EA Update v0.5.12 - Rockman Assist and More Sprites!
Highlights
Rockman Assist
Rockman, from FTL: Faster Than Light, has been added to the game!
Official FrayTools Plugins now available on GitHub
We're excited to announce that the very same FrayTools plugins we actively use for internal development have been publicly released on GitHub! We sneakily released them a few weeks ago and have already started to continue development from these open-source repositories. In addition to the Fraymakers plugins you'll also be able to find "plugin-core", the FrayTools library that serves as a development kit for creating your own plugins, along with some minimal example code repositories. Check out everything we've released so far below!
With this change, we've moved the Fraymakers API documentation from its original website over to GitHub to simplify maintenance and provide a better browsing experience. You can explore the new home for the documentation here:
We’ve decided to remove this feature from the game for now. Aside from being somewhat underdeveloped, adding additional lights could affect performance on lower end hardware if the feature wasn’t turned off. On top of this, we discovered a bug that resulted in point light calculation not being entirely disabled when generating hitsparks, even if the feature was turned off. With the system disabled, everyone who had the feature turned off may see some modest performance gains based on our testing. The feature may return at some point in the future, but for now it’s on the backburner while we focus on larger priorities.
New error logging feature
If the game crashes, a new error.log file will be generated alongside the game executable containing crash details. When reporting crashes (ideally via https://fraymakers.com/feedback), please be sure to send us this file to help fix your issue!
Fixes
Negative hitstun values are now processed correctly as a Float with respect to the documentation.
Playable Characters
Octodad
Side Special Air - Updated with completed pixel art.
Down Special Air Attack - Updated with completed pixel art.
Welltaro
Neutral Air - Updated with partially completed pixel art.
Forward Strong - Updated with partially completed pixel art.
Forward Strong Land - Updated with completed pixel art.
Neutral Special Air - Updated with completed pixel art.
Assists
Rhythm Doctor
Corrected a console error by removing a deprecated ‘forceTumbleFall’ stat from the animation.
EA Update v0.5.11 Hotfix - Fixes for crashing in Quick Play and Custom Content
Online
Quick Play
Fixed a bug that caused a crash if the person you matched with left the room.
Training
Quick Reload
Fixed a bug that caused the game to crash if you tried to Quick Reload Custom Content downloaded from Steam Workshop.
Custom Content
Uploading Content
Fixed a bug that would cause the game to crash if you tried to upload content with an old meta.json file.
EA Update v0.5.11 - Super Hexagon and Reworked Custom Content Loading
Highlights
Super Hexagon Assist
Added to the game!
Playing With Custom Content Online
The game will now check to see if your version number on custom content is identical to everyone else on match load. If they aren’t, the custom content will be redownloaded, preventing desyncs caused by mismatched versions. As a result of this update, version numbers are now required to be changed every reupload.
New text overlay added while the match is loading indicating which players are currently downloading specific content.
Menus
Character / Assist / Stage Select Screen
Added announcer voice lines for selecting custom content.
Fixed a bug that caused duplicate content to sometimes appear in the custom content selection menu.
Online
Creating an online lobby now pre-fills your lobby name with “’s Lobby”.
Custom Content
Uploading Custom Content Reworked
Reworked upload procedure, with new prompts and warnings for an easier experience. Errors now persist on screen until you click “ok”.
Version numbers are now required to be in the following format: - xx.xx.xx.xx (a sequence of up to four “less than 100” numbers separated by decimal points. For example: 1.0, 0.0.5, or 0.4.1.10)
Thumbnails are now limited to 3 Megabytes in size.
Changelogs can now be added via the meta.json - A blank “changelog” key will be automatically added for you. If you specify one here, you don’t need to do so via the game client.
You can now specify content visibility settings on the workshop via the meta.json file. You can use “private”, “unlisted”, or “public” (default). Note that “private” content cannot be played online. Use “unlisted” if you’d like to test in a private setting.
You now are automatically subscribed to any content you upload and immediately fetch the latest updates when you upload revisions of your content.
Custom content is now sorted alphabetically on the CSS.
