Is it that time already, Champions?

It feels like just yesterday that we had launched the game on Quest and PSVR, and here I am once again writing up a blog post to highlight yet another release.

This past month, in addition to making some hotfixes for both the Quest and PSVR, we’ve been hard at work putting the finishing touches on the PC version of Until You Fall. We really wanted to ensure that all the improvements we made for the newly released versions of the game made their way back to PC while still preserving the look and feel.

As part of this, in addition to our own QA and Development teams hammering on the game, we’ve been fortunate to have our Discord community join in on the fun through a series of Beta builds. Huge thanks to everyone who participated and left feedback/bug reports - you helped us discover a variety of weird and wild issues we would likely have missed before launching the PC version.

I can’t overstate the fact that we’re actually leaving Early Access (much like having launched on the Quest and PSVR) continues to feel...well, surreal. Awesome, to be sure, but certainly surreal in many ways. Seeing so many new faces jump in playing on Quest and PSVR has been amazing, and seeing so many old faces return to express their excitement and help us test the PC build has been just as incredible.

As for what’s next for Until You Fall, we’ll likely be taking a bit of a break to get our bearings and see how things unfold. We’ll be responding to bug reports and making critical fixes as best we can, as well as listening to your feedback, but beyond that we have nothing official to announce just yet.

Once again, thank you all for your support and feedback; both through Early Access, as well as the more recent launches on our new platforms. This game has been a labor of love for the team, and we’re all incredibly grateful to see how passionate our community is about our weird, neon sword game.

We’ll be in touch again soon, Rune Knights. Keep up the good fight.

- Dave, Project Director

Release 1.1.0 (Steam & Rift) Changes & Additions

While a bulk of the work was already done during our 1.0 push for Quest and PSVR, we’ve made a few additional fixes for the PC release. We hope to eventually roll back into the Quest and PSVR releases in the near-ish future.

Enemy Lunge Attack and Behavior Fixes

Since the dawn of time, we’ve had a handful of enemy quirks that have been...well, frustrating. Attacks that, even when you dodge backwards to avoid them, would still hit you unfairly. Weird interactions with Stasis. We took some time to address the worst offenders listed below.

• Certain enemy attacks will no longer travel with the animation, preventing attacks (looking at you, Captains) from feeling like they hit you from out of nowhere
• Enemies once again strafe correctly during combat
• Enemies will no longer immediately attack upon leaving stasis in certain situations
• The Aether Horror is no longer targetable with Dash when it is outside of the arena
• Aether Horror’s looping SFX should no longer be playing for longer than it should

Other Notable Changes and Fixes

• Added Windows Mixed Reality specific assets for tutorials
• Added Quest Link definitions for both SteamVR and Oculus, ensuring the correct controllers and tutorials are shown
• Made optimizations for the Screenfade that happens between scenes
• Players can no longer (accidentally or otherwise) reroll the dungeon rooms after completing a “fixed” encounter - usually a tutorial or first time enemy introduction
• Variety of audio/music fixes and adjustments
• Edge case bugfix for specific achievements not being unlocked immediately

Release 1.0.0 Changes & Additions

I've included a modified version of the 1.0 Patch Notes to highlight other changes that have made it into the PC version.

Performance Optimizations

As part of our work to bring the game to our new platforms, we put a lot of effort into making sure we were doing things in a clean, optimized way. With any optimization changes though, the best ones are the ones you don’t notice.

• Audio, art and tech have had significant improvements for performance
  • Notable areas of improvement include the Aether Bloom reward moment and particularly busy / intense enemy encounters, but basically everything has had some improvement

Achievements

Clearly, the game couldn’t become a 1.0 release without those sweet, sweet Cheevos.

• 40 unique achievements can be earned on Quest, PSVR and PC
• Certain achievements will be rewarded retroactively based on your progress
  • However, others didn’t have stat tracking implemented on the back-end, so you’ll likely have to re-earn a few

First Time User Experience Updates

Throughout Early Access (and back when we showed the game off at conventions, when that was still a thing), we’ve received a lot of great feedback from our players, new and old, about things they wish they’d either known earlier or got to experience sooner.

As such, we’ve made some adjustments to the tutorial and early game, as well as the way we award weapons based on your progress (more on that in the next section).

