Before I go on to say anything about the new Build, I wanted to thank you guys for donating to the Red Cross. The money you gave will undoubtedly be appreciated by the people of Japan in these trying times. Thanks for your generosity, guys! We'll be posting a receipt as soon as we get one back from the Red Cross.
It’s been a few weeks since the last Build, and we’ve been hard at work on a shiny new build of Blade Symphony! This time around, we’ve added a whole bunch of things to give people more of a sense of progress and make your duels actually matter - the biggest thing you requested - including a currency system you can use to purchase swords (PS: this means stats are being reset - just a heads-up).
Download and Beta Invite
Blade Symphony Build 6 can be downloaded either as a standalone installer or you can just run Sidekick and update as usual! (You do not need the Build 1 installer if you use the standalone installer.)
(There's also a torrent download if you'd like to spare us a monstrous bandwidth bill.)
Oh, and... Don't have access to the beta? You might want to go here and input the following code: 0e485bbc222b82ed
Music
I thought I should mention the very talented Tom Stoffel has started working on a soundtrack for Blade Symphony:
You can already hear his work ingame on the main menu, so please let him know your appreciation!
A brand new currency system!
The first of these is that we’ve added a currency system to build on top of the XP and ranking systems we’d already introduced. You will now earn in-game currency called Notes (using the ɲ symbol for short), which you can use to unlock character customisation options. For now, the only thing you can buy are swords, but we’re contemplating extending the system to things like character skins, pre-fight announcement soundbytes and other goodies. Let us know if you have any suggestions for things that could be unlockable, by the way - we’re always looking for good feedback.
Swords are no longer just cosmetic!
They now have gameplay effects, too!
Each sword is tailored to a specific play-style and all of them are designed to be on an equal footing with the starting swords; but as a general rule, the more expensive the sword is, the more specialised it will be. As an example, the Legato Splice - one of the more expensive swords - charges its attacks 15% faster but only does 20/15/10 damage in exchange.
The three basic swords that players get for free (listed in the next section) have no stat modifications at all - they still use the 40/20/10 damage model that all swords used before this release. You can find a full list of the swords and their gameplay effects here.
You may also have noticed that we've added a new frontend to the stats site (pictured above). You can log in with your Steam community details (this is all handled securely through Steam's API, so there's no risk of your details being leaked to anyone) and buy swords straight from the website.
Unlockable swords!
We’ve added a few new sword models as well as drastically overhauled the sword selection UI to go with the new currency system - it’s still very WiP but it’s a small taste of the direction we want the Blade Symphony HUD to move in.
All players will now start out with three swords - the Black Rose’s Tone Death, the Vagrants’ Daito no Kagura and the Hokuten’s Serrated Serenade. Additional swords can be unlocked from the sword selection menu by spending the Notes you’ve won in battle!
And that about wraps it up. Here’s a full changelog, for those interested:
- Additions & Changes:
- Swords now have stats and each have different damage and abilities - see the stats site for a full list.
- Sword selection UI is revamped. It now displays stat information, price, etc.
- You can no longer change swords mid-duel. It will change the sword for you after the duel is over. FFA is not affected.
- You now earn Notes (money) for duels. 100 Notes per win, 10 Notes per loss.
- Added wind impact audio for moves which move the character forward very quickly. (Woosh!)
- Added a new swords: Tone Death; Serrated Serenade; Daito no Kagura; Legato Splice.
- Added second Phalanx skin, Dragoon.
- Added music to the main menu, authored by the very talented Tom Stoffel.
- Changed UI sounds to be stylized around
- Removed Dyssonnance (Dystopia Katana,) Steve’s Iron Sword (originally Minecraftian Minuet,) and Cadeceus Chord until they’re properly balanced.
- Combos and damage output are not displayed on the printout HUD.
- Non combo attacks are no longer displayed, but can still be shown via bb_printdamageoutput to display all damage dealt. Debug only option to be used on listen servers.
- Added a bb_debug_presstime to display the actual time between clicking and when an attack is executed.
- Added a bb_debug_recovery to display how much time a player spent recovering from getting hit.
- Simplified round start information.
- Slight nerf to Reverse Left Tier 1 by increasing its cooldown time.
- Simplified round start screen.
Bugs:- Fixed some scaling and alignment issues with the Caduceus Chord.
- Fixed an issue with Ryoku not properly fading out in FFA.
- Fixed a bug where attacking while noclipping causes you to become stuck charging.
- Balanced Right Tier 2 now animates slower but the tracer is now more accurate.
- Balanced Left Tier 1 and Balanced Right Tier 1 both have their warm-up time increased so they don’t deal damage when the arm is held behind the body.
- Starting a duel in FFA will now cancel any charging attack.
- Fixed a bug where tracers UV mapping was not being set correctly.
