Blade of Darkness News

Full Controller Support - v83 (Dec 17, 2021)

The new update brings full controller support to the Blade of Darkness. The key changes introduced in the new build:
- [new feature] full controller support
- [new feature] optional smoothed camera (OPTIONS --> VIDEO)
- optional vibration (CONTROLS --> GAMEPAD)
- ability to remap controller controls (CONTROLS --> LAYOUT)
- visual reference for controller's bindings (CONTROLS --> GAMEPAD)
- updated tutorial, mindful of controller experience
- automated combo panels (respond to input device)
- dynamic support for controller's glyphs (Microsoft, Playstation)
- fixed empty screen during loading
- fixed various crash scenarios, improved stability
- fixed os.utime function
- various localization improvements

The current v74 build is retired to the rollback branch.

A BETA branch release. Today we introduce our WIP version of the controller support.

What's new:
- full controller support across the game
- optional new smoothed camera feature
- fully functional gamepad layout
- Playstation & Xbox controllers glyphs
- updated tutorial
- automated combo panels (the F1 menu) which now respond to the chosen input method
- optional vibration
- weapon names in the F1 panel are now attached to their respective IDs (no longer static images)
- bunch of various optimizations

What's missing but is WIP:
- support for Steam Input API
- bindable menu for changing some of the controller mappings
- settings for the new smoothed camera
- game pause in case of input disconnect
- multiple UI improvements and bugs

The layout:
A - Attack
X - Use / LeftRight
Y - UpDown (180 turn outside of combos)
B - Select Object / Jump
LB - Block
LT - Sneak / Previous Enemy
RB - Throw
RT - Lock On Enemy / Next Enemy
Left Stick - Regular movement, with Up being 'Run' and softer version of it 'Walk'
Right Stick - Camera
Up - Desinage from Lock-On / Draw or Sheathe Weapons
Down - Cycle through weapons
Left - Cycle through shields
Right - Cycle through potions
L3 - Next View
R3 - Last View

This layout enabled us to preserve the combo mechanic as-is without sacrificing its complexity. We like to think that it's mindful of the possible range of actions you want to do in various scenarios be it combat, exploring, checking combos panels, navigating through the main menu, or shooting with a bow.

Share your feedback in a new Beta Branch section on our forum. The UI still needs some work, and we're on it - most of the immediate bugs you will notice are already reported and will be worked on. But your experience of playing with the controller using the proposed layout is the most important thing to us - let us know how it will go.

We've heard you loud and clear - playing with the keyboard and mouse shouldn't be the only available option. Today we would like to announce upcoming support for controllers and optional camera stabilization features. As these two go hand in hand we're working to preserve the original feel, yet make everything from combos to menu navigation comfortable and up to modern standards. Once we have a stable version, we will make it public on the beta branch and embrace your feedback. We're aiming to have the first build before the end of the year.

Stay tuned and please vote for Blade of Darkness. We love it as much as you!

We are a small team and we really love the games we work on and Blade of Darkness is a special one for us. We'll appreciate it if community can support us in the Labor of Love nomination.

Following the game's release, we're focused on addressing critical issues some of you encountered while playing the game and you might've noticed our dedication to introducing changes as fast as we can. This backfired with the last two patches, where we seem to bring more problems than fixes for which we're very sorry. Starting from today, aside from a new v74 build, we introduce a new 'beta' branch (in addition to already existing 'default' and 'rollback' branches) where we will be releasing the majority of the following builds first. To avoid any confusion here's the current state we're in:
'beta' - dormant (waiting for the next build)
'default' - v74
'rollback' - v71

The goal of the beta branch is rather straightforward - to avoid stressing the vast majority of the players with potential issues in the new builds. On the other hand, enabling the community to give us feedback on whether or not the new fixes we work on address the problems before they are made available to everyone by default.

P.S. In case the v74 won't stabilize the situation we will revert the default branch to a mix of v71 and v72 (read: safe & stable build) in 24 hours.

v74 (Oct 20, 2021, hotfix)
- fixed random crashes introduced in v73 and related to the audio