This is a pretty big update on technical and aesthetic levels. Aesthetically, we’ve changed the 3D shaders as well as the actual 3D models for several characters to improve their graphics. We’ve also added new costumes for Grave, Jaina, and Setsuki to the in-game store. We’ve updated our game engine to a version of Unity that’s three years newer than the version we were using and this allowed us to fix some long-standing technical issues with Xbox controllers as well as with fightsticks on Linux. We also added a new feature on Steam that allows you to assign which controller is player1 and which is player2 (especially important on Steam because of how we allow the keyboard to be both player1 and player2). Finally, there are some long-requested balance changes in this patch too.
NEW GRAPHICS
--Graphics upgrade for many characters and costumes. Enjoy a new look for Grave, Setsuki, Rook, and more!
We have adjusted the shading style used on our characters. When using a cartoony style, there are often a few distinct shades of darkness in shadows. Before, we had the issue that the boundary between these areas (like between a shadow on the skin and a non-shadow part of the skin) was irregular and grainy looking. Worse than that, when the character is in motion, the boundaries between shading zones would “swim” around and appear watery rather than the hard lines you’d expect. These errors are all gone with our new shaders.
In addition to that change, we also changed the actual shape and sculpt of some characters so they look even better with the new shaders. Here’s an example with Grave:
Notice on his chest the crisp, hard lines of shading on the new version and the grainy, blurry regions of shading on the old one’s chest. Notice the highlights on the new one’s hair that makes it pop and shine, compared to flat, blah-ish shading on the old one’s hair. The new one’s face (and chest) have been re-sculpted to be more stylized too. We also extended his tattoo further onto his chest because it just looked cooler.
Rook is another example:
Rook suffered especially much from the problem of grainy, blurry boundaries between shading zones that would “swim” around when he’s in motion. That’s all gone now and his shadows and highlights look a lot more deliberate. The modeling of his vines has been greatly improved as well. As you can see above, the old vines were a bit of a mess in that they seemed to penetrate his body here and there, looked low poly in some places, and didn’t have shadow between the vines and his body. Now the fines are clearly separate from him and have pretty great shadows.
Here’s another example of Rook in his gameplay stance:
We’d also like to highlight the visual changes to Setsuki for you.
Setsuki’s hair was always a problem for us. We were never happy with the way it was modeled, but couldn’t really figure out what to do until now. As you can see, it’s a lot less “bananas” now, and more stylish. Her crazy hair colors show that she wants to have a style, so styled hair is just a better fit here.
NEW COSTUMES
Three new costumes available for purchase (on a rotating basis) in the in-game store: Grave Dojo Champion, Jaina Midnight Archer, and Setsuki Stealth Ninja.
Setsuki and Grave have new costumes available for purchase
Setsuki (Stealth Ninja) vs Jaina (Midnight Archer)
Grave (Dojo Champion) vs Rook (default costume with new graphics)
Remember that we’ve taken the unprecedented step in the fighting game genre of making the gameplay of ALL our characters FREE in online casual matches, online ranked matches, practice mode, and 1p vs AI mode. We hope you support us by buying a costume here and there so that we know it was the right choice to take the risk of making the gameplay for all characters free.
NEW FEATURE
--[Steam] You can now set which controller is P1 and which controller is P2 as you enter appropriate game modes. There’s a new screen to move pictures of a controller into those slots.
On Steam, we intentionally make the keyboard both player 1 and player 2. This makes it really easy to go into practice mode and set up various tests where you control both characters at the same time. Until now though, a single controller on Steam has always been locked to player1, which forced a keyboard player to be player2 (remember, the keyboard can always be p1 and/or p2). The new feature we just added finally lets a single controller be player2, so the keyboard player can be player1 if they want.
The feature is so robust that it even supports having extra controllers plugged in. For example, imagine you had two PlayStation4 DualShock controllers plugged in, and two fightsticks also (so a total of four controllers). Now, you can go into versus mode, then choose the two DualShock controllers as p1 and p2. Then you could back out, go into versus mode again, and choose the two fight sticks as p1 and p2 from then on. This allows a group of friends to easily swap controllers during a session without having to unplug/re-plug anything.
