Swordai News

Update 0.5.3 is out and contains a lot of polish as well as a few significant gameplay tweaks for the next playtest which will start later this week. Be sure to follow the game and to click "Request Access" for the playtest on the main steam page. You'll get an email when you get access to the playtest.

Here are the full patch notes.

• When you run out of tower time, rather than being removed from the tower immediately, you get the "Final Fury" status effect which drains your health continuously. The effect is removed if you do something to gain tower time (eg kill an something, loot a chest, etc). This allows you to potentially recover if you run out of time.
  
• All red portals now send you to the same spawn point if you follow someone within 30s of them teleporting
  
• You can now hold F or press and release F to interact with things like portals / chests / etc, before holding didn't work as one might expect
  
• If you tap an offhand ability and immediately release the button to cancel it, it only has a 1s cooldown, to prevent you from accidentally blowing your cooldown
  
• Significantly increased the time limit for inputting the code on puzzle doors
  
• Made it more clear that you should leave your home and go to the trail of initiation after completing the first stage of training
  
• Significantly increased the amount of tower time the killing most npcs gives.
  
• Fixed a bug where chests weren't scaling the tower time given based on how long it had been since they were looted
  
• Fixed a bug where leaving the tower server and rejoining could make your tower time not display properly
  
• Added a slider to change the overall game volume
  
• Added a new shrine buff that grants life steal on combo attacks only
  
• You now steal shrine buffs with their remaining duration as well as soul keys if you kill a player who has one and loot their crystal
  
• Made the initiation trial door only require 60 essence to open
  
• A lot of decoration / minor cosmetic improvements
  
• Increased shrine buff durations to 15 min
  
• Increased the absorption and reflection on the molten edge buff to 3
  
• Added achievements
  
• Many minor bug fixes
  

Super excited for the next playtest to start. It should be just a few days!

First of, I'm extremely excited to present the new official game trailer:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Update 0.5.0 is a major update as it has all the intended gameplay for the next playtest that should open up in roughly 2-3 weeks. All that is missing is some visuals / sounds and some polish. I will spend the next few weeks bug fixing / balancing / etc. based on everyone's feedback while I also flesh out the missing visuals / sounds.

Here are the full patch notes:

• Added a new section of the dungeon that is currently inbetween the two existing sections featuring axe traps, puzzles, a new mini boss and more
  
• Implemented a first pass at an intended loot mechanic. Chests increase in quality the longer they go with no one looting them. Right now this just affects essence, its mostly just to test out the code.
  
• Redid some of the animations and AI for the claw based enemies (the new mini boss is of this type)
  
• Added a knockback to kicks after finally figuring out the best way to make knockbacks buttery smooth. The mini-boss has a knock back based ability as well. In the future he will drop the ability shard for it and you will be able to equip it
  
• Some AI changes / bug fixes
  
• Implemented the randomization system for some aspects of the dungeon. Enemy spawns in certain areas and puzzle solutions randomize themselves as the game runs. This is pretty minor at the moment and mostly just testing out that the system works well.
  
• Added a server select for the tower, and am testing out multiple instances of the tower running in parallel on the same server. In the long term in won't work that way (different processes will handle different areas of the tower so rather than 8 processes running 8 tower instances, it would be 8 processes each controller 1/8th of a single big tower instance) but the current parallelization will work well for the next playtest.
  
• More sound customization for specific enemies including sounds for the claw lizards
  
• Many many small changes to the pretty much every level
  
• Some fairly minor performance optimizations
  

This patch includes a new boss fight, detailed decoration of the first tower section and the beginnings of the loot system. There is also substantial progress on the second section of the dungeon but that is hidden at the moment. Currently when you complete the first section, you skip the section section and go to the boss area.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Changes:

• Finished the entire decoration of the first section of the dungeon.
  
• Changed the "F to Interact" text to be contextual (eg the fountain says F to Drink) and removed some of the no longer needed instruction text.
  
