large single Bubble Shield." --New visual effects for when Bubble Shield pops (both from when you block an attack and when you pop it yourself with Air C -> C).

STAGES

--Dojo stage performance improved by about 8% fps.

[ 2018-03-18 02:53:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello all, we posted a big update to Fantasy Strike yesterday, and while all the new content is great, the online play got pretty rocky. The two reasons are that we "cleaned house" in our project but cleaned it a little too thoroughly and deleted a few things we shouldn't have. You know, like if you threw out all your garbage and there was a support beam for your house in there. Second, we updated to a new version of the Unity game engine and it turns out it has a bunch of issues with visual effects. So, we scrambled to fix things and here's a list of what's different:

ONLINE FIXES

--Fixed an issue that caused quickmatches to immediately disconnect at the start of round 1 if either player was in practice mode or arcade mode when they got their match. --Fixed an issue that caused the rematch menu to stay on the screen after a quickmatch ended. --Fixed a crash when Lum was knocked down from Rook’s air C. --Fixed an issue that caused quickmatch opponents each seeing different stages for the match. --The versus screen before each arcade match and also before an online quicmatch now plays the voiceover line for the opponent only, rather than playing voice for both simultaneously, on top of each other.

VISUAL EFFECTS

The new version of the Unity game engine that we started using in the last patch has many differences in how visual effects are handled, which introduced a lot of bugs in our project, unfortunately. --Fixed Lum’s “on fire” state, such as when he’s hit by Jaina’s C. It didn’t really work right in the last update. --Grave’s projectile now has its trail restored. (No gameplay change, the visual was wrongly turned off in the last patch.) --Four or five fixes all of the form “in online games, don’t have visual effects flicker around crazily too much.”

TEAM BATTLE

--Winning a game of team battle as Midori in Dragon Form no longer incorrectly gives you Midori for your next game, too.

CHARACTERS

DEGREY --Changed shading on DeGrey’s skin and lightened the dark circles around his eyes. ARGAGARG --Changed graphics for the small bubbles on his Bubble Shield super, but we didn't finish (we're still in the middle of making this effect). Sorry, these will change again next time.

[ 2018-03-03 11:58:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now. This is one of our biggest updates from a development standpoint. It contains multiple things that are each the culmination of months of work. Highlights: --New Team Battle mode, playable offline and online in friend matches. --All characters now have voices. --All characters except Geiger now have facial animation. --Even more performance improvements. In addition to that, we have several balance changes, online desync fixes, a couple updated stages, and quality of life improvements for Argagarg, including lots of polish for how poison works on the lifebar. Plus, most hits in the game feel like they hit harder now.

TEAM BATTLE

New mode where you choose a team of 3 characters then play a best-3-out-of-5 match against your friend’s team. Here's a video of our lead developer talking about this mode: https://youtu.be/ArTsK5yim7o

• Each game, you’ll play a new randomly selected matchup.
• You'll go through all your characters before repeating.
• You must win with all 3 of your characters to win the match!

There's lots of variety in this mode. You'll play an even spread of many matchups, rather than usually playing the most unfair matchups as often happens in counter-pick systems.

VOICES

--All characters now have voices! This has been a long time coming, and suddenly it's all here. This includes combat moves as well as voice lines on character select and during the in-between screens of the new Team Battle mode. --The announcer has also been updated. It's Rook's voice because Fantasy Strike is his tournament.

FACIAL ANIMATION

We'd like to explain the significance here because it's easy to miss from the outside. Updating our characters so they have the ABILITY to have facial animation is a separate step from them actually having facial animation. The first step, where they are capable of facial movements, has been one of the biggest technical hurdles on the whole project. It involved switching over to new animation rigs, but it also involved changing the models themselves to better work with the rigs. And these changes in some cases had rippling changes that affected many other things, such as screwing up all cloth animation, etc. This process has taken us many months and we're finally done with all characters except Geiger. (He's next.) After this huge step was complete, we then worked on creating actual animations for the faces. Right now, this includes mostly subtle movements on the main menu, plus all the character select-related animations, especially since they now have voice lines that the facial movement needs to match. We've gotten to some of the win poses as well. These are the most prominent times we see faces, so we started there first. Future updates will include facial animation in other situations, such as during supers and yomi counters and so on.

PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

--Menu screens have been optimized yet again, and now have better framerate. The boost you get depends on your hardware, but we estimate something huge, like 60% improved fps on high end computers and even more than that on low end computers. --The Fox’s Den stage has been optimized and should have improved fps of at least 20%, maybe more.

ONLINE FIXES

--Fixed two bugs that caused desyncs when playing Argagarg online. --Fixed a bug with DeGrey’s ghost that could cause desyncs online. --After a casual online match, the score screen now show buttons for: ready / change character / leave queue. If you choose “ready” then you are immediately put back in the matchmaking queue, without having to wait for the score screen to count down.

CHARACTERS

JAINA --Knee gives 2f less blockstun. ROOK --Thunderclap (back+A) sucks the opponent in now, so that Thunderclap -> C throw is a lot easier to land. --Thunderclap -> C against a cornered opponent no longer pushes Rook away for no apparent reason. Now leaves him very close, just like when you do it midscreen. --Air super no longer has active hit frames the entire way down. Still has plenty, but it was just silly how long it was before. --Air super now has a white highlight that shows the invulnerable frames. --Ground super used to be listed as 0+2 frames startup (0 before the super flash, then 2 frames after). It was actually 0+4 though and the frame data was wrong. Now it has been changed to 6+0. The 6 frames of startup are invulnerable and though it cannot hit a jumping opponent or an opponent in pre-jump, the opponent can no longer jump out on reaction during the super flash. To compensate for this powerful property, the range has been reduced, though it’s still far (about the same range as his normal throw). The graphics for the throw whiff reach much too far and we will change these graphics if we decide to keep this functionality. VALERIE --Fixed Valerie’s neutral B having shorter hitstun than f+B and back+B for no reason. --Lips improved to look more like she used to before facial animation was possible for her. (This was really difficult, thanks.) --Shading on her skin has changed to be softer (slightly less comic-bookish). This also causes her head shape to look a little different, the net effect is a rounder looking head that seems more like the shape it used to be before we added facial animation to her. SETSUKI --Throw with hold B no longer faces the wrong way sometimes (or at least...fewer times?) --Small technical errors with her lips have been fixed. She no longer has a thin black line around her lips and the shading on her lips is a bit better. DEGREY --New character model that looks older, as he was always supposed to look. --New animation for f+A. Now an elbow attack rather than a kick. The functionality is basically the same, so just an aesthetic change. --We have temporarily turned off DeGrey's cloth simulation. It became unreasonably buggy in the latest version of the Unity game engine, so we'll sort that out later. MIDORI --Fixed an issue accidentally introduced last build that caused that startup of Midori’s flurry punches (mash A) to be too short. --Fixed ground B flying kick immediately canceling at the start for no apparent reason when Midori does the move with his back to the corner. --Fixed Midori losing the poison highlight for no reason when reverting to human form while poisoned. --Dragon form’s C throw has infinite hits of super armor rather than 2 hits. --The dust that appears when he does his B kick is now timed correctly instead of appearing way too late. LUM --Lum’s throw attempt now has the same frame stats as other characters. ARGAGARG --New UI graphics for Argagarg’s poison counting down on the lifebars. You can now see how long until the opponent’s poisoned life will drain away. Very helpful! The lifebar also has a new visual effect when a victim takes poison from damage and another visual effect when a poisoned victim hits Argagarg and becomes cured of poison. --Bubble shield super now show graphics of small floating droplets of water when you aren’t holding back and a big bright bubble when you are holding back. This makes it even more clear that when you aren’t holding back, the protective effect isn’t active. Note: we are still developing the effects for bubble shield so it's a work in progress, but already more readable what's going on. --Argagarg’s forward throw against a cornered opponent doesn’t push Argagarg back ridiculously far anymore. --Fixed a bug that let Argagarg's poison hit you and kill you even after a timeout, which could give Argagarg an extra round win from that "kill" if the poison damage (after the round ended!) took the opponent’s last hit point. --When Argagarg is knocked down, walking into him now pushes him like with any other character. --Hitboxes around Aragagarg’s feet during his jumps changed so that he is now more able to jump over projectiles. --The practice routine animation after online matches now has non-placeholder visual effects for the fish splashing into / out of the water. --Argagarg air C and bubble shield + air C bubbles can initiate a pop 10f earlier than before, at the start of the move. --Bubble shield + air C now starts traveling sooner than the non bubble shield version. --Bubble shield + air C, the C pop now has a bigger hitbox that better matches the graphics. --Popping a bubble with air C or with Bubble shield + air C now highlights Argagarg in white, showing that he’s invulnerable during those frames. --When you summon a river with C then jump, if you then press C at a time that can summon the river’s orange fish, that button press will now do so *without* also initiating an air C bubble. (If you want the bubble, just press C again quickly). This allows you to more precisely control when you want to air bubble or not, while still being able to summon the orange fish.

