Blade & Sorcery News

Hello folks, The Baron here with a bit of U8 news, but alas I have an unfortunate announcement first. At this point you have surely all heard about, and likely even been impacted by the Corona Virus. Sadly I must report that COVID has impacted Warpfrog too and caused some disruptions to U8's release schedule. Just as all this madness began going down, KospY was in the process on opening a new Warpfrog office and onboarding some fulltime employees. The idea was that having employees working side by side with KospY would greatly streamline the workflow, so the time invested in opening the office would be worth the payoff. Unfortunately the office was only open a week when news began circulating of businesses shutting down for safety, so to protect his employees KospY decided to temporarily close office and revert back to working remotely, which is not a great learning environment for any new employee... Furthermore, several of the new employees had relocated to KospY's city specifically to work for Warpfrog, but as they arrived right as COVID trouble began brewing, several of them didn't even have a chance to get set up with internet connections and are using phone internet to work, which as you can imagine is not great... The team are working out the workflow kinks right now and hopefully this situation will get better.

What this means - The team is pressing on as best they can, but U8 will be arriving late April at best. To avoid disappointment I would caution everyone to prepare for a worse delay, and that way if it is in fact late April then it will be a nice surprise. Everyone is working as hard as they can to get U8 released, so thanks for your patience and understanding, guys. If I get any more news regarding this I will keep you guys posted!

So then, let's jump into what's new with U8!

Model makers have been hard at work, churning out new weapons and armours to go along with the new tier system. With each weapon having 4-5 tiers, you can probably appreciate that it is a lot of work! Here are some of the latest models for early tier axe and some shields:





The bow aim bug has been fixed by the way!


Work on armour continues, and the team have been getting through the armours at a good steady pace. The latest additions were leather and plate; here is how they look on the models (still actively wip):


Finally, some concept armour for you on armour tiers still to come; to recap, each tier has a type of leather, chain or plate, but the tier reflects the coverage/functionality and each higher tier provides progressively more coverage / defense. Oh and some of you were surprised to hear this so I will say it again -- The player can wear the same armour as the AI. ːsteamhappyː And in fact armour is modular, so the player can mix and match armour pieces. You could wear a plate chest piece with leather gloves for example.


That's it for this week, folks. I'll keep you all posted on Reddit, Discord and Steam if I get any new developments. Stay safe!

Hello folks! The Baron here, and I'm delighted to be able to deliver on my promise from last time to show you guys the much anticipated and illusive spell: Gravity! KopsY has been silently slaving away in the background but has now let me know that the spell is finished mechanically, but heads up that the graphics including the spawn effect and particles are not finished, so what you are seeing is a WIP.

So, what's it all about? There are very few games out there with a robust telekinesis system and even fewer that make you feel powerful and badass to use it. Dark Messiah was surely one of the few, and it is in this vein of inspiration where B&S Gravity comes in. The general idea is that this spell will allow the player to pick an enemy up, push him, pull him, throw him, and maybe even come up with some more creative punishments. :D


Another element of the spell is the ability to imbue weapons. A weapon that is imbued with gravity becomes weightless, making striking and wielding the weapon easier since the weapon is "lighter".

Enemies that are struck with a Gravity imbued weapon will become temporarily weightless, as teased in the gif from last time.


But now onto the juicy stuff. As mentioned some time ago, one aspect of the spell system is that spells can be merged to form bigger and more powerful spells. Well, you might wonder what happens when you merge Gravity with Gravity - The result is a powerful zone of weightlessness that will trip up enemies and scatter objects, giving you a tactical advantage if surrounded.


Enemies who are caught in the Gravity dome are weightless, which means they can be ragdolled around and punched with tremendous force. All in all, it should lead to some good clean fun.


That's it for the news, folks! I will post higher resolution clips to Reddit (Steam only allows 3mb gif format) and longer videos to Youtube. Here is a nice little video to tide you over. :D Cheers!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hello folks! It's that time again for a little bit of news, and today I have some sneak peeks of upcoming weapons with regards to the tier system.

If you had not heard, since the last update B&S is moving to a tiered weapon system (just like armour) where each weapon will have 4-5 tiered variants, with each variant offering improvements on the previous. Higher tiered weapons may have some functionality bonuses, such as useful hilts, extra attack surfaces (a blunt mace might also have a spike for example), or a more functional design, such as a greatsword that has a grip for half-swording. Another wip concept is that higher tiered weapons will be able to retain a magical imbue longer.

The overall tiered weapon/armour idea is to bring a little bit of a progression feel to B&S to go along with the future progression mode ("campaign mode"), so that players will have equipment to unlock and strive towards. But for sandbox lovers, don't worry because there will still be a sandbox mode and all these tiered weapons will be freely available there.

The last goal of these reworked weapons is to take one more step further away from Unity store assets in favour of custom models. So with that said, here is a look at what our modeler has been working on with the Greatsword rework:







These are the Tier 0, Tier 1 and Tier 2 of the Greatsword. You can see how the lowest tier is rusted and even lacks a pointed tip, whereas the last tier is much more functional and versatile. They will likely be 2 more tiers of the Greatsword to come too (tier 4 and 5) but I just don't have any images of those at the moment.

Here is a peek at the reworked bow - (tier 2)



And good news, the inaccurate bow bug has been fixed for U8. KospY Sends his apologies for not including it in the last update!

That's all the news for now, folks. But then again, it wouldn't be a B&S news post without a little teaser, so here is a peek at the Gravity spell, imbued in this weapon. Hopefully next time I will be able to post some news and videos of Gravity. Cheers!

Hello folks! The Baron here with a little bit of U8 news for you, and today we are talking about Armour!

