Today is the day that Stronghoof releases onto the field of battle! We'll be doing a developer stream later today at our usual time (3pm PT / 6pm ET / 11pm UK) on our Twitch channel to celebrate, hang out, answer questions, and play some launch day matches. Come join us! In this update we're shipping a number of bugfixes, including fixes for critical issues with Paprika's gift eating and Pom's dog attack canceling, both of which originated in 4.0.1. These particular two problems presented significant, unnecessary disadvantages to those characters, and we would have preferred to address them immediately, but we were unable to release an update any earlier due to the long lead times on console patches and the close proximity of the 4.0.1 release to our initial submission of the Stronghoof release. It was not an ideal situation to say the least, and we will be taking extra precautions to reduce the chances of bugs like this making it out to live releases. We apologize for our mistake and for how long it took to fix. There is one more piece of news we want to relay before getting into the patch notes. Stuart Ferguson, one of our two musicians, has left Mane6 to pursue other projects. We are on good terms, he is still around making music, and there may be a chance for us to work together again in the future. Whitetail will be the sole producer of music for TFH hereafter. Without Stu, we are not able to produce music at the same capacity as before, so we have made the difficult decision to limit the scope of the Dynamic Music System for new stages going forward, starting with Stronghoof's. From now on, the DMS on new stages will model that of the Hidden Waterfall stage, featuring stage-specific intros, outros, round transitions, and idle/final round versions, but no character-specific themes. Stages that already feature "full" DMS (like Texas' stage) will still get character themes for new roster members. The DMS is an iconic part of TFH, but it presents a unique production issue as the game grows. With "full" DMS, we have to create themes for all existing characters on new characters' stages, and a new character's theme has to be written into all existing stages. That means for each new character, the total amount of work required for a "full" DMS increases exponentially, and with the (relatively) rapid pace at which we're producing new characters these days, it has become unsustainable for our (now singular) musician to maintain for the foreseeable future. If you have any questions about this, we'd be happy to discuss things further in our Discord server or during the stream today. That's all the news we have for now, so let's talk about what's in store for 5.0!

New Character: Stronghoof

Stronghoof the Reindeer joins the roster as the second character in the Season 1 Pass! Unlocking Stronghoof requires the purchase of the Season 1 Pass or his individual Character Pack. Owners of the Deluxe Edition are automatically graced with his presence without any extra steps! Regardless of whether or not you own the DLC, you may still fight against him in online play. He also sometimes shows up as a CPU-controlled opponent in Arcade Mode!


KNOWN ISSUES:

• The DMS on all stages contains Stronghoof-specific intros, outros, and transitions, but not his domination character theme. We ran into some last-minute bugs and had to disable it for safety. They will be patched in the next update.
• If you have the Pixel Lobby avatar for Stronghoof (or Texas) equipped and you leave/rejoin a lobby, you'll be reset to Shanty. We will fix this!

Tutorials

• Revised the position of the hazards in Velvet's (and now Stronghoof's) Slide tutorial, to make it easier to complete (and possible at all for Stronghoof).

Command Lists

• Texas' command list now properly says "bullseye" instead of "tipper" (English only; it's correct in all other languages).
• Fixed missing move property icons (Low, Overhead, Grab, etc) for level 3 supers on non-English command lists for Tianhuo and Shanty.
• Fixed the word "Magic" not being highlighted blue for "Ran Shao Feng" in Tianhuo's Russian command list.
• Fixed the word "Super Attacks" being misaligned in Arizonas Russian command list.
• Fixed Texas' 6A description "blockable while the opponent is descending" being in Spanish instead of Brazilian Portuguese on that command list.
• For Russian command lists, retranslated "Projectile Invulnerable" (where it appears), "Retreat Flip" (Tianhuo), "Cartwheel" (Paprika), and "Launcher Attack" (All Characters).
• For Brazilian Portuguese command lists, retranslated "Parley" (Shanty), "Dark Cataclysm" (Oleander), "Digging Pup" (Pom), "Volcanic Bash" (Tianhuo), and the description of "Eat" (All Characters).

Gameplay

General

Cosmetic

• Added one new palette for each character:
  • Arizona - "Marching Fishes"
  • Velvet - "Koyousetsu"
  • Oleander - "Hell's Grenade"
  • Paprika -" Fifth Slash"
  • Pom - "Double Typhoon"
  • Tianhuo - "Mega Flame"
  • Shanty - "Night of Fire"
  • Texas - "Hammer Spark"

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue present in the last patch that was causing Max-JD hitspark sound effects to play louder than they used to.

Bugfixes

• Fixed certain chain attacks not coming out consistently. Players would get forward attacks instead of low attacks. (6A > 3B or 6A > 3C).

Bugfixes

• Fixed Velvet not being able to super cancel during the first few frames of 3C.

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue where 5B could be canceled into 3C on whiff.
• Fixed grounded Magic Spark (level 3) appearing as the size of a normal Spark, instead of being enlarged (this seemed to have broken at some point in the past).

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue present in the previous patch that caused normals performed as a reversal to no longer trigger gift eats (only specials should bypass gift eating).

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue present in the previous patch that caused dog attacks to stop attacking when Pom was put into preblock (dog attacks should only stop attacking during actual blockstun).
• Fixed an issue where if Momma dog was hit by Texas' 2D during Rally, she would instantly activate her counter the next time she used it.

Features

• Texas now has an onscreen timer for his level 2 super (Pummel Pillar).

Bugfixes

• Fixed trades of Prairie Pummel with Paprika's cinnamon roll causing Paprika to fall out of the super prematurely.
• Fixed an issue causing Texas to fall backwards instead of straight down when being thrown by Shanty's air grab.
• Fixed an issue causing the camera to not follow Texas properly if launched offscreen by certain moves while his Prairie Pillar was active.
• Fixed Texas sometimes being invisible during the cutscene of Oleander's level 3 super.
• Fixed Texas being vulnerable to projectile hits during the grab of his 6A. He is now invulnerable immediately after a successful grab.
• Fixed Texas being able to activate Cowbell followups after triggering the counter from Pom's level 3 super.
• Fixed opponents gaining extra height after being hit with Prairie Pummel during the middle of being ground bounced.
• Fixed an issue where j.C could be canceled into an air throw at a very specific time, even on whiff.
• Fixed an issue that allowed a trade with Cowbell against a KO'd Texas to do followups.
  • KNOWN ISSUE: This fix has created another issue where same-frame trades with another Texas Cowbell cause mismatched frame advantage, favoring Player 2. We are looking into a fix.