Playable Characters
CommanderVideo
Neutral Special - Fixed attack angle when fired backward (110 → 70)
Down Special - Fixed grounded down special preventing you from using your Rainbow Trail to jump cancel. - Added grounded ECB to the aerial version of loop. - Bounce sound effect now has a cooldown before it can play the sound again.
Octodad
Dash Attack - Removed stray pixel from the pixel art.
Ledge Climb - Updated with completed pixel art.
Orcane
Neutral Special - Droplet projectile is no longer destroyed by the death boundary.
Down Special - Droplet projectile is no longer destroyed by the death boundary.
Welltaro
Parry Fail - Updated with completed pixel art.
Assists
Crewmate
New palette added.
Niko
Projectiles spawned by a player in Niko’s light are now also buffed.
Orcane
Fixed bug which made the assist fly backward at different rates when spawned on the ground or in the air.
Tankman
Projectile now recolors with costumes.
Stages
Backyard
Soul Bros’ music track no longer drops in volume near the end of the loop.
The Spire
Top camera and death boundaries moved 20 pixels upward.
Fraymakers Api Types Plugin v0.1.6
General
New HitboxStats fields: tumbleType
Deprecated HitboxStats fields: forceTumbleFall
New TumbleType constants
New Character function: pressedStrongAttack()
New CollisionBox functions: copyFrom()
Removed accidental internal comments from a few of the constants classes
New constants class: StrongInputType
New CharacterEvent: JUMP_CANCEL
EA Update v0.5.10 - Tons of Character Changes and Sprites + Menu Sensitivity Fix
Highlights
Overview
This patch features tons of changes to all of the playable characters, ranging from balance tweaks to new mechanics and move overhauls. With this patch, we took a pretty liberal stance on changes: some of them are fairly aggressive or experimental in nature (especially those made to CommanderVideo and Octodad), so we’ll be keeping a close eye on how things play out and making further adjustments (or even reverting some things if necessary) moving forward. Though there are some big changes, this isn’t yet the final vision for the cast - some characters (especially Welltaro) have some aspects that are still a work in progress, and should have further changes coming down the line.
Considering the scale of the changes in this patch, it’s not unlikely that overall cast balance will be a bit out of whack in the short term. Our goal was to get some of the bigger pieces in your hands first, then adjust from there to get balance in line. Once you’ve had a chance to try everything out, we’d love to get your feedback! We put together a form so you can let us know what you think on any or all of the changes. Thank you so much for your help! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScdqEaebC2XCvf7JX-jOvWcHWqN_ZRODKcFibqJ3mGlbKUN-Q/viewform
You can find an overview of the changes to each character below. Keep scrolling to read the complete patch notes - we fit in a lot of fixes and QOL changes in this patch that aren’t covered in this section, so make sure to check them out!
General
Gameplay
Strong attacks can now be used during run turn animations
Fixed bug where dashing with the dash button during a walk wouldn't work if you were already holding a directional input.
Fixed bug where dropping through platforms with the dash button wouldn't work if you were already holding the down input.
Characters now animate through shield_in when holding the shield button through the end of a roll. - This doesn’t have a gameplay implication, just a visual correction.
Fixed incorrect value that was causing a perfect shield-esque effect to be possible on the first frame of shield. This behavior should no longer occur.
Custom Content
Bug fixes
Null costume error fix - Fixed bug where characters and assists who didn't have a base costume defined could crash the game online.
Menu
General
Dedicated directional deadzones - Directional presses on most menus now use a stricter dead zone that is layered on top of your base dead zone settings to allow for more precise navigation.
Playable Characters
All Characters
Tech Roll - You are now active earlier in the animation (active on frame 41 → 39) - Distance increased across the cast.
Standing Jump - Holding forward or backward during jump_squat now gives you a boost of initial speed (jumpSpeedBackwardInitialXSpeed 0 → -3, jumpSpeedForwardInitialXSpeed 0 → 3).
CommanderVideo
Overview - CommanderVideo has had some substantial changes to his rainbow trail mechanics. Previously having a rainbow trail active only affected side special, allowing you to jump cancel it until the trail was deactivated. This created a character with a pretty fun rushdown and combo game, but it had a few issues. Allowing side special to be repeatedly jump cancelled made the move overly noncommittal, allowing you to cancel a side special done in an unfavorable situation without any downside. You could also use this to run away from opponents on some stages, which although not unbeatable was certainly obnoxious to deal with. While side special was extremely strong, his other special moves were lacking, and mostly had niche to non-existent utility outside of recovery.
