Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


EA patch 9: Why are we posting at ungodly in the morning

The patch (8/18/18) is now live on steam so if you haven't yet, restart your games and pixel lobby servers to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.

Tianhuo is a difficult character to balance against the rest of the cast. Her mobility, mix-up potential and long, flashy combos are unique to her, and this can present a challenge. For some time now, she has been over-performing. We wanted to make sure to preserve her defining characteristics and leave them intact, but reduce their potency. Her damage values and scaling have undergone various tweaks to bring her damage more in line with the other characters.

Additionally, various mix-up and pressure tools have been reined in. Instead of removing them outright, they have been moved to her level 2 super, Ran Shao Feng. In previous updates, we started to re-purpose Ran Shao Feng from a tool to rack up significant combo damage into a power-up that gave her extra utility and mix-up potential. This patch continues that trend, balancing out her risk and reward, and requiring the player to make more tactical decisions with her resources. We will continue monitoring Tianhuo and all of her various match-ups following this patch.

Gameplay

Arizona

  • Now has a proper air throw. She carries the opponent to the ground with a headbuck.

Velvet

  • Damage reduced across specials
  • Chip damage increased slightly on Shatters
  • Fixed a bug causing Velvet to sometimes lose invulnerability during 623D
  • Fixed incorrect damage scaling on 214A and 214C (Minimum damage should now be increased)
  • Minimum Damage reduced on supers
  • B is slightly less safe on block
  • Now has a proper air throw. Throws further away than most.

Oleander

  • Now has a proper air throw. Functions like the ground throw which steals meter, grants 1 magic, but does little actual damage.

Paprika

  • Gift toss is slightly faster
  • Now has a proper air throw. Functions similar to ground throw, but can combo into more types of attacks depending on height.

Pom

  • Now has a proper air throw. Always throws backward.

Tianhuo

  • Flips now are only capable of passing through opponents during dragon install
  • Flips can no longer directly cancel into eachother
  • Flips have slightly smaller hurtboxes
  • Ran Shao Feng timer increased overall
  • The timer for Ran Shao Feng no longer speeds up while grounded
  • All damage during Ran Shao Feng is now scaled by 25%
  • Magic regen now gets paused for an extended period after flight has been used
  • Magic regen is now paused momentarily when airdash is used
  • All magic regen cooldowns are disabled during Ran Shao Feng
  • Flight startup in Ran Shao Feng now matches normal flight startup
  • Tian gains 50% less meter during Ran Shao Feng
  • Both Air and Grounded Volcanic Bash (236B) cause slightly less hitstop on the first hit
  • Both Air and Grounded Volcanic Bash deal significantly less hitstun on the first hit
  • Grounded Volcanic Bash damage now matches the air version
  • Air Volcanic Bash JD now matches the grounded version
  • All versions of Volcanic Crash (236C) now apply JD
  • Volcanic Crash during Ran Shao Feng now bounces tianhuo off of the ground instead of going straight into standing
  • The bounce from Volcanic Crash during Ran Shao Feng is flight cancellable
  • Fixed even more cases where 7D, 4D and 1D would appear to armor through attacks rather than dodging or getting hit, as intended
  • j.A startup time increased slightly
  • j.A hitstun reduced on grounded opponents
  • j.B JDG increased
  • Damage reduced on specials
  • Damage increased slightly on Super
  • Now has a proper air throw. Easy to followup with magic abilities.

Predators

  • No longer turns into arizona during cross canter
  • No longer turns into wolf when throwing

Known Issues

  • If Velvet gets hit by another Velvet's level 2, some specials may act particularly weird/disappear.
  • There may still remain some instances where Tianhuo flips gain armor, continue reporting this one!
  • It is still possible for Tianhuo to occasionally lose momentum during some airdash cancels
  • Pom is still capable of calling multiple level 2's with certain setups
Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


Early Access Patch 7/21/18 is now live on steam so if you haven't yet, restart your games and pixel lobby servers to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.


NEW FEATURES!

Tutorial Mode

We've worked hard to provide Oleander with both the free time and crayons to teach you how to fight. While she wasn't happy about being asked to, it's in her contract, so she'll now teach the basics, not-so-basics and advanced-basics of the game's mechanics to everyone. You can find her lessons on the Single Player Menu! Happy learning!

