Hello mates, The Baron here with the latest in Blade & Sorcery U8 news. Let me get the bad news out of the way first - The feared delay has manifested. U8 is now looking at end of May release. Sorry guys, I hope you are all not too disappointed. The good news is U8 is set to be the biggest update yet, even bigger than U5, so hopefully in the end you will all agree it was worth the wait! ːsteamhappyː
Now for the latest updates -
Some of the menus are getting an overhaul and moving from a 2D render to 3D, which will look way cooler in VR. Right now it is the wrist menu (your health, mana, etc) and the spell wheel. Here is a little peek at how the wrist menu looks now, plus some bonus messing around with spells - the left bar (red) is health, right (blue) is mana, and green (center) is 'focus', which I will explain in a second. (note: Audio is WIP and ignore the old spell wheel in this video)
So you may be wondering what 'focus' is. The main idea behind focus is that slow motion as we all know it is now on a separate bar independent to mana. This is to allow the slowing of time for casting spells more easily without actually draining your mana needed for spells. Focus will also not regenerate by itself during combat, forcing the player to do a kill or parry an opponent to regenerate it.
For mana, KospY and team are bouncing ideas on how/when/if mana should regenerate, so nothing confirmed there. And before some of you fret, let me say that like everything, sandbox mode will include an option to enable infinite mana, focus, health etc for all those who just like to mess around. No worries. ːsteamhappyː
So that is mana, and here is the new spell wheel in action (minus the actual player):
It's a whole lot snazzier and fitting for a VR game. For anyone wondering how limited spell slots would work for modders, (as we are likely to see a modding explosion for spells) U8 will have dynamic spell slots, so adding plenty of spells will be no problem. The biggest problem I foresee is that people might have literally too many spells to keep track of, lol.
And the last bit of news for the week, work on armours continues and the in-game model for Plate T2 armour is finished. Here it is below (on the right) compared to the concept art reference on the left.
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Now let's get into a little bit of meta news. The Community Manager from Nexusmods has let me know that Blade & Sorcery has made the front page! This will surely not matter to some, but the reason I think it is incredible is because it shows how absolutely lit our modding community is and how much recognition they deserve.
If you think about it, it is bananas to consider as a VR game we are still up there (we knocked Witcher 2 off the board) despite how small the VR player pool is. We are up there as one of the most modded VR games for sure. And lastly, we only moved mods to Nexus since U6, so we rocketed up to #18 in the space of like 6 months, and yet there is so much more to come with spells sdk support coming!
Last bit of meta, Blade & Sorcery has joined the OP club on Steam!
On behalf of KospY and team, thank you so much to everyone who left a review. I swear to you, positivity fuels the team. Some of you OG crowd might remember it was not too long ago we were excitedly announcing that the latest B&S update "now has kicking!" or when telekinesis was added as a new feature. None of us could have imagined how much of a push the game would get from the community, and it was truly the community that extended the life and development of the game by taking a chance on the Early Access back when it was just mostly ideas. For whatever it is about this game that has drawn this community of people together, you guys rock, I can't say it enough.
That's it for this week, folks. Stay safe and I hope you are all well!