Blade & Sorcery News

Hello mates, a small patch incoming with a slew of fixes for U12.

One of the most noticeable fixes will be felt by Index players who were having issues with the physical swimming; this should feel a ton better now and be on par with the Quest swimming controls.

Another huge fix is something that has been the scourge of B&S troubleshooting since early modding days. Many will know the pain of installing a bad mod that causes infinite loading, or even worse, removing that bad mod but still having your game hang or your performance reduce to a crawl because the missing mod is spamming the logs with errors.
Finally we have a potential solution implemented so that corrupt/invalid asset bundles for mods should no longer hang loading and save files with old mod data are now cleaned out so old data doesn't spam the log with errors. ːsteamdanceː

On the SDK side, the spawning books and alters are now fixed so custom arena maps should be good to go. The first iteration of custom Dungeons documentation is also now out, meaning modders can now read up on how to make custom dungeons. ːpraisesunː We will keep adding more documentation to the wiki as time goes on; some folks have been asking for custom music documentation for example.

And by the way, on the subject of modding, in less than 4 weeks since release the number of mod downloads for Blade & Sorcery on modio has passed 22 million downloads with 11 million subscribers..... for any game, let alone a VR game, that is completely and utterly bananas. B&S modders are smashing records over there - we are proud of you guys! ːsteamsunnyː

That's it for now, folks! Last little note because I know non-Steam players read these news too --

If you are a PICO user reading the news, please check this out!

Nomad players having issues with Meta downloads, please check this!

If you are a U12 modder, please check out the latest post about version tags on the modder-bulletin channel on discord.




- Fixed issue with index controllers and swimming
- [Nomad] Fixed home mirror black artifacts
- Fixed player eyes reflection being wrong when looking our avatar in the mirror
- Fixed bhaptics not loading plugin
- Fixed bug where an item breaks and the original doesn't despawn
- Added new QA menu to test levels
- Fixed bug where players inventory wasn't getting saved when going back to home
- Fixed not being possible to scroll down to read the last mod option tooltip.
- Fixed broken mod asset bundles causing the game to hang on loading screens
- Fixed removed modded items not being cleaned from the save file
- Fixed mod options' categories not being shown in the selected language
- Potentially fixed an issue where players could hit an invisible barrier in some runs where CliffTerrace was added.
- Removed dirt from home mirror and reduced distortion effect slightly
- Fixed weird lighting in some areas of SewerMaintenance
- Fixed seams in the walls in SewerMaintenance
- Fixed incorrect skybox in SewerMaintenance
- Fixed weird water behaviour in SewerMaintenance and UndergroundZipline
- Fixed clipping issues with the male mercenary gloves
- Fixed long text values overlapping the new mod options button frame
- Fixed long mod options tooltips overlapping over the options bellow
- Fixed bug where handposer tool wasn't mirroring the finger tips position
- Fixed ModOptionSaveValue attributes not being processes
- Fixed ModOption(string name) constructor not setting default values
- Fixed a bug where the defaultValueIndex was sometimes not used
- Fixed a bug with color and catalogitem modoptions weren't being refreshed by the UI if data was changed at runtime
- Using -vrmode oculus will now correctly force oculus loader to be used
- Added MockHMD support using -vrmode mockhmd (for rendering debug purpose)
- [Nomad] Fixed home wooden planks having black tips

Hello mates, the first patch for U12 is now released! Huge thank you to all the players for your really nice well wishes to the Warpfrog team following the release of U12. It's a real great morale boost for us all after working on the update for so many months, so much appreciation to you all for the support! ːer_heartː

This small patch contains a slew of bugfixes that were spotted in U12 - shoutout to those who reported bugs and the legends who recorded video / images of said bugs. That hugely helps with bugfixing!

Some of these fixes were little enviro issues like small pink textures and strange lighting, while some QoL fixes were added such as now being able to turn off the "stingers" kill sound when you lower the music slider (eventually we will add a toggle so you can disable stingers separate from music), and adding a little aid for players who get stuck on the wall jump portion of the tutorial - now it can be bypassed.

But best of all guys, the U12 SDK is now released. ːsteamdanceː This will allow modders to fully update every mod to U12.