With this patch, CommmanderVideo’s biggest changes are centered around his rainbow trail. You can now jump cancel any special move if you have a rainbow trail, but doing so will deactivate the trail. Different moves can be jump cancelled at different points - usually, it’s at some point after the hitbox is active. Alongside other changes to special moves, neutral special now has a limited range, is a multihit, and hits at a backwards angle. Down special received the least significant changes here - aside from being jump cancelable with a rainbow trail, it mostly functions the same, so we’ll keeping an eye on it and potentially looking to adjust it more substantially in the future.
Our goal with this patch is to preserve the fun aspects of CommanderVideo’s play style while dialing back some of the negatives mentioned above. Since this is probably the biggest change in this patch, this should definitely be considered something of a work in progress. If we do end up moving forward with this direction, it will almost definitely need some adjustments to the numbers. We’d also implement clearer audio and visual queues for gaining and losing the rainbow trail - with the increased frequency at which you gain and lose the trail, it can be hard to track at the moment. We’re looking forward to seeing what you think!
Rainbow Trail - All special moves can now be jump cancelled after a certain point in the animation if you have a rainbow trail. - Jump canceling any special move now deactivates the rainbow trail. - Hitting invincible enemies no longer gives you a rainbow trail.
Forward Air - Startup increased (14 → 15) - Endlag increased (13 → 15) - Autocancel activates later (34 → 38) - Hitboxes adjusted to better conform to the shape of the attack.
Up Air - knockbackGrowth reduced (60 → 50)
Back Air - Sweetspot baseKnockback increased (45 → 55) - Autocancel activates later (22 → 28) - Landing lag increased (10 → 11) - Sweetspot is now active for more frames (2 → 3) - Sourspot is now active for fewer frames (6 → 5) - Slightly reduced size of hitboxes.
Down Tilt - Angle adjusted (361 → 110)
Neutral Special - Reworked into a quick short-distance multihit beam.
Up Special - Holding backward out of the startup animation will now reverse the direction you face when cannon angling begins. - Stats adjusted (angle 70 → 80, knockbackGrowth 50 → 40, damage 13 → 10)
Roll - Normalized frame data to match the rest of the cast, resulting in 2 additional frames of endlag.
Octodad
Overview - Your feedback on our previous survey confirmed what we were feeling was a big issue with Octodad: it was too tricky to reliably tell the difference between a tipper and non tipper hit on many moves. Hitting with some moves like up aerial that you thought looked like a tipper but ended up not being one was far too common of an experience, and it made him feel kind of finicky and unreliable. He also had some issues with moves that did not clearly convey their hitboxes, like his forward aerial which featured a smear that was not fully hitboxed.
For this patch, we applied two main fixes to Octodad’s most problematic moves. First, some moves’ tipper hitboxes have been changed from the lowest to the highest hitbox priority. This means that if you hit a character with both the sourspot and sweet spot of those moves simultaneously, you’ll get the sweetspot. Secondly, we adjusted the sprites of the active frames for moves with conveyance issues. This also included adjustments to many moves where the tipper hitbox changed is now top priority - you’ll find that some of their hitboxes cover less space to balance out how much more easily they can hit with the tipper hitbox. Our goal is for him to require a bit more accuracy to land hits, but to reward you more consistently for doing so. Let us know what you think, or if you think either of the above changes should be applied to any other attacks!
Optimized Sprite Sheet - Lower end hardware previously could have experienced a hitch when using Octodad due to his spritework existing on two sprite sheets. This has been optimized to one spritesheet, matching the rest of the cast.
Neutral Air - Startup reduced (11 → 10)
Forward Air - Tipper priority changed from lowest to highest. - Adjusted hitbox sizing and positioning. - Active frame visuals adjusted.
Up Air - Tipper priority changed from lowest to highest. - Adjusted hitbox sizing and positioning. - Active frame visuals adjusted.
