Mahou Arms News

Hello everyone,

I wanted to give you all an update on the progress we've made regarding the threat of legal action against us.

Since replying via email to the composer's initial threat, we have not received any further communication from them. However, using our version control system, we were able to compile a list of all assets the composer added or modified in the game. This has allowed us to remove all audio content generated by them and review their other work to determine whether it would meet the standards required for copyright to apply.

We're happy to announce that we've now replaced all of their sound assets and have found that their other contributions were not unique or complex enough to qualify for copyright protection. In addition, much of their other work had already been redone, modified, or was no longer in use anyway.

We have made this new game build available to the composer to verify that their copyrighted material is no longer present. We have given them a deadline of Tuesday, June 30th, 2020 to respond. If we do not hear from them, we will assume that they have verified that the new build is free of their copyrighted material.

Thanks to our version control system, we feel confident that we have removed all of the composer's copyrighted material and therefore, if in the future we receive any additional claims from the composer, we will not take down the game as we have done in this instance without a court order. We will investigate their claims and if they prove credible, we will replace the content and release an update. We have given the composer the opportunity to provide a list of material over which they own copyright, but they have not done so yet. Therefore we consider this policy to be reasonable.

It is still possible that the composer will proceed with legal action against us, however we do not think they will win if the matter goes to court. We have ample evidence that we have acted properly over the course of our communications and we took immediate action to stop distribution of the game and remove their copyrighted material as soon as they informed us that we were no longer permitted to use it.

Thank you all very much for your patience with this matter. You should hear from us again on Tuesday, or earlier if there are new developments.

Hello everyone,

First, we've emailed Valve to temporarily remove the game from Steam. We are still developing the game and it will be available again in a month or two. Read on for the reason behind this.

Unfortunately, I must inform you that we recently received a threat of legal action against us from a composer who worked with us for a short period over 2 years ago.

This composer was informally contracted to produce sounds and music and implement them into the game. We agreed to pay them £31.50 per hour and limited them to 30 hours a month. If they needed to work more than 30 hours in a month, they were to ask for permission. This was to control costs since they were being paid a high hourly rate and this was early in the game’s development.

The composer ended up working with us for about 4 months before we asked them to leave the project on May 2nd, 2018 for unacceptable behavior and jeopardizing our relationship with our publisher.

They billed us for 82 hours of work over three months (we did not get a bill for the final month). They exceeded their 30 hour limit in one month by 7 hours, and presumably would have exceeded their 30 hour limit for the final month if they had of sent us a bill for it. They claim that our main artist gave them permission to exceed the limit, but our artist did not have the legal authority to make financial decisions for the company. So, we reduced their 37 hour bill to 30 hours and also assumed that their final bill would hit the 30 hour limit as well. In the end, we paid them for 105 hours of work, which works out to £3,307.50 GBP or around $4,616.25 USD.

Due to the capping of their bills, they claim that we have underpaid them by at least 7 hours (because we did not receive a final bill, we don’t know their exact claim regarding underpayment). They also claim that we agreed to pay severance when we hired them, and although we did mention being open to the idea, we did not agree to it explicitly. They also felt that they deserved two months worth of severance, which at their average monthly pay would have been at least £1,653.75 (or around $2,308.13 USD). This seemed an unreasonable demand for a part time, contract position. We attempted to negotiate a lower severance, but in the end I got frustrated with what I felt was unreasonable greed and chose not to pay for anything more than the 105 hours previously mentioned.

After paying them for these hours, we moved to remove their content from the game, since we felt it was likely they would eventually either demand it removed or demand extra payment to be allowed to keep using it. We removed their music and thought that we had removed their sound effects and other contributions as well, but now the composer has come forward claiming that we had failed to do so. They are seeking extra compensation and damages resulting from the unauthorized use of their assets. It is our position that we paid the agreed amount for their work and, up until now, they never stated that we could not use their assets in the game. We are in contact with them now, but until this is resolved, we will need to temporarily take the game offline until we can confirm that all their contributions have been removed.

We apologize for this inconvenience. When you purchased Mahou Arms on Steam, you trusted us to use the money toward the development of the game in the most efficient way possible. This is what we are trying to accomplish by not giving into these demands.

Thank you for your understanding, and we will keep you updated.

