Fantasy Strike News

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.

This month we really tightened up Fantasy Strike from a software development standpoint. The gameplay is already in place, but we want everything about it as a piece of software to be as smooth and polished as possible. We massively reduced the game’s file size, reduced loading times (they were already fast!), fixed some bugs with online play that we accidentally introduced last patch, as well as fixed several other bugs.

Also of note, in order to make Jaina run well enough on the upcoming Nintendo Switch version, we had to completely redo the graphics for her flame arrows as well as the cloth system used by her skirt. In both cases, I think we pulled off the same kind of trade-off as last month’s performance improvements: in order to make it run faster, we also had to make it look better.



The game now uses 3GB less disk space. There has been no change to the size of the character spotlight videos, so if we exclude those and just look at the file size of the rest of the game, it’s now 34% the size it used to be.

A little of this improvement is from deleting assets that weren’t actually used in the game. A little was from reducing the size of some textures that were enormously too big for no reason (e.g. a small rock you can barely see having huge textures that don’t even improve that rock’s visuals.) Most of the improvement is from additional compression applied to all textures. Textures were already compressed in a way friendly to video cards, and now they are also compressed in a second way that’s friendly to your hard drive.



If you have a fast computer, you already had very fast loading times in Fantasy Strike. Consoles have SIGNIFICANTLY slower loading in general, so in preparation for launching on consoles, we have sped up loading times even more.

--Launching the game is maybe twice as fast as before. We really want you to reach the main menu as fast as we possibly can get you there.

--Hovering over a character on character select has that character appear on the screen faster than before. For example, on the Survival character select screen, hovering over Jaina should have her appear something like 10 times faster than before.

--We have a background loading system speeds up character loads even more. After you load a character in menus once (that is, see that character at all in menus), that same character will load even faster every subsequent time in menus. Furthermore, even the FIRST time you encounter them in menus will be the very fast version as long as you wait a bit after launching. For example, if you idle on the main menu, or set your buttons, or poke around menu screens, etc, we pre-load characters behind-the-scenes so that the first time you load them in menus will be the extra fast version.

--Loading of characters on the “versus screen” (the one with the orange background) is greatly sped up. For example, if you select Jaina in Survival mode, once the versus screen is shown, her character slides onto the screen something like 100 times faster than before. (Yes, really.)

--When playing Arcade mode, the wait time before the first story scene is shown is much faster, probably 5 or 6 times faster than before.

--All stages load slightly faster too.



Last month’s patch unfortunately introduced several desync problems with online matches. That means matches would suddenly end because you’d get out of sync with your opponents. These problems were caused by some speed optimizations we did that didn’t work well with online play. We’ve fixed the problems without reverting the speed changes.

--Fixed a desync related to projectile positions.

--Fixed a desync that frequently happened after a character was hit out of the air and landed on their feet.

—Fixed a desync related to DeGrey’s ghost. Actually, it’s more like an intersection of three desyncs in one. Our March performance update accidentally hit the online workings of the ghost pretty hard. Sorry, fixed now.

--Fixed a rare bug that could sometimes cause the game to hang for multiple minutes on launch while trying to connect to the server and failing. Possibly more likely on Mac.

MEMORY MANAGEMENT
--Fixed lots of cases where character assets were not getting unloaded when we no longer needed them, which meant that they stayed in memory for much too long.

--Fixed lots of cases of assets being double loaded. That is, two copies of the asset being loaded for no reason.

Together, these changes somewhat reduce the RAM requirements of the game, which is especially helpful to the upcoming console release.



JAINA

--The animation on her skirt is now controlled by a completely different system. The reason for this change is so that it can work on the Nintendo Switch at all. The skirt’s motion is generally more deliberate now, and this new system also prevents the bad states the skirt could get into before, such as being stuck crumpled up or folded in on itself.

