A new build of Fantasy Strike is available to our patrons on Patreon.
EDIT: now version v7361. (Was version v7350. See note at the end.)
This month we cleaned up a lot of our current content. Setsuki has a new character model that is much higher quality and matches her Yomi art better. (The fixes to the modeling of her shirt are especially improved.) Several characters had their placeholder hit reaction animations replaced, so they don’t slide and pop in glitchy ways when they get hit. We have new visual effects on more of Jaina’s moves as well as a new tech for exaggerating limbs on Rook. Midori’s Dojo stage looks even better now that it has more highlights and contrast as well as some effects. There are a few balance changes, the most fun of which is Setsuki’s ability to cancel her teleport kick (B button) with a super. Also try out Grave’s new, faster sword attack.
Here's old and new Setsuki:
And the old Midori's Dojo stage followed by the new one:
PlayStation 4
--We put in a lot of work making the game run properly on PlayStation 4, for the PlayStation Experience trade show. It generally ran well and maintained 60fps during the 19 hours of play at our booth. That said, we did experience some jittery framerate and sudden frame skips after it had been running a while, so we had to restart the build every so often to get back to non-jittery framerate.
--After the show, we investigated the problem and found a memory leak that our game has probably had for a long time (on all platforms). We have now fixed this. We hope this allows the game to stay solid feeling even after hours of play. (But it needs more testing.)
GRAVE
--Air super has new animation.
--All of Grave’s hit reactions are now animated for real.
--Fixed a bug that made Grave’s big fireball during wind play a successful-hit sound even when it didn’t hit.
--Grave’s sword (C button) is now 5 frames faster.
--Grave’s projectile (B button) no longer knocks down.
JAINA
--On the local versus and training mode character select screen, she now has fire effects on her bow and arrow.
--After firing a level 1, 2, or 3 arrow, her feet no longer slide around during recovery.
--Jaina’s fire arrows have new visual effects when they impact the opponent. This is for the level 1 ground arrow as well as the air B, C, and super arrows.
--When Jaina causes the victim’s body to be on fire, they effects are all new. This happens when she hits with a level 2 or level 3 arrow with the B button, or her Dragonheart C attack, or her ground super.
--New visual effects when the fire arrows hit the ground (from air super or air C)
--Flame arrows from air super and air C now form during startup instead of instantly popping into existence.
--New fire effects during her Dragonheart (C button) attack, including fire effects on Jaina herself at the end to hint that she takes damage.
--New dust visual effects on the ground during her back+A kick.
--New dust visual effects on the ground during her f+A knee.
--All of Jaina’s hit reactions are now animated for real.
--New visual effects for her ground super, including a corkscrew of fire and a fire dragon.
VALERIE
--Valerie f+A hitbox now extends into her body. This fixes a problem where she could get a “meaty attack” mid combo after air B because the first part of the f+A would whiff.
--Fixed an animation problem when she gets up from a knockdown. Before, when she appeared to be fully standing up, there were still many more frames of this pose that didn’t count as “fully standing up,” which made it very hard to time your attack to hit her right as she got up.
ROOK
--All of Rook’s hit reactions are now animated for real. This is a bigger improvement than for other characters because Rook’s placeholder animations had several technical problems where his body scrunched up or collapsed in on itself. His new hit reactions are animated just for him and make more sense for his size and weight.
--Improved his turn around animation (for example, from when someone jumps over him.)
--Rook’s air B now has a new animation where he spins around with his vines extended.
--New visual effects for Rook’s air B
--Thunderclap (back+A) no longer has a hitting zone above rook’s arms and head, so that the hitbox better matches the animation.
--Kick (forward+A) no longer has the hitboxes extending slightly beyond the tip of his foot (very small change).