Please note that this is the first public iteration of Tutorials, as the mode will be receiving tweaks and updates based on needs and feedback.


Gameplay

Not much in the form of gameplay updates beyond some bug fixes this time around. Gameplay/Balance changes are absolutely incoming, some are/are close to being major changes and the tutorials have been getting hard focused among other things. Now that the tutorial is done, we can start to iterate properly and provide more rapid, smaller updates as this has been our largest undertaking so far. Stay tuned!

General

  • Counterhit timings are now far more consistent across normals.
  • Fixed a miscalculation from the previous patch that caused blocking to give more meter to the attacker than landing hits would(!!!!)
  • Blocking now also grants a small bit of meter for the defender
  • All characters now have proper, lip synched introductions. As of now, Player 1 remains the only one with a speaking role, but we'll be introducing more back and forth intros over time.

Arizona

  • 6A hitbox extended forward slightly
  • 6A moves forward slightly

Velvet

  • Fixed minor launcher graphical bug which caused the ice sculpture to face the opposite direction

Oleander

  • It's no longer possible to gain meter on block while Fred is out (whups!)

Paprika

  • Fixed a bug that allowed j.C to hit without applying JD

Pom

  • Follower puppies now continue following while pom's in hitstun, but slowly
  • Puppies manually moved while puppy is in distress are slowed
  • Mom counter is cancelled if pom is in hitstun

Known Issues
  • If Velvet gets hit by another Velvet's level 2, some specials may act particularly weird/disappear.
  • 4D into j.A with tianhuo reads out to be 14 frames of startup before earliest possible hit, but it's actually 18.
Jun 26, 2018
Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


Long delayed hello, everyone!

As you might have noticed, TFH hasn’t hit the expected 1.0 milestone yet.

Due to the same row of heavy "RL" reasons mentioned before, (the details of which you don't really want to hear, but include some really heavy RL issues for some of our Devs), we continue to be down three people in our development team for long periods of time.

We've attempted to patch part of these holes by putting out a call for a pixel artist to cover the major delay on story mode (art placeholders), but we've yet to hire one. We've got a couple of people who applied to us whose stuff we've really liked, but which haven't yet replied to our e-mails. Applicants, if you're reading this, please check your inbox and spam folders! We might be trying to contact you. All of this is putting the story mode on hold for far longer than we expected and far more than what we’d have liked. Hopefully we can steer that particular situation back on track soon, as the hiring of said artist would help us finish the remaining elements needed AND free other people to work on additional things we’ve been holding down the priority list for some time.

That said, the remainder of the team has still been working hard these past few weeks, as we strive to get those features which do not require our MIA developers to get completed working and out of the gate.

You might have already seen a couple of glimpses of the upcoming features here and there in Beta and Anu's worklogs in the official forums, but here's a slightly more detailed breakdown of what’s coming to TFH in the near-immediate future.


Tutorials

We've been working hard to supply Oleander with the time and the crayons to teach you how to fight, and building the framework that’ll allow us to create and easily iterate on lessons across many fighting game concepts, with some light target practice and obstacle courses to reinforce all you have learned.


Watch it in Motion

Watch it in Motion

Ranked Matchmaking

Soon, we will have standard matchmaking features to pair up similarly skilled players with a more ‘competitive’ scoring system. In addition, a casual levelling system that is always active as you play online (ranked or not) will provide unlockable hats and palettes at certain milestones. Performance within each match, fighting against tougher opponents and other challenges provide xp bonuses to push you even further!


Watch it in Motion


Pixel Dungeon 2.0
Salt mines. Now even saltier.

We wish to keep most of this stuff a surprise, but we're pretty excited for this release. In addition to the PvE element, we've added more cooperative play to unlock hats and intercept predators. We're also putting in some interesting little items to make dungeon fights more stylish and silly.



Character Intros/Outros

Characters will no longer stand still while the fightin’ starts happenin’ - New animations for Intros/Outros are coming to the game.


