Mahou Arms
Status Update: Susan Animation Work-In-Progress
Getting Susan's animations in-game! Note that this is early work and is missing refinements and finalization.
(Example: there's a bug that makes the hitstop feel longer and the animations are missing physics.)
Status Update: Susan Model WIP
September 2021 Update (v.0.3.1176)
Changelog:
- Amelia's sprinting animation has been tweaked
- Additional force feedback effects added
- Slight tweaks to lighting in Rockefallen Level
- Fix: QTE Widgets no longer poll all key mappings every frame (this was causing major performance issues in some areas)
- Fix: Razorpetal's AOEAttack doesn't always trigger
- Fix: When you pause during the Chapter 1 end dialogue sequence the game soft locks in the pause menu
- Fix: Yellow missile during baroness fight cannot be locked on to
- Fix: Players with old saves are reporting Sprint issues. Please let us know if you still have this issue after this patch.
- Fix: amelia washed out by incredibly bright camera light in extra mission dialogue
- Fix: player clips through some pillars in chapter 4
- Fix: triggering both alien keys too fast and walking through the big door will get the camera stuck in LookAtActor mode
- Fix: amelia's guns don't show up for the first attack after linking from ground pound
- Fix: some projectiles exploding on cutscene enter even if they've already been blown up
- Fix: some parameters in placed alien keys in dining room got messed up
- Fix: large encounter area in Rockefallen can despawn when the player camera is close to some of the walls
- fix: Ingame choice menus sometimes don't hide the cursor when its' done
- potential fix: Items are being launched super high sometimes when spawned from item pickups
- fix: big circles in reflection capture in diningroom in rockefallen
- fix: Clicking "no" on "no return" section softlocks ch 4
- tweaked: Slightly buffed Rockefallen boss health
- fix: grabbing the gold key in rk_rockefellerShops01 gets confirmation screen then text box, but this hides the cursor before the player can press "OK" sometimes
Chapter 4 Build Out! (0.3.1146)
Additional Changelog:
- Screen Weather Effects setting added to Graphics Settings
- Graphics settings grouped
- Fix: various out-of-bounds bugs
- Fix: transforming and shooting enemies with guns, then transforming back will get Amelia stuck facing the enemy she shot until another attack is executed
- Fix: pressing jump and light attack at the same time no longer gives Amelia an undesirable amount of height
- Fix: Collision spot for the golden key at the parking lot on Chapter 4 persists after picking it up
- Fix: Carnassus's swords spawning attack sticks to the ground better
- Fix: Carnassus's encounter no longer has cars where she can get stuck
- Fix: Turret enemy can't get up after certain attacks, and cannot be launched with launch attacks
- Fix: Amelia can move while loading saves
- Fix: Sounds can be heard during initial loading
- Dialogue portraits added to Extra Mission 1
- Various UI Fixes
- Various Sound Mixing fixes, especially during loading
- Probes in Ch.4 Boss Stairway removed
- Fix: Extra Mission 1 Player Spawn was set to wrong place
- Fix: Dining Room Alien Key Meshes invisible
- Some optimizations to CPU thread related to fetching enemies
- Fix: Probe's ball attack gets stuck when cutscenes start, sometimes sticks to walls
- Fix: The massive syringe outside the stairs to the Gold Baroness sometimes disappears
- Tweaks to item spawn rates
Mahou Arms Chapter 4 Releases on August 6
Mahou Arms will have a major update on August 6! This update will add a new chapter to the story in addition to polish and tweaks to existing art, gameplay, sound, & music. It also includes a wide array of bugfixes and optimizations.
Featured Additions:
- Chapter 4. Unravel the chains that control humanity in New Inverness.
- Four new 'Locks: Ophanim, Carnassus, Flamethrower Corrupts, and Mahou Arms's first boss, the Rockefallen's Gold Baroness.
- Full Audio Rework (Thanks, Strikecast!)
Other Changes since 0.2.961:
- Soft checkpoints added to Chapter 1 (Auto-respawn at some locations if player dies, restoring their inventory)
- Amelia's Air Heavy in normal mode is now a different attack
- Chapter 3 BGM changed
- Option to continue on from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3 and Chapter 3 to Chapter 4 when in-between missions
- Double jump no longer uses the same charges pool as air dashes
- Infinite air travel distance should no longer be possible by chaining Amelia's light air attack with itself
- Better quality models in some scenes using dynamic tesselation at High material quality setting
- Better handling for resolutions wider and narrower than 16:9
- Data Diaries have been added. These are used for lore and quests.
- Characters and Enemies now have more specific vulnerabilities to different attacks; health damage is separate from vulnerability to being hitstunned, stunned, grabbed, or launched. Different attacks are classified as weak or strong Physical or Magical attacks. Add better telegraphing for this in the future if it's not obvious enough in gameplay based on player feedback.