This build is targeted at addressing feedback from EA launch. Next build scheduled for end of July.

Featured tweaks and additions:

- New Style Meter & Style Rank Logic

- Enemy death explosions

- Probe's ball shooting attack has been replaced with one where they charge a larger ball that homes in on nearby enemies for 3 seconds after it is shot before traveling in a straight line for the rest of its lifespan

- Probe has a new melee attack


-MP system Framework
-Perfect dodge now replenishes 100MP when executed. It's hardcoded as an ability currently, but players will be able to swap perfect dodge bonuses in the future.

Additions Since 0.2.931 (Last Bleeding Build):

-Probe and Corrupt OL detect when enemies are in their personal space and act aggressively.
-Probe's ball shooting attack has been replaced with one where they charge a larger ball that homes in on nearby enemies for 3 seconds after it is shot before traveling in a straight line for the rest of its lifespan
-Probe has a new melee attack


Additions Since 0.2.886 (Last Steam Build):

-Tweakable sharpen filter to help remove oversmoothing from temporal antialiasing
-New Style Rank
-new style rank UI
-style rank grants points depending on how frequently the last attack has been used. If an attack is used multiple times it will stop gaining points from that attack, so players are encouraged to mix it up
-Damage multiplier up to 3x depending on style rank
-tweaks to combo cooldown, point gain parameters
-rank decay will accelerate if player does not deal damage for 6s
-getting hit will reduce ranks by up to to 2 rank depending on gameplay difficulty
-perfect dodge immediately gains a lot of style
-MP system Framework:
-MP is broken up into bars. Each bar is 100MP. MP will replenish up to 1 bar when empty, but filling more than one bar will require items (in the future) or certain abilities. MP bar will be upgradable in the future.
-Ability System Framework
-Abilities will be equippable in the future. Currently Scan is hardcode equipped. Note this has no visible UI yet
-Perfect dodge now replenishes 100MP when executed. It's hardcoded as an ability currently, but players will be able to swap perfect dodge bonuses in the future.

Tweaks since 0.2.931:

-Probe's repositioning between attacks is faster and travels less distance
-Hitbox tweaks Probe, Corrupt OL, Amelia Attacks
-damage and hitstop tweaks
-Corrupt OL's stun animations have been replaced with ones that allow them to be hit when they are stunned
-probe ball explosion effect tweaked
-style meter tweaks
-gun is now automatic when light attack button is held down
-a 25% and 50% damage penalty is applied to damage at Hard and Nightmare difficulty levels
-gun damage now gives the user 6 style points instead of 10
-Autoaim has been toned down a bit
-New player and enemy collision logic, and better perch and character Pushforce parameters
-enemies have weight classes and it affects how easily they are pulled by weapons and pushed around by the player
-escape button now acts as back button in menus
-hitflash has been added

Tweaks since 0.2.886:

-motion blur dialed down
-renamed "motion blur" to "motion blur quality" for more clarity
-game no longer mutes when focus is lost. Better behavior for streamers playing in windowed or borderless windowed mode
-some UI elements have been scaled up a little and their fonts / styling tweaked a little for better legibility
-Corrupt and Probe's health have been dropped 500 points
-Gun damage adds less style rank points than other attacks but increases the combo delay, making it better for extending combos than other attacks
-Hit effects are more visible (their light influence has been increased)
-Enemies crack and explode when they're defeated
-Enemies can no longer be juggled after they're defeated
-Environment art tweaks / additions
-camera shake tweaks
-Time of Day length doubled
-Scan ability now also shows Save Points & Hscenes
-Some environment props are now destructible
-Save point added to downtown shops area, near the dialogue portion with Piro
-hair fake translucency effect added
-game defaults to 60fps fps cap for more consistent frame timing. User can override in settings
-Lock on now prioritizes closer enemies better

Fixes & Optimizations since 0.2.931 (Last Bleeding Build):

