Heya everyone!
We've just released a new update for Blade Symphony!
We expect to continue this trend of releasing updates every Monday.
Changes since Patch 1:
Bug Fixes:
Fix FFA duels forcing to Classic Style in serverside, regardless of client option.
Fix matches not ending when map timer was zero. We're hearing this is still happening after Patch 2, however, so we're hoping that Patch 3 will finally address this.
Remove ragdolls of players that are spectators within a match.
In workshop previews, don't show character model when previewing a mask.
FFA scoreboard shows the correct value for duel victories.
Standard Ryoku Kabuki returns as a free unlockable item.
We hope you have a lot of fun playing this update, you can join our Discord if you want to get involved, give feedback and join our community!
Have fun!
Patch 1 Hotfix Released!
A little more than 12 hours ago, we released a nice big Patch to the Harmonious Prelude update. I also went into detail about what is going on with the Item Store, Workshop and the future of Blade Symphony development. Check it out here:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/bladesymphony/announcements/detail/1690432065523584769
Additionally, we just pushed a small hotfix that should hopefully address one of the known issues in those patch notes with regards to ragdolls appearing from other arenas.
Workshop, Itemstore and Harmonious Prelude Patch 1 release
Hey there everyone,
First, I wanted to say thank you to the people who supported us and the release of the Harmonious Prelude update for Blade Symphony. It was a stressful, albeit fun, week of last minute testing and patching. We’re very fortunate to have had the turnout we did, and are happy the update is finally out. Before I delve into the the release of Patch 1, I want to address a few topics. These are things that I really should have provided more clear information on prior to release, but I got caught up in the work leading up to the release.
What the Harmonious Prelude was and wasn’t.
Back in March, I made a news post discussing the Future of Free-To-Play. Under the Release section, I made it clear that we would first be releasing a large update, Harmonious Prelude. I tried to make it clear in Discord and in news posts, that this was the predecessor to Blade Symphony going Free-To-Play. I apologize if I wasn’t clear enough.
Here’s why we did Harmonious Prelude:
The feeling was, and still is, that with a big update and a price reduction from $4.99 to $0.99, that this would feel like a good bargain for new players. However, some still feel like it’s not good enough for current players. Which leads me into:
What is going on with the Item Store
Free-To-Play games just get more players. Period. Lower barrier of entry, means more people downloading and trying. However, in order to sustain a Free-To-Play game, that went from making little money to no money, the developers have to sell something. Since Steam doesn’t offer a micro-currency system, we had to get rid of the in-game notes currency (RIP.) However, it meant that we could use the Steam Inventory Service to sell items we felt were premium. Upon launch, we went live with four items on the Item Store.
Unfortunately, these were already items that were available for players prior to the Harmonious Prelude update. The long-term plan was for a variation of these items to be available on the item store, but they were not completed in time. For example, a variation of the Ryoku Kabuki mask will be available on the Item Store. Here’s what it looks like so far:
When the new variations for Ryoku’s Kabuki Mask, Resonant Phase, Flame Song and Cardboard Tube are complete, then these variations will appear for anyone who purchased them. The original variations will be put back into the game as items freely available to unlock. As much work as we could to improve the pipeline for new content, I didn’t expect that many of our old models and source files would be in a bad state. Many of them need to be re-made from scratch, or we don’t have the original assets for. My hope is that we can get all of these items complete within the next two weeks.
Workshop changes, and returning to normalcy
Many people are understandably frustrated with the lack of ability to use the Steam Workshop like it was prior to the Harmonious Prelude. Please do not fret, it will be like the old days soon. There are two types of Steam Workshops: Subscription-based and Voting-based.
Prior to Harmonious Prelude, Blade Symphony had a Subscription-based workshop. This meant that, anyone could subscribe to an item, and they would have it until they unsubscribed. The downside to this, was that authors could not sell their work if they wanted to. For a Free-To-Play game, it wouldn’t make sense not to allow authors to charge. After all, anyone who does work on the game, should be paid. It will help support Blade Symphony longer term.
Now, Blade Symphony has a Voting-based workshop, similar to Rust or Team Fortress 2. This means that the community must vote for an item to get implemented into the game. Once it is approved, the developers work with the Workshop Author to implement it, and it is released with a new game update. However, the downside is, that we’re not able to offer items for free (apologies if I said otherwise, I was misinformed.) Even if we could offer items for free, it would severely screw up the economy by having free items that are marketable floating around.