Watch it in Motion


Watch it in Motion


...And an apology

In addition to the things mentioned above, we’d like to apologize for the breakdown in general communications; we’ve been active and communicating with the playerbase through a couple of the discord community channels, as well as pulling some of the most active people in the game for gathering feedback on these new features and on the already existing ones. Discord has been really helpful for quick, direct feedback and feature implementation, but has given off a perception of silence to the general public. As things are now closer to their initial public iteration, we’re going to be posting more often to the general community via our official forums, the social media places and the Steam community forums.

As always, we’d like to thank you guys for continuing to stick with us through the rough patches.

- M6
Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


Early Access patch 7: Ev'rybody Dance Now! Edition
(Da da da da da da da da da)

Hotfix 11-5-18.a

Tianhuo

  • Can't cancel launcher into flight on block (whups)

Be sure to update and verify your files again. If you fight someone and one of you isn't updated, your fight may desync.

----

The patch (5/11/18) is now live on steam so if you haven't yet, restart your games and pixel lobby servers to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.

This is a rather hefty patch as it includes a ton of changes and fixes to some long standing bugs. As the gameplay has been given time to settle in a bit, it turns out certain characters were slightly overperforming. Furthermore, due to staggers being a reliable way to avoid mechanics intended to limit the potency of mixups after knockdowns, we have changed how staggers work post-JD. Players who rely on using staggers as late as possible will now have to be more wary of the JD bar as they too have to deal with a guaranteed knockdown situation. These changes may adversely impact the performance of said characters in unexpected ways, and we'll be keeping a close eye on how they perform to determine if any further tweaks are necessary to compensate. Lots of things are quite different now, so please be vocal and detailed with any issues/bugs you run into and we'll be sure to give it a look!

Gameplay

General:

  • Cross Canter is now totally impossible to combo after
  • Cross Canter now armor breaks
  • The opponent can no longer be staggered if JD is filled, It will instead cause a crumple that always leads to soft knockdown
  • Fixed some cases where a player could tech out of command grabs
  • Fixed several situations where a player could cancel block and hitstuns into movement options or supers
  • Fixed being able to gain above full health from eating apples
  • Fixed health gained by eating apples messing up red health values
  • It is no longer possible to force a Hard Knockdown off of full JD normals by cancelling into a super before they hit the ground
  • Fixed an issue preventing input buffering for specials when landing
  • Fixed an issue preventing grabbing (until the player returns to neutral) after doing a low attack (This issue specifically affected Arizona, Oleander and Paprika because of command normals)
  • Training Dummy now properly techs tumbles at the earliest possible frame after a groundbounce/tumble has been used in a combo
  • Standing KO's work properly again, should eliminate most if not all of the remaining 'Armored KO' bugs

Arizona

  • Damage proration from Ropes reduced slightly
  • 6B Hurtboxes moved upward
  • Super now completes VO
  • Super now has 1 frame post-superflash, alleviating previously 'unblockable' situations
  • Super now cleaves through pets and projectiles without hitstop

Velvet

  • Cancelling C startup into grab no longer spawns the ice graphic
  • Eating animation no longer has a cardboard ice sprite. Poof!
  • Now has a crouch sliding animation

Oleander

  • Fred is no longer controllable while teching
  • Fred stops attacking if Oleander gets hit
  • Outside of meter stealing attacks, you can no longer gain any meter while Fred is out
  • Super meter requirements per level increased slightly
  • Teleports A and B now always costs 1 magic, even if grounded
  • Opening damage for j.2C decreased, minimum damage increased slightly
  • Fixed another remaining case of the Chapter Trap hitbox detaching from its graphic when cancelled into a super
  • So they came into the outway, It was Sunday, but a black day, I could make a salutation, sounding heartbeats, intimidation...
    • Ollie, are you okay, are you okay, are you okay, Ollie?
    • Ollie, are you okay, are you okay, are you okay, Ollie?
    • Ollie, are you okay, are you okay, are you okay, Ollie?

Paprika

  • Blocked super should more reliably end up on the opposing side
  • B startup and recovery has been sped up
  • B and 2B are slightly safer on block
  • Kiss now refunds a flat 250 JD, with a minimum cap of -150
  • Damage proration from Kiss reduced slightly
  • Super should no longer be able to trigger off of pets/projectiles
  • There is now an indicator that a player is close enough to eat a gift (actual graphic pending)
  • Super now cleaves through pets without hitstop
  • Fixed a bug involving paprika's movement options that had an extremely small chance to crash the game(!)
  • Boom, baby!