--Rook’s ground super has way less range now. That said, the range is still really far (farther than his already very far normal throw). We think he probably doesn’t need that anymore as he has enough tools to get in, and a fast 3 damage throw that can’t be yomi countered is good even when it’s only “really far” rather than “3/4ths of the screen”. Also, the startup is slightly faster now, only 1 frame startup.
--Air C now has the statue tilted to the side a bit. (No gameplay change.)
--New dust effects on his kick (forward+A)
--New tech: we can now scale parts of characters during moves to exaggerate attacks. This is currently used by Rook’s b+A, A, f+A, and B attacks. Do you like it? (No gameplay change.)
SETSUKI
--Setsuki has a new character model. It fixes several technical and aesthetic problems of the previous version and better matches her Yomi art now.
--Adjusted all of Setsuki’s costume colors.
--All of Setsuki’s hit reactions are now animated for real.
--Fixed a bug that caused A-button kick done in neutral state to fail to combo to super if the super input used A+B (rather than the dedicated super button).
--Setsuki’s teleport kick (B button) now has bigger hitboxes so it can better hit jumpers.
--Setsuki’s teleport kick (B button) can now be cancelled into her super. If the kick hits, this allows her to combo into the super. If the kick was blocked, doing the super allows her to potentially be safe from retaliation.
--Setsuki’s slide (back+A) gives a couple more frames of hitstun and blockstun. It’s now barely possible to combo into f+A double palm. On counterhit, this is much easier so counterhit slide, f+A, super is possible as a combo.
GEIGER
--Fixed Geiger low punch (neutral A) causing the wrong hit reaction. It used to trigger a heavier hit reaction animation than intended. This doesn’t change frame stats.
--All of Geiger’s hit reactions are now animated for real.
--New main menu idle animation.
DEGREY
--Air super can be done much lower to the ground now.
--Pilebunker (B, then B again) now uses our new character scaling tech to make DeGrey’s fist bigger during this move. (No gameplay change.)
MIDORI
--Doing a yomi counter while in dragon form now resets your dragon form meter so that you can stay in dragon from longer, rather than instantly leaving dragon form. It was always supposed to do this.
STAGES
--Snow stage. Fixed a lighting issue on this stage that was slightly hurting the framerate.
--Dojo stage. New sunlight effects, dust-in-sunlight effects, and falling leaves.
--Dojo stage. More shading on the rocks. Better use of highlight / shading on the building. Highlights on on the grass too. Slight adjustments to the waterfall.
MISC
--Fixed bug where finishing a game of local versus would show the rematch menus partially off screen on resolutions larger than 1080p.
--Fixed a bug that accidentally removed the “crossup” message during gameplay in the last build.
--The keyboard buttons shown for each move in the move list are now your currently set buttons, rather than always the default buttons.
--Training mode now displays “S” rather than “AB” when you input a super.
--Fixed a bug that triggered if you landed a killing blow just as the timer hit zero. No longer causes the following round to end instantly(!).
EDIT: BUG FIX
We have done an emergency from version v7350 to v7361. The purpose of the update is to fix a bug that the grass on Midori's Dojo stage appear as large black rectangles on some computers. Please download new builds at the patreon link at the top of this post.
Though the black grass fix is the reason for the update, there also happen to be these changes too:
--Geiger Main menu animation changed so that he doesn't put his hands in his pockets.
--Removed the empty stage from the game (not the training stage, but the completely empty gray stage.)
--Fixed a bug that made Rook’s "blob shadow" way too small.
--Fixed bug where blob shadows weren’t correctly mirrored on p1 / p2 sides.
--Jaina's character select screen arrow rotated so the arrow's dragon head looks better.
--Fixed a bug when selecting Jaina, after she shoots her arrow when you confirm your selection of her, her next arrow instantly appeared instead of forming over time.
--Fixed big hands/feet being stuck big bug (e.g. when hit out of DeGrey’s pile bunker)
--Fixed rotation of Rook Air C on hit/block
--Fixed Rook’s Ground super reaction causing opponent to have and opened mouth after the super.