This is an incredibly busy week for us, putting final touches on the build, for this week's release of the Harmonious Prelude update! What better way to encourage people to play Blade Symphony, than with a Steam Free Weekend! Alongside this Thursday's release at 10am US Pacific Standard Time, Blade Symphony is taking part in a free weekend to celebrate the update! Get a look at our latest work on the Beta, since we've released our second-to-last Release Candidate (before "gold master,") on Steam. Update now to get the latest, the changelog is below. Finally, WE REALLY NEED YOUR HELP! If you're a very detail oriented person, with experience in spreadsheets, large text files and Regex, OR you're someone who knows a non-English language very well, we need help with putting Blade Symphony into as many languages as possible! Slowly, more languages are being imported from our translation tool to various Google Documents located here. Anyone can view, but not anyone can edit. If you would like to help in some form or fashion, please talk to us on our Discord! The more languages we have, the more inviting this is for a broader audience.

Changes since Release Candidate 5

• Bot Population System
  • As incentive for players (especially new or those in uncommon time zones) to join servers, bots will spawn upon connection. Players will be able to duel bots while waiting for more players.
  • Dueling a bot will give 1/4th the XP normally gained from fighting a player.
  • Number of bots that spawn when player joins can be changed using bb_duelbots_num_bots
  • When the player joins a server, a bot will leave the server within any match that the player joins, freeing up space for more players. All bots should be gone when the number of players in the server is greater than or equal to bb_duelbots_num_bots. This can also be turned off by using bb_duelbots_proportional
  • The bots are displayed on the server browser, so that the player knows they can duel bots.
  • In the future an XP bonus will be given players that stay around for more players to join.

• Final Blow Slowdown
  • The finishing blow on a player, will now result in a small 2 second slowdown for emphasis on how the character was killed. This is really cinematic and cool!

• Single Player Pause System
  • If the player is in a listenserver (localhost server,) and presses the ESC key to bring up the main menu, the game will pause. Bots will not move.
  • As it applies to listenservers, this means that it will apply to the tutorial.
• Changed XP bar to display XP for current level and next level, instead of overall XP
  • 0 - Dummy, the bot does nothing
  • 1 - Easy, the bot will not throw shurikens or charge attacks.
  • 2 - Normal, the current state of the bot
  • 3 - Hard, this is not implemented yet
• Stance and Style Indicator
  • The colored Kanji lettering that represents the style is now shown behind the stance indicator
  • This symbol only appears when readied in or spectating an empty match, or while spectating a duel
• Spawned bots now choose between Arcade Style and Classic Style at random when creating matches
• Players can now start a vote to change the map on the server. The maps are presented in a fancy way, and the list is populated based on the player’s own maps.
• Scoreboard now no longer displays the player's character level while in spectate
• Vanguard can temporarily not switch stances while charging. Vanguard is receiving charge animations, and this change will be reverted upon their completion.
• Shurikens no longer track to targets on 2 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, and Control Point modes
  • Unfortunately, a situation could occur where one player could sit back and endlessly shuriken while another attacked.
• Friendly Fire is now enabled by default on 2 vs. 1, 2 vs. 2, and Control Point modes
  • Having this disabled caused the parry system to be held back, since the player could just throw numerous balanced and heavy attacks, to stun their opponent when their opponent parried.
• Modes that are not duel will now default to Classic Style
• Style overrides on game servers (using bb_tactical_server_override) will now be shown on the client
• The join match button should be disabled when in a match now
• Changed Style Screen descriptions to be more accurate.
• The last hit of a round is played in slow motion (bb_duel_last_hit_emphasis)
• You can now pause the game fully, and take a break without risk of being murdered several times while playing the tutorial and when fighting bots in singleplayer.
• Classic Style
  • Increased Katana damage to 0.90 from 0.85
  • Reduced Phalanx’s Balanced String 2 Tier 1 damage from to 20 from 24
  • Reduced Phalanx’s Fast String 1 Tier 1 damage from 9 to 6
  • Increased Phalanx’s Fast String 1 Tier 2 damage from 14 to 15
  • Decreased Phalanx’s Fast String 2 Tier 1 damage from 15 to 9
  • Increased Phalanx’s Fast String 2 Tier 2 damage from 14 to 15
  • Decreased Phalanx’s Fast String 3 Tier 1 damage from 14 to 9
  • Decreased Phalanx’s Fast String 3 Tier 2 damage from 18 to 11
  • Decreased Phalanx’s Fast String 4 Tier 1 damage from 10 to 9
  • Increased Ryoku’s Fast String 1 Tier 1 locktime from 0.28 to 0.33
  • Increased Ryoku’s Fast String 1 Tier 2 locktime from 0.28 to 0.33
• Classic Style and Arcade Style
  • Increased Feint cancel percent from 0.35 to 0.51
  • Increased Feint cooldown time from 0.75 to 1.5
  • Increased Feint cancel cooldown from 1.0 to 2.3

• Fixed a Windows crash when changing resolutions
• Fixed a Linux crash when the multi-hit indicator was displayed
• Fixed escape menu staying up after selecting a style on the Style Select screen
• Fixed sword tracers casting shadows
• Fixed ragdolls sometimes appearing in other matches
• Fixed not being able to cycle between spectators when spectating a single playerFixed stance indicator to be covered up by scoreboard
• Fixed level overlaying on top of player names, long player names now receive ellipses
• Fixed chat bubbles being leftover from players leaving a match, or by invisible players
• Fixed issue causing voice communication to not function correctly
• Fixed numerous issues related to scoreboard display and match destruction
• Fixed screen going black during duel introduction
• Made Control Point score be kills / death temporarily. Will instead be score / kills in the future.
• Fixed style toggle button not properly scaling in nonstandard resolutions
• Fixed Vanguard and Phalanx having their experience swapped
• Fixed issue causing player’s outfit colors to be set, and then fade out.
• Fixed a bug that caused the user to connect to a server if ESC was pressed with a server highlighted in the server browser.
• Implemented multiple changes for upcoming transition of Workshop items to Marketplace items
• Fixed an issue causing links from the Main Menu to display while in a server
• Fixed Left and Right click not changing players or arenas while spectating
• Fixed Ctrl not switching view type while spectating
• Fixed the counter not being reset for achievements requiring actions to be completed consecutively.
• Fixed a bug where if you performed no actions in a duel you would gain -2147483648 XP.