To go with this, the guys at Warpfrog spent a bunch of time writing up a special wiki to give instructions on how to use everything in the SDK so that modders can get the best out of it. ːpraisesunː Modders will find all sorts of information here; from modding basics to setting up the SDK, information on item components and event linkers, to instructions for making your own custom armours and (eventually) custom dungeons - yes, native support for custom armour and dungeons is here! We are still writing the instructional docs on custom dungeons, so hang tight for that but it shouldn't be too long.

We are hoping this blows the roof off modding for U12! You can find the BAS WIKI here.

You will also find in this patch native support for bHaptics (pcvr only, no Nomad support for now). It used to be possible to use bHaptics with B&S via a mod, but now it is actually officially supported in the game.

Full changelog is below, cheers!



[h2]Features:[/h2]
- Added bhaptics support [PCVR]
- The player character's eyes move when looking in the mirror or viewing in third person
- U12 SDK released

[h2]Enhancements:[/h2]
- Changed how telekinesis targeting works so it makes more sense
- Added hardware info logging to logs
- Renamed Dismemberment cheat to "Easy Dismemberment"
- Made Easier Dismemberment cheat even easier
- [Mods] Added optional attributes that can be used to make creating mod options easier
- [Mods] Added support for buttons on ModOptions
- [Mods] Added support for mod option category ordering

[h2]Fixes:[/h2]
- Fixed spells being in the wrong order at the end of the tutorial
- Fixed mod manager button still being active after mods are loaded when returning to the main menu
- Fixed some tutorial images being incorrect
- Fixed pink square in Chapel
- Fixed shore mesh in Nomad home
- Fixed lightmap problems in Arena
- Fixed holes in doorways between rooms
- Adjusted handles on the small wooden crate
- Fixed tool weapons not sitting on players holsters correctly
- Fixed room going invisible when in climbing area of SewerGate
- Fixed touch highlighters displaying when out of range (grab bug)
- Fixed rock not falling properly in tutorial
- Fixed punching with free climb cheat on making your fists grip onto things
- Fixed telekinesis events not being configured correctly
- Sliced parts are no longer wirelessly connected to the creature's body
- Fixed an issue where deleting save games would still show the last character made
- Fixed stinger volume not being linked to music volume
- Fixed volume sliders not scaling properly
- [Mods] Reduced some item logging
- [Mods] Fixed an extended abstract ThunderScript from crashing the game
- [Mods] Added check to prevent ItemModules loading twice
- [Mods] Changes mod loading so it loads all mod assemblies, then all mod addressables, then all mod catalogs, then all mod options, then all mod thunderscripts, then the catalog refreshes.
- [Mods] Fixed character save loading so it happens after mods are loaded - modded spells and equipment now get added to the player properly
- [Mods] Fixed ContentCustomData from uninstalled mods hanging the game on load
- [Mods] Fixed mods without errors or modoptions showing on the mod options page

Hello, mates! The Baron here with the latest and goodest news about Update 12; after months of grueling bugs squashing, KospY and the Warpfrog team have managed to quash the worst offending bugs to the point that we now believe U12 is finally ready to release!



What a whirlwind! Once again a self inflicted wound from Warpfrog adding features and creep that were not supposed to be included and creating bug hell, lol. ːsteamlaughcryː

A ton of time was also spent troubleshooting a lot of the internal changes that we made, such as the creation of the new Dungeon system - But this was for a good cause because it will allow modders to now bypass copyright restrictions and make their own dungeons by freely using our own tech.

But I digress, let's have a look at what's included in U12:



[h2]Physics-based swimming[/h2]

The simulation expands; physics-based swimming has arrived!

From the moment we added the beach in U10 we were peppered with requests for swimming, and understandably so because it certainly seemed it would fit really well into the physics simulation as a feature. That is the gift/curse of B&S, lol.



There are two methods to swimming - physics based, which is swimming with your arms in a motion like IRL; this will propel you and also rise in the water. Heads up though, you don't have to go hard at this motion for it to be effective.

The other method is for those who are not interested in the physical motion, or maybe have discomfort with that motion; you can simply use the thumbstick to swim around and go up and down.

Or of course you could use a combination of both methods.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

This is basically the first step in swimming as a feature; we don't have much application for it right now and it is just for simulation fun. We have a couple of small water sections in the Dungeons, but it is always optional. So for now swimming is really just for messing around!

