Game Update: Late July 2017

A new build of Fantasy Strike is available to our patrons on Patreon.
Originally posted build: v10144.
July 28th, updated to v10211.

ONLINE PLAY

--Implemented more features for our matchmaking algorithm. Now it factors in the quality of the connection to your potential opponents. It will factor in both quality of connection as well as the difference in skill levels when looking for an opponent. Over time it expands the search, allowing a wider range of both variables.
--Fixed a problem with online play that could cause your character to not be able to jump sometimes.
--Fixed a crash that happened during online play sometimes when Setsuki successfully parried with her air super.
--Fixed a problem during the first frame the gameplay scene is shown at the very beginning of the fight. On this frame, the scene was too dark, the camera was in the wrong position, and characters often started out facing backwards. All of this has now been corrected.
--Fixed a bug that caused usernames to become “Player 1” and “Player 2” after you rematched an online opponent.

CHARACTERS

JAINA
--Updated sound effect for her dragonheart (C button) on hit.
--Visual effects for her victims catching on fire last longer.

ROOK
--Has more voice lines, but they are placeholders.

GEIGER
--Geiger’s watch now appears in more places. It is now visible when you select him on the local versus and practice character select screens, during his air B, knockdown, and getup animations.

DEGREY
--New visual effects for air super. Also, counter-hit version is more POW!
--Fixed a bug that made DeGrey’s throws not preserve the opponent’s block damage state.

MIDORI
--Updated visual effects for Dragon’s f+A, A breath weapon.
--New visual effects for Dragon’s yomi counter.
(These visual effects are still a work in progress.)
--When you revert from dragon back to human, you’re now vulnerable during the transformation, rather than invulnerable for the whole thing.

MISC

--Improved lighting on characters during all cases where the camera is not a side view (supers, yomi counters, win animations). Before, the shading on characters was tuned to look good from a side view, but had many unintentional areas of total blackness on the characters when the camera moved. This has now been corrected.
--Fixed an issue with the training mode option to make the dummy throw on wakeup and exiting blockstun. Before, if you were near the edge of the dummy’s throw range, it wouldn’t even attempt to throw you, but now it does.

UPDATE

July 28th update. The Mac build is now available and back in parity with the Windows build.
Here are more changes this month:

ONLINE PLAY

--Fixed a problem where you appear to be in the matchmaking queue, but actually you aren’t.
--Fixed two crashes involving checking the pings of other players to find a good connection.

CHARACTERS

VALERIE
--New animation for air A,A (no functional change)
--If you press neutral A on the ground several times, Valerie now alternates between two different animations. This has no gameplay effect and is just so it looks cooler.

SETSUKI
--C -> B kunai (and back+B) are now possible
--Landing recovery 5f->4f on everything that uses it
--Less pushback on back+A dive kick (this and previous change help air C -> air A -> A -> super work better overall)
--Super travels farther so that after a blocked B kick, cancelling to super makes you safe.
--Fixed a bug during online play that sometimes caused the kunai’s “bounce off and disappear” animation to play repeatedly rather than just once per kunai.

DEGREY
--New visual effects for yomi counter.
--Fixed a bug where the opponent would gain super meter during his yomi counter, but shouldn’t.

MIDORI
--Dragon Midori gets an extra vulnerable hitbox in several grounded basic moves, so that he doesn't accidentally go over very low attacks like DeGrey's ground punch or Rook's earthquake

MISC

--New music for the “versus screen” before the fight starts.
 

Game Update: July 2017

A new build of Fantasy Strike is available to our patrons, here, on Patreon.
v10045.

We FINALLY have online play available to you all. That’s probably all you really need to hear about these patch notes, but we also have a bunch of new visual effects, some optimizations that make the game run a little better, and a new “event mode” that we use at trade shows (and you can use too!).