Pom

  • Every puppy in Stampede now have hurtboxes
  • Dad now follows the opponent from behind, as intended
  • Preblock distance of 2C increased (This might cause issues, will be monitoring the effects of this)
  • Throws from pets can no longer connect with opponents who are in preblock
  • Fixed Pom being able to level 2 after dad has hit the opponent
  • Mom Izuna Drop now properly KO's if it's the last hit
  • Mom Counter and Izuna Drop no longer gain a first-hit bonus
  • j.B hitstop increased (should also help with the high/low protection)
  • Puppies are no longer controllable while teching
  • Dad usability now follows the same rules as all other puppies (Not usable during hitstun or teching, stops when pom gets attacked, etc.)
  • You wouldn't hit a wee lamb, would you?

Tianhuo

  • Can no longer whiff cancel air normals into flight
  • Volcanic Bash now has a grounded version
    • Travels a bit less of a distance than air version
    • Goes through projectiles
  • All specials except for successful V.Crashes have increased landing recovery
  • New j.A that aims moreso for air-to-air than straight towards the ground
  • Flight startup time increased
  • Upward flight max speed lowered
  • Downward flight acceleration increased
  • Super startup time decreased
  • Super startup jump height decreased
  • Old j.A is now accessible during Ran Shao Feng, and is now an overhead
  • B hitboxes normalized, no longer whiffs on crouching opponents during the beginning of the attack
  • B recovery increased
  • Has renounced captaincy of the Empress' Imperial Guard to assume captaincy of the Empress' Imperial PicnicBasketBall Team.

New Lobby Features

  • Added 'voice channels' so now users can choose which chat channel they are on. This includes an option to only hear and communicate with people who are fighting with you or spectating.
    • Reverted change where your voicechat was filtered per lobby room
  • Lobby scoreboard now shows everyone's voice channel so you can see where your friends are
  • Lobby fights now show both fighters voice chat activity and voice chat channels
  • Spectators can now open online menus during fights


Bug Fixes

  • Fixed major bug where some controller types could stop working after fighting a predator in saltmines
  • Fixed up lobby character collisions against walls to correctly handle slopes and sharp corners
  • Fixed bug where music was at full volume on splash screen, but then adjusted when the main menu came up
  • Fixed bug where D notification could appear while you were trying to open a chest
  • Fixed bug where grabbing a chest while running could cause a server desync
  • Changed teleport/arrival sound in pixel lobby so that it only plays for the whole server when you first join the server.
  • Fixed bug where disconnecting from someone during character select could prevent you from fighting them in the future until one of the games was restarted

Backend changes

  • How players recieve world updates from the lobby server has changed. You should not feel any difference in smoothness, but if you do experience new problems, be sure to let us know!
  • Entirely changed how chest claiming works internally. Should provide a smoother experience, but as with all new code, there may be bugs!
  • Changed the way sprite drawing works. Should be less load on older computers, but has potential for bugs. Let us know if you get weird graphical glitches in lobby

Known Issues

  • If Velvet gets hit by another Velvet's level 2, some specials may act particularly weird/disappear.
  • 4:D into j.A with tianhuo reads out to be 14 frames of startup before earliest possible hit in training mode, but it's actually 18.
  • Currently, spectators cannot set their voice channel while in a match

Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


Early Access Patch #6 (13-4-18): Infinite Combo Your Friends Edition!

From user feedback, we've put together a new feature for online matches. All online modes now have an options menu that can be brought up by holding start. This menu contains options for enabling and disabling certain features of the fight (like infinite magic) and training data displays that can allow you to lab better with friends. Players in a training fight can now display their opponent's (or teacher's) inputs to better follow by example.

