This Summer we introduced a new type of distinction for local events called the Make Your Mark series. Events with this banner award a prize like no other – a chance for the first place finisher to create their own skin with the developers, custom taunt and all.
After a hard fought battle at Xanadu's Elemental Rivalries, our first MYM victor stood tall. To immortalize Penguin in Rivals of Aether history we present without further ado - Penguin Absa:
Penguin's victory is everyone's victory, and this skin is now available for free on Steam. Download and enjoy it today right here:
Keep your eye on the Steam announcements page to look for more upcoming Make Your Mark events if you want your own chance to get a skin in the game.
Other New Steam Store Skins
Along with Penguin Absa, we're also releasing 4 additional skins for the first time on the Steam store. These skins were originally made as a way to support community events and have helped fund player travel reserves and prize pools at over 7 tournaments.
Now that their time in compendiums is over, we've decided to move them to the Steam store due to popular demand from players looking to spend Steam balance on skins. Arcade Elliana, Shine Zetterburn, Summit Orcane, and Arcade Maypul are now available on the Steam store for $2.99 each. In addition to these changes, our 3 other skins released during Early Access are going up from $1.99 to $2.99 to standardize skin prices.
Now that players have gotten some game time with our latest character, Shovel Knight, we have a few updates we wanted to squeeze in before our next major event. This includes a new way to spend your Aether coins along with some balance updates. Stay safe during any upcoming Heat Waves and read on for the full notes below.
New Profile Icons and Icon Shopping
You can now shop for profile icons with all those Aether coins you've been hoarding! In any online mode, scroll through your icon pages to see purchasable ones designated by a golden lock. These feature non-playable characters you might recognize from story mode and even others you might not be so familiar with from throughout the world of Aether.
Whew this one's pretty pricey. Who is that guy anyway?
Halloweeen Skins
You might have noticed these snuck in during a hotfix, but if not, our Halloween skins are here to begin their reign of terror for the Halloween season. You can choose these skins in any game mode (including ranked) where these colors will be available until the next season rotation.
Gameplay Changes
Patch 1.4.0 - For Shovelry!
It's been a wild summer packed with plenty of Rivals events and announcements, and we don’t plan to stop anytime soon. Strap in and and get ready for the largest patch we've had all year with a brand new guest character, fresh stages, updated animations, and lots more!
Shovel Knight Delves into Rivals of Aether
The wielder of the legendary Shovel Blade joins the roster as our final guest in a collaboration between Dan Fornace LLC and Yacht Club Games. Shovel Knight is available now for $4.99 on Steam, which includes Shovel Knight himself and the standalone Troupple Pond stage.
As always, you can try Shovel Knight for free in our character tutorial section.
New Stages
Two completely new stages have been added featuring areas from both Sylvanos’ and Elliana’s story. You can unlock these stages yourself by purchasing (or already owning) the Sylvanos and Elliana character DLC.
Fight in the deadly undergrowth of the Aetherian Forest on “The Forest Floor”. Make sure you keep an eye on the local flora in Aether Mode, or you’ll find out firsthand the reason the Tree Dwellers never venture below.
Visit the Steampunk town where Elliana built her infamous mech. Fight on the city skyline and across an ongoing delivery operation in the bustling city of “Julesvale”.
As our stage list grows we’ll continue to evaluate its competitive impact. In line with that goal, we’ve also added an additional stage ban this patch (upping the bans to three) along with these exciting new locales.
Game Engine Update
We've been hard at work on a game engine upgrade all summer, and are pleased to announce that GameMaker Studio 2 is back. Once again, this should provide immediate improvements to help gameplay run smoother for most players, as well as set us up for future upgrades and additional platforms.
If you have trouble launching the game, controller problems, or any other issues on the newest patch - please run DXDiag and send us some information about your PC by using the “Save All Information” button. To run DXDiag simply type ‘DXDiag’ into your start bar.
Other General Changes
Character Specific Changes
From Hero to Rival: The Development of Shovel Knight as a Rivals of Aether Character
It’s true! Everyone’s favorite spade-swinging protagonist will be joining the Rivals cast this September! We could not be more excited to bring Shovel Knight to the game, and have been working like crazy to ensure that he not only lives up to the hype, but is true to the character you know and love.
In fact, we want to do something we’ve never done before, and take you on a little behind the scenes journey into the process of bringing Shovel Knight to life as a Rivals character. Rather than just describe the process, we want you to hear directly from the folks who made this all possible. So, we asked some of our awesome team to share their own experience in developing our latest guest character.
The answer here is, of course, “because he’s awesome!” However, Dan had a bit more insight on what makes the character an ideal choice as a guest character. To him, there were three main draws to Shovel Knight as a playable fighter:
Of course, once the team chose to make Shovel Knight playable in Rivals, they had to actually, y’know, make him.