ONLINE PLAY

--Holy cow, there is online play! Right now, it’s just quick match (fight an opponent that our matchmaking system gives you).
--The matchmaking system does take your skill into account, but does not take your connection quality to potential opponents into account yet.
--Online play does use GGPO networking technology, but is unoptimized and might have some disconnects that are our fault. We’re working on it.
--The display of your username online uses a temporary method and will be changed once the game is on Steam. For now, you get a randomly generated username, but you can supply your own username by editing your displayname.txt file.
--While searching for a match a purple box shows the search status. You can go anywhere the menus or other game modes and the search status stays there.
--To cancel your search, you can mouse click on the search box, or hold the PS4 square button in menus. During gameplay such as practice mode, you can also cancel your search from the pause menu.
--You can rematch after an online game if you want, up to a maximum of best 2 out of 3.
--After a match, there is a new score screen where you get XP for your account and for the character you played. This XP currently does nothing and will do nothing for a long time, but it will someday be tied to cosmetic rewards. It also does not even correctly add up the XP, so ignore the XP values for now.
--The score screen has fun new animations for all characters, showing the character “practicing for the next match.”
--The score screen has new music.
--The “vs screen” before each match has been updated to show usernames and XP for your upcoming opponent. (Not actually fully hooked up yet though.)

EVENT MODE

--New feature: event mode. Accessed (for now) in debug options. When event mode is on, online play is removed from the main menu. Instead, the first item in the main menu becomes “play” which leads the local versus mode character select screen. Also, the main menu gets an entry for “demo” which has CPU characters play each other. Any input you do during demo mode asks if you want to go to local versus mode. The point of event mode is if you’re running a local event, you don’t care about online play so we replace that with more prominent local play, and you might want CPU characters fighting each other while no one is at a station so that it shows off the game.

CHARACTERS

JAINA
--Added visual effects to her win animation.

ROOK
--Rook’s B lands 1f later (still hits on same frame as before) so that it now beats Midori’s empowered throw and also hits an enemy Rook trying to C throw. (C throw then will land, but at least Rook’s B did a damage.)

SETSUKI
--New visual effects for hold-B teleport throw.
--Ground super has speed lines behind it now.
--Air C Flying Fox has speed lines behind it now.
--When her kunai hits something, fixed a bug where it used to become flat shape with no detail as it bounced off.
--After her air super successfully parries then ends, the camera cut back to gameplay is cleaner and no longer has a jittery pop.
--The air super’s log and smoke have updated graphics.

GEIGER
--New visual effects for B and hold-B time spiral projectiles. This includes new effects during their startup, as they travel, and when they impact the opponent.
--New visual effects for ground C flash gear.
--New visual effects for air C.
--New visual effects for phase out (air B).
--New visual effects for air super, including new effects when it shatters at the end.

DEGREY
--New visual effects for pilebunker (B -> B).
--New visual effects for counter-point kick (B -> C)
--New visual effects for back+A ground punch.
--New visual effects for air B, B kicks.

MIDORI
--Leaving dragon form no longer momentarily shows a full, green meter.
--Leaving dragon from no longer eats the opponents inputs in the same way a that super flash does.
--New visual effects for entering and leaving dragon from.
--New visual effects for dragon form’s f+A,A toxic breath.

MISC

--Fixed a bug where triggering a win animation, then later doing any move that caused the camera to move (such as Rook’s air super) made the lighting much too dark.
--Updated in-game move list to be accurate for Valerie, Rook, and DeGrey.
--Fixed several bugs with the environmental sound effect slider in the options. It was really broken before and would not respect the values you set, and separately from that, it didn’t scale the volume of the effects in a sane way when set between 0 and 50.
--Fixed a bug where the camera would pop at the end of all win animations if player 2 won.
--Performance optimizations. Several tweaks that reduce our CPU usage by about 12% in total.
--Fixed several throw animations for the thrower (and DeGrey's yomi counter) to all be fully invulnerable until the end of the throw, so that if a projectile happened to be on top you as your throw ends, you can still block.