--When on the p2 side (facing left), Jaina’s costume now correctly mirrors. It was always supposed to do this because her armor protects her front side as she shoots her bow, but for the last 3.5 years we’ve been unable to do this mirroring specifically because of how her skirt worked. The above change to her skirt tech now allows us to mirror the whole costume on the p2 side as it was always supposed to be.

--Jaina now has new graphics for her flame arrows. They now look a bit better, more like they were originally intended, and they require much less processing power than the old arrows so they will work better on the upcoming Nintendo Switch version. Also, the graphics for the new arrows make the visual difference between level 1, 2, and 3 ground B shots even more clear than before.

VALERIE

--Skin shading is smoother now.

SETSUKI

--Skin shading is smoother now. Palms are no longer kind of dark for no reason. Lips are no longer really huge.

--Fixed a bug with the last 3 frames of her air super’s parry attempt. Those frames didn’t correctly parry attacks, but now they work the same as all the other active frames of the move.

DEGREY

--Fixed a visual bug with DeGrey’s ghost, introduced last patch. After using the ghost once, her animation would no longer update. She would only pop between static poses as she moved around the screen. Now works correctly again.

ARGAGARG

--Fixed a glitch with his ground shadow when jumping over some characters.

--Improved collision of his whiskers to no longer penetrate his body, especially during main menu idle and gameplay idle (does not affect gameplay).



--Character spotlight videos have been updated. Fixed several references to moves that had changed function over the course of development.

--Fixed a bug where the where the main menu stage would render with the wrong lighting when you returned to main menu from various modes.

--Numerous fixes to the animations of characters doing pushups after online and survival matches. They no longer clip through the ground in various ways (Midori’s beard, Jaina’s hand and skirt, Lum’s belly, etc.) and they have ground shadows again, too.

--Fixed a lighting issue on defeated survival opponents. When they are laying on the ground before disappearing, they now have correct lighting, rather than sometimes appearing dark, other times not.

--The “loading time” between survival opponents was already instantaneous on good computers. On lower end computers, there might be a slight pause (fraction of a second). We’ve sped this up, maybe twice as fast as before.

--The “blocking” section of the tutorial has an extra sentence in the yellow text box telling you that you have to hit back the dummies after you block their attacks.

--Single Match mode now actually gives you a random stage when launching the match, rather than keeping the menu stage. It was always supposed to be random, but a last-minute bug before last patch caused you to get the same stage every time.

--The notification box that slides in on the upper left saying “You have 2 friend requests” or whatever is now correctly sized so that the text always fits inside.

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.



We’ve done massive performance improvements. In order to make the game run faster, we had to make the tradeoff of...also making the graphics look better. The game runs about 250% the fps it used to--yes really. About 2.5x as fast. This is totally insane and we hope you tell someone about it.

There are now only two graphics quality settings (standard and high) rather than four settings, and the new lowest setting looks better than the old highest setting...while running faster than the old lowest setting.

Here are some graphics comparisons, showing the old lowest setting compared to the new one:



In order to achieve this, we replaced the game’s lighting system with a new one that runs much faster and looks much better. We hand-tuned every stage to look as good as possible with this new system. In addition, we use a new method to draw character shadows on the ground. These shadows are now more accurate and run 600% faster than before.

In addition we further optimized CPU usage to reduce occasional frame rate spikes where the CPU suddenly has to do a large task on certain frames. Last patch we reduced this as well and we did even more optimization on that in this patch.



There’s now a new 1p mode called “Single Match.” You pick your character, the CPU character, then play one game against their AI, then automatically return to character select afterwards.



The second pre-launch season has ended. It lasted about 3 months. Your rank is now reset to the lowest possible (bronze E), but you get bonus stars based on your best rank last season. You get one bonus star for each RANK up you achieved. For example, if your best rank last season was Silver C, then you’ll get 7 bonus stars immediately at the start of this new season (the 7 rank ups you achieved were to Bronze D, then C, then B, then A, then Silver E, then Silver D, then Silver C). Also, the crown markers showing which survival modes you beat are reset for this new season.



