Feb 13, 2020

Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc

We’re excited to announce new availability for both the "Best Of" and "Complete Recordings" soundtrack collections for Them’s Fightin’ Herds. There’s a lot of particulars, so let’s begin with a short summary:

First, the “Best Of” collection may now be purchased here on Steam. Previously it was available via the musicians’ Bandcamp site (and it still is). It’s priced the same on both sites: $9.99 USD (subject to regional pricing on Steam).

Second, the “Complete Recordings” collection may now be purchased (for the first time ever), via Bandcamp. It’s split into separate packs that group tracks together by stage or feature, to make it possible to acquire smaller parts of the greater collection. Each individual pack costs $1.99 USD. We don’t have a bundle offering at this time.

Have specific questions? Craving details? Please, read on...

FAQs

What’s the difference between the two collections?

The “Best Of” collection is our general-purpose soundtrack that contains all base stage themes, character themes, pixel lobby BGMs, title/menu BGMs, and a bonus Reine City chiptune track. It’s an easy-listening “traditional”-style album with 22 tracks (at the time of this writing).

The “Complete Recordings” collection encompasses absolutely every single variation of every track we use for the game’s Dynamic Music System, including all unique character themes for each of the stages and character select, in both looping and non-looping mixes.

I’m a crowdfund backer. Where do I get my soundtrack rewards?

As always, crowdfund backers who earned either of the soundtrack collections through rewards can retrieve them by logging into Backerkit.

Do these collections include high-quality audio formats?

Yes. All official soundtrack collections have both MP3 and FLAC formats. On Steam, the FLACs are an optional download.

Why is the “Complete Recordings” collection only available on Bandcamp?

The main reason we decided to do it this way was to avoid clogging up the market with too many SKUs. We feel it’s clearer to have the “Best Of” collection presented as “the soundtrack” while offering a central place to buy individual “Complete Recordings” packs if desired.

Will more tracks be added over time?

Yes. The game is still in development. As new music debuts (for example: in story mode chapters), we’ll expand the “Best Of” collection for no additional charge on Bandcamp and Steam. iTunes users will have to pay for the new tracks individually (sorry, there’s nothing we can do about that, it’s an Apple thing).

When a new track set becomes available, the dynamic variations will be gathered into a pack for the “Complete Recordings” collection to be released as a separate purchase.

Crowdfund backers will of course continue to receive track expansions according to their reward tier through Backerkit completely free of additional charge.

What happened to the pixel lobby track expansion on iTunes and Spotify?

At the time of this writing, we are still waiting for the musicians’ distribution “label” to add the latest tracks to those platforms. We are working on it and apologize for the delay. The process of releasing music on major platforms like those is more complicated than one might expect. When they finally do go through, we will make another announcement. Hopefully next time it will not take months.

Who gets the money from soundtrack sales?

100% of the proceeds from soundtrack sales (after platform fees) go directly to the musicians: Stuart Ferguson and Whitetail.

So ends the FAQ section. Thanks for your support, and enjoy the moosic.

Dec 12, 2019

Early Access Patch #24

Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc

We're pushing out a relatively small but significant patch to address some critical bugs in the menus and in the Salt Mines. There is a shiny new palette for Tianhuo: Royal Gold! Read on:

Menus/UI

Added pageleft/pageright icons on either side of the main menu newsfeed to make it more clear that you can manually scroll.
Added a black stripe on the bottom of the main menu to make navigation easier to see.
Fixed a bug that caused player portraits on the casual XP display to appear blank.
Fixed a bug that caused the “backer” portrait banner to appear for players who were not backers, and to not appear for players who were backers (on the main menu only).
There is now a “Mane6” portrait banner to help identify devs.
Fixed some errors/inconsistencies with keyboard button glyphs.

Pixel Lobby

Salt Mines

Fixed a bug that caused the screen to get stuck on black if a player entered a fight during a difficulty level transition, or as the Final Showdown began.
Many more predators now spawn during high-population runs to prevent starvation.
The controls display on the salt mines HUD has been expanded to include interacting/opening chests and mining in addition to throwing dynamite.
All players are now invulnerable to dynamite stun for 4 seconds just after coming out of a fight (yes, this includes the boss bear).
There is now a “diminishing returns” period on dynamite stuns, where if a player is stunned again shortly after coming out of their invulnerability period, that stun’s duration is reduced (yes, this includes the boss bear).

General

Fixed yet another spectate bug where if a player canceled at the spectate ready screen, they would no longer be able to fight or spectate other players.
Added pageleft/pageright icons to the hintstripe of the wardrobe menu.
Players will no longer receive matchmaking requests while they claiming an overworld chest. If a matchmaking accept prompt is already onscreen and a chest is claimed, the matchmaking prompt cannot be accepted. The player remains in the matchmaking queue (This change is intended to prevent the occurrence of a bug that breaks matchmaking (until that player leaves and rejoins the lobby) if they receive a matchmaking request while claiming chest).
Fixed a bug where the GGPO ping display would not be the same as the actual match ping.
The Bunny Ears hat now layers properly with Oleander’s horn.

Gameplay

Tutorials/Trials

Fixed a bug in Velvet’s tutorial during her specials section where the dialogue explaining Shatters were using QCF glyphs instead of QCB.
The font of the input display list during combo trials has been condensed to allow more lines to appear onscreen at once.

Velvet

Instructions on how to perform “Slide” now appear on Velvet’s command list.

Tianhuo

New palette: “Royal Gold”.

Nov 27, 2019

Early Access Patch #23

Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc

We are pushing a maintenance update to prepare for NEC that includes revisions to the tutorial, more finely-detailed command lists, and some tightening across various menus. Also, there are now longma NPCS hanging out in the background of Huoshan, with animation!

General Updates/Bugfixes

Tutorials/Trials

The tutorial now takes you to your character’s stage instead of just Arizona’s.
Dialogue in all “basics” sections have been revised for better clarity. The rest of the tutorial will get a pass later on.
Oleander now wears her glasses in all “basics” sections... She’s been reading too much.
The tutorial dialogue’s font has been increased in size... For Oleander’s benefit.
Fixed the “Rebound” bug where a successful execution of Arizona’s level 2 super would fail the trial if done a little on the late side.
Fixed a bug where the advance dialogue arrow would not show up for any prompts past the very first intro.
Input display across all tutorials is now locked to stick only.
Renamed certain options in the tutorial pause menu for better clarity.
There is now a “previous section” command in the tutorial pause menu that takes you to the start of the section before the one you’re on currently.
During objective tests, the "FAIL" text now says "TRY AGAIN". (Oleander is slightly nicer to you… But you still failed.).
Greater input leniency is now allowed for the basic combos section. Example: rapid fire jabs no longer fail the trial.
Fixed a bug in the Combo Trial move list where Crouch Rapid Fire A moves wouldn’t show the crouching arrow icon.

Menus/Classic Lobby

Fixed an oversight that set Xbox controllers’ pageleft and pageright defaults to RT/RB. The defaults are now LB/RB, respectively.
In options menus, fixed a bug where a section’s “restore defaults” would restore defaults for options that were moved to other sections.
Added a “restore defaults” to video options, excepting display resolution options.
Fixed a bug where player portraits would not appear next to players’ names in the Classic Lobby.

Pixel Lobby

There is now a nicer background while you’re waiting to join a Pixel Lobby via “Quick Join”.
We believe we have fixed “spectate bug” #8. This one required you to watch your next match before you could spectate anything else or enter a fight, even after closing the game.
Fixed a bug where ping information on the match ready screen would be wildly incorrect if a player had previously timed out from the server.

Gameplay

General

All command lists have been updated to include more details on moves (as room allows).
Tianhuo’s stage now has additional background characters, including animated longma NPCs in the distance. There was always a population in Huoshan, we swear!

Arizona

All of Arizona's "reference" palettes now properly list credit as "Mane6" rather than "Mane6 Original.

Oleander

We have temporarily removed the (intentional) asymmetrical leg color on the “Dusk Royalty” palette to fix widespread color errors with Oleander’s palettes in general. (Meanwhile, we've committed Leed and Anu to the laughing academy).

Known Issues

The Video Settings menu will not scroll back up once scrolled down. Don’t worry, no options are missing, just the header for Display Settings.
Tianhuo’s specials tutorial doesn’t yet contain an explanation for Volcanic Bash. We are working on it!

Nov 14, 2019

Early Access Patch #22

Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc

Greetings and salutations. We've got a maintenance patch going out to tie off the majority of the features planned for the previous Main Menu 2.0 update. There's not a whole lot here gameplay-wise (yet), but we do think you'll enjoy this collection of tasty UI improvements and bug obliterations.

We won't be doing a post-patch stream for this update, but there are some exciting announcements coming down the line soon. We'll be in touch.

Patch notes below:

Menus

TFH now supports button glyphs for “Fun-Location Shaped-Based”™ controllers. (Please don’t sue us.)
An option to manually specify the type of button glyphs you want displayed for each player has been added to the button config menu.
Accepting a matchmaking prompt is now done with Start/Pause instead of Utility 1.
- Utility 1 is now an entirely vestigial input, but we’re looking into repurposing it for other modes. It remains an empty shell in button config until then. Don’t think about it too much or you’ll give it power.
During config all in button config, Voice Chat (formerly Utility 2) now uses the correct text in the prompt.
The game now displays a notification if you have less than 2GB of RAM available when you start the game, which is recommended for a smoother experience.
- You may disable this notification in the options menu.
Fixed some inconsistencies with confirm/cancel buttons across various menus and prompts.
Fixed a bug that showed an odd notification if you mashed join on a full Pixel Lobby server.
Targets Mode: Fixed an issue where the hover/selection bar would be white instead of magenta.

Pixel Lobby

Salt Mines

We’ve added unique glyphs to show when you’re in range to interact with chests, ore, and characters.
You should now be able to stand next to both a chest and salt ore and interact with either (using the relevant button) without having to move your character.
Fixed a bug where the boss bear could use its super from the background during its magic attack.
Fixed a bug where players would not be awarded salt if they started a predator fight during a difficulty level transition.

General

The overworld HUD now tells you when you’ve reached the salt cap of 50K.
The salt mines gate now asks you to confirm you still want to enter the mines despite having max salt.
Fixed a bug where the matchmaking icon displayed over a player sprite’s head layered over the quick chat menu.
The bone pile on the east cliff of Arizona’s lobby now has proper layering on the top edge.

Gameplay

General

Classic Lobbies have been un-broken’d.
We’ve added a feature that automatically resets a player’s button config if their controller is removed and an entirely different controller is plugged in. This is intended to alleviate an issue with button configurations remaining from a previous controller, particularly at local events.
- To clarify: it only does the reset for one player if you swap that player’s controller while the game is running. It will not reset if the same controller is unplugged then replugged, nor if you shut the game down, unplug the controller, launch the game, then plug a different controller in.
- This feature is disabled by default, for now. You can enable it using the "Automatic Controller Reset" toggle in the gameplay options menu. We would like to make this the default option in the future if it doesn’t cause more problems than it solves, so please try it out and give us your feebdack.
Adjusted analog sensitivity to allow for more consistent diagonal inputs on certain gamepads.
In Training Mode we’ve added a “standing” state for the dummy, which is now the default on new configs. This is intended to give players a way to have a standing dummy without the risk of accidental inputs from player 2’s controller.
The image previews on stage select for Pom’s stage now use the new stage instead of the old one.
Tutorial mode: dialogue for all character’s specials and magic sections has been revised.
Tutorial mode: clearer circle-gate input glyphs (that show up better on a black background) have been added to all relevant sections.
On the tutorial section select screen, the titles of various sections have been revised for better clarity.
Added the blinking red “low time” visual warning to minimal HUD.
Fixed a bug that allowed juggle decay settings from Training Mode to carry over to Arcade Mode and the Salt Mines.
Fixed a bug that allowed characters to take damage after the match timer had run out.
- This issue would have never made the difference between a win or lose, it was purely visual. Matches were already decided before the extra damage was taken. Still, we added a safeguard that prevents characters from taking damage after the game decides a winner, to make things more clear.

Pom

Walk animations have finally been sped up to better fit her current walk speed.

Predators

Bear can no longer do foreground specials and super while in the background.

Known Issues

There’s a color error on Oleander’s far-front leg during certain animations.
In Arizona’s tutorial for her super attacks, the game sometimes doesn’t recognize the input buffer on Rebound properly, and will not register a successfully executed move.

Oct 26, 2019

Early Access Patch #21

Them's Fightin' Herds - Mane6, Inc

Spooky season has arrived at last! To celebrate, we've added new hats and seasonal decorations to all Pixel Lobbies. Cap'n'Cash's shop will be stocked exclusively with the new hats until the event ends on November 4th, at which point they'll go in with the regular rotation.

This patch includes the first release of Main Menu 2.0, which means a new look (still WIP), reorganized structure, and at long last, the separation of in-fight controls from menu controls (!!!).

Important notice: all configs have been been completely reset with this update to avoid potential conflicts with the new control scheme. This means EVERYTHING: audio, video, gameplay, and controls. Please take the time to make sure your options are set the way you like them before you start playing!

Planned for later patches: organizing the training mode menu, further enhancing the appearance of the main menu, and level 3 supers.

Upcoming stream news: The Fightin' Foenatics are doing a 24-hour donation stream RIGHT NOW for their Combo Breaker 2020 tournament. We will also be doing a post-patch stream on Monday the 28th at 3PM PT to talk about this update, the next update, and our appearance at Youmacon in less than a week. Everything's on twitch.tv/manesix.

We hope you enjoy this month's update! Patch notes below. Read on...

Main Menu 2.0

The main menu has a new look and structure! The look is still a work in progress and will be further improved in future updates.
Game modes are now organized by Local / Online / Practice rather than Single Player / Multiplayer. The Pixel Lobby has been moved to the “Online” submenu, and Story is on the top menu (though still not available until game version 1.0).
New Feature: Pixel Lobby Quick Join, which transports you directly into an official, populated server without having to select from the server list. The old Pixel Lobby option has been renamed to Pixel Lobby: Browse Servers. Both are under the new “Online” submenu.
The options menus have been reorganized so items are now in their proper categories. There are now three categories: Gameplay / Sound / Video.
In-fight controls no longer affect menu and lobby controls (ABOUT F███ING TIME). There is now a dedicated set of controls for each separate environment, all from the same button config. Config All still only affects fight controls.
Start and Voice Chat (Previously Utility 2) are universal buttons that require exclusive buttons for them. If you attempt to bind them to something that is already bound elsewhere, the buttons will swap places, as explained below.
Config All functions a little differently now:
Buttons swap: If you try to bind a button that is already bound to another action in the same category, it will swap those buttons. Example: your Light Attack is bound to B, and you try to map B to Medium Attack, it will switch the button that was previously on Medium Attack over to Light Attack.
Prompts during Config All now appear at the bottom of the input list instead of in the middle, allowing you to see these swaps happening in real-time.
There is now a time-out period on Config All. It will reset all bindings to default if you leave it for a few seconds without pressing any buttons, just in case you make a mistake.
We’ve locked the remapping of directional buttons on non-keyboard controllers unless you enable it in a new option in Gameplay Options: Allow Stick/DPad Remap. The default is “Off”. This is designed to protect pad and fightstick users from mapping a directional input to a face button unless they reaaally want to. Keyboard users still have full access to directional remapping even if this option is “Off”.
“Vanilla Lobby” is now called “Classic Lobby”. Like classic coke, but more vanilla!
The “Controls” option on the main menu has been renamed to “Button Config”, so it is more distinctive from “Controllers”.
Macro buttons are now disabled in menus and in the Pixel Lobby, to prevent accidental inputs.
“Versus CPU” mode now shows up on the new “Local” submenu. It is not available yet and has been greyed out, but it has been added.
We’ve added Ping Tolerance for matchmaking into Gameplay Options. You can tolerate ping easier now.
There are now sweet hexawipe transitions between most modes. Like wiping your screen with silk!
There is now an awesome lightning effect around the logo on the title screen… either that, or we forgot to insulate the new menu.
Fixed an issue where Master Volume scaling applied twice to everything except music.

Pixel Lobby

Halloween Event
This seasonal event will run from now until Nov 4th.

New spooky hats added! Cap’n’Cash’s shop will carry only this new apparel during the duration of the event. Once the event ends, they will go into the regular rotation with all the other hats. You will also be able to find the new hats inside chests in the Salt Mines.
Everyone gets candy bags to wear!
Each Pixel Lobby has seasonal decorations and ambiance. Except A Dreary Place. That’s still dr… ohnowait, those ARE decorations.
The predators are wearing costumes too. How did they get them? No one may ever find out! Why are they dripping ketchup? IT IS A MYSTERY.
New Feature: Invite Friends!
You can now invite your Steam friends to the Pixel Lobby server you’re currently in. This option is located on the lobby pause menu.

Salt Mines

Mining salt ore now has a dedicated button, separate from interact/open chest. By default, it’s the cancel button.
Players may now throw dynamite over ledges. Dynamite no longer stops short as if it hit a solid wall. It now continues long, as if it hit a gaseous wall. Which it did.
The black backdrop we added behind the Salt Mines HUD to increase clarity (obscurity?) is now properly in, after getting deployed and rolled back last hotpatch.
During the final showdown, we’ve added a system that will temporarily lock doors for a player if they go back and forth rapidly between two rooms (more than three times in quick succession). This is intended to prevent room transitioning from being used as an exploit to stall the bear out.
Medium and large denominations of salt pickups are now tinted darker blue so they stand out more.
Fixed a bug where if a player opened a dynamite chest then immediately opened a treasure chest, they could still move while they were opening the chest.
Players now receive a notification that the final showdown is being skipped if they are the only one left in the mines when the timer runs out. No beating yourself here!
Players no longer receive split-second ending notifications as they return to the overworld.
Fixed a bug where players wouldn’t receive health from a health chest if they got into a fight as the chest was opening.

General

Particularly tall hats no longer clip through the waterfall in Arizona’s lobby.
Cashmere is slowly defrosting to you, and now has more expressions in her dialogue portrait.
Various pieces of shop dialogue have been revised and expanded.
The graphic for the Nurse Hat has been updated. It is more lovely now. And less liable to be liable.
Both Icicle Wings items now have a proper degrees symbol in the flavor text.

Gameplay

Features

The experimental ‘TRM’ish system introduced in Early Access Patch #18 has been removed from the game. The quick and dirty way we had initially implemented the system was causing unintended side effects. Implementing it properly through input reading and proper lockout timers showed that it was still not going to give the desired results when mixed with our current set of mechanics. As both real world gameplay and internal technical tests were not solving the issues we were focused on (and honestly, the issues were not that big in the grand scheme), we’re rolling back this part of the changes we’ve made to throw mechanics with a few tweaks/reversions:
The inputs for throw teching have been cleaned up a bit. The input requirements to throw tech were not following most of the input leniency we’ve introduced to the game over time, which was emphasized even further after the TRM patch. Teching should now be more consistent if your inputs aren’t super exact. Yeah, you DID tech that one.
Throw startup is no longer counterhit, but throw recovery is.
Throw startup auto-techs like it used to.
On the combat HUD, the match timer now pulses red when it reaches 10 seconds or less for an increased sense of doom. THE END IS NEIGH.
The announcer now speaks a line when time runs out.
More dust effects for character movement have been added.
Completing Arcade Mode now displays a “Thanks for Playing!” outro screen.
The 2D version of the training stage has been pulled out of the fourth dimension, and now has a discernible floor.
Tutorial dialogue during various characters’ supers attacks sections has been revised for further clarity.

General Bugfixes

Backer characters that were removed in a prior patch from Pom’s stage for technical reasons have now been restored with new artwork.
Fixed a bug where the Perfect KO graphic would show during a time out if it was both a time out and a perfect. It now always shows the Time Out graphic, as intended.
Fixed an issue where there would still be 1 pixel of health left in a health bar despite it being empty. No more (un)magic pixel!
Training mode: made it so the dummy state resets to standing when recording a move if it was previously set to AI.
It should no longer be possible for both characters to have the same palette during online matches. There can be only one.
Fixed a bug where non-Mane6 players would have a blue name if they were player 1 and a Mane6 staff member was spectating.
Linkster has been fired.
Fixed a bug where the game could not find its config.ini file if a player had a Windows username in Cyrillic. (Sorry this one took us so long to squash!)

Velvet

Fixed a seam that would appear on Velvet’s face during her win pose on certain palettes.
Velvet still swears she has had no plastic surgery whatsoever.
Fixed an odd-looking smear frame during her 5A.

Oleander

Shadow Blast can now destroy projectiles.
Fred’s summon and desummon animations now have a suction effect. Slurp.
Fixed a general color issue where the bottom half of Oleander’s back leg was discolored during her character select and