- UI reskin / rework on a couple of UI elements
- There is now a Holster management UI in the inventory for quickly removing a lot of items from the Holster at once.
- Lock On cursor now sometimes targets a more relevant part of an enemy instead of always the center of the character
- Inventory Details can now be scrolled with gamepad
- Characters now tick at max 16ms intervals (60FPS). The rest of the game still ticks beyond that if framerate is above 60FPS. This was done in the hopes of more consistent animation timing and significantly less CPU load.
- Knockback should no longer scale with game's Turbo setting
- Many bug fixes
Mahou Arms Update Preview
Sorry for the lack of updates lately, we are working on the game as much and as quickly as our small team is able to and sometimes posting updates to Steam falls by the wayside. For more frequent updates, follow the Mahou Arms twitter, which we're able to update more often and easily with progress.
That aside! There's a new update coming soon (not sure quite when yet) so we wanted to share some of the contents of the incoming update.
First off, there will be a new level: the Rockfallen building. Here's some screenshots of it!
Also, there's three new enemies in the update. The Ophanim, a mobile enemy who's position you'll have to be careful to keep track of:
[previewyoutube="jGuSaz3VR7c;full"]
The Carnassus, a heavy enemy you'll prefer to fight one on one.
[previewyoutube="RHBb2fnyDv8;full"]
And a flamethrower variant of the corrupted office lady, you'll want to keep them stunned!
[previewyoutube="sjMdG5JSheY;full"]
We're also working on a bossfight at the end of the level. We don't have a video yet since it's still a work in progress, but here's some concept art!
That's all for now! Thank you all for your support and patience with us! In the future we'll try to post Steam news updates more often.
Resolution of Legal Threat and Resumption of Steam Availability
As a quick recap, on June 25th we received a threat of legal action against us over unauthorized use of copyrighted material from a past contractor. Over the next few days we ceased distribution of Mahou Arms, took steps to remove the material in question from the game, and attempted to communicate with the owner of the copyright. We updated you on June 27th, letting you know that we had removed all of the copyrighted content in question and had given then owner of the copyright until today to respond and verify that the content had been removed.
Today we received an email from the copyright owner. They refused to review the new build of the game and continued to demand payment. We are therefore presuming their affirmation that the game no longer contains any assets over which they own copyright. Therefore, we will be asking Valve to resume distribution of Mahou Arms. We are not sure how quickly they will respond, but we expect the game to be available for purchase again within the next few days. The copyright owner may chose to proceed with legal action, but it should not affect distribution of the game as it is now, since it no longer contains their copyrighted content.
Please note that because we've had to replace some sounds on such short notice, they may not be ideal. Thankfully, we were working on getting new sounds commissioned anyway.
In any case, thank you all for your patience with this matter.
Update on Temporary Unavailability Due to Legal Action
I wanted to give you all an update on the progress we've made regarding the threat of legal action against us.
Since replying via email to the composer's initial threat, we have not received any further communication from them. However, using our version control system, we were able to compile a list of all assets the composer added or modified in the game. This has allowed us to remove all audio content generated by them and review their other work to determine whether it would meet the standards required for copyright to apply.
We're happy to announce that we've now replaced all of their sound assets and have found that their other contributions were not unique or complex enough to qualify for copyright protection. In addition, much of their other work had already been redone, modified, or was no longer in use anyway.
We have made this new game build available to the composer to verify that their copyrighted material is no longer present. We have given them a deadline of Tuesday, June 30th, 2020 to respond. If we do not hear from them, we will assume that they have verified that the new build is free of their copyrighted material.
Thanks to our version control system, we feel confident that we have removed all of the composer's copyrighted material and therefore, if in the future we receive any additional claims from the composer, we will not take down the game as we have done in this instance without a court order. We will investigate their claims and if they prove credible, we will replace the content and release an update. We have given the composer the opportunity to provide a list of material over which they own copyright, but they have not done so yet. Therefore we consider this policy to be reasonable.
It is still possible that the composer will proceed with legal action against us, however we do not think they will win if the matter goes to court. We have ample evidence that we have acted properly over the course of our communications and we took immediate action to stop distribution of the game and remove their copyrighted material as soon as they informed us that we were no longer permitted to use it.
Thank you all very much for your patience with this matter. You should hear from us again on Tuesday, or earlier if there are new developments.
Temporary Unavailability Due to Legal Action
First, we've emailed Valve to temporarily remove the game from Steam. We are still developing the game and it will be available again in a month or two. Read on for the reason behind this.