GRAVE

--New sound effects when the air parry super successfully parries, so that’s sounds more exciting. Also, the sounds at the end of this move when the lightning dragon is shown now work better in the case where the move causes a KO.

--Grave’s projectile clouds no longer get too dark on some stages.

JAINA

--Jaina’s back+A kick has 4f less recovery. (Still slightly minus on hit or block.)

--The sounds at the end of a successful ground super now work better in the case where the move causes a KO.

ROOK

--Rook’s C throw armor highlight now correctly turns off when he gets hit during the attempt.

--Added armor to rook’s combo C throw (back+A -> C) to match his regular C throw.

SETSUKI

--Slightly improved shading on several alt colors. The shadows are less dark on bright costumes.

LUM

--Changed the shading on Lum’s fur to remove (possibly weird) shadows on his face. This also much improves the shading on his belly during gameplay, which used to have a large horizontal shading artifact.

--Lum’s walk-in intro no longer has an animation pop at the end where his feet are suddenly in a different place.

--Improved graphics on Lum’s cloud, more cartoony and matches Grave’s clouds.

--When Lum’s coin hits an opponent or the ground, it now blinks as it disappears. (No gameplay change.)

--Fixed a visual bug where Lum’s slot machine would wrongly appear at the top of the screen during the startup cinematic for his ground super.

--Replaced the slot 2 costume with a more interesting looking color set.

MIDORI

--While in dragon form on the 2p side, we think(?) we fixed the issue where sometimes his wings vibrate rapidly for no reason. (This is just a graphic fix, does not affect gameplay.)

ARGAGARG

The following are bug fixes for bugs accidentally introduced in the last update:

--Argagarg's fA can once again punch under an Argagarg blue fish, rather than always lose to it at any range.

--Argagarg's fA can once again punch under a Geiger gear, rather than always lose to it at any range.

--Argagarg's water wave will once again NOT negate Geiger's gear.



--Fixed the profile screen not showing the "time played" section correctly for a master-ranked player.

--Fixed master rank computation and display, to fix the bug that sometimes multiple master rank players could appear to have exactly the same rank (e.g. two different players each displaying as the 2nd best player overall).

--Player levels over 100 now display a star for each 100 levels, plus a number. For example, 234 now shows two stars + 34.

--Better handling of networking checks when players try to get into the online matchmaking queue. In cases where the server is missing some information from the player, rather than silently fail, as if your button press to get in the queue did nothing, it now tries to get the necessary information to put you in the queue. If it can’t, it now shows a popup error message about what happened.

--Fixed "ghost spectators" that could stick around in your spectator list even after they stopped spectating.

--Raised volume of "Shadow Boss" and "Metal Boss" voice lines in Survival Mode. Also raised the volume of the announcer saying "Draw" a little bit.

--Armor moves (the ones with a blue highlight) now have a special sound effect for the armor.

--Menu sounds now have subtle “whooshes” on the main menu, mode select screen, character select screen, and ladder screen. These are especially for players who have the music off, so that the sound effects are a bit “fuller”.

--Fixed the friends screen showing incorrect dropdown options for a friend that you just added through a friend invite during this session (screen was accessing the "sent request" for the friend request by accident, thinking it was a challenge or watch request).

--Fixed a crash that could happen when very rapidly going back and forth between the main menu and practice mode character select. (Why are you very rapidly doing that over and over?)

--Fixed a crash that triggered when you voluntarily disconnected from an online ranked match.

--There’s now a fade from black when gameplay starts as you enter practice mode and at the beginning of round 1 in all modes. (There already was a fade from black for rounds after round 1.)

--When quitting gameplay and returning to the main menu, the main menu background stage is now the same one as the gameplay stage you were just on, rather than a random one. This allows menu graphics to load faster any time you quit from gameplay to main menu.

