Hello, mates! The Baron here with the latest and goodest news about Update 12; after months of grueling bugs squashing, KospY and the Warpfrog team have managed to quash the worst offending bugs to the point that we now believe U12 is finally ready to release!
What a whirlwind! Once again a self inflicted wound from Warpfrog adding features and creep that were not supposed to be included and creating bug hell, lol. ːsteamlaughcryː
A ton of time was also spent troubleshooting a lot of the internal changes that we made, such as the creation of the new Dungeon system - But this was for a good cause because it will allow modders to now bypass copyright restrictions and make their own dungeons by freely using our own tech.
But I digress, let's have a look at what's included in U12:
U12 - The Mod Manager Update
Physics-based swimming
The simulation expands; physics-based swimming has arrived!
From the moment we added the beach in U10 we were peppered with requests for swimming, and understandably so because it certainly seemed it would fit really well into the physics simulation as a feature. That is the gift/curse of B&S, lol.
There are two methods to swimming - physics based, which is swimming with your arms in a motion like IRL; this will propel you and also rise in the water. Heads up though, you don't have to go hard at this motion for it to be effective.
The other method is for those who are not interested in the physical motion, or maybe have discomfort with that motion; you can simply use the thumbstick to swim around and go up and down.
Or of course you could use a combination of both methods.
This is basically the first step in swimming as a feature; we don't have much application for it right now and it is just for simulation fun. We have a couple of small water sections in the Dungeons, but it is always optional. So for now swimming is really just for messing around!
Breakable Items
Every few updates a feature comes along where something gets added to the game and you wonder how we played the game without it. Dismemberment, climbing, death animations, and now breakables. ːpraisesunː This feature is fun as hell.
A lot of world objects will now react to the physics force applied, making them breakable. If you worried that means everything is now gonna explode on gentle impact, don't worry! The objects will only break based on a significant force of physics applied with relation to the object type.
For example, if you swing a sword at a ceramic vase with enough force you may smash right through it in one hit, however slashing a wooden crate may not have enough force to break it.
Smashing it with the power of gravity or over someone's head on the other hand... ːsteamlaughcryː
In-game mod manager
The big boi... It has been a repeated request since day one, so finally here it is - an in-game mod manager for Blade & Sorcery for one click installs.
Modders who upload their mods onto mod.io/g/blade-and-sorcery will have their mods show up for players in the mod manager. However, do take note that if you couldn't care less about the in-headset mod manager for whatever reason, mods can still be installed the old fashioned way by manually dropping mod folders downloaded from nexusmods or mod.io into the streamingassets/mods folder.
We tried our absolute best to include every little user friendly feature we could think of, so for this feature the best thing may be just to break it down by bullet point on what it can do.
Here is a list of its functions:
- You can install and uninstall mods all in-headset (no pc required) for Blade & Sorcery or Nomad
- If you use PCVR you will not see Nomad mods, if you play Nomad you will not see PCVR mods
- It will only show you mods for the version of the game you are playing - no more downloading out of date mods accidentally
- You can toggle mods on and off without uninstalling
- It will automatically download any mod prerequisites
- If you are subscribed to a mod and the modder updates it, the manager will update it for you to the latest game version
- There is a search bar and virtual keyboard
- You can filter by tags
- There are three main tabs - New (latest mods), Popular (currently trending mods) and Most Downloaded (most popular of all time)
- You can install / download multiple mods simultaneously
- Your manual mods will appear in the mod manager as local mods, so you could still do manually download/install mods and use the mod manager to manage them
- If you input your email and link your B&S mod manager and mod.io accounts you can sync them, so you could subscribe directly to mods on mod.io via web browser and it will be reflected in the game. However, this is not forced on you and you don't have to link accounts at all if you don't want to, and instead could just download mods straight in-headset without a mod.io account. But take note that if you skip linking your email and mod.io account but change your mind at a later point, you would need to contact mod.io.
What the mod manager does not do:
- Mods would still need to be updated for the correct version to play them - you still can't play U8 mods in U12 for example
- Even though it auto downloads prerequisites, it doesn't list the mod prerequisites before downloading. We can add this in U12.X and the reason it's not a thing now is the UI was not planned for it in time.
Hopefully I am not forgetting anything. We tried our best with the mod manager, but this release will be the first time it is going to be tested by the masses so if there are unexpected mod manager bugs, keep calm! Just let us know and we can patch it right away.