[h2]Breakable Items[/h2]



Every few updates a feature comes along where something gets added to the game and you wonder how we played the game without it. Dismemberment, climbing, death animations, and now breakables. ːpraisesunː This feature is fun as hell.

A lot of world objects will now react to the physics force applied, making them breakable. If you worried that means everything is now gonna explode on gentle impact, don't worry! The objects will only break based on a significant force of physics applied with relation to the object type.

For example, if you swing a sword at a ceramic vase with enough force you may smash right through it in one hit, however slashing a wooden crate may not have enough force to break it.



Smashing it with the power of gravity or over someone's head on the other hand... ːsteamlaughcryː



[h2]In-game mod manager[/h2]



The big boi... It has been a repeated request since day one, so finally here it is - an in-game mod manager for Blade & Sorcery for one click installs.

Modders who upload their mods onto mod.io/g/blade-and-sorcery will have their mods show up for players in the mod manager. However, do take note that if you couldn't care less about the in-headset mod manager for whatever reason, mods can still be installed the old fashioned way by manually dropping mod folders downloaded from nexusmods or mod.io into the streamingassets/mods folder.

We tried our absolute best to include every little user friendly feature we could think of, so for this feature the best thing may be just to break it down by bullet point on what it can do.

Here is a list of its functions:

• You can install and uninstall mods all in-headset (no pc required) for Blade & Sorcery or Nomad
  
• If you use PCVR you will not see Nomad mods, if you play Nomad you will not see PCVR mods
  
• It will only show you mods for the version of the game you are playing - no more downloading out of date mods accidentally
  
• You can toggle mods on and off without uninstalling
  
• It will automatically download any mod prerequisites
  
• If you are subscribed to a mod and the modder updates it, the manager will update it for you to the latest game version
  
• There is a search bar and virtual keyboard
  
• You can filter by tags
  
• There are three main tabs - New (latest mods), Popular (currently trending mods) and Most Downloaded (most popular of all time)
  
• You can install / download multiple mods simultaneously
  
• Your manual mods will appear in the mod manager as local mods, so you could still do manually download/install mods and use the mod manager to manage them
  
• If you input your email and link your B&S mod manager and mod.io accounts you can sync them, so you could subscribe directly to mods on mod.io via web browser and it will be reflected in the game. However, this is not forced on you and you don't have to link accounts at all if you don't want to, and instead could just download mods straight in-headset without a mod.io account. But take note that if you skip linking your email and mod.io account but change your mind at a later point, you would need to contact mod.io.
  

What the mod manager does not do:

• Mods would still need to be updated for the correct version to play them - you still can't play U8 mods in U12 for example
  
• Even though it auto downloads prerequisites, it doesn't list the mod prerequisites before downloading. We can add this in U12.X and the reason it's not a thing now is the UI was not planned for it in time.
  

Hopefully I am not forgetting anything. We tried our best with the mod manager, but this release will be the first time it is going to be tested by the masses so if there are unexpected mod manager bugs, keep calm! Just let us know and we can patch it right away.

[h2]New Dungeon Outpost Rooms[/h2]

This... got out of control, lol. What should have ended up being a few side rooms ended up being 14 side rooms and 24 entirely new rooms added to Outpost. ːpraisesunː

While glorious, it also meant an absolute metric ton of bugs for us to fix lol.







The great news is that for those of you who have played Dungeons to death, this should inject a whole breath of new life into Outpost Dungeon with new areas to explore, including a couple of outdoor areas and sewer places.







In addition to the brand new rooms you will also find side rooms. Side rooms are new small areas attached to older rooms, accessible via an interactable door. As mentioned before, the side rooms are just for fun/exploration for now, but in the future they would be related to loot in Crystal Hunt.







[h2]Overhaul of Shield Enemies[/h2]



Continuing on the perma-task of improving AI, a new enemy behavior in U12 is improved shield AI.

Shield enemies now have a chance to shield bash you and push you back, with the AI utilizing the bash behavior more frequently on higher difficulty. You can negate the pushback by bracing with a shield of your own.

Enemies will also use their shields more effectively and have a better block and riposte when they parry, making them a lot more dangerous than they were before.