--When choosing “change character” and returning to the character select screen, the characters load even faster than before.

--Reduced loading time of the tutorial.

--The story sequences in arcade mode load 10x faster than before.

--In all stages with grass, leaves, plants, etc, those things now slightly sway over time, rather than always being frozen in place.

--New spiffy images for all stages during stage select. (The previous ones were looking pretty old!)

Time for another Steam Sale! Starting today and ending on February 11th, you can save 20% on Fantasy Strike, Yomi and Puzzle Strike, as well as their respective DLCs.

This time around, Steam is taking an additional $5 off of your first order of $30 or more, so be sure to toss one (or all!) of our games into your first shopping cart.

Take advantage of these great deals and we’ll see you online!

This update to Fantasy Strike is live right now.



For the last year and half, an insidious matchmaking bug has killed our online population, and we have only recently discovered this and deployed a fix. The problem is that if you would be matched against certain kinds of bad connections, the match would not be made (that’s good, you wouldn’t want to matched then anyway) but you would be secretly removed from the matchmaking queue, while appearing to still be in it on your screen (oh no!) and you were given no indication that any of this happened.

In other words, a single player with a bad connection could “poison the well” by causing more and more currently online players to no longer be able to find matches (until they restart the game). Those players would all think they are waiting for matches, but actually they weren’t. They would then wrongly believe no one else was even online. This belief would cause them to give up, which then ACTUALLY caused fewer people to play online. It seems that this didn’t happen all the time (hence it being so hard for us to pin down), but enough that it really tanked our online population.

This issue is NOW FIXED.

Separate from the matchmaking situation, the underlying netcode for online play is extremely good in Fantasy Strike, and has been for a long time. So it’s extra heart-breaking that this matchmaking issue may have prevented some people from even realizing that. Please invite your friends back to the game and try some casual or ranked matches this week, in honor of us now having fixed this matchmaking bug.



Last patch, we said that we added facial reactions to the game, meaning when a character is hit by something such as Grave’s super or Jaina’s yomi counter, etc, that the victim’s face is actually animated. There was a problem with this tech and we quickly disabled it via a hotfix immediately following last month’s patch. This time, the facial reactions really are in the game.



VALERIE

--Valerie’s yellow attack (both neutral and forward versions) have 1f faster startup. This is the attack you get by pressing either B or forward+B after you do the B,B (cyan -> magenta) sequence.

--Valerie’s neutral yellow attack is -6 on block instead of -12; the forward version is -13 instead of -12.

--Valerie C’s first hit now hits 5 frames later than before, though the 2nd and 3rd hit and total move duration are unchanged.

Developer’s note: the purpose of the above changes is give more of a reason to do the neutral (non-crossup) yellow attack after doing the B,B (cyan, magenta) sequence. After doing B, B, you can end with either a C or a third B, but the C choice was very fast and only -1 on block, which is pretty good. The C is still -1 and still good, but doing it now gives the opponent more time to attack before the C reaches them. Meanwhile, doing the B (yellow) ender is still fast, and actually 1 frame faster than before. That is just barely fast enough to beat throws now during its startup, like the C already does anyway (the C beats throws because it’s off the ground).

If the opponent blocks the neutral yellow C mentioned above, you’ll be at -6, which is better than the -12 you used to be. You’re probably safe because of the pushback. There’s a tradeoff now in that the rainbow ender ends at -1 on block (good), but its slower startup means more things can possibly beat it. The neutral yellow ender is fast enough to beat all normal attacks and normal throws when done after B,B, but it’s -6 on block. That’s worse than -1 on block, but better than before this patch when it used to be -12.

This leaves the crossup yellow ender. It’s 1f faster so that it’s startup matches the non-crossup version, and it has 1f more recovery so that it can be hit back a bit more easily when blocked correctly (for example, Lum’s forward+A punch can now hit it back after he blocks, but barely couldn’t before).