STAGES

--Valerie’s “Wall of Truth” stage has some spare paint cans laying around, and for visual interest, a bunch of paint spilled. Oops! --Fox’s Den has a new ground texture, new foliage, and large trees to overall help with the aesthetics. It also has substantial performance improvements, so expect at least 20% better fps on it now.

MISC

--Lots of hits throughout the game now feel like they hit harder! Because each hit matters so much in our game, we figured it was ok to juice up the power of the hits more than you normally would. Try Grave's f+A double palm as a random example. --The button config screen now has an option to turn the throw macro off, or set it to either J+A or A+B, and an option to turn the super macro off or set it to B+C. --When you pick your character and color, it now says "ready" while you wait for the opponent to pick theirs.

FRAME DATA DISPLAY

--Fixed incorrectly calculated startup frames for several cinematic supers (Jaina, Setsuki, Valerie, Rook, Lum's ground supers, and Valerie, Geiger, Rook, Lum and DeGrey air supers), from incorrect frame rounding --Fixed incorrect active frames for Lum's ground super. --Fixed incorrect recovery frames for all projectiles, which were all 1 frame too few. (It could even incorrectly show "-1" of recovery!)

[ 2018-03-02 07:03:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Master Ando Midori is a martial arts teacher who can transform into a mighty dragon. He prides himself on honor as well as grappling expertise. Learn about his gameplay in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li6gp_S9vXs

[ 2018-02-24 00:01:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Setsuki Hiruki is a ninja student at the Fox's Den school. She's fast, energetic, and enthusiastic. Gameplay-wise, she's a terrifying rushdown character. Learn about her gameplay in this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VJ3ZlWYiZ0&index=8&list=PLFhqt7OorJEvR8NGgqjHbLEoUGYRLJ91C

[ 2018-01-30 02:49:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Trading Cards for Fantasy Strike are now available!
For more information on what Steam Trading Cards are and how they work, check this information from Valve. Basically, they are fun cosmetic items that you earn just by playing the game, and they can be traded, bought, and sold with other players. Collect them all and craft some badges. Enjoy!

[ 2018-01-23 03:30:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.
This is a big update because it has a NEW CHARACTER, a new stage, new button-macros for throw and super, faster walk speeds, and even more performance improvements. There are also several bug fixes and balance changes.