[h2]Dynamic music system for Dungeons[/h2]

Finally we have some music for Dungeons! This was on the to-do list forever but the hold up was we wanted to implement a system that the music could start and stop with combat instead of just being a track that played right throughout.

Now when you get into combat, a new handmade battle music will play for the duration of the combat. However if this is not your cup of tea, you can of course disable the music on Dungeons as you could any sandbox map.

[h2]Custom-Made Music for each Arena[/h2]

I know, you have that Arena track "Future Gladiator" burned into your brain, don't you. You hear it in your sleep, I know, I know, we all do.

As iconic as that track has been for B&S since the very first beta, the time has come to part ways and we now finally have all new custom music tracks for each sandbox map.

These tracks were written and composed by the awesome Glamdok from the Warpfrog team. ːer_heartː

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Content creators can also rejoice that this brings to an end the era of Youtube placing false copyright flags on their videos. ːer_heartː

[h2]Brand new Menu UI with Mod Settings Support[/h2]



More than just a cosmetic overhaul, for a long time we were wanting to redesign the UX of the options book as it was a bit confusing and there have even been players that never realized that some options had multiple pages lol. So with this, we hope it will be a cleaner experience.

As a bonus, we also included a dedicated mod options page - this would be for mods where the modder has added their own custom options to tweak their scripted mod; well now there is a nice dedicated space for that.

Also, the mod page now shows any errors with the mod, which is great for diagnosing mod related issues.

[h2]New cheat - Free climb[/h2]



Aka Spiderman mode! Here is a nice surprise bonus for you -- Enabling this cheat option will allow the player to climb on any surface regardless of if there is a gripping point there.

Some folks out there were having trouble with the climbing system, so we wanted to add this more relaxed option for anyone who wanted to enjoy climbing but was getting frustrated with the vanilla system. It should also be a pretty cool option for just messing around and exploring new hard to reach places!

[h2]New cheat - Easier dismemberment[/h2]



Another community pain point that tends to come up is some folk find the dismemberment system a bit too hardcore. It was always intended in our vision that vanilla dismemberment be a skill-based system and a rare occurrence, but we are also of the opinion that we shouldn't force our vision of fun on players, so we included this extra bonus option for anyone who wants to make the dismemberment a lot easier.



You might notice that in the dev menu this option is called "dismemberment" which is a bit confusing as we have a separate option in another tab called dismemberment, which enables and disables actual dismemberment. In 12.X we will fix the naming of this cheat option to properly read "easy dismemberment".

[h2]New tools / weapons[/h2]



You will find 6 new weapons to spawn or find in the world, although technically these are tools! Originally we were going to leave them as in-world items that you could find but then we figured why not add them to the book spawner in case a player wants to pick some heads, lol.

---

That's it for Update 12, guys! Any grievous bugs will be dealt with in 12.X patches, after which... the road to 1.0 begins...

Update 12 is the last stop before Crystal Hunt, which unbelievable to say, means the next update should be full release! We are on pins and needles in anticipation for that.

Last note - Modders, there are some really juicy things coming in the SDK for you guys with regards dungeon modding, breakable modding, etc, but unfortunately due to the scramble to finish U12 the Warpfrog devs have not yet had a chance to finish the SDK, so the tools are not quite ready. For that reason we will hold off on getting into the SDK news until it is ready. When it's ready for release I will post the info in another news for you guys as well as on Discord.

Cheers, everyone! Full changelog below -



[h3]Features[/h3]
- Physics-based swimming (with Tutorial)
- Added water drag area on some items
- Added Breakable items
- Overhaul of Shield enemies
- Dynamic music system for Dungeons
- Custom-made music tracks for each arena
- Brand new Menu with Mod Settings Support
- New dungeon outpost rooms, including underwater sections and new interactive elements
- In-game mod manager (based on mod.io)
- New moddable area system (used for dungeon generation)
- Armour modding support
- Trap doors
- Added a shortcut for the player log in the F5 menu
- Added text for what is being loaded during Game Loaded
- Added keyboard system which modders can use
- Added AMD FSR 1.0 upscaling (PC)
- New cheat - Free climb, enable to climb on any surface
- New cheat - Easier dismemberment
- Spell wheel now supports more than 10 spells without overlapping
- Mod manifests now have icon support