SETSUKI

--Fixed a bug that could cause the kick ender in Setsuki’s B attack to “auto-correct” when it shouldn’t (turn around suddenly to face an opponent who got on the other side of it). This same fix might also make her hold-B throw face the direction it should in rare cases where it might have thrown the wrong way.

--Setsuki's B teleport kick no longer completes the dash part for no reason while time is stopped from Geiger’s Time Stop.

GEIGER

--Slightly improved the shading on his face, and changed his overall skin tone to not be so shiny, which used to result in his hands looking too plasticy.

DEGREY

--Fixed graphical issues when DeGrey appears in menus where his clothes intersected his body at the waist and shoulders.

--Fixed DeGrey's ghost suddenly popping to a different position on the final frame of his winpose.

MIDORI

--Removed a stray 1f of invulnerability when Midori reverts to humanform on the ground, at the very start of the vulnerable recovery.

LUM

--Fixed a graphical tech issue that made his eyeballs sunken too far into his head.



--Performance improvement. Depending on the speed of your computer, you might have experienced intermittent framerate spikes. For example, even if you can maintain 60fps, every so often it might drop to 40fps or something for a fraction of a second, then back to 60. We’ve greatly reduced this issue, such that these framerate spikes are less frequent and less severe if they do occur.

--Fixed a crash that could happen in survival mode if you beat an opponent really fast after they enter the playfield.

--Slightly improved the load time of the score screen at the end of survival mode (it’s fast anyway).

--Fixed Survival Results screen to be a blue background instead of accidentally being white.

--Updates for text in the in-game move list:
DeGrey's f+A "Overhead kick" -> "Elbow lunge"
Grave's air B "Hurricane" -> "Whirlwind"

--The voice over in survival for the announcer saying “Metal Boss” and “Shadow Boss” is now the same voice actor as the rest of the game. Also, a more dramatic take of him saying "sudden death round" is in. (Sudden death round happens in ranked and team battle when both players need one more round to win and they then have a draw round.)

--Adjusted the sound mix. Story voice over is louder now (was getting lost against the music before), the versus screen fanfare music is a littler quieter so it matches the rest of the game, and the announcer’s various lines also better match the loudness of the rest of the sounds.

--The CPU opponents now have a better idea what their own thrown ranges are and will not attempt to whiff normal throws outside of that range. It was especially egregious for Argagarg, Rook, Midori, and Dragon who often whiffed their throws over and over from far away for no reason. Also, the CPU will no longer try to throw airborne opponents or mash the throw button while airborne.

--Fixed an issue where pressing accept to start watching a character spotlight video had a short window of time where pressing accept again would put you in a buggy state.

--Deleted the tiny squirrels from Midori's stage because it gives +2fps on Dojo (the worst fps stage) on both medium and high graphics on computers roughly the strength of a PS4.

--During the tutorial, you can no longer enter frame step mode.

--When exactly two controllers are plugged in, the help text throughout the game no longer constantly reverts to keyboard mode for no reason.

--Fixed a bug where victory poses (such as Jaina’s, Grave’s, Rook’s) could sometimes show their secondary objects (sword, bow, birds) moving around in the wrong place, disconnected from the character.

--The profile screen was wrongly showing NUMBER of Daily Challenges attempted, but now correctly shows the best result you’ve achieved this season.

--On the move list, fixed the position of the word "Super" when the resolution is different than 1920x1080. The lower the resolution, the lower this word would accidentally appear on the screen.

--When selecting "Online" in Main Menu while trying to connect to server, if the connection fails, a pop-up now appears (instead of nothing).

'Tis the season to save 40% on all of our digital titles, including Fantasy Strike, Yomi, and Puzzle Strike! The Steam Winter Sale lasts from now until January 3rd, so be sure to grab one of our games for yourself (or a loved one) this holiday season.

We're also selling Yomi and Puzzle Strike on iOS for a massive discount as well.

Take advantage of these great deals and we'll see you online!