Our answer to this, is to integrate it directly into the level-progression system. So now, if an item gets voted up, the author will work with the developers to add it so that anyone can unlock it based on their level. We’ll also offer the chance for items to unlock as a playtime reward (x items per week for playing,) but that’s new, so more on that later.
In summation, in order to allow Workshop Authors to sell their content (if they wish,) we needed to move over to a more flexible Workshop type. Once Valve gets back to us on approving items, I will be working with authors to implement their items, and hopefully you can wear construction cones and television sets on your head once more.
What’s happening now
There’s been some bumps in the road. However, we’re committed to this game for the foreseeable future, and Free-To-Play is still in the cards. Since we’re not dealing with a completely different Steam App (The Blade Symphony Beta,) we’re going to be releasing weekly updates. My hope is to release a patch every Monday that represents the last week of work.
As far as what we’re tackling? Right now, it’s not very clear. We have a good amount of bugs and small fixes that we know we want to get in, that either were too low priority to get in with the Harmonious Prelude patch, or things that we only discovered once the patch came out.
After that’s done, we’ve merged in Valve’s new Panorama code, which will make creating and modifying menus (something we need to be better at, prior to becoming a Free-To-Play title) much easier. Additionally, we’re having conversation about doing further changes to the content pipeline so that our artists can create new content directly from their modeling and texturing program of choice. Additionally, we’re eyeing some game modes for integration, and a potential new platform.
Patch 1 Release
On to the exciting stuff! After about three weeks of taking a break, and doing a lot of necessary back-end work, we put time into fixes and updates last week. We’ve released Patch 1 and are already hard at work on a Patch 2 release for next Monday.
Changes since Release Candidate 4 Changes
Fixes
Known Issues
FREE WEEKEND, MASSIVE UPDATE! Harmonious Prelude for Blade Symphony is out, and on a Free Weekend!
After three years of hard work, learning, and a lot of mistakes, the Harmonious Prelude update to Blade Symphony is out NOW! And to celebrate, we're having a FREE WEEKEND to invite everyone to play. We're so happy for the results, and will be doing weekly updates, we can't wait for you to try it!
Free Weekend THIS WEEKEND, RC6 and Language Support!
This is an incredibly busy week for us, putting final touches on the build, for this week's release of the Harmonious Prelude update! What better way to encourage people to play Blade Symphony, than with a Steam Free Weekend! Alongside this Thursday's release at 10am US Pacific Standard Time, Blade Symphony is taking part in a free weekend to celebrate the update!
Get a look at our latest work on the Beta, since we've released our second-to-last Release Candidate (before "gold master,") on Steam. Update now to get the latest, the changelog is below.
Finally, WE REALLY NEED YOUR HELP!
If you're a very detail oriented person, with experience in spreadsheets, large text files and Regex, OR you're someone who knows a non-English language very well, we need help with putting Blade Symphony into as many languages as possible!
Slowly, more languages are being imported from our translation tool to various Google Documents located here. Anyone can view, but not anyone can edit. If you would like to help in some form or fashion, please talk to us on our Discord! The more languages we have, the more inviting this is for a broader audience.
Changes since Release Candidate 5
Changes
Release Date, Trailer and RC5 for Harmonious Prelude!
We're coming to you with a special update today. Not only another Release Candidate update, as we're two weeks since the last one was released, but a teaser trailer as well! This video is hopefully the first of many, to show changes we've made in the Harmonious Prelude update over the last two years. Expect more in the coming weeks that will explain these changes.
Check out the trailer below for the Release Date for the Harmonious Prelude update to Blade Symphony!
We're throwing a hotfix out there for all you lovely people, because we want to make sure our super awesome Linux Mint, Ubuntu and other Debian/Ubuntu based distro friends are supported.
There's also a few other changes that we managed to get in over the weekend that we're sharing with you.
Harmonious Prelude: Release Candidate 3 is out, and needs YOU.
Not even a week after putting Release Candidate 2 update into your hands, we've got another! Mostly this week, we spent time working to get networking and prediction to feel as good, if not better, than the current version on Steam.
As always, please provide us feedback and help us hunt down bugs, by joining our Discord server.
If you haven’t signed up to try the Harmonious Prelude update, then head here!
Changelog since Release Candidate 2
Changes
Bug Fixes
Release Candidate 2 for Harmonious Prelude!
Hot on the heels of the initial Release Candidate update for the upcoming Harmonious Prelude update, is another Release Candidate build! Hop in our Discord server if you’re looking for opponents or want to get information on the latest changes.
If you haven’t signed up to try the Harmonious Prelude update, then head here!