[h3]Enhancement / Changes[/h3]
- Updated to Unity 2021.3.17f
- Added side rooms and doors in some dungeon outpost rooms
- Updated models for a lot of props (crates, barrels etc)
- Dungeon areas with Ocean no longer instantly kill player when you fall in to them, added climbable areas to return to the area.
- Added ocean to Chapel river.
- Updated some arenas with updated models for minor props (like flags)
- Adjusted what props spawn in Arenas
- Tweaked dungeon outpost layout and misc changes about some rooms
- Shield enemies in general should be more competent, and will opt for a more turtling and riposte fighting style than their non-shield counterparts.
- New player menu
- Improve text quality on all the UI (updated texts to TextMeshPro)
- The rock used for tutorial's wall jump section will break after some time, allowing for a quick and easy climb instead.
- Adjusted colliders of arrows to have better piercing.
- Some props in Arenas and Dungeon now spawn via a loot table.
- Removed Exterior Doorways (the one which only was in 2 rooms).
- Improved memory usage by unloading despawned weapons and armour
- Improved memory usage by optimizing shader loading (expect a 2-3GB memory reduction without mods)
- Improved level loading times
- Added EventTime fields to Creature events in the EventManager
- Added new options: Screenshot Resolution, Render Quality (PC) , and Upscale Filter (PC)
- Added new sandbox options: Breakables, and Free Climb
- Colour gamut is now fixed on Nomad - No more red tinge
- 'Head' is no longer an option when creating a new character
- Added screenshot message
- Pressing grip will now cancel a spell charging (doing a fist to punch should be easier)
- Screenshot file name now contain level name and dungeon room name if any
- ColliderGroupData now allows you to filter which spells can imbue a collider group

[h3]Fixes[/h3]
- Fixed underwater effect not working with spectator camera
- Fixed underwater caustics being too bright and staying on screen
- Fixed Ruins terrain having no physics collider
- Fixed several localization and language bugs
- Removed "Reload JSON" from the Menu.
- Removed unused props used on the exterior of Market
- Fixed very rare issue where Dungeon runs would end early and not have an "End" room.
- Dungeon rooms with Sunlight cannot spawn next to eachother, to prevent light darkening on room enter
- Dungeon rooms with Ocean cannot spawn next to eachother, to prevent Ocean leaking in to other rooms
- Fixed Wooden pierceables not making sound when stabbing with
- Improve brain pooling performance
- Fixed Rugged Trousers and Worn Sandals missing reveal/blood
- Fixed wrong reveal normal mapping on Mercenary Armour
- Fixed wrong reveal normal mapping on the Claymore
- Fixed refresh rate not updating correctly when changed while in-game
- Fixed memory leak with reveal
- Fixed physics bodies falling asleep too quickly when pushed slowly
- Fixed spell wheel locking in place when opening then crouching or jumping
- Fixed memory allocations from creature navigation every frame.
- Fixed an issue where NPCs would stretch when sliced on specific parts
- Fixed memory leak with the mirror in home
- Fixed rare issue where imbue emission would not light up
- Fixed issue where the player menu randomly switched the opened sub-menu from the user clicking on another button
- Fixed light color of Fireball Impact being a wrong tint.
- Fixed NPCs not defending themselves from one of the easter egg weapons
- Workaround for the "grab bug" issue where sometimes pressing grab will cause you to jump to the last thing you had grabbed.

[h3]SDK (Coming soon) [/h3]
- Added Breakable script
- Added Tooltips for a lot of components
- Added "Spawnpoint" to each item. This now adjusts the location/rotation of the object when spawned.
- Reworked ItemSpawner
- Removed ContainerSpawner (merged in to ItemSpawner)
- Armor modding support
- Dungeon/Area modding support
- New "ReflectionSorcery" component for Fake views.
- Added new Physics Material "Ceramic".

Hello mates! The Baron here with a little bit of news to fill you guys in on what the heck is keeping U12 from dropping. Well...



We are being crushed by the amount of U12 bugs right now and every time we crunch down on one bug two more take its place. Unfortunately they are also the kind of bugs that make playing impossible / unfun, so sadly we can't just release and have people play while we fix them in a patch; things like Dungeon rooms being invisible, door portals being glitchy, performance issues, etc.