Settling on the Shop Design
Making a guest character is a collaborative process. Since the team is borrowing a pre-existing character from a popular franchise, Shovel Knight’s original dev team needs to make sure that the soul of the character remains intact when translating him into a brand new genre.
Trevor said, “Shovel Knight’s shop mechanic came around after we tried two other designs first, and I think it’s by far the most interesting of the three.” That iterative process was important, because the team needed to find a way to make Shovel Knight fit within Rivals’ unique gameplay while still making fans of his original game feel as though they were playing the same character.
Dan explained that this was particularly difficult with Shovel Knight because he is essentially the “Mario” of his series. “He is the balanced, traditional character that balances against the rest of the Shovel Knight cast. That would be great if we were doing a roster of indie game characters where Shovel Knight could be one of the main mascots and have a traditional moveset. But because we wanted a character that stood out from the rest of the Rivals with a new mechanic, we had to come up with ideas that gave him a unique style while also pulling from Shovel Knight for inspiration”
This is where the Shop design came in. It retains the soul of Shovel Knight’s progression and access to a wide array of tools, while making him a completely unique character within the Rivals roster. Of course, Rivals is still a fighting game, and some items that are wonderful in a platformer could have been problematic when ported to a platform fighter.
“A lot of Shovel Knight’s relics are projectiles,” said Trevor, “which didn’t really fit our vision of him, since we didn’t want another projectile-focused zoner. The task became a lot easier when we started adding Custom Knight’s relics to his moveset. Some relics, however, would be extremely busted if we kept their original functionality, like the War Horn or the Phase Locket, so we took some liberties and tweaked their properties to fit Rivals better.”
Pixel to Pixel Translation
While the character design team is busy playing with all of Shovel Knight’s moves, the art team has its own unique challenges. Someone unfamiliar with Rival’s art direction may think that Shovel Knight would be a simple character to translate to Rivals. After all, they’re both pixel art games!
Indeed, translating an existing character does speed up the concept process. The designers and artists can more easily communicate about how each move should look, because they have plenty of direct reference material from which to pull. However, Shovel Knight’s particular aesthetic presented the team with a new, but familiar challenge.
Ellian said, “it's the fact that he has armor that was the biggest challenge. As for Elliana, in pixel art it's really hard to animate "non-organic" elements while retaining the smooth animation style that characterizes Rivals. I just didn't want it to feel like those old retro games, where it's just different layered parts that moves independently. But I think we managed to avoid that without losing our style. The coolest part (and the hardest!) was being able to add Shield Knight as a summon parry. It might be the animation we spent the most time on, because we wanted her to be perfect!”
He’s So Cool!
Throughout their interviews, the team could barely contain their excitement for Shovel Knight. So, we decided to just let them gush about their work for a bit.
Dan: I think the coolest aspect is probably the simplest. His Down Air is his Shovel Drop and that move just opens up so much more of his gameplay. Whether its bouncing off projectiles or using it with the Dynamo Mail to trigger Aerial Strong attacks, there is so much you can do with Shovel Drop in both Shovel Knight and Rivals of Aether.
Trevor: I was impressed by how many different references we were able to fit in. Almost every single move is pulled from something in Shovel Knight’s game (down tilt is the only one that isn’t a reference to anything). Also Shovel Drop is just an incredibly fun move that I’m glad we could port almost directly from Shovel Knight.
Ellian: My favorite aspect of doing Shovel Knight for Rivals is how DOPE it was to work on such an iconic character. I get to make my own take on it! That's wild! Yacht Club's main feedback was "just make sure it fits Rivals, that's the most important", and having such freedom was great.
Marc: I think the only thing I can say, on my side, is that it's been really fun to draw him “interacting” with the other Rivals characters, getting to explore reaction from both him and the other characters. And that obviously I feel honored to be involved in any way with such an iconic character, being someone who played Shovel Knight as soon as it came out on 3DS years ago and really enjoying the game.
We cannot wait for you to get your hands on Shovel Knight. To stay up to date on the latest news, make sure to join our Discord and follow us on Twitter. While you’re there, let us know what about Shovel Knight has you most excited!
Shovel Knight joins the Rivals of Aether Roster!
Shovel Knight is joining the Rivals of Aether roster this fall! In a collaboration between Dan Fornace LLC and Yacht Club Games, Shovel Knight has been adapted to compete against the other Rivals. Shovel Knight will be available in September on Steam as a $4.99 DLC addition. It comes with the playable character Shovel Knight as well as the Troupple Pond stage from his game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4SFvmJ9NPE
Shovel Knight comes with a huge array of tools from his game and puts them all to use in Rivals of Aether. His attacks knock gems out of his opponents which he can collect to increase his treasure. By taunting, Shovel Knight can summon Chester and spend his treasure on upgrades. This allows players to customize each fight to their needs and experience even more of Shovel Knight's abilities.