Here’s the new options:

New Features

In Fight (Online)

  • New Options added to Pause Menu

    • View command lists
    • Show Hitboxes (Online training only)
    • Show Collision box (Online training only)
    • Show Your Stick Motions (Online training only)
    • Show Your Opponents Stick Motions (Online training only)
    • Display you or your opponents input list (Online training only)
    • Enable or disable HUD (Online training only)
    • Enable, disable or defocus background (Online training only)
    • Enable or disable infinite super (Online training only)
    • Enable or disable infinite magic (Online training only)
    • Enable or disable juggle decay (Online training only)
    • Netgraph variant
    • SFX volume
    • Music volume
    • Voice Chat volume
    • Character voice volume
    • Chest notification sounds (pixel lobby only)

Voice channels and muting all but opponent/spectators for pixel lobby was meant to go on here, but it didn't quite make it in in time. Next patch!

Other Changes

In Fight (Everywhere)

  • Button displays have been recolored to be more Mane6-ey (and match our ABCD color standard)

Pixel Lobby
  • Goggles cosmetic moved to hat slot
Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


This update (EA Patch 5 - 4/3/2018) contains a ton of content! …. That we can't show quite yet! Much of it is related to Saltmines 2.0. We have decided to roll out a couple of pretty major backend changes that we’ve been waiting to try for a while. These changes are aimed at overall game stability to strike down those last few elusive bugs that cause "random" failures. Let us know if you get any crashes after this patch!


(Fairly) Major Backend Changes
  • Major backend change that could potentially fix most remaining "random" crashes that people are having.
  • The "black textures on UI" bug should be fixed now, for people that were still getting that
  • Raised Pixel lobby player limit to 25 -- will keep some servers at reduced cap just in case
  • Changed the way textures are handled under the hood, which should make the game significantly more stable after being open for long periods of time
  • Changed the way that Relay connections are detected, and relay connections are now displayed on leaderboard by turning the opponent's ping red

Changes and Improvements
  • Moved many Pixel Lobby face-type items (glasses, masks) into the third cosmetic slot, which is now usable
    • Third slot now has a "NEW!" indicator that displays until you access it

Bug Fixes
  • UI elements in pixel lobby (name tags, interaction menus) are no longer affected by screenshake
  • Fixed a bug in which the Salt Mine ungulates appeared in full color. Palettes for AI Ungulates in Salt Mine fights remain unchanged, but will be corrected in a future patch
  • Fixed sound rollback being able to be turned on, but not off again
  • Fixed Backer characters sometimes getting disabled "permanently"
  • Fixed glitch where random body parts in pixel lobby player characters could disappear (or appear) incorrectly when switching cosmetic items
  • Fixed minor UI issues that caused lines to appear over predators in main menu
  • Fixed issue where you would disconnect from lobby after minimizing
  • Fixed issue where AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA level of mines could cause clients to slow down over time and not recover until restarted
  • Added more robust blackscreen fadeout -- less prone to camera glitching
  • Leaderboard now shows if you are using a relay connection to a player
  • Fixed issue where, sometimes, going through a door could cause the top of the black screen transition to "pop" resulting in a janky door transition
  • Sound listener position is now based on your lobby characters position, not on the camera

Notes
Check your settings for weather effects, backer characters and sound rollback. If you had them set away from the defaults, they may have been reverted.




Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


This update (EA Patch 5 - 4/3/2018) contains a ton of content! …. That we can't show quite yet! Much of it is related to Saltmines 2.0. We have decided to roll out a couple of pretty major backend changes that we’ve been waiting to try for a while. These changes are aimed at overall game stability to strike down those last few elusive bugs that cause "random" failures. Let us know if you get any crashes after this patch!


(Fairly) Major Backend Changes
  • Major backend change that could potentially fix most remaining "random" crashes that people are having.
  • The "black textures on UI" bug should be fixed now, for people that were still getting that
  • Raised Pixel lobby player limit to 25 -- will keep some servers at reduced cap just in case
  • Changed the way textures are handled under the hood, which should make the game significantly more stable after being open for long periods of time
  • Changed the way that Relay connections are detected, and relay connections are now displayed on leaderboard by turning the opponent's ping red

Changes and Improvements
  • Moved many Pixel Lobby face-type items (glasses, masks) into the third cosmetic slot, which is now usable
    • Third slot now has a "NEW!" indicator that displays until you access it