• Added some pretty awesome corpse SFX/VFX and gave various NPCs different death animations
  
• Added a loot mechanism where some NPCs can drop a soul core and you can loot it and did the VFX/SFX for that
  
• Added a boss section to the dungeon, right now when you complete the initial section you skip straight to the area that has the boss
  
• Changed the end of "beginnings" to use the new loot mechanic on the lost soul that you defeat
  
• Made it so that when there are sub objectives are part of a multi-step objective you get a notice when a sub objective is completed
  
• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes crash when returning to the main menu (I think, if it happens to anyone, let me know)
  
• Fixed a bug where the block trainer in home was feinting
  
• Fixed a bug where if you went forward in the block trainer menu and then backwards you could access modes you hadn't unlocked
  
• A bunch of other minor changes / fixes
  

This patch has a playable first section of the tower, but with no loot. This release of the tower is highly experimental and doesn't have some of the instructions in it, so I recommend waiting 1-2 more patches before venturing into the tower dungeon, but it is there to try for the truly brave. There is a miniboss in the final room which you can see a preview of here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A core mechanic of the tower dungeons is that you have a timer counting down while in the tower dungeon. As you do things like kill monsters or other players, find chests and blessings, etc. you gain time. You lose time when you die. If you run out of time you are booted from the dungeon and you keep your essence but don't keep your loot. If you make it to an exit portal your essence is tripled and you keep your loot. The time right now is a bit tight as the "soul cultivation" tree which is disabled currently has ways for you to get more time. The decoration isn't done so some of the rooms are quite bare.

This patch also has an EU server though right now it is not running the tower, just the "train" multiplayer maps. Below are the detailed patch notes:

• Added a playable first section of the tower.
  
• Added 2 new types of npcs, Othari and Forgotten Knights. Set things up to make adding more NPC types in the future much faster
  
• NPC AIs now use kiai and dodge more intelligently
  
• NPC AI movement is now more natural and generally stronger
  
• Tweaked a bunch of small things in the first chunk of the tutorial after noting that of the 12.5% or so of people who don't get through it, most of them fail on the door or the 4th orb.
  
• Made the required objectives in your "Home" include successfully kicking the attack trainer 3 times
  
• You no longer need to beat the trial of initiation to play multiplayer in the "train" menu, its only required for the tower. Note I still intend to make the 3rd stage of that trial easier, more changes to the tutorial and the trial of initiation will come next patch.
  
• Improved a bunch of the sound effects and added reverb to all maps
  
• Lots of small things the tower needs, bindable spawn points, chests, limited use fountains, and more. The next section should be much quicker, though I may add the loot system in first.
  

Patch notes for 0.4.8

This patch is designed to get more feedback / data on the single player content by forcing you through the challenge of initiation prior to unlocking multiplayer.

• Added riposting and combo blocking to the block trainer based on a video @Fantas shared of using the block trainer on medium speed to practice block -> riposte -> combo block in a loop. The block trainer also now has a details panel that you can see by holding TAB that has helpful hints about blocking.
  
• Added an objective display to the pause menu that tells you your current objective
  
• Added a set of training objectives that you need to achieve in your home prior to unlocking the challenge of initiation so that you cannot get there without understanding riposting / combo blocking / kicking / combo attacks.
  
• Changed the scale of the drag click sensitivity slightly, 1.0 now acts as 0.9 would have previously.
  
• Added a visual effect to your charge meter when it gets full to make it more obvious
  
• Increased the degree to which looking down or up moves your upper body so that you can matrix / swing manip a bit more. Also fixed an issue where looking up and down affected movement speed.
  
• Fixed a visual bug where some hair styles with go through one of the helmets
  
• Fixed a bug where on a dedicated server, a kata orb could have a feint clear client side but not server side (if you stammed out charging an attack right before reaching the required charge) so you would need to feint again
  
• Possibly fixed a halarious bug where in rare cases during a kata colliding with an orb could send you flying across the map. It was very rare / hard to reproduce so I am not 100% sure its fixed
  
• Made some performance optimizations that should only effect dedicated servers. It should allow for more players with less CPU usage.
  
• Fixed a bug where the statues on the last stage of the trial of lava were the wrong size.
  
• Fixed a bug where holding down 1 while that ability was on cooldown would spam the "ability on cooldown" message / sfx
  
• Made freeform more bright