-tracking lasers should now go through enemies but block on player character
-sound plays and icon disappears during loading: sounds are now muted during loading (music only); can't do much about icon. On most systems the icon only disappears very briefly
-you can open the menu as the end of chapter 3 cutscene starts up, this locks you into the loading screen until you exit out of the menu.
-various out of bounds fixes
-when transformed, it's possible to clip the camera into basically every wall, this can only be done while transformed
-Text for Stay and Leave is very tiny and hard to decipher between the two, had clicked stayed and anticipated to leave too often: font changed, background darkened, and order swapped. hopefully this is more legible
-the dropped guns from dashing while transformed/transforming can clip into the ground and walls making them in red inside of walls or the floor
-The aerial light homes in on the last enemy you hit, rather than whatever you're closest to/targeting. This includes locking on to dead enemies if that's the last thing you've hit.
-Dpad isn't working when trying to confirm changes to graphic settings
-you can still surf on your guns if you do instant-surf (dash -> heavy 1f) while transformed
-if a player launches in normal mode, then the launch animation can be played again after a jump
-DSA fires are being triggered when they shouldn't be, also they block IK traces
-various optimizations in pier and downtown areas
-can dodge certain attacks by just doing the first L attack at a certain timing?: enemies track better now, so this should be fixed...
-The fix that stops you from throwing your guns also disables your ability to chain from a heavy attack into any transformed attack
-zoom is uncapped in manga cutscenes
-amelia spins around in normal mode: more natural spin rate
-health icon wasn't reflecting style input state
-launch01 can occasionally trigger without a weapon
-When locked on, sometimes the camera will flicker back and forth between two positions when an object is between the character and enemy at just the right spot

Fixes & Optimizations since 0.2.886 (Last Steam Build):

-If a player launches in normal mode, then the launch animation can be played again after a jump
-various places where player or enemies can get stuck between containers in ny_pier
-out of bounds in MIS_ST_01 and MIS_ST_03
-can jump over force fields in MIS_ST_03 Rhyme's Square encounter
-mission says new york at the beginning, when it shouldn't
-spamming buttons during load still allows moves to happen while the screen is black
-softlock with pause menu when entering / exiting menus quickly
-out of bounds in downtownstops
-not switching properly between gamepad and kb+mouse
-can pause during loading of MIS_ST_03, which results in black screen without the pause menu showing up
-running to the save point immediately after starting MIS_ST_03 skips receiving the quest altogether and breaks progression
-hitboxes stick around with some cancels
-patched a couple environment art holes in MIS_ST_03 area
-can get stuck in shoulder cam mode
-old runstop still plays in some scenarios
-groundpound decal spawns sideways when floor is set to "no collision"
-normal groundpound does three times the damage
-moonwalk sprint if joystick is gradually returned to center while sprinting
-Various game thread (CPU) optimizations on gameplay actors / AI
-Various UI (CPU) optimizations on ingame HUD widgets
-can throw guns instead of axe in some heavy attacks
-amelia keeps running if bonfire is triggered while input is in a direction
-fillrate optimizations for rain effects and ny_pier area
-running into benches no longer launches them

Many of you have been asking for a production roadmap, and here it is! Note that tasks that come up in the middle of production aren't included, and this is only a high level overview. It also doesn't take into consideration things like rescopes. If the scope drastically changes, we'll update the roadmap.

(click for larger image)


Cheers,
Dischan

Firstly, we'd like to thank you all for giving Mahou Arms' Early Access such a warm welcome! Whether you only just learned about MA or have been a patron since 2018, I cannot stress how much we we deeply appreciate your support. We're super excited to finish MA ASAP, and this launch has been super motivating.

In this post, we'd like to address early impressions of the game, feedback, and our upcoming plans, including our high level production schedule and scope for the project.

[h2]Addressing First Impressions & Feedback:[/h2]
We've been watching streams and checking feedback daily and we're happy to see a generally positive reception for the game. That said, there's a couple of topics that are frequently brought up as being issues or poor experiences. In this post, we'll list a couple of them and give a time frame for when we expect to improve them.

[h2]Immediate Improvements:[/h2]
Impact Sound Effects are Bad: We've contacted a sound design contractor for a quote on new sounds. New sounds should be implemented in 1-2 months.

[h2]Next 2 Months:[/h2]

• Lack of Tutorials and Input Remapping: We're going to implement popup tutorials (which you'll be able to turn off) and an input remapping screen soon. For Input Remapping, Mouse and Keyboard will be supported first, while gamepads will have a couple profiles to choose from. Exhaustive Gamepad Input Remapping will be implemented sometime in the future, though we don't have a date for that yet.
  