The most crippling issues are mostly stemming from three things -

As mentioned in the Road to U12 news, we remade the whole Dungeon technology to improve the dungeon generation and give the possibility to expand the system with new features later. It also allowed us to eliminate 3rd part copyright issues that were preventing modders from being allowed mod Dungeons. By remaking it ourselves, it meant we can just give modders the permission to do what they like since we then own it.

The whole undertaking was crazy, but things were looking really good at the end of last year. However, now that we are making builds we are only just discovering lots of things that broke and need fixing and it's the annoying sort of stuff that you don't discover until you spent a full day making a test build. We are slogging through these fixes now.



The other thing is Unity itself, which the game is built on. Unity brings its own whole host of issues, and when Unity updates it can introduce all sorts of new problems that take a lot of time to workaround, as is the current case.

But some good news here is that as we work on it we are taking a lot of time to improve performance issues. U12 is coming with a big improvement on memory usage, so that should feel really nice. You will hopefully see much better loading times too.

Finally, we added a silly amount of new dungeon rooms to U12 lol.



It was only supposed to be a small bonus for the update and then things got carried away as they always do with us. (image from u/Enchanter1101 ːer_heartː)

The good news here is that the new rooms look awesome and it should inject a bunch of fresh new life into Outpost while everyone is waiting on Crystal Hunt.





But the bad news is new rooms mean new bugs or other environmental issues to be found, diagnosed and fixed. To give you an example, one day a perfectly square chunk of the ocean went missing in one outdoor room. ːgoblinː Just.. gone, see ya later without rhyme or reason. This is the kind of things we are fixing in rooms.



So that's where we are folks, and why we are suddenly and surprisingly being blocked from a release when we seemed so close before... IT'S ANNOYING! ːeagleangryː



The guys at Warpfrog are really working hard on releasing though, so rest assured we will get there. KospY has aged about ten years in the past 3 months lol, so believe me that we are all eager to finish this and have the whole team move fully onto 1.0 update (rest assured we still have some of the team working on 1.0 right now).

But it's not all doom and gloom for U12! The stuff that is working is working really well, most notably breakables.



This is one of those feature additions that you are gonna find it hard to remember B&S before it because it lends itself so well to the game.





Breaking things is caused by force, so don't worry about tapping into things and finding them break really flimsily. It works really well and logically with the physics simulation. Gravity mage runs are super-duper fun to smash furniture.





Elsewhere, doors to siderooms are working well in Dungeons, although its sad still that we have no Crystal Hunt loot implemented yet (coming in 1.0). For now it will just be for fun and exploration.

By the way, I'm not sure it was ever mentioned there are trapdoors. ːpraisesunː



While the bulk of the team are working on fixing the torrent of U12 bugs, the rest of the team are polishing other things. One example is the UI...

It had long been on the cards to update the old book menu for UX purposes (many players didn't even realize the book menu had multiple options pages.. ːKScaredː) and make room for new options. In the last news we had posted a preview of the new UI, thinking "I sure hope players will enjoy this new clean redesign..."

We were legit surprised by reactions to the new look and the book nostalgia some of your guys had haha. But some folks pointed out something interesting - the clean look was a bit "too sci-fi" and didn't really fit with the aesthetic of B&S, which is something the old book did well. This was a really great point! We were focused on making a nice and clean menu with a good UX, but it's a great example for us of "missing the forest for the trees".

Well we heard you! We did a bit of switcharooing and were able to get the best of both words by adding a nice clean UI that allows for all the new options menus, while still retaining the classic B&S feel. Hope you guys like this one!



That's it for now, guys! I simply cannot wait for the day when I can drop the news that says "U12 is now available.

One last little nugget of news for Nomad players because I know Nomad players read these Steam news; some hope for you regarding the long awaiting scripted modding --

Some tests are being done on making complex mods run in-game and there has been some victories! Here is an example of the Mystic Hands mod by the legendary modder Lyneca being run in Nomad:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

There are still bugs, still work to be done and I still don't have a release date, but this is great news as it is a proof of concept for the madness that is making advanced mods work on the Quest 2. This is a great milestone!

Hello mates, Baron here with the latest news! KospY and the team at Warpfrog have been working away on U12 with the goal to try and wrap the update for release. The majority focus has been on trying to finalize the in-game mod manager functionality, fixing issues with the new homemade Dungeon tech, and bugfixing.