We are incredibly excited to bring such a well-known and beloved character to Rivals of Aether. We are even more excited about the unique playstyle that he brings to the table. Many of his attacks seem simple on first glance but have intricacies in how you can use them, similar to his abilities in his own game. Shovel Knight's signature Shovel Drop is a big part of his game plan in Rivals of Aether and sets up for his combos.
While Shovel Knight is the last planned character addition to Rivals of Aether, the road does not end here. The team is gearing up for a Definitive Release in early 2019. This will come with all the characters, more online features, and Abyss Mode customizations for every character. We are very excited to be bringing the Definitive Edition to PC in 2019 and plan on bringing it to more platforms as well. Keep your eyes here to see where else you'll be able to grab Rivals of Aether in 2019!
Thank you for checking out Rivals of Aether. Let's get Shoveling!
Patch 1.3.5 Notes: Don't Mine If I Do
GMS2 Migration Complete
It's our first patch on an upgraded engine - that's right - we've completed our move to GameMaker Studio 2! This is good news as you'll see some immediate benefits like texture updates and other optimizations to help gameplay run smoother. This also sets us up further down the road to bring Rivals to more platforms.
If you have trouble launching the game, graphical issues, or controller problems on the newest patch please run DXDiag and send us a screenshot of your system and display tabs. To run DXDiag simply type 'DXDiag' into your start bar.
Moonwalking
We’ve added even more movement options to Rivals this patch with the advent of moonwalking. This advanced tech is great for microspacing or when you just want to show off.
Japanese Localization
RIVALS OF AETHER is now available in Japanese! We’re excited to announce that our first localization efforts are complete, allowing players to switch from English to Japanese text through the in-game options menu.
Character Specific Notes
1.3.3 Patch Notes
Now that the dust has settled from our recent major update, we've had some time to squash a few bugs. Thanks to everyone who helped report these. Please continue to send us your suggestions and feedback so we can keep Rivals excellent.
Bugfixes
Patch 1.3.2
We've got a small patch today featuring some quality of life changes, a few bugfixes, and other balance changes we've made in respect to Sylvanos' and Elliana's launch last week. There's also some fixes for controller issues that had arisen from our revamp last patch. If you're looking for older notes since there's been a few patches recently, here's 1.3.0 and 1.3.1.
Controller Support
Last week patch 1.3.0 revamped how Rivals detects controllers, allowing players to use Dinput and Xinput devices at the same time without setting a controller mode. This also solved one of the largest common controller issues in Rivals where crashes would occur when players were added or removed (more commonly seen during live events).
Thanks to players' feedback we've been able to work out a few of the kinks in the new system and we appreciate all of your help as we make this change for the better. We're still working on re-adding support for a few adapters. If you find your controller not working, unchecking Steam's controller configuration settings under manage game has gotten many players back up and running. If you're still experiencing issues please email contact@rivalsofaether.com so we can help!
Patch 1.3.0 - Sylvanos and Elliana
Surprise! Patch 1.3.0 was not an April Fools' joke (unlike most of what we revealed this weekend). We’ve got two brand new characters, revamped controller support, a host of balance changes, and more to dig into. Read on for the detailed notes and other good stuff.
Sylvanos is our third Rival to represent the earth element while Elliana rounds out our roster as the final air Rival. Both of them are also unique in that they’re our first Rivals who are also villains. Pick them up today or try them for free in their tutorials, accessible through the solo menu in game.
Steam Sale
To celebrate the release of Sylvanos and Elliana, we’re putting on the biggest Steam sale Rivals has ever seen. For just one week, the base game is going all the way down to $4.99, while all of the past DLC (both characters and skins) will be 50% off.
That means you can pick up the base game in addition to all of the characters and skins for just $20 total. If you have a friend who’s been waiting for a sale, make sure you pass on the news!
Controller Support Update
We’ve completely revamped controller support this patch. Players will no longer need to select a controller mode in the options menu as Dinput and Xinput both work simultaneously now. Support was also added for Switch Pro controllers via Bluetooth.
If you're having trouble with yours on the new patch, make sure you post in our bug support forum so we can dig into the issue.
Patch Notes
We've got balance changes for every character this patch and the list gets quite long! To view the full detailed patch notes head over to our website at: http://www.rivalsofaether.com/blog/?p=3023
Hotfix 1.2.6
We've just released a small update where we squashed a few bugs, including a tricky Abyss mode crash. Here's the notes for those interested in the details.