• Enemies Feel Too Much Like Damage Sponges: This will be addressed by making the player deal more damage with a higher style rating. Globally decreasing enemy health as a fix leads to a lot of poor experiences (killing enemies with the first hit in a combo), so we're hoping style-rank based damage-acceleration will mitigate this and encourage skillful play while resolving the main damage issue.
  
• Too Easy to Gain Style: The style rank is a brand new feature that has not been balanced yet. This will be balanced and become better over time.
  
• Enemies Are Too Easily Stunlocked: There are a couple of approaches we are going to try for this. What solution we go with will depend on testing.
  
  • First, we're going to try making the player more vulnerable to attacks from other enemies during a combo. This will likely include a combination of: reducing player movement during attacks, using enemy weight to dictate how much the player can push them during an attack, and making the enemies' attacks' tracking more accurate, especially over subsequent shots.
    
  • Second, we'll try giving some enemies stunlock-detection AI, where they can try dodging or teleporting to a nearby location if they've been stunlocked too long.
• Probe Randomly Shoots Balls With no Telegraphing: This attack will be replaced by one that has a more obvious charging state and projectile. We're not sure what form the projectile will take, but a user on our feedback channel suggested a larger, homing ball that explodes when shot by the probe's laser, similar to Unreal Tournament's Shock Combo, which we're willing to try out.
  
• No Attack That Allows Amelia to Hit Diagonally from the Air: Divekick to Normal Amelia will be added (Heavy Attack while in air).

[h2]Next 2-6 Months:[/h2]

• Lack of Content and Enemies: This will be improved up until release, but the most important part for mission content (game width, as opposed to depth) requires us to work on a horizontal slice for the rest of the story missions as soon as possible so we can pace out the missions for the best intensity curve. For this period, we'll be heavily focusing on new enemies, bosses, a new character, and a horizontal slice of the game.
  
• Broken Progression Loop, Not Enough Saves: We need a home base for the player to come back to between missions to address this. We'll reveal more details on this soon, but think of a kind of XCOM-like base building component.
  
• Zombies are too Easy: Try explosive zombies.

[h2]Next 6-18 Months:[/h2]
Lack of Depth: We'll be working on until release, but here are some of the proposed mechanics we're adding to help add depth to the game:

• Utility Skills: Right now, if L3 (Q on keyboard) is pressed, the character sends out a "ping" that scans the environment for enemies and collectibles. In the future, this ability can be upgraded to deflect projectiles and maybe stun enemies on successful deflects. Other ideas would include skills that launch missiles, lasers, throw grenades, or suck enemies towards a black hole.
  
• Weapon Mods: Mods will make make weapon bullets consume MP for secondary effects, such as breaking shields, freezing enemies, and bullets that explode after a period of time.
  
• MP System: Utility skills and weapon mods will consume MP.
  
• Ignite System: Devil trigger. Details TBA
  
• Character Switching: Switch character in the middle of a combo
  
• Ability System: Gives secondary effects to certain abilities, like stealing health on a perfect dodge, etc.

[h2]Undetermined Production Timeline:[/h2]

• Customization: Character skins, hairstyle swaps, and accessory swaps
  
• Charge Attacks

[h2]Intentionally Delayed Until Release:[/h2]

• Combo / Command List: We're deliberately delaying this since a lot of attacks and inputs get tweaked throughout development. Every time a change happens we'd have to spend time updating the list and the tutorial text for the list, which can be a poor use of development time for our tiny devteam. This type of list cannot be automated.
  
• Chinese/Japanese Localization: Simplified/Traditional Chinese and Japanese are confirmed localization targets. It's most efficient to translate all the narrative at once when it's done though, so while we might translate UI / gameplay components, narrative translations will happen later.

[h2]Onwards![/h2]
This post is already very long, so the next one will be a high level roadmap of what we're working on at what point in time for the Early Access period of Mahou Arms. Please note that re-scoping will happen throughout development, so it might not be completely accurate, but if it changes drastically we'll create a new roadmap.

We're always open to feedback, so if there's something you'd like to mention, don't hesitate to post on our discord, Patreon, Twitter, or anywhere on the Steam Community around Mahou Arms. Thank you for reading!

Cheers,
Dischan