Unfortunately, I must inform you that we recently received a threat of legal action against us from a composer who worked with us for a short period over 2 years ago.
This composer was informally contracted to produce sounds and music and implement them into the game. We agreed to pay them £31.50 per hour and limited them to 30 hours a month. If they needed to work more than 30 hours in a month, they were to ask for permission. This was to control costs since they were being paid a high hourly rate and this was early in the game’s development.
The composer ended up working with us for about 4 months before we asked them to leave the project on May 2nd, 2018 for unacceptable behavior and jeopardizing our relationship with our publisher.
They billed us for 82 hours of work over three months (we did not get a bill for the final month). They exceeded their 30 hour limit in one month by 7 hours, and presumably would have exceeded their 30 hour limit for the final month if they had of sent us a bill for it. They claim that our main artist gave them permission to exceed the limit, but our artist did not have the legal authority to make financial decisions for the company. So, we reduced their 37 hour bill to 30 hours and also assumed that their final bill would hit the 30 hour limit as well. In the end, we paid them for 105 hours of work, which works out to £3,307.50 GBP or around $4,616.25 USD.
Due to the capping of their bills, they claim that we have underpaid them by at least 7 hours (because we did not receive a final bill, we don’t know their exact claim regarding underpayment). They also claim that we agreed to pay severance when we hired them, and although we did mention being open to the idea, we did not agree to it explicitly. They also felt that they deserved two months worth of severance, which at their average monthly pay would have been at least £1,653.75 (or around $2,308.13 USD). This seemed an unreasonable demand for a part time, contract position. We attempted to negotiate a lower severance, but in the end I got frustrated with what I felt was unreasonable greed and chose not to pay for anything more than the 105 hours previously mentioned.
After paying them for these hours, we moved to remove their content from the game, since we felt it was likely they would eventually either demand it removed or demand extra payment to be allowed to keep using it. We removed their music and thought that we had removed their sound effects and other contributions as well, but now the composer has come forward claiming that we had failed to do so. They are seeking extra compensation and damages resulting from the unauthorized use of their assets. It is our position that we paid the agreed amount for their work and, up until now, they never stated that we could not use their assets in the game. We are in contact with them now, but until this is resolved, we will need to temporarily take the game offline until we can confirm that all their contributions have been removed.
We apologize for this inconvenience. When you purchased Mahou Arms on Steam, you trusted us to use the money toward the development of the game in the most efficient way possible. This is what we are trying to accomplish by not giving into these demands.
Thank you for your understanding, and we will keep you updated.
Build 0.2.954 Live!
Featured tweaks and additions:
- New Style Meter & Style Rank Logic
- Enemy death explosions
- Probe's ball shooting attack has been replaced with one where they charge a larger ball that homes in on nearby enemies for 3 seconds after it is shot before traveling in a straight line for the rest of its lifespan
- Probe has a new melee attack
-MP system Framework
-Perfect dodge now replenishes 100MP when executed. It's hardcoded as an ability currently, but players will be able to swap perfect dodge bonuses in the future.
Additions Since 0.2.931 (Last Bleeding Build):
-Probe and Corrupt OL detect when enemies are in their personal space and act aggressively.
-Probe's ball shooting attack has been replaced with one where they charge a larger ball that homes in on nearby enemies for 3 seconds after it is shot before traveling in a straight line for the rest of its lifespan
-Probe has a new melee attack
Additions Since 0.2.886 (Last Steam Build):
-Tweakable sharpen filter to help remove oversmoothing from temporal antialiasing
-New Style Rank
-new style rank UI
-style rank grants points depending on how frequently the last attack has been used. If an attack is used multiple times it will stop gaining points from that attack, so players are encouraged to mix it up
-Damage multiplier up to 3x depending on style rank
-tweaks to combo cooldown, point gain parameters
-rank decay will accelerate if player does not deal damage for 6s
-getting hit will reduce ranks by up to to 2 rank depending on gameplay difficulty
-perfect dodge immediately gains a lot of style
-MP system Framework:
-MP is broken up into bars. Each bar is 100MP. MP will replenish up to 1 bar when empty, but filling more than one bar will require items (in the future) or certain abilities. MP bar will be upgradable in the future.
-Ability System Framework
-Abilities will be equippable in the future. Currently Scan is hardcode equipped. Note this has no visible UI yet
-Perfect dodge now replenishes 100MP when executed. It's hardcoded as an ability currently, but players will be able to swap perfect dodge bonuses in the future.