Down Air - Tipper priority changed from lowest to highest. - Time between hits reduced by two frames. - First hit baseKnockback increased (35 → 45) - Active frame visuals adjusted.
Back Air - Now interruptible 3 frames earlier.
Down Tilt - Adjusted hitbox sizing and positioning on both hits. - Stats adjusted on first hit (baseKnockback 10 → 30, knockback growth 25 → 10) - First hit can no longer hit with a reverse angle. - Active frame visuals adjusted.
Up Strong - Tipper priority changed from lowest to highest. - Adjusted hitbox sizing and positioning to better match the animation.
Neutral Special - hitstopOffset increased (3 → 5)
Side Special - Armor starts later (frame 5 → 10) - Air version final hit stats adjusted (knockbackGrowth 80 → 75, baseKnockback 60 → 55)
Up Special - Stats adjusted (damage 6 → 8, baseKnockback 50 → 40) - Link frames applied to the aerial version. If you land during the animation, you will continue the animation with the grounded version instead of going into heavy land.
Down Special - Startup updated with completed pixel art. - Startup now prioritizes connecting to ledges before terrain. - Grounded Attack endlag after successful grab reduced (21 → 19) - Grounded Attack now plays more reliably (instead of the aerial version) when grabbing an opponent near the ground. - Grounded Attack updated with completed pixel art. - Aerial Attack endlag after successful grab reduced (21 → 19) - Aerial Attack sketch updated. - Pull zip to ledge alignment improved. - Pull updated with completed pixel art. - Land updated with completed pixel art.
Crash Attack - Updated with completed pixel art.
Crash Roll - Updated with completed pixel art.
Ledge Roll - Updated with completed pixel art.
Tech Roll - Updated with completed pixel art.
Parry Fail - Updated with completed pixel art.
Orcane
Overview - In the previous patch, most players considered Orcane to be the best or near the best character in the game. While not a problem on its own, Orcane was a bit too good at rushing down opponents and using simple loops for hard punishes. In this patch, we aimed to reduce those aspects while also introducing some new tricks. You’ll find that Orcane’s horizontal speed and many of his most powerful moves are somewhat toned down compared to before. On the flip side, we introduced several mechanics that might be familiar to anyone who’s played him in rivals, including Hydroplaning, Puddless Recovery, and Orcahopping, among others! You can find more details on these mechanics in the full patch notes below. We’ll be keeping an eye on his balance especially, so we’d like to know what you think of how Orcane plays and his power level.
General - Added Hydroplaning. You will now slide further when inputting and charging a strong out of run turn. - Replaced sketched water spouts with placeholder effects based on down strong. - runSpeedCap reduced (7.6 → 6.5) - aerialSpeedCap reduced (7 → 6) - dashSpeed reduced (8.5 → 8)
Puddle - Can now pick up puddles at any point during strongs’ start up. - Now disappears when Orcane loses his final stock.
Up Special - Added Puddless Recovery. You can now press the shield button during the startup to prevent Orcane from warping to his puddle. - Added Orcahopping. If you up special immediately after double jumping, you will get an additional vertical boost if you don’t teleport to a puddle. Note that due to the existence of ledges in Fraymakers, this doesn't go quite as high as it does in Rivals of Aether. - Added ledge grab box to last three frames of aerial activation animation. - Slightly reduced size of late hitbox. - The attack's IASA activates later on, resulting in increased endlag (17 → 20)
Side Special Air - Hurtboxes tightened.
Up Tilt - IASA activates later, resulting in increased endlag (16 → 18)
Down Tilt - Increased endlag (13 → 14) - Reduced size of hitbox in all directions slightly and more significantly backward. - Angle adjusted (80 → 75)
Neutral Air - IASA activates later, resulting in increased endlag (12 → 13) - Landing lag increased (5 → 6) - knockbackGrowth increased (65 → 70) - Adjusted hitbox size to be smaller and normalized across all active frames.
Forward Air - Bubble Butt knockbackGrowth now scales with xSpeed.
