We reached a beautiful milestone today. Two Strikes innitial version would have 6 characters to start. So today we reach this magical number even though there are a lot of things that aren't ready still, but at least now you have a proper fighting game, with enough characters to create very exciting duels. Thank you for
Who is Yasuke?
(This character is based on a historical person).
Yasuke was born in Mozambique, in an inland village away from the coast, as the youngest of three siblings. In his early childhood, he was enslaved by a Portuguese raiding party, who took him and his siblings captive. After a succession of transfers, he was brought for sale to the Estado da India, the Portuguese Indian colonies in 1553. Even as a young boy, he was incredibly muscular and was selected for service in the Portuguese colonial army as an indentured soldier. He fought in the Ottoman-Portuguese conflicts of 1538-1559, including serving in the Battle of the Gulf of Oman under Dom Fernando de Meneses. After saving one of his commanding officers from being beheaded by a cannonball, he was given his freedom as thanks. Separated from his brother and sister, he returned to Goa, the center of Portuguese power on the mainland, where he searched tirelessly for them, to no avail. In 1574, he made the acquaintance of Reverend Alessandro Vagliano, an important Jesuit missionary, who hired Yasuke on as his combination bodyguard valet. Yasuke accompanied Vagliano first to Macau for four years, and then all the way to Japan in 1579, where Vagliano was to be the official representative of the Catholic Church. During Vagliano’s 1581 diplomatic overtures to Oda Nobunaga, a Japanese warlord, Oda took interest in Yasuke, and hired him a few months later as one of his retainers. Yasuke and Oda grew far closer than Yasuke and Vagliano ever had been, and Yasuke eventually rose to be Oda’s personal weapon-bearer. He accompanied Oda throughout the final years of his power until Oda was forced to commit seppuku by the forces of the rival warlord, Akechi Mitsuhide during the Honnō-ji Incident. Yasuke was captured and brought to Akechi, who decided that Yasuke was free to leave, so long as he traveled directly to the Christian missionary church in Kyoto.
But that didn't happen. Why would Yasuke be here in the eternal tournament? To be revealed later in Two Strikes story mode!
Gameplay
Yasuke is a powerful warrior with his skills valued by Oda Nobunaga himself.
Yasuke's move set consists of:
Weak Attack: His weak attack is fast and has a long range. Really great to poke the opponents, but his recoil is also big, leaving time for his opponents to get in range.
Strong Attack: Yasuke unsheats his sword after a long preparation delivering one of the farthest strikes in the game.
Both of his attacks can be canceled.
Dashback: Normal dashback with quick transition
DashForward: This is where it gets interesting. If the player performs his dashforward while he is moving or idle, he will perform a special technique that will break the opponents defense and trigger a quick counter attack that is impossible to defend.
If the player started an attack animation, if they dashforward, a situational dashing will occur. A normal dash to get closer to his opponents.
For more details on his move set, I did a video explaining it better:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdxpep113qg
Yasuke is a very unique fighter that took me a long time to figure it out his design but I super excited to finally deliver him to you, I hope you like him as much as I do!
Gameplay Changes:
The perfect parry effect on the defender changed. Before the character would continue they defense animation, now it goes straight to Idle, giving more time to perform a counter move.
All the characters received a buff speed. I want to give the player the ability to rely not only on his dashes, but also his normal movement to play the right fotsies game. Also, this change makes the game a lot more dinamic.
I decided to increase the brightness of the blood spurts when the player is hit. Some stages were difficult to actually see it. Now is shining in the player faces. Some might think it is too much and they look weird, but I believe it is more important to give both players the current status of the battle just by looking at the floor.
Buffs:
- Ayai backdash distance increased
- Goemon dashforward distance increased
Nerfs:
- Goemon takes longer to throw kunais
- Tomoe strong attack distance decreased
Bug Fixes!
Uff, there are so many of them. The implementation of the clash duel and perfect parry weren't perfect and I took this last month to finish fixing every bug I could find with these two new mechanics.
Other bugs squashed:
- the AI was stucking in the hurt animation sometimes
- Some colliders were off, specially Tomoe weak attack collider for player 2
- The best of "5" was not appearing on the round counter.
- Finishing rounds were taking longer without nothing happening
- Fixed many AI interactions (more on that later)
- Fixed many characters end fight animations
Price Increase:
Like said in the last piece of news, the price will be increased to 12.99 US$.
Next Steps
I will start working hard on the AI again. It is time to fix a lot of things and flesh it out to produce more difficult and easier enemies. I have many ideas that I started implementing and many more to test!