New Dungeon Outpost Rooms
This... got out of control, lol. What should have ended up being a few side rooms ended up being 14 side rooms and 24 entirely new rooms added to Outpost. ːpraisesunː
While glorious, it also meant an absolute metric ton of bugs for us to fix lol.
The great news is that for those of you who have played Dungeons to death, this should inject a whole breath of new life into Outpost Dungeon with new areas to explore, including a couple of outdoor areas and sewer places.
In addition to the brand new rooms you will also find side rooms. Side rooms are new small areas attached to older rooms, accessible via an interactable door. As mentioned before, the side rooms are just for fun/exploration for now, but in the future they would be related to loot in Crystal Hunt.
Overhaul of Shield Enemies
Continuing on the perma-task of improving AI, a new enemy behavior in U12 is improved shield AI.
Shield enemies now have a chance to shield bash you and push you back, with the AI utilizing the bash behavior more frequently on higher difficulty. You can negate the pushback by bracing with a shield of your own.
Enemies will also use their shields more effectively and have a better block and riposte when they parry, making them a lot more dangerous than they were before.
Dynamic music system for Dungeons
Finally we have some music for Dungeons! This was on the to-do list forever but the hold up was we wanted to implement a system that the music could start and stop with combat instead of just being a track that played right throughout.
Now when you get into combat, a new handmade battle music will play for the duration of the combat. However if this is not your cup of tea, you can of course disable the music on Dungeons as you could any sandbox map.
Custom-Made Music for each Arena
I know, you have that Arena track "Future Gladiator" burned into your brain, don't you. You hear it in your sleep, I know, I know, we all do.
As iconic as that track has been for B&S since the very first beta, the time has come to part ways and we now finally have all new custom music tracks for each sandbox map.
These tracks were written and composed by the awesome Glamdok from the Warpfrog team. ːer_heartː
Content creators can also rejoice that this brings to an end the era of Youtube placing false copyright flags on their videos. ːer_heartː
Brand new Menu UI with Mod Settings Support
More than just a cosmetic overhaul, for a long time we were wanting to redesign the UX of the options book as it was a bit confusing and there have even been players that never realized that some options had multiple pages lol. So with this, we hope it will be a cleaner experience.
As a bonus, we also included a dedicated mod options page - this would be for mods where the modder has added their own custom options to tweak their scripted mod; well now there is a nice dedicated space for that.
Also, the mod page now shows any errors with the mod, which is great for diagnosing mod related issues.
New cheat - Free climb
Aka Spiderman mode! Here is a nice surprise bonus for you -- Enabling this cheat option will allow the player to climb on any surface regardless of if there is a gripping point there.
Some folks out there were having trouble with the climbing system, so we wanted to add this more relaxed option for anyone who wanted to enjoy climbing but was getting frustrated with the vanilla system. It should also be a pretty cool option for just messing around and exploring new hard to reach places!
New cheat - Easier dismemberment
Another community pain point that tends to come up is some folk find the dismemberment system a bit too hardcore. It was always intended in our vision that vanilla dismemberment be a skill-based system and a rare occurrence, but we are also of the opinion that we shouldn't force our vision of fun on players, so we included this extra bonus option for anyone who wants to make the dismemberment a lot easier.
You might notice that in the dev menu this option is called "dismemberment" which is a bit confusing as we have a separate option in another tab called dismemberment, which enables and disables actual dismemberment. In 12.X we will fix the naming of this cheat option to properly read "easy dismemberment".
New tools / weapons
You will find 6 new weapons to spawn or find in the world, although technically these are tools! Originally we were going to leave them as in-world items that you could find but then we figured why not add them to the book spawner in case a player wants to pick some heads, lol.
That's it for Update 12, guys! Any grievous bugs will be dealt with in 12.X patches, after which... the road to 1.0 begins...
Update 12 is the last stop before Crystal Hunt, which unbelievable to say, means the next update should be full release! We are on pins and needles in anticipation for that.
Last note - Modders, there are some really juicy things coming in the SDK for you guys with regards dungeon modding, breakable modding, etc, but unfortunately due to the scramble to finish U12 the Warpfrog devs have not yet had a chance to finish the SDK, so the tools are not quite ready. For that reason we will hold off on getting into the SDK news until it is ready. When it's ready for release I will post the info in another news for you guys as well as on Discord.