Tweaks since 0.2.931:
-Probe's repositioning between attacks is faster and travels less distance
-Hitbox tweaks Probe, Corrupt OL, Amelia Attacks
-damage and hitstop tweaks
-Corrupt OL's stun animations have been replaced with ones that allow them to be hit when they are stunned
-probe ball explosion effect tweaked
-style meter tweaks
-gun is now automatic when light attack button is held down
-a 25% and 50% damage penalty is applied to damage at Hard and Nightmare difficulty levels
-gun damage now gives the user 6 style points instead of 10
-Autoaim has been toned down a bit
-New player and enemy collision logic, and better perch and character Pushforce parameters
-enemies have weight classes and it affects how easily they are pulled by weapons and pushed around by the player
-escape button now acts as back button in menus
-hitflash has been added
Tweaks since 0.2.886:
-motion blur dialed down
-renamed "motion blur" to "motion blur quality" for more clarity
-game no longer mutes when focus is lost. Better behavior for streamers playing in windowed or borderless windowed mode
-some UI elements have been scaled up a little and their fonts / styling tweaked a little for better legibility
-Corrupt and Probe's health have been dropped 500 points
-Gun damage adds less style rank points than other attacks but increases the combo delay, making it better for extending combos than other attacks
-Hit effects are more visible (their light influence has been increased)
-Enemies crack and explode when they're defeated
-Enemies can no longer be juggled after they're defeated
-Environment art tweaks / additions
-camera shake tweaks
-Time of Day length doubled
-Scan ability now also shows Save Points & Hscenes
-Some environment props are now destructible
-Save point added to downtown shops area, near the dialogue portion with Piro
-hair fake translucency effect added
-game defaults to 60fps fps cap for more consistent frame timing. User can override in settings
-Lock on now prioritizes closer enemies better
Fixes & Optimizations since 0.2.931 (Last Bleeding Build):
-tracking lasers should now go through enemies but block on player character
-sound plays and icon disappears during loading: sounds are now muted during loading (music only); can't do much about icon. On most systems the icon only disappears very briefly
-you can open the menu as the end of chapter 3 cutscene starts up, this locks you into the loading screen until you exit out of the menu.
-various out of bounds fixes
-when transformed, it's possible to clip the camera into basically every wall, this can only be done while transformed
-Text for Stay and Leave is very tiny and hard to decipher between the two, had clicked stayed and anticipated to leave too often: font changed, background darkened, and order swapped. hopefully this is more legible
-the dropped guns from dashing while transformed/transforming can clip into the ground and walls making them in red inside of walls or the floor
-The aerial light homes in on the last enemy you hit, rather than whatever you're closest to/targeting. This includes locking on to dead enemies if that's the last thing you've hit.
-Dpad isn't working when trying to confirm changes to graphic settings
-you can still surf on your guns if you do instant-surf (dash -> heavy 1f) while transformed
-if a player launches in normal mode, then the launch animation can be played again after a jump
-DSA fires are being triggered when they shouldn't be, also they block IK traces
-various optimizations in pier and downtown areas
-can dodge certain attacks by just doing the first L attack at a certain timing?: enemies track better now, so this should be fixed...
-The fix that stops you from throwing your guns also disables your ability to chain from a heavy attack into any transformed attack
-zoom is uncapped in manga cutscenes
-amelia spins around in normal mode: more natural spin rate
-health icon wasn't reflecting style input state
-launch01 can occasionally trigger without a weapon
-When locked on, sometimes the camera will flicker back and forth between two positions when an object is between the character and enemy at just the right spot
Fixes & Optimizations since 0.2.886 (Last Steam Build):
-If a player launches in normal mode, then the launch animation can be played again after a jump
-various places where player or enemies can get stuck between containers in ny_pier
-out of bounds in MIS_ST_01 and MIS_ST_03
-can jump over force fields in MIS_ST_03 Rhyme's Square encounter
-mission says new york at the beginning, when it shouldn't
-spamming buttons during load still allows moves to happen while the screen is black
-softlock with pause menu when entering / exiting menus quickly
-out of bounds in downtownstops
-not switching properly between gamepad and kb+mouse
-can pause during loading of MIS_ST_03, which results in black screen without the pause menu showing up
-running to the save point immediately after starting MIS_ST_03 skips receiving the quest altogether and breaks progression
-hitboxes stick around with some cancels
-patched a couple environment art holes in MIS_ST_03 area
-can get stuck in shoulder cam mode
-old runstop still plays in some scenarios
-groundpound decal spawns sideways when floor is set to "no collision"
-normal groundpound does three times the damage
-moonwalk sprint if joystick is gradually returned to center while sprinting
-Various game thread (CPU) optimizations on gameplay actors / AI
-Various UI (CPU) optimizations on ingame HUD widgets
-can throw guns instead of axe in some heavy attacks
-amelia keeps running if bonfire is triggered while input is in a direction
-fillrate optimizations for rain effects and ny_pier area
-running into benches no longer launches them