CHARACTER CHANGES
GRAVE
--Grave's ground super slightly pulls back its pushbox during the few frames before the cinematic hit, to avoid edge cases where the pushbox incorrectly prevents the cinematic hit.
Example: vs Argagarg's neutral A, which slightly extends its pushbox such that Grave's ground super can't cinematic-hit it for no apparent reason, when it can easily cinematic-hit idle Argagarg from further away.
VALERIE
--Fixed a bug with her fA attack, which wrongly made her invulnerable to throws for some frames.
GEIGER
--The 15th frame of ground C no longer has a white highlight, because only the first 14f are invulnerable.
DEGREY
--Ghost has 1 second longer cooldown between uses.
--Ghost no longer breaks armor. (Onimaru now has some hope using his ground C against DeGrey. Rook’s Landslide and C-throw are now better against DeGrey too.)
--Ground S has 3f more startup, 5f -> 8f. Now if he blocks Onimaru’s fA attack and Onimaru cancels that into B, DeGrey’s ground super parry will not be active in time to hit it. (And if DeGrey tries to parry between the fA and B, Onimaru can press B again to hit DeGrey with a 2-damage Spirit Fire.)
MIDORI
--Midori's empowered throw (when he glows yellow, after a parry) is no longer allowed to grab-and-instantly-destroy Quince real-illusions (illusions in Two Truths mode). It just looked too weird.
QUINCE
--Fixed a sound bug with Quince’s C (Dodge the Question) that made the initial split have no sound unless you did the f+C version.
--Super cooldown increased from 10 seconds to 12 seconds.
—His fall to the ground after doing air C (mirror) is reverted to the slower fall that it was during his pre-release testing.
--His back+A (Truth Geyser) can no longer juggle as much. Only one additional juggle hit is possible after it now, and it can no longer bounce victims who were already bouncing. The most practical effect of this is that Quince can no longer do 3 damage against victims who are somewhat cornered when he lands bA x 3 (only 2 of those will hit now) or bA, B, A (the final A punch no longer hits).
Developer comments: Quince seemed a bit too good, especially over time as players got better at taking advantage of his strengths. These nerfs still leave intact most of why he’s good, so they are kind of minor, but leave opponents with a little more leeway: more time between his supers, more time to act after his air C, and avoiding taking a third point of damage in some combos.
ONIMARU
--His back+A sweep has more pushback so that when you cancel to C (Divide and Conquer) on block, it no longer forces the opponent to block three times total, which guard broke them.
--Reverting Onimaru’s nA hitboxes to the older version that was not great anti-air. It still has reasonable hitboxes to hit a jumper, but not “dragon-punch-like” immunity that he’s had for the last few months. The point of this change is so he has to save his super more for anti-air, rather than being free to use the super for reaction punishes only.
BOSS RUSH
--Rook's "Landslide Plus" now hits twice, to match regular Rook’s Landslide now hitting twice.
--Setsuki’s “Starlight Sparkle” is no longer completely unblockable for no reason.
--Fixed a bug from a few months ago on Argagarg's "Fish are Friends" powerup (Rushing River now summons two goldfish rather than just one). It now actually summons the second fish.
--Valerie's CMYK "Black" attack is now allowed to correctly turn around when doing a double-crossup when Valerie also has the Quick Specials powerup.
--Lum's f+B cartwheel plus "Quick Specials" no longer uses Lum B's rolling recovery when it lands for no reason.
--Lum's Random Toss (improved air C) now throws both a melon AND an item, rather than just throwing an item (so it’s much stronger).
MISC
--New language available: Russian.
--Fixed a bug with the right side (player 2 side) of character select, that caused normal maps to be inverted for some costumes, such as Grave’s master costume and Quince’s default costume. This bug has been around for years, and we finally solved it. It made the affected characters look slightly wonky on character select when on the right side of the screen, meaning some of their contours and shadows were “inside out”.
--Fixed a bug with the right side (player 2 side) of character select that caused Valerie’s blue eye to be rotated incorrectly.
--Fixed a bug on character select that caused Valerie’s real-time shadows (such as shadows on her face from her hair) to look low res and pixelly.
--[Steam] The Mac version’s main menu now correctly blurs the background, so the aesthetics now match other platforms.