Swordai News

This patch includes the first portion of a server sharding system that will allow different areas in the tower to be controlled by different server processes, so that the overall number of simultaneous players and npcs in the dungeon can be greatly increased without performance issues. Note that within each regional server there is a single unique dungeon, so you can still control areas, contest the boss, etc. The only change is that now different server processes control different parts of the dungeon which will allow for a very large number of concurrent players.

In addition, this patch includes most of the client side features of the new ability loadout system but without the UI. Loadouts can currently only be changed via chat commands. The next patch will contain a set of prebuilt example loadouts that players will be able to switch between via chat commands. In the future loadouts will require crafting, equipping and upgrading abilities but the UI and server side code for that is still in progress.

I also implemented a number of smaller changes to the core gameplay based on player feedback from the June playtest. The most impactful of these are making the early release portion of swings blockable and adding a new "block assist" feature that will nudge your mouse input in the direction that blocks a swing of the person you are currently targetting if they are charging an attack or swinging and near you. The "block assist" is just strong enough to significantly reduce the frequency of minor input errors, most of the time you won't even realize it exists.

Finally, a significant portion of the server side system for securely managing player inventories is also functional now, but is hidden for the time being.

Changes:

• The tower entrance and the rest of the dungeon are sharded into two processes. A second sharding patch will come later this quarter that will split the dungeon itself across several processes as well.
  
• The client side loadout system is implemented but without UI.
  
• Implemented a "block assist" that makes it such that if your enemy is attacking with an overhead it is easier to block "up" and harder to block "up right" or "up left" while all 3 of the down blocks are totally unaffected.
  
• Changed the way your upper body rotation is replicated / smoothed. I think you should feel like you have significantly smoother control of your character
  
• Made attacks blockable during Swordai's equivalent of the "early release" attack phase.
  
• Fixed a bug with the overhead swing where the sword was turning off to late and you could hit someone in the shin with the recovery
  
• Made the sword turn on later when doing an overhead swing when you are looking up
  
• Changed the down left swing animation
  
• Made the up right and up left swings slightly floatier to allow for a bit more swing manipulation
  
• Added a limited turn cap effect to your camera while swinging so that people aren't confused. The "real" turn cap is enforced server side and is on your character, not your camera and that is unchanged.
  
• Completely removed the dead zone for mouse input in drag click mode at max sensitivity
  
• Starting a block cancels the hit reaction animation so if you try to start blocking shortly after getting hit it feels more responsive (shouldn't really affect gameplay too much, but might reduce partial blocks when you are getting comboed) and might make 1vX feel a bit better
  
• Added visual smoothing to the drag click direction indicator so it looks better at high sensitivities. Your actual mouse input it not smoothed, it just captures the mouse delta of the most recent frame, the change is purely cosemetic.
  
• Fixed a bug where if you got kick stunned while jumping you would hover in mid air until the stun ended.
  

Thanks to everyone who took part is this playtest, it was awesome playing with you all. Over the course of the week, about 1,000 chests were looted and millions of damage was dealt. The least killed boss was Korgothok with only 20 kills, followed by the puppeteer with 55 kills.

Over the next few months I'll primarily be focused on implementing the loadout / ability system and integrating it with the loot system. This will significantly expand the options for 1vX situations and in particular dealing with multiple NPCs, while also allowing players to augment their build to focus on particular play styles ranging from combo focused high damage builds, to more defensive, blocking oriented builds, and more.

During that time, I'll be running events every few weeks to test out and balance new abilities and collect feedback. We'll hop on and equip specific loadouts and either do team fights, 1v2s, duels, or dungeon runs. For more details be sure to join the Swordai discord.

Update 0.5.3 is out and contains a lot of polish as well as a few significant gameplay tweaks for the next playtest which will start later this week. Be sure to follow the game and to click "Request Access" for the playtest on the main steam page. You'll get an email when you get access to the playtest.

Here are the full patch notes.

• When you run out of tower time, rather than being removed from the tower immediately, you get the "Final Fury" status effect which drains your health continuously. The effect is removed if you do something to gain tower time (eg kill an something, loot a chest, etc). This allows you to potentially recover if you run out of time.
  