Sadly we are experiencing a lot of technical issues and bugs that are preventing release. These are not your little type of "Oh how quaint" physics bugs that could be ironed out in a beta, but more "Hmm, today every Dungeon room transition is broken" type bugs which are complete blockers for release.

For that reason I have the sad duty to announce we will not be able to release U12 this month and it will be likely early 2023. I won't try to guess any exact time as it would be better to just know that we are working with intent to release literally as soon as possible, as soon as we can get these technical issues fixed.

So with that, I thought in the meantime I could do a little preview of some U12 stuff and generally show how it's going, bugs and issues aside.

[h3]Breakables[/h3]

It was a nice surprise for us to see how much interest was generated over breakables in the last news. The funny thing was it was only like one line in the news, but since it seemed to get peoples attention here is a bit more on it!

Big thanks to Drags for recoding all the previews in today's news. ːsteamdanceː



Originally, only a handful of props were breakable, but in response to the player interest we hugely expanded what kind of props are breakable. It now includes a lot more objects like benches, wooden tables, crates, etc and in fact we went a bit mad and it is now 24 breakable props in game, lol. We hope it will make for some pretty interesting and dynamic fights!

Wrestling fans can rejoice at being able to spike people through tables now.



One of the questions that was popping up was if the broken parts of the breakable could be used as weapons. For things like blunt objects, you could always use any object as a blunt object to attack so nothing new there, but for things like ceramic shards the answer was originally no because you would have to add damage handlers to the individual shards.

However since that did seem like a really cool idea and something the player was interested in, we did go ahead and add damage handlers to things like broken pots, so now you can stab away.



While doing the damagers on breakable props there was also a few other goodies stuffed in, such as the addition of 6 new tools to find in the world that have damagers added so they can be used like weapons too. For example, a pickaxe.



[h3]Mod Manager[/h3]

Now let's get into the Mod Manager. The big change for modders and mod-enthusiasts is that whereas up to now we had always used trusty old nexus for hosting mods, these in-headset mods will be hosted on mod.io. Mods that are uploaded here will appear in the headset and can be subscribed and unsubscribed via the in-headset menu.

Modders, if you want to have your mods show up in-headset I recommend you start uploading your mods now so that they are ready to roll before U12 launches.

Here is how it will look in-headset!



There are some nice filters in the manager that you can use for browsing mods, including searching mods by game version. ːpraisesunː So provided the metadata is correct by the uploader, you could now search something by filter such as "U12" + "Spells" to only display spell mods for U12.

But rest assured, if you are not too interested in this in-headset mod manager you can still download and install mods manually the good old fashioned way with any mods downloaded from the websites nexusmods.com or mod.io.

[h3]New Rooms[/h3]

In the last news I mentioned the whole new Dalgarian Dungeon that is planned for 1.0, so a bit of a ways away still, but I did mention that U12 would be adding a bunch of new siderooms that will be expanding old Dungeon rooms.

These were just little extensions added onto current rooms that will eventually be useful for loot purposes, but for now they are just for fun and exploration and to add doors into Dungeons so you can throw enemy through.

Door handles are for losers!



But anyway, in the last news we may have downplayed the whole "we are adding more rooms" just a teeny bit... ːwftogrinː

We have added about 14 siderooms into the game, but we also didn't even mention that there is also about 24 entirely new dungeon rooms being added, lol. For context, the current U11 Outpost Dungeon has something like 50 rooms total, so that's quite a few rooms to freshen up Outpost. ːsteamdanceː



It will be a mix of transitional rooms, standard rooms, and then one will be an "arena-type" room, The Watermill, and by arena-type I mean those rooms that spawn mini-waves like the Chapel or Library but are not the final wave rooms like Watchtower.



Hopefully this will make Outpost Dungeon a bit fresh for anyone who has played it to death, as there will be a lot of new rooms to experience.

[h3]New UI[/h3]

By the way, here is a little peek at some of the new UI changes coming that give it a nice clean look - you might spot there is a Mods tab where modders can add their own mod options.



Well that's it for now folks! This is likely the last news of the year, so from all of us here at Warpfrog a big thank you and much love to all the fans and well-wishers who support us and have followed along with the development of this game. We love you guys and wish you all a wonderful rest of your year. Here is to a great 2023! ːer_heartː