A new build of Fantasy Strike is available to our patrons on Patreon.
v9698.
This month there are several balance changes and more and more polish. Each character now does a fun animation when they win a game. Setsuki has several new visual effects, and Midori and Lum and many new sound effects. The dojo stage has some great new plants and foliage, and the tavern stage's lighting has been changed substantially, as well as several elements of it remodeled. We've also fixed several bugs.
WIN ANIMATIONS
--When you win a game, each character now does a fancy animation (except Lum, we didn’t get to him yet).
CHARACTERS
GRAVE
--His wind meter no longer fills to max at the start of every round (but still starts full at the beginning of round 1).
--Fixed a bug where f+A double palm, when done as a combo after jump A, had a hitspark in the wrong place.
JAINA
--Fixed a bug that caused Jaina’s block damage to be cleared any time she did C (dragonheart) while at 1 life.
--Air C and ground B (level 1 shot) have slightly less pushback now.
--Ground super is no longer always safe on block against Rook. Instead, it’s now very unsafe on block against Rook.
ROOK
--Super throw is now throw invulnerable enough to beat another Rook’s C throw.
--Air B has bigger defensive hitboxes, so it’s easier to hit. It’s still good priority though. This change isn’t so much a “nerf” as a bug fix. We’ve had a long-standing problem for months that made it impossible to implement correct hitboxes for this move, but now we can.
--B armor punch is now armored from frame 1, rather than from frame 12. Note that it always showed a blue highlight starting from frame 1, which was a lie until now.
--B armor punch animation changed to be lower so that it goes under Jaina’s air B, even when she does it low to the ground on the way down.
--The version of Rook’s C throw that happens after you cancel back+A (thunderclap) -> C now has 15 active frames instead of 2, so that it matches his main C throw. It also makes this move a lot more useable because you can threaten it even when the opponent blocks thunderclap.
Developer’s note: Rook vs Jaina has always been a hard match, but we’ve recently realized it’s absurdly too hard when Jaina is very skilled. Jaina’s head-height air B (combined with backup air C arrow shot) is generally very difficult for him to deal with, and even if he does his air B through her projectiles, she can usually punish him for that with knee -> B. Furthermore, her ground super was always safe vs Rook, but not vs any other character. To help this matchup, her super is now very unsafe on block vs Rook, she doesn’t push back quite as much with her most commonly used arrow shots, and Rook can now at least attempt to avoid some of her shots with his lower-to-the-ground armored punch.
SETSUKI
--Starlight Tumbler throw (C, then C again) now has 7 more frames of recovery for Setsuki to prevent her from doing too good of a setup afterwards with jump B kunai, then C throw again. There’s now more gap for the opponent to get out of that.
--Fixed a bug where Setsuki dealing what should be the killing blow with block damage by her super caused the victim to be healed to 1 life with no flashing block damage.
--Slide (back+A) no longer goes under fireballs. It was never really supposed to, so this is basically a bug fix.
--New visual effects. Updated effects for to B (teleport kick), new effects for air B (kunai throw), new effects for ground super, adjusted effects for air super, including effects if she whiffs the parry attempt. The new kunai throw animation is especially an improvement because we now see the kunai in her hand before throwing it, we see it release from her hand rather than suddenly appearing somewhat near her, we see the swipe trail behind her hand’s movement, and the kunai itself has been remodelled.
--Facial animation. This took us many weeks to implement. Her main menu animation as well as character select screen animations now have her face animated as well. The specific facial movements she now has were not the hard part (and we can easily adjust her expressions if needed). The difficulty was in setting up the tech to allow her face to move at all. We have to do this process separately for each character, but the good news is that it will be substantially easier for all other characters because they will share at least some tech with Setsuki’s face.
GEIGER
--Air super deals its damage on the last hit rather than the first hit. (This might have been accidentally changed to first hit when Valerie’s air super behavior changed.)
--Air super duration down from 8 seconds -> 5 seconds (still long).
DEGREY
--Ghost (ground and air version) now destroys projectiles and keeps going.
--Air ghost travels much faster (and therefore farther) than before.