NEW CHARACTER: ARGAGARG

Argagarg is a water shaman and pacifist wise-fish. In gameplay, he’s a zoner and keep-away character. We won’t be able to create a video about him for quite a while, so we figured you’re rather be able to play him now than wait for that. Here are some tips about him: Normal Attacks --His back+A is a long-range anti-air attack. It has kind of low priority, but it’s still a good tool. If it counterhits a jumper, he can even combo to his long-ranged f+A punch. --Neutral A is a,fast anti-air attack with a good hitbox. It can cancel to specials on hit or block. --His forward+A is a long ranged punch. It can cancel to specials on hit or block. --Jump A is a long range diagonal attack. On hit or block, you can cancel it to air C. Special Attacks --The B button spits a blue fish (made of water) that does no damage, but on hit will stun long enough that usually he can hit with forward+A. --Hold the B button down to get a poison fish. This will travel through all enemy projectiles and not get destroyed (!) and it’s unblockable(!). It deals no immediate damage, but it poisons 2 of the opponent’s hit points. After a few seconds, they will lose 1 of those hit points, then after a few more, they will lose the other. You CAN stack this to poison 4 or 6 hit points, etc. If the opponent hits Argagarg while they are poisoned, they become cured of poison. --C rushing river pushes the opponent away. During the river, you can press C again to summon an orange fish that hits for 1 damage. You can hold back / neutral / forward + C to get three different versions of that fish. You CAN do this move even if you’re doing another move, or in blockstun! --Jump B is a pretty fast diagonally downward drill attack. --Jump C is a bubble that lets Argagarg float forward or back. During the bubble, press C again to pop it for an attack. Super Attacks --Ground super is Bubble Shield. When the shield is on him, if you block a strike, the bubble automatically pops and can hit. Also, if the bubble is on you then doing jump C -> C will pop the air bubble with a faster, better hitbox. --Air super is Giant Fish. Summons a huge fish that flies at the opponent and keeps them away, great for using when they are already poisoned. Argagarg is one of the most difficult characters to play, not because he is physically hard to control, but because the power of his keepaway increases massively if you are good enough to actually keep them away until poison damage has a chance to tick. In other words “half” keeping them away isn’t half as good as fully keeping them away, it’s much worse than that. Enjoy! He is our last new character for the foreseeable future. More new characters are entirely gated on our ability to pay for more development, so please help grow the community and then we’ll be happy to make more characters after launch.

NEW STAGE: FOX’S DEN

Deep in the forest, the Fox’s Den is a hidden ninja dojo where Setsuki trains. The school even has a semi-invisibility field, making it harder to find.

PERFORMANCE

--The performance during gameplay any time the camera moves away from the default side view has been massively improved. For example, when the camera moves during a yomi counter or a super. This used to drop framerate by about 50%(!), but will now drop framerate by very little, if any. --Performance during menus (including character select) has been significantly improved (finally!). --Reduced memory usage of all sounds in the game. --Added new video option for turning fullscreen antialiasing on. Leaving it off is fine, as it's only a minor visual improvement (that costs like 10-12fps possibly), but if you have a great computer then try it.

GENERAL GAMEPLAY

--All walk speeds have been increased a lot (25%). --There are new macros of jump+A as well as A+B for throw, and B+C for super. Also, the slop factor on these has been reduced so you don't get them accidentally as much as the old A+B command. This means that using default controls on a PS4 controller, for example, lets you use the left two face buttons for throw and the right two face buttons for super (you can still use the trigger buttons for throw and super if you want). Also, on a joystick, it means that your top row of buttons can be A, B, C and A+B = throw ; B+C = super.