• A selection of three powerful traits are now guaranteed to appear at the conclusion of the supers tutorial
  • This gives players the chance to experience powerful traits early, and learn about the traits system - it was something that could happen organically, but we wanted to make sure that everyone got a chance to learn about this core part of the game
• Rokari Keenblade now starts with two empty trait slots
  • The Keenblade, which originally started with the “nimble” trait, now earns it at upgrade level III
  • This allows players to experiment with which traits they equip in their earlier runs, which helps us to expose the trait system sooner rather than later

Super Charge Crystal in the Runeforge

Based on community feedback/requests, we’ve added a way for players to quickly try out supers in the Runeforge. That dummy won’t know what hit it!

• Added a new augment to the hub: Shard of Ephemeral Power
  • Instantly charges the Super of the hand that crushes it
  • Supers will reset upon re-entering the portal

Weapon Unlocking Revamp

While we were happy with awarding new weapons after each boss fight, we wanted folks to be able to unlock and experiment with weapons sooner. Further, we still felt like we didn’t do enough to communicate when you’ve actually earned a reward, so we took some time to remedy that.

• Weapons now (generally) unlock when you defeat new opponents for the first time
  • Engraved Arming Sword & Rokari Keenblade - Starting Weapons
  • Heartsplitter & Ritual Dagger - Weapon Purchase Tutorial
  • Knight-blooded Crest - Defeat Knight
  • Vestal’s Wrath - Defeat Captain
  • High Arcanist’s Blade - Defeat T1 Boss
  • Spellsword’s Charm - Defeat Spellweaver
  • Duelist’s Edge - Defeat Empowered Knight
  • Mistcutter - Defeat T2 Boss
  • Gemini Stranded - Defeat Empowered Spellweaver
  • Gemini Esper - Beat T3 Boss
• Reorganized weapon racks to be in the order in which they unlock (from right to left)
• Added messaging to alert you to new unlocks when returning to the Runeforge
  • Messaging will queue up in the event you’re awesome and unlock a bunch of weapons at once
• Caught some weird edge cases where you could unlock things even though you had not met the requirements to do so

Visual Updates

There were a few areas we felt could use a little more love for all versions of the game, so we took some time to address those.

• Agatha, the Runesmith, has received a facelift - the 3D model hanging over the portal to the Shattered Woods has been reworked
• The Aether Blooms in the Shattered Woods have had a visual rework for both optimization purposes and visual styyyyle
• Environmental Aether has been slightly reworked to be more visually consistent
• Added an icon to the aether counter in the Runeforge
• Adjusted colors that show between scenes and added a loading icon animation for the Oculus Rift

Intro & Settings Changes

As we cleaned up the game in preparation for 1.0, we took some time to clean up the settings a little bit, looking to add some missing features and clarify some other already existing functionality.

Gameplay Settings - We broke out the overloaded and confusing “360 Tracking Mode” into its constituent parts, allowing folks to opt in (or out) depending on their configuration.

• 360 Tracking Mode has been broken out into three new settings
  • Strict World Forward
    • Pause screen will appear in fixed location, depending on how you calibrate
    • Moving between rooms will bring up a prompt to return you towards your defined forward (usually your system’s cameras)
  • Loss of Tracking Warnings
    • In-game warning that appears when you are looking ~180 Degrees away from your defined forward (usually your system’s cameras)
  • Loss of Tracking Protection
    • Setting that pauses the game should you look away from your defined forward (usually your system’s cameras)

Intro & Calibration Screen

• These screens will now attempt to follow where you’re looking, reducing cases where you start off looking into utter darkness

Recenter Logic

• We’ve added logic to respond to different platforms’ recentering functionality, allowing you to redefine which way is forward

Audio Settings

• Added a slider to control ambient SFX volume

Weapon Range Adjustments

We’ve made a few adjustments to how far weapons can reach to smooth out some of the more frustrating areas.

• Extended the reach of all weapons slightly to help hit more foes
• Made some big modifications to the Aether Horror’s hitboxes to make it easier to strike; especially with shorter ranged weapons like daggers and the Katars.

Notable Changes & Bug Fixes

• Upgraded our Unity version to 2019.3, providing a slew of small improvements for both performance and workflow
• Resonant increased to 2x Super Charge on block
• Added a few more encounters to several rooms in T1 that had been missing them. This should help make T1 a little less repetitive, especially for new players
• Fixed instances of enemies aggroing the Rune Knight as soon as they enter the room, before moving
• Fixed an issue during that final boss fight that could cause strange weapon behavior if the Rune Knight got too close to the Red Aether around the edges of the arena