--Ground ghost now spawns from wherever she was floating rather than always right behind DeGrey. Also she travels faster now.
--Ground and air ghosts now have the same cooldown as each other. Ground ghost cooldown 4.5 seconds -> 3.5 seconds. Air ghost cooldown “buggy number that was less than 3.5 seconds and different in different situations” -> 3.5 seconds.
--Fixed a bug that caused the ghost to travel back to DeGrey much too slowly after he landed a successful yomi counter or ground super. (This was very annoying!)
Developer’s note: DeGrey was a little weak so these changes overall buff him. Before, the air C ghost was mostly for doing tricky stuff as you jump over the opponent. It can still do that, but now it’s also great for using on approach, to help DeGrey get close. The ground ghost spawning wherever the ghost was floating (rather than always behind DeGrey) creates some new setups for him. Sometimes he can summon her pretty close to the opponent as a trick if she happened to be near them while she’s lit up. Also, the ghost used to trade with projectiles, but she has a cooldown so that was kind of sad for DeGrey. Now, the ghost destroys projectiles and keeps going, allowing him to get in more easily.
MIDORI
--Lots of new sound effects for his dragon form moves.
--Fixed a bug that made Midori totally invulnerable for several frames whenever his empowered throw attempted to trigger (the auto-throw that he can do after successfully parrying).
--Fixed an oversight that made Midori’s leg totally invulnerable during his neutral A jump kick.
--Neutral A jump kick is now slightly less steerable (but still quite a bit) and has 10 frames of landing lag instead of 1.
--Air B now has less landing lag, 15f -> 10f.
LUM
--Lots of new sound effects.
--New graphics for his trampoline (during air B).
--New item: cloud. It travels diagonally up, then it strikes lighting straight down.
[Reminder: all of Lum’s animations and visual effects are still placeholder.]
--Neutral A punch startup 10f -> 7f.
--Super used to have 5f startup that was fully vulnerable. Now the 5f startup is invulnerable. The first frame the move can hit, it’s no longer invulnerable. This means it’s now a real reversal attack, but it’s similar in nature to Blanka’s balls in SF2 in that it will trade with meaty attacks rather than beat them. In Lum’s case, the items won’t even come out if it trades, but at least it gives him a way to get people off him when he really needs it.
MENUS
--Main menu layout slightly changed for better aesthetics.
--New debug option for setting input mode to Auto / Mouse / Gamepad. The real setting is “auto” (which automatically sets the menus to gamepad mode when you touch anything on your gamepad and sets the menus back to mouse mode when you touch your mouse.) The other two are for testing purposes.
--New graphics for the “how to play” screen for both keyboard and PS4 controllers.
MISC
--Fixed a bug that caused block damage not to register in the case where you were in blockstun from a strike, then during that short period of blockstun, you then blocked a special move.
--Fixed a bug that caused environmental sound effects to be turned on when you launch the game even if you turned them off the last time you launched. (Note: even though that bug is fixed, we are aware that the environmental sound effects slider is not working correctly.)
--Changed the rules in practice mode for life regenerating. Before, after 2.4 seconds of not getting hit, all hit points were regenerated. This was confusing in the case where a chunk of life was flashing from potential block damage, because it appeared that after 2.4 seconds, the period of block damage danger ended. But in non-practice modes, block damage danger time lasts 4.0 seconds, not 2.4 seconds. So now, in practice mode if you have flashing life, it will continue to flash for the full 4.0 seconds, then life will refill. This lets you better practice sequences of attacks that deal block damage.
--Fixed a bug in arcade mode that caused the wrong music to play on the versus screen before each CPU opponent after the first one, if you were playing any character other than DeGrey.
--Improved the lighting during all cinematics (meaning anything that changes the camera angle, such as Rook's air super for example) so that the characters are much less shadowy and black.
STAGES
--Grass in the dojo stage has been replaced with a variety of plants. A lush visual upgrade!
--Tavern adjusted quite a bit, made deeper and several objects remodelled.
--Lighting on tavern stage changed significantly. Now has many more shadows from various objects where it should, a different style of lighting, and a slightly different color scheme.