CHARACTERS

JAINA ​​​​​​​--Fixed Jaina's ground super not triggering its cinematic when it hits the opponent in the very last frame of its final hit. (oops!) VALERIE --Last month we had to remove her hair’s ability to animate, for technical reasons. This month, her hair now moves and bounces again. This movement now looks better than before, does not glitch out on lower graphics settings, and no longer clips through her body. The part where it no longer clips through her body is the kind of thing that is one line in patch notes for you, but the end of a months-long struggle for us. SETSUKI --C -> C has 3f more landing recovery. --Holding C causes the throw attempt to lock in a few frames earlier, so that you can’t hold C then way late into the move still be able to air super. --Blockstun reduced on the first hit of B and hold B. (If she does the throw option, now Lum can block the first hit and hit back with neutral A.) --The window to choose between hold B (throw) and B (kick) is 6f shorter than before. So you can’t enter the throw command then change to the kick at the last moment. GEIGER --Jump A has slightly worse priority at the tip of the foot. --Delayed Time Spiral (hold B) has 4f more recovery, and travels faster once it starts moving. This is not for the sake of nerfing or buffing the move, but rather to interact reasonably with his new faster walk speed. MIDORI --Midori A,A flurry attack is safer, so that it’s not unsafe on hit against Rook most of the time. --Fixed a bug with air B kick that would cause Midori to hover just above the ground for one second if the move was done late in a jump, just before landing. LUM --Ground super now returns to gameplay cam almost instantly instead of over a period of 20 frames, so that it no longer allows the opponent to do moves off-camera. --Fixed a bug that appeared last month in Lum’s super that caused the startup to be vulnerable one frame too early. It’s now back to being vulnerable starting on the same frame that it can hit, rather than one frame before that. (In fighting game slang, it’s back to being a “bad reversal” rather than “not a reversal”.) --Fixed a bug when the opponent did an attack that touched one of Lum’s dice and also Lum himself. Before, such a hit would hit Lum, but deal 0 damage to him. Now, it deals damage as expected.

MISC

--In arcade mode, the ladder screen between fights has new sounds. --When you’re in arcade mode, then play an online game and return to arcade mode, you now return with the same costume color you had before. --Fixed a bug that randomly changed the music levels over the course of a session. --Fixed a bug on the score screen after online matches that made the top of the screen black. --Fixed a bug during the first frame of all super flashes. When an opponent’s super flash begins, if you input a move during the first 8 frames, you should be forced to do that move as gameplay resumes. This was true for frames 2 - 8 of the flash but was accidentally not true for frame 1. --Added flag icons to the language settings dropdown menu, so it’s easier to tell the languages apart. --Created a workaround for the very annoying bug in the Unity game engine that triggers when you’re in fullscreen mode, then alt-tab to another program, then return to our game. Before, this would secretly, silently set the game to your monitor’s native resolution, which could be massively too high to get good framerate. Now, you will return to the game at the same resolution that you left it.

[ 2018-01-19 05:08:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Our gift to you all this month is performance improvements. This was really a team effort to vastly improve how well the game runs on any given computer. We expect a ridiculous 60% increase or more in fps for most players. We have also translated the game into 5 new languages, fixed several bugs, and did a few balance updates.

PERFORMANCE

--Dozens of improvement to performance. This includes making low level code more efficient, changing the way several visual effects work (they'll look the same though), changing the effects used on several stages (they'll look slightly different), and optimizing character models and textures. --10% reduction in CPU usage, at least, from just low level code changes. --We predict at least a 60% increase in fps on most hardware during offline play. (This is crazy.) The improvement during online play is likely to be even greater than this. --Each of the four graphics quality settings (high / medium / low / lowest) has been revised. These revisions remove various performance hogs, usually in cases where there wasn't even a tradeoff. The "low" and "lowest" settings, on the other hand, previously used some bad tradeoffs. By choosing more carefully which things get disabled on low and lowest, we've made the game look a lot better on those settings. The character shadows on "low" look far better now than before, and the shadows in the background of stages, especially the tavern and dojo, look dramatically better on "lowest" now than before. --Valerie and DeGrey's models and textures have been adjusted. There is no visual difference at all, but they should run more smoothly. For Valerie in particular, this also fixes the issue where moving to her character select box used to cause a long loading delay. --Fixed an insane bug that periodically caused the number of function calls during input detection during online play to be 10,000 times higher than the usual number of function calls. This fix will significantly improve performance during rollbacks. Note: Only a fraction of the above performance improvements apply to our game's menus. While the menus will run slightly better than before, if you still get bad performance in menus, bear with us as we continue the optimization process and please make sure to check your framerate in actual gameplay. Note2: when checking framerate, please be aware of a bug in the Unity game engine that we're still waiting on Unity to fix. If you set the fullscreen resolution in-game, say to 1080p, then you alt tab to another program, then alt-tab back to our game, the resolution will silently and secretly be set to the native resolution of your monitor, which might be massively too high for running a game. If you alt tab back to Fantasy Strike, make sure to set the resolution back to 1080p or whatever you really want, in the game's video options. This is already in Unity's pipeline to fix, we just want you to know about the bug so it doesn't ruin any framerate tests you do.