Cheers, everyone! Full changelog below -
U12 - Full Changelog
Features
- Physics-based swimming (with Tutorial)
- Added water drag area on some items
- Added Breakable items
- Overhaul of Shield enemies
- Dynamic music system for Dungeons
- Custom-made music tracks for each arena
- Brand new Menu with Mod Settings Support
- New dungeon outpost rooms, including underwater sections and new interactive elements
- In-game mod manager (based on mod.io)
- New moddable area system (used for dungeon generation)
- Armour modding support
- Trap doors
- Added a shortcut for the player log in the F5 menu
- Added text for what is being loaded during Game Loaded
- Added keyboard system which modders can use
- Added AMD FSR 1.0 upscaling (PC)
- New cheat - Free climb, enable to climb on any surface
- New cheat - Easier dismemberment
- Spell wheel now supports more than 10 spells without overlapping
- Mod manifests now have icon support
Enhancement / Changes
- Updated to Unity 2021.3.17f
- Added side rooms and doors in some dungeon outpost rooms
- Updated models for a lot of props (crates, barrels etc)
- Dungeon areas with Ocean no longer instantly kill player when you fall in to them, added climbable areas to return to the area.
- Added ocean to Chapel river.
- Updated some arenas with updated models for minor props (like flags)
- Adjusted what props spawn in Arenas
- Tweaked dungeon outpost layout and misc changes about some rooms
- Shield enemies in general should be more competent, and will opt for a more turtling and riposte fighting style than their non-shield counterparts.
- New player menu
- Improve text quality on all the UI (updated texts to TextMeshPro)
- The rock used for tutorial's wall jump section will break after some time, allowing for a quick and easy climb instead.
- Adjusted colliders of arrows to have better piercing.
- Some props in Arenas and Dungeon now spawn via a loot table.
- Removed Exterior Doorways (the one which only was in 2 rooms).
- Improved memory usage by unloading despawned weapons and armour
- Improved memory usage by optimizing shader loading (expect a 2-3GB memory reduction without mods)
- Improved level loading times
- Added EventTime fields to Creature events in the EventManager
- Added new options: Screenshot Resolution, Render Quality (PC) , and Upscale Filter (PC)
- Added new sandbox options: Breakables, and Free Climb
- Colour gamut is now fixed on Nomad - No more red tinge
- 'Head' is no longer an option when creating a new character
- Added screenshot message
- Pressing grip will now cancel a spell charging (doing a fist to punch should be easier)
- Screenshot file name now contain level name and dungeon room name if any
- ColliderGroupData now allows you to filter which spells can imbue a collider group
Fixes
- Fixed underwater effect not working with spectator camera
- Fixed underwater caustics being too bright and staying on screen
- Fixed Ruins terrain having no physics collider
- Fixed several localization and language bugs
- Removed "Reload JSON" from the Menu.
- Removed unused props used on the exterior of Market
- Fixed very rare issue where Dungeon runs would end early and not have an "End" room.
- Dungeon rooms with Sunlight cannot spawn next to eachother, to prevent light darkening on room enter
- Dungeon rooms with Ocean cannot spawn next to eachother, to prevent Ocean leaking in to other rooms
- Fixed Wooden pierceables not making sound when stabbing with
- Improve brain pooling performance
- Fixed Rugged Trousers and Worn Sandals missing reveal/blood
- Fixed wrong reveal normal mapping on Mercenary Armour
- Fixed wrong reveal normal mapping on the Claymore
- Fixed refresh rate not updating correctly when changed while in-game
- Fixed memory leak with reveal
- Fixed physics bodies falling asleep too quickly when pushed slowly
- Fixed spell wheel locking in place when opening then crouching or jumping
- Fixed memory allocations from creature navigation every frame.
- Fixed an issue where NPCs would stretch when sliced on specific parts
- Fixed memory leak with the mirror in home
- Fixed rare issue where imbue emission would not light up
- Fixed issue where the player menu randomly switched the opened sub-menu from the user clicking on another button
- Fixed light color of Fireball Impact being a wrong tint.
- Fixed NPCs not defending themselves from one of the easter egg weapons
- Workaround for the "grab bug" issue where sometimes pressing grab will cause you to jump to the last thing you had grabbed.
SDK (Coming soon)
- Added Breakable script
- Added Tooltips for a lot of components
- Added "Spawnpoint" to each item. This now adjusts the location/rotation of the object when spawned.
- Reworked ItemSpawner
- Removed ContainerSpawner (merged in to ItemSpawner)
- Armor modding support
- Dungeon/Area modding support
- New "ReflectionSorcery" component for Fake views.
- Added new Physics Material "Ceramic".