Bug Fixes
  • UI elements in pixel lobby (name tags, interaction menus) are no longer affected by screenshake
  • Fixed a bug in which the Salt Mine ungulates appeared in full color. Palettes for AI Ungulates in Salt Mine fights remain unchanged, but will be corrected in a future patch
  • Fixed sound rollback being able to be turned on, but not off again
  • Fixed Backer characters sometimes getting disabled "permanently"
  • Fixed glitch where random body parts in pixel lobby player characters could disappear (or appear) incorrectly when switching cosmetic items
  • Fixed minor UI issues that caused lines to appear over predators in main menu
  • Fixed issue where you would disconnect from lobby after minimizing
  • Fixed issue where AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA level of mines could cause clients to slow down over time and not recover until restarted
  • Added more robust blackscreen fadeout -- less prone to camera glitching
  • Leaderboard now shows if you are using a relay connection to a player
  • Fixed issue where, sometimes, going through a door could cause the top of the black screen transition to "pop" resulting in a janky door transition
  • Sound listener position is now based on your lobby characters position, not on the camera

Notes
Check your settings for weather effects, backer characters and sound rollback. If you had them set away from the defaults, they may have been reverted.




Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


EA patch 4: Kinda-sorta-was-supposed-to-be-but-now-sorta-isn't-a-hotpatch Edition!

The patch (3/21/18) is now live on steam so if you haven't yet, restart your games and pixel lobby servers to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.

Gameplay

General
  • Air teching after getting hit out of a shorthop should no longer lock out a character's ability to air block.
Oleander
  • Non-cardboard swipes added for 2A and 2C

Pom
  • Launcher now has a non-cardboard shockwave

Paprika
  • Fixed minor paletting issue during StandH
Tianhuo
  • No longer loses the coloring of her lower jaw during certain hitstuns

New Features & Bug Fixes

Character Select
  • Fixed Oleander's off-by-one palette error.

In Fight
  • There are now voice indicators under HUD portraits for when your opponent is talking in online fights.
  • Fixed bug where player names in fights could show as [unknown].

Pixel Lobby Browser
  • Servers now sort by number of players active.
  • Holding up or down on lobby browsers will now scroll through list faster.

Pixel Lobby
  • Big Balls of Violence now display the name-tags of the players involved in the fight.
  • Health-bars now display above players while in the Salt Mines. (Saltmines 2.0 prep)
    • The Bar will change in color from green to red as health depletes.
  • Zone partitioning has been implemented in pixel lobbies, in preparation for Salt Mines 2.0 coming soon.
  • Transitioning between areas in the pixel lobby is a lot smoother now.
  • Voice Isolation between Lobby rooms has been applied. e.g. If you're in a cave, players outside of it will no longer be able to hear you.
  • Announcer has been disabled in online training.
  • Several steps have been taken to lower the amount of data lobby sends to your game client overall. This includes in fights.
  • Added extra information to the occasional bug where you can get locked out of fighting in pixel lobby. We think this may have something to do with Salt Mines, but the "you were involved in another fight" error should now tell you what the server is complaining about. Let us know if you get this error message please!
  • Fixed memory leak where the UI could potentially make an infinite amount of name-tags -- albeit very very (very very) slowly.
Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


EA patch 4: Kinda-sorta-was-supposed-to-be-but-now-sorta-isn't-a-hotpatch Edition!

The patch (3/21/18) is now live on steam so if you haven't yet, restart your games and pixel lobby servers to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.

Gameplay

General
  • Air teching after getting hit out of a shorthop should no longer lock out a character's ability to air block.
Oleander
  • Non-cardboard swipes added for 2A and 2C

Pom
  • Launcher now has a non-cardboard shockwave

Paprika
  • Fixed minor paletting issue during StandH
Tianhuo
  • No longer loses the coloring of her lower jaw during certain hitstuns

New Features & Bug Fixes

Character Select
  • Fixed Oleander's off-by-one palette error.

In Fight
  • There are now voice indicators under HUD portraits for when your opponent is talking in online fights.
  • Fixed bug where player names in fights could show as [unknown].

Pixel Lobby Browser
  • Servers now sort by number of players active.
  • Holding up or down on lobby browsers will now scroll through list faster.