Back Air - IASA activates later, resulting in increased endlag (9 → 13) - Landing lag increased (5 → 7) - First hit stats adjusted (damage 6 → 4, baseKnockback 40 → 45) - Second hit stats adjusted (baseKnockback 55 → 65, knockbackGrowth 85 → 75)
Down Air - Initial hitbox size reduced. - Landing lag increased (6 → 7) - Stats adjusted (damage 3 → 2, baseKnockback 15 → 30, knockbackGrowth 15 → 5)
Puddle Boosted Strongs - Added 6 additional frames of hitstop and selfHitstop to make them feel more impactful.
Side Strong Boosted - Hitbox placement adjusted to reach further backward (now starts from the same place as the non-boosted version).
Jab 3 - Dust effect added.
Tech Roll - Adjusted sprite positioning.
Dash Attack - Adjusted sprite positioning.
Intro - Sound effects adjusted.
Welltaro
Overview - Out of all the characters in this patch, Welltaro has the fewest major changes. He has a number of balance adjustments that target overly powerful moves alongside some functionality and usability improvements to moves like neutral aerial, forward strong, and airdash. We’re currently still in the process of prototyping some larger changes to Welltaro, including some conceptual iteration on side special - we didn’t want to hold back the patch because these aren’t ready yet, but you can expect to hear more on these in the future.
General - dashSpeed reduced (9 → 8)
Airdash - Ammo consumption decreased (3 → 2)
Double Jump - Damage reduced (2 → 1)
Neutral Special - Heart Balloon’s effect on your terminal velocity reduced (multiplier from 0.5 → 0.6)
Down Special - Startup reduced (29 → 26) - Hitstop increased (15 → 30)
Up Air - Late hit now lasts longer (4 → 6) - Now entirely timing based. Previously, you could hit with the sourspot from the beginning of the attack. Now all early hitboxes are the sweetspot, and all late hitboxes are the sourspot. - Second hit stats adjusted (angle 50 → 75. baseKnockback 50 → 40, knockbackGrowth 70 → 25)
Back Air - Startup increased (13 → 15) - Landing lag increased (7 → 8) - Auto-cancels 2 frames later. - Hitbox size reduced.
Project Settings - Palette Shader Mode changed from “Limit 64” to “R/G Map” - The shader mode was changed to R/G Map by default because it is based on the official shader used by the Fraymakers Engine. In exchange for efficiency and a larger possible map (up to 65536 source colors), you are limited to only using colors with unique Red and Green channels. Learn more here (control + f “Palette Shader Mode"): Fraymakers Custom Content Deep Dive
Animations
Standing Jump - Holding forward or backward during jump_squat now gives you a boost of initial speed (jumpSpeedBackwardInitialXSpeed 0 → -3, jumpSpeedForwardInitialXSpeed 0 → 3)
Up Special - hitstopNudgeMultiplier changed to 0. - directionalInfluence changed to false.
Roll - Normalized roll to 34 frames with IASA on the final frame.
Tech Roll - Speed increased (15.5 -> 18) - Added 2 frames of IASA to the end (total frames 41 -> 39)
EA Update v0.5.9 - Optimization and Custom Content Error Detection
Highlights
Optimization
Using performance profiling tools, we dug deep to identify some bottlenecks and rework code to improve the game's performance, especially for lower-end computers. We’ll be continuing to identify ways we can optimize the game even further going forward. For those of you interested in the technical details, here are some of the improvements we made this time:
- Replaced all Haxe Reflect.hasField() calls with null checks instead where applicable, as the function is known to be slow in most cases. - Cached animation index lookup for Sprites (previously animation look-ups looped through the whole set to find an animation) - Internal collision boxes for collisionTestGroup() calls are now recycled to reduce memory allocations (rather than generating temporary boxes every time) - Refactored stats classes (e.g. AnimationStats, HitboxStats, etc.) so that their import/export logic is baked into the source code rather than dynamically looping to identify valid fields in the classes.
Log message text is no longer drawn to the game live while the console window is hidden. This should prevent the console log window from causing lag during normal gameplay, improving performance in scenarios where the console log is used.
Custom Content
Error detection
Fixed bug that suppressed error messages for custom content. Content creators will now see applicable error messages in the custom menu and in training mode when using their custom content. You can access the console in training mode by pressing the backtick (`) key.