LANGUAGES

--There are now FIVE new languages supported, other than English: French, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Norwegian, and Japanese. The game will automatically default to the language set in your Steam client, if it’s one of our supported languages (English if it’s not). You can also manually set the language in Options -> Game -> Language.

STAGES

--Added a new stage! Valerie's stage: Wall of Truth. A mural that Valerie painted magically appears in the first few seconds of the round.

SETSUKI

--Teleport kick (B button) can no longer cancel to super. --The version of Flying Fox that comes from pressing C -> C has a new trajectory that is better able to hit jumpers and now knocks down if it hits a jumping opponent. --Hold-C throw has 3 fewer active frames toward the end.

LUM

--Mini-Lum now doesn’t hit on way up (only falling and when on ground) --Lum Dice now have 2HP vs strikes/projectiles (still only do 1HP damage each to opponent) --In practice mode, when Lum is set to do “reversal” on wakeup or after blockstun, he will now do his super instead of doing nothing. --Fixed a bug that made Lum’s roll too high priority as anti-air. (Note: no balance testing of Lum involved us using this move as anti-air, so his balance is fine without using this move in that way.) --Lum's yomi counter now correctly disallows the victim from gaining super meter during its animation.

ARCADE MODE

--Before each match, there's now a fun screen that shows how many opponents are left and what stage you'll fight on next. --When you lose in arcade mode, you now get a real menu instead of a weird looking black screen placeholder thing. The menu allows you to try again, skip to the next CPU opponent, or give up. --If you're playing arcade mode, then enter an online match, you'll be returned to where you were in arcade mode after the online match ends.

PRACTICE MODE

--If you're in practice mode, then enter an online match, you'll be returned to practice mode with the same characters you were practicing with, after the online match ends.

BUG FIXES

--Fixed a bug introduced a month or two ago with all crossup attacks in the corner. Against a cornered opponent, jumping attacks that crossed up were never landing on the crossup side. An accidental force pushed the attacker away from the corner while in the air, making all such attacks say “crossup” (and blockable as crossups), but with the attacker then landing outside of the corner, rather than in the corner as they should. --Fixed a bug that sometimes caused there to be too much glow / bloom on the versus screen before the fight starts. --Fixed a bug in the options menus that caused sliders to sometimes not increase / decrease if you press and hold “left” or “right” on them. --Fixed a bug in all music tracks that causes a hiccup a few seconds in, where each song’s intro transitions to the looping portion. --On the button config screen, when you assign a key to one of the 4 movement directions, it now correctly unassigns that key from the other player. --Fixed an issue that caused the video options, when in fullscreen mode, to show multiple copies of each possible screen resolution for no reason.

[ 2017-12-19 09:01:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Have you had your eye on one of our titles? This is the biggest sale Sirlin Games has ever had. From November 22nd to 28th, you get 50% off everything Sirlin Games sells. Yes, everything. That includes: All our tabletop games at SirlinGames.com. Use the code CRAZY50 when checking out. Check out our top sellers here. Keep in mind that some products might sell out before the sale period ends, sorry! Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike on Steam (as well as their associated DLC and soundtrack). Yomi and Puzzle Strike on iOS. If you're looking for a fancy gift, we suggest Pandante (either regular or deluxe), as it's joyful experience for both non-gamers and experts. Or, you could try anything else! Fantasy Strike on Steam is our newest and prettiest game. :)

[ 2017-11-22 18:05:34 CET ] [ Original post ]