Swordai News

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
  

This patch is the release candidate for the 1st public playtest which I am currently planning to open up mid next week, I'll probably release one more update with some minor visual improvements and fixes for any bugs that come up but no new features.

The highlights

• Added a sequential progression throughout all the game content where one thing unlocks another. This means that to an extent Memories is required to unlock various things. You can still join servers for any map as long as you have done "beginnings".
  
• Added a few more achievements, there are now 25
  
• Added a pure difficulty to challenges that you unlock by S grading the base version of the challenge.
  
• Changed thrill of the hunt to refund stamina on hit and reworked second chance to heal on block.
  
• Add links to the discord, the new wiki and the steam page into the game. The wiki needs some fleshing out, I'll be working on that over the next few days, if any community members want to contribute let me know on discord.
  
• Made it so you have to S grade the previous kata to unlock the next one
  
• Added a "home" area with training stuff that you will be able to upgrade in the future
  
• Made the challenge of initiation its own map (screenshot below)
  
• Adjusted the up right and up left charge animations a bit to make your arms more visible in first person
  
• Added a first person visual effect for getting staggered that replaces the "staggered" popup
  
• Changed the display for being out of stamina or trying to use an ability when its on cooldown
  
• Fixed a bug that could cause the game to crash when you exited a level right after finishing a kata or a challenge while the web request to store the result was in flight.
  
• Fixed a camera issue when holding an up block while landing from a jump. As part of this I redid the way the jumping animations work so they also should look a fair bit more smooth when you are doing left side attacks in mid air.
  
• Fixed a bug with the block trainer where he was fienting sometimes
  
• Added a display and stat tracking the block trainer where he tracks your blocks in the last minute and block percentage and you have to unlock the higher attack speeds
  
• Made the block trainer despawn if he doesn't attack anyone for a while, he also starts despawned and you can summon him from his rune stone.
  
• A lot of other minor tweaks
  

Patch notes 0.4.1

There is a lot packed into this patch, but here are the highlights. For full details see discord.

• Added offhand abilities, that you activate while taking your hand off your sword (you can cancel them by blocking or charging an attack, but you can't do blocks/attacks simultaneously with offhand abilities). The first two abilities are in game, but the longer term plan is that there will be a sizable pool of abilities you can unlock and you can then pick abilities to fill your slots (2 passive slots, which should come in March, 2 offhand slots which now exist, 2 warcries of which Kiai is currently 1, and kick/dodge for a total of 8). The two new offhand abilities are a ranged "tether" ability that slows your target increasingly if you keep your cursor over them. If you keep your cursor on the player for long enough you teleport to them, if your cursor is off them for too long the ability fizzles. Second is a self heal, just channel the ability until it completes and then you get 15s of passive health regen. You can't sprint while channeling the abilities but you can run and you can immediately cancel them to block/attack/kick/dodge at any time. The longer term plan is that the synergies between the abilities and the passives will drive certain play styles.
  
• Fixed a very tricky spectator bug, where in soulwar if you are spectating a player and they are far enough from where you died that your client isn't loading data you wouldn't see the person they are fighting.
  
• Fixed a soulwar spectator bug where if you join the match late as a spectator the health bars and UI wouldn't display properly.
  
• Renamed the "Duels" map to "Arena" to be a bit more clear that it is structured.
  
• Made soulwar split players into 2 teams rather than 3 if there are 8 players or fewer.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could get stuck blocking in the default controls if your click drag sensitivity was less than 1 and you started an attack and then switched to a block without inputting an attack direction. Big thanks to @Ghostickles for providing an input recording for this one.
  
• Fixed two camera issues, where strafing right while blocking up or strafing left while charging an up attack would cause your right arm to block your camera
  
• Added a reset to defaults option on both the key settings and mouse settings
  
• Made the tether VFX on the teleport ability more performant
  
• Updated the arena duels map visuals
  
• The clouds now update in real time when the overall graphics quality settings are changed, before you had to leave and rejoin the map.
  
• Made the up left and up right attacks significantly horizontal to make them more unique and distinct from the overhead. Also decreased the damage penalty for hitting with the late part of those swings so that they are more draggable. One of the passives I plan to add will be a cleave which will focus on those two swings.
  
• Updated the claw lizard animations to use the new system that the sword fighters use and fixed a bug both with their AI and their kick animation
  
• Updated the player kick animation to raise your foot a bit higher and make it a bit more draggable but also slightly slower
  
• Made the lost soul at the end of the tutorial charge his attacks for longer so new players have more time to visually see which way to block
  
• Redid the look and feel of the kata grounds map to be more performant while also not looking more consistent on low quality and matching the rest of the game a bit better
  

Alpha 0.3.36 has been released and includes a major overhaul to the camera setup and first person mesh which allows for a higher FoV (with Panini transforms to counteract distortion), and better visibility. In addition, this update has a new WASD based direction input system, definitely check it out and give feedback!

Here is a summary of the patch notes, for full details join us on discord.

• Changed the location of the camera so that you can see a bit more of your arms / shoulders / sword while charging a swing / blocking / etc to give more visual clarity
  
• Redid the first person mesh
  
• Switched the default sword to a katana, redid the "longsword" that was the previous default, and added the capability to switch between swords. Katana's should handle hit less as they have a much smaller cross guard, but they have slightly shorter range.
  
• For testing purposes, in freeform only you can do "/weapon katana" or "/weapon longsword" to switch between the two
  
• Made some small changes to the idle right, down right block, and overhead swing animations
  
• Made a more significant change to the stab animation so that you can see your sword while charging it
  
• Changed the default FoV to 110, increased the max FOV to 130. Not that UE5, and Swordai tend to refer to horizontal FoV while Mordhau's FoV number refers to vertical FoV. The exact correspondence between the two varies with aspect ratio but on a regular wide screen monitor, 130 horizontal FoV = 101 Vertical FoV and 110 maps to 78 (https://themetalmuncher.github.io/fov-calc/). If your FoV was at the default 90 before it will automatically go to 110 when you update, otherwise it will stay at whatever you set it at, but I encourage everyone to try values at 100+
  
• Added a new post processing effect that attempts to invert the "fishbowl" effect that you get at high FoV. This is on by default but can be turned off/on under experimental settings in the mouse settings mneu
  
• Added the option to use WASD controls for blocks only, attacks only, both or neither. Also made it so that if you are using WASD controls for both, the direction indicator now appears and updates as you move
  
• Fixed a UI bug with the buff / debuf display where icons were showing at different sizes
  
• The chat window now auto hides / collapses based on feedback from @Mack and @Chastokol There is now a damage notification that pops up a bit below the center of your screen.
  
• Some visual updates to Freeform to further performance test some of the stuff
  
• A bunch of behind the scenes work on soulwar