First up, here is the overview: Armour (player and AI) will be tiered and modular. The categories are cloth, leather and plate (metal), and within those categories you have tiers suggesting just how protected the person will be. For example, here is a comparison of the male Leather T1 vs Leather T2.





And a little bonus, here is little peek at the concept art design for Female Leather T1 and Male Plate T2.





The big unique factor about armour in B&S is that KospY wants to avoid "gamey" mechanics, most notably that in 99% of games when you see an armoured enemy, you can assume he is just some tougher guy with more HP. Well in B&S armour does not mean extra HP; it means armour, lol. Enemy are still as vulnerable as ever, IF you can get around their armour. Depending on the category and tier, some weapons may penetrate (leather, e.g.), but if the enemy is wearing something like plate, then the player will have to use new tactics to overcome them; using magic to sear a hot blade that can slice through metal, utilizing the environment, breaking out the blunt weapons or using finesse to stab between the vulnerable gaps in the armour.  

What's interesting about all this is that if you are a gamer for your whole life like myself you will relate that our whole lives we have been conditioned to think about armoured enemy as HP sponges that generally just require grind. But what if you came across a boss character in full metal who could be killed with a single dagger to the exposed neck? This is a real mechanic game-changer and I think it will require gamers to rewire their thinking to break the conditioning of traditional games. But if any game were to pioneer this then it makes sense for it to be B&S because I think VR players are a little more nuanced and open to new, game-changing ways to play video games. And then even more specifically within VR community, the B&S fanbase who had an open mind towards B&S' alien combat system that utilized physics based melee.

So the great news is Kospy was cranking away the last few weeks and has actually now finished working on the armour collision system! And best of all, he says the hitboxes are pretty precise and he is happy with them. Knowing KospY as a perfectionist, I know that if he is happy then I think that translates into it is gonna be awesome. He reworked all the collision and materials logic, so now there is stuff like dynamic damage by penetration depth, and maximum penetration depth relative to materials. This new system inherently means we will have a super cool non-roadmap, but very long requested feature: being able to push a blade into flesh without a windup! Yes you heard that correctly but let me say it again just so it sinks in: stabbing is now achieved by applying pressure!! This is such a huge fan wishlist request and was only possible thanks to the penetration rework. So related to armour, while a blade will easily push into flesh, it will not easily push into leather, and that's where force would come into it in order to break through the armour layer.

Going along with new armour we will also be getting new models! It has long been the desire to move away from Unity store assets in favour home something homemade that will be more fitting than discount kanye west and bald lady #1, so after a year of slaughtering the same gormless faces, the new models will surely be a breath of fresh air. Here is a sneak peek at the base mesh model (i.e. a "naked" enemy with no armour equiped)



That's all the news for now, folks! Non U8 related, KospY is in the final stages of taking on 3 fulltime employees with intent for them to get a headstart on "Dungeons" and make sure B&S hits its EA to 1.0 release date goals. Hopefully WarpFrog will be settled into their nice new office soon. Office pictures to come when they are all set up!

Hello folks, The Baron here with a bit of good news / bad news. Let me hit you with the bad news first — U8, which was penciled in for late Jan will now be delayed until Q2 2020, likely April. This breaks with the tradition of one big update every 2 — 3 months, but here is the reasoning and good news: U8 is now planned to include features from U9, including.... Functional armour! This will be a huge feature step forward, but also as a bonus the update will also include support for custom armour modding for the modders! One step closer to total conversion modding. ;)

So why the merge of updates? Kospy decided it would be best to conjoin U8 and U9 since the two build on related systems to do with reworked armour and material penetration. For example, remember the gif of the hot blade? Well the idea of the reworked penetration system is that a hot blade would be able to pierce metal armour where a normal blade would not. So it would just make sense to lump these two concepts together and work on them at the same time in order to keep momentum. So basically it means U8 is gonna be even more massive and feature heavy.

Here is how the revamped roadmap would look:
Update 8 (April 2020)
- New spell: Gravity
- New spell: Fire
- Lightning spell v2
- Spell merging, same class only (lightning/lightning, fire/fire, gravity/gravity, but modders can create new combination like fire/lightning)
- NPC and player armors
- New characters design
- Tutorial
- Overhaul of the material/collision logic and FX system
- Custom armor (modding)
- Custom spells (modding)
- New weapons

You might notice all sorts of unmentioned goodies on here that I couldn't discuss before, including spell merging! When I mentioned last time that lightning was changing to have a build up before firing, the mechanical reason for that is because players will now be able to merge spells together (combining them like orbs) to create more powerful / new spells. What's cool about this is that it also means modders can go ham with creativity since U8 will have custom spell support, so we could have some crazy custom spell merging combinations!

You might also have spotted the "Life" spell (now being renamed to "Soul") has been pushed off the update and saved for later. The reason is because Soul is going to be more of a support spell and thus more relevant for the Dungeon update. The mechanics of this spell are still not fully revealed however.

Work on the fire spell continues and KospY has it running pretty well now, with some effects in place. The fireballs will have some level of control over them when they are launched to help with accuracy. (a bit like Dark Messiah)



As well as shooting fireballs you will also be able to apply magic to weapons which will add elemental power to the weapon, as well as increase the penetration values. So as mentioned, this means a blade could now pierce metal armour, or even stone!







It's not just fire by the way. Here is another example of imbue in action to get your creativity flowing. (WIP!)



Other than spells, work continues on the revamped character designs. The modelers are adding to it daily, but it's still a bit too WIP to show the ingame models. However, here is some concept art for the new T2 warrior design, including their leather armour.





Given the delay, KospY agreed it would be good to keep you guys posted with updates and little teasers, so I am gonna harass him for info from now until release! In the near future I will be posting more news that elaborates on aforementioned systems, such as the new spells and armour. Cheers!