Rivals of Aether News

Earlier this year, we announced that four new characters would be joining the Rivals cast in a free update coming late 2021. However, these characters all shared something never-before-seen in Rivals. Instead of coming from the minds of our dev team, they originated as some of the very best from the thousands of community-created Steam Workshop mods.

https://youtu.be/fK71Zc3JA-Q

One character from each element has been chosen to officially join the Rivals universe! Mollo, Hodan, Pomme, and Olympia will be added to the game in a free update for both Rivals on Steam and Nintendo Switch. Each character will also come with their own stage skin and brand new music from RESOFORCE and flashygoodness.

Fans who've already played these characters in the workshop will also still have plenty to look forward to. This squad with their unique take on the Rivals classical elements aren't just being added as-is. Their abilities, sprites, and story are being adapted into the official Rivals universe. You can even see Mollo appear in Future Imperfect Issue #3!

Players can look forward to plenty of animation and graphics updates from the original creators as well as Rivals animators Ellian and Jasontomlee, in addition to ability reworks and balance passes to ensure the characters are a natural addition to the cast.



As we work on balance testing and other exciting changes, here's a few things we can tease from each character as we prepare them for release:

Mollo



Mollo has all-new strong attacks accessible while not holding anything. His down strong throws a smoke bomb that deals knockback and allows him to dash out from either direction!

Hodan



Hodan's special attacks have been reworked a bit to add some extra spice to his game. His new neutral special spins him around, giving him a brief air stall and pulling in sweat spirits to empower a full-fledged water spout!

Pomme



Pomme's animations have been given a lot of love. Pomme's DACUS allows her to power-slide like a true popstar!

Olympia



Olympia's crystal stun has been reworked to be unique from the rest of the cast. Her neutral special and her down special lock opponents in crystals for a short time before launching them upward upon shattering!

Which character are you looking forward to most?

Part three of the Future Imperfect series is available now! Clairen is closing in on her life-long goal, but first she has to survive the fiery revolutionary Mollo! How far will she go, and what will she sacrifice, on her quest for revenge?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We're exited to bring the world of Aether to comics with a star-studded team featuring Dan Fornace, Ian Flynn, Jack Lawrence, Matt Herms, Marc Knelsen and Jack Morelli.

Tales of Aether Issue #3 can now be purchased on ComiXology for $2.99: https://www.comixology.com/Tales-of-Aether-3/digital-comic/951386

Future Imperfect is a four part series with the final issue releasing next month. You can find past issues in the collection on comiXology.

Summer is around the corner and we are excited to rollout some nice quality of life and UI improvements that affect both local and online modes.


A few QoL and UI improvements that we've been working on:

• The Random Stage rule will now only pick a stage once, not repeating until every stage has been played at least once. (Once that happens, every stage can be picked again.)
  
• You can now use Up and Down on the milestones screen to scale the progress bars up and down.
  
• The match timer is now always centered based on the total width of the timer, instead of just on the colon.
  
• The foreground water in Merchant Port and Frozen Fortress have been made slightly more transparent.
  
• The Team Attack rule now defaults to being on.
  
• Display options have now been split into two menus: Display and Graphics.
  
• You now have the option to hide the top bar on the HUD under Display options.
  
• The HUD top bars now display the players' steam names instead of their profile tags.
  
• Air Armada's background now uses a texture instead of a hard-coded color.
  

A small change to make Zetterburn's NSPECIAL behave like it used to before we adjusted double jump and aerial attack buffers earlier this year.

• Zetterburn's NSPECIAL now overrides the double jump aerial buffer, meaning you can buffer a doublejump out of it easier.
  

Bugs patched! Thanks for sharing your reports.

• Fixed declining a casual mode rematch booting you back to the online menu.
  
• Fixed workshop mode forcing itself on after every match in local VS and local Tournament modes.
  
• Fixed Forsburn's clone destroying other players' articles on death.
  
• Fixed online CSS screens with Abyss mode enabled not playing the correct music.
  
• Fixed online profiles not saving color palettes (for real this time).
  