• All red portals now send you to the same spawn point if you follow someone within 30s of them teleporting
  
• You can now hold F or press and release F to interact with things like portals / chests / etc, before holding didn't work as one might expect
  
• If you tap an offhand ability and immediately release the button to cancel it, it only has a 1s cooldown, to prevent you from accidentally blowing your cooldown
  
• Significantly increased the time limit for inputting the code on puzzle doors
  
• Made it more clear that you should leave your home and go to the trail of initiation after completing the first stage of training
  
• Significantly increased the amount of tower time the killing most npcs gives.
  
• Fixed a bug where chests weren't scaling the tower time given based on how long it had been since they were looted
  
• Fixed a bug where leaving the tower server and rejoining could make your tower time not display properly
  
• Added a slider to change the overall game volume
  
• Added a new shrine buff that grants life steal on combo attacks only
  
• You now steal shrine buffs with their remaining duration as well as soul keys if you kill a player who has one and loot their crystal
  
• Made the initiation trial door only require 60 essence to open
  
• A lot of decoration / minor cosmetic improvements
  
• Increased shrine buff durations to 15 min
  
• Increased the absorption and reflection on the molten edge buff to 3
  
• Added achievements
  
• Many minor bug fixes
  

Super excited for the next playtest to start. It should be just a few days!

First of, I'm extremely excited to present the new official game trailer:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Update 0.5.0 is a major update as it has all the intended gameplay for the next playtest that should open up in roughly 2-3 weeks. All that is missing is some visuals / sounds and some polish. I will spend the next few weeks bug fixing / balancing / etc. based on everyone's feedback while I also flesh out the missing visuals / sounds.

Here are the full patch notes:

• Added a new section of the dungeon that is currently inbetween the two existing sections featuring axe traps, puzzles, a new mini boss and more
  
• Implemented a first pass at an intended loot mechanic. Chests increase in quality the longer they go with no one looting them. Right now this just affects essence, its mostly just to test out the code.
  
• Redid some of the animations and AI for the claw based enemies (the new mini boss is of this type)
  
• Added a knockback to kicks after finally figuring out the best way to make knockbacks buttery smooth. The mini-boss has a knock back based ability as well. In the future he will drop the ability shard for it and you will be able to equip it
  
• Some AI changes / bug fixes
  
• Implemented the randomization system for some aspects of the dungeon. Enemy spawns in certain areas and puzzle solutions randomize themselves as the game runs. This is pretty minor at the moment and mostly just testing out that the system works well.
  
• Added a server select for the tower, and am testing out multiple instances of the tower running in parallel on the same server. In the long term in won't work that way (different processes will handle different areas of the tower so rather than 8 processes running 8 tower instances, it would be 8 processes each controller 1/8th of a single big tower instance) but the current parallelization will work well for the next playtest.
  
• More sound customization for specific enemies including sounds for the claw lizards
  
• Many many small changes to the pretty much every level
  
• Some fairly minor performance optimizations
  

This patch includes a new boss fight, detailed decoration of the first tower section and the beginnings of the loot system. There is also substantial progress on the second section of the dungeon but that is hidden at the moment. Currently when you complete the first section, you skip the section section and go to the boss area.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Changes:

• Finished the entire decoration of the first section of the dungeon.
  
• Changed the "F to Interact" text to be contextual (eg the fountain says F to Drink) and removed some of the no longer needed instruction text.
  
• Added some pretty awesome corpse SFX/VFX and gave various NPCs different death animations
  
• Added a loot mechanism where some NPCs can drop a soul core and you can loot it and did the VFX/SFX for that
  
• Added a boss section to the dungeon, right now when you complete the initial section you skip straight to the area that has the boss
  
• Changed the end of "beginnings" to use the new loot mechanic on the lost soul that you defeat
  
• Made it so that when there are sub objectives are part of a multi-step objective you get a notice when a sub objective is completed
  
• Fixed a bug where you could sometimes crash when returning to the main menu (I think, if it happens to anyone, let me know)
  
• Fixed a bug where the block trainer in home was feinting
  
• Fixed a bug where if you went forward in the block trainer menu and then backwards you could access modes you hadn't unlocked
  
• A bunch of other minor changes / fixes