Pixel Lobby
  • Big Balls of Violence now display the name-tags of the players involved in the fight.
  • Health-bars now display above players while in the Salt Mines. (Saltmines 2.0 prep)
    • The Bar will change in color from green to red as health depletes.
  • Zone partitioning has been implemented in pixel lobbies, in preparation for Salt Mines 2.0 coming soon.
  • Transitioning between areas in the pixel lobby is a lot smoother now.
  • Voice Isolation between Lobby rooms has been applied. e.g. If you're in a cave, players outside of it will no longer be able to hear you.
  • Announcer has been disabled in online training.
  • Several steps have been taken to lower the amount of data lobby sends to your game client overall. This includes in fights.
  • Added extra information to the occasional bug where you can get locked out of fighting in pixel lobby. We think this may have something to do with Salt Mines, but the "you were involved in another fight" error should now tell you what the server is complaining about. Let us know if you get this error message please!
  • Fixed memory leak where the UI could potentially make an infinite amount of name-tags -- albeit very very (very very) slowly.
Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc


Early Access Patch 3 (3/17/18) is now live on steam so if you haven't yet, restart your games and pixel lobby servers to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.

We're gearing up for the saltmines revamp while we work on storymode, but before we can start digging for salt, we're digging for more stability and network issues. Hopefully this patch takes care of a few more of those! We've also done a huge rework on p2p connections for pixel lobby. We're hoping it fixes connectivity and connection speed issues for many people.

While fight connections have gotten a lot of love, affection and hair-pulling debug work for this patch, it's still new code, and all new code is prone to bugs. Let us know if you have any issues with it!

Gameplay

General
  • Throw tech sparks should now display again (oops)
  • Throw teching (ground and air) should no longer break certain characters' palettes for a moment, and should no longer turn predators into arizona
  • Intros and outros should no longer display broken palettes for certain characters
  • All A normals now add a small amount of JD

Arizona
  • Headbuck B hurt/hitboxes adjusted
  • 6A hitbox is active for longer
  • 2B range increased slightly

Pom
  • Bark has a visual shockwave
  • Big Papa no longer becomes cardboard while turning around

Velvet
  • "Maniacal Laughter" palette has been relocated

Bear
  • Hurtboxes given a pass to prevent rapid size changes during neutral/movement


Online Changes
  • P2P fight connections between players in pixel lobby have had a massive re-work. They should be *much* faster and (hopefully!) more reliable now, especially for players with high ping.
  • Shortened disconnect for both pixel lobby and in-fights if your opponent is already confirmed to have loaded
  • Shortened online charselect timer to 30 seconds
  • Shortened online world select timer to 15 seconds
  • Dramatically reduced the time that spectators can be stuck in limbo if a network error occurs during a fight

Bug Fixes
  • Fixed several cases where players with high ping could randomly get booted back to lobby after challenging (especially prone to happening with spectators)
    • This issue has multiple causes, so let us know if this happens to you again without an obvious cause (e.g. network connection lost)
  • Fixed a crash related to voice chat after a long time of being in pixel lobby.
  • Fixed several cases where players could be denied rematches when spectators were not present
    • Again, several things could cause this issue, so let us know if it happens to you repeatedly.
  • Sound rollback mass reset #2 -- somehow it didn't get reset for a lot of people the first time.
  • Fixed a rare crash related to some drawing elements never getting cleared.
  • Fixed issue where after leaving pixel lobby, you would often not be able to connect again for several minutes.
  • Fixed bug where certain training mode elements drew over pause menus.
  • Fixed issue where even if your voicechat volume was set to zero, it would apply game sound attenuation (drop the game volume in response to someone talking)
  • Fixed issue where certain resolutions could cause the UI to stretch to an odd aspect ratio when performing supers.
  • Fixed visual issue where loading a fight in pixel lobby would flicker on the lobby overworld.

New Options
  • Minimal HUD is now a main menu option (requires a restart to work properly).
  • You can now turn off weather effects from the main menu.

Known Quirks
  • Due to character changes, the following combo trials have been removed temporarily: Velvet Prestigious 1, Pom Master 3
  • The following combo trials have been updated: Paprika Master 2, Velvet Master 2
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