The future continues! The world of Aether hits the digital shelves for the second time with the release of Tales of Aether – Future Imperfect Issue 2 on ComiXology. Issue #2 is available now for $2.99, and dives deeper into Clairen's fiery backstory. Learn more about the world of Aether and its heroes in volume 2 of our debut series.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Future Imperfect is a 4 part series, and we're excited for Tales of Aether to allow fans to see their favorite characters come to life in comic form. This mini-series expands on the story told in Clairen’s introductory trailer, and what happens to the world of Aether in a dark but not so distant future.





We’re also exited to bring the series to ComiXology, where we can reach readers around the world on their favorite way to read digitally. Fans can look for future volumes published under Aether Studios to find the latest issue when it comes out to keep up with the story.







We hope you enjoy the second issue of Future Imperfect, and also pick up the first issue from ComiXology if you haven't already! More issues will be coming soon, so make sure to follow! More issues will be coming soon, so make sure to follow @StudiosOfAether for updates, as well as our star-studded team working on it:

• Publisher: Dan Fornace
• Writer and Editor: Ian Flynn
• Pencils, Inks, Cover: Jack Lawrence
• Colors, Cover: Matt Herms
• Letterer: Jack Morelli
  

Things have been busy in the world of Rivals since our last patch with the announcement of Aether Studios, new games, characters, projects, and much more! This update includes some quality of life changes along with standard bug fixes while rollback and other larger content updates are underway behind the scenes.

• If you switch characters during a ranked set, losses will apply to the new character you switched to if your first character can't lose any more stars.
  
• The results screen no longer shows "+0" on coins earned.
  
• When losing a money match, coins are now subtracted the moment the match ends.
  
• The music player in the CSS now has an option to change the music volume, similar to the button on Stage Select.
  
• Fixed the Random Stages rule sometimes picking Rock Wall twice in a row and never picking Fire Capital.
  
• Common SFX like standard swipes and blows now have a very slightly random pitch each time they're played.
  

• Stage select now displays the names of custom characters instead of just "Custom".
  
• Practice mode now displays a prompt to press F5 to reload workshop content when debugging using the Ctrl+8 errors on mode.
  
• New macros added to get_local_setting():

  SET_FX_QUALITY, SET_HUD_SHAKE, SET_RETRO_FX, and SET_LANGUAGE

• Kragg's Up Tilt sprite now matches the hitbox better.
  
• Kragg's rock can no longer be thrown if it's already in the process of being broken.
  

• Absa's FStrong final hitbox has been lowered by 1 pixel, and its height has been reduced by 1 pixel, to prevent outlying behavior where it could hit only attacking players on Spirit Tree's platforms.
  

• Ori & Sein no longer gets their doublejump back after hitting someone with Dair and airdodging out of it.
  
  • They still keep their doublejump if they had it in the first place.

• Fixed various minor sprite errors like missing pixels in Elliana's crouch, Ranno's Up Tilt, Kragg's Down Tilt, and stray pixels in Ori and Sein's Nair.
  
• News links on the main menu are now clickable again.
  
• Fixed an odd crash when changing pages on the workshop character CSS.
  
• Hydroplaning FStrong forwards now properly keeps its momentum once again. In addition, hydroplaning FStrong forwards now works via the strong button as well as with the right stick.
  
• Fixed profiles not saving properly when exiting online lobbies, causing preferred palettes to be stuck on one option.
  
• Fixed the plant hazards on Aether Treetop not dragging you all the way down to the bottom blastzone.
  
• Fixed win counts being displayed incorrectly on online stage select.
  
• Fixed rune colors on workshop characters being inconsistent with base cast runes.
  
• Fixed spectators being unable to favorite replays.
  
• Fixed replays using the incorrect player names if you were a spectator.
  
• Fixed a crash when exiting the replay menu immediately after quitting a replay.
  
• Fixed controls being stuck after inputting an incorrect cheatcode.
  
• Fixed

  get_match_setting()

  not properly getting the time and stock when overridden by the stage. It will now always pick what the option was before the match started.
  
• Fixed an article's

  player_id

  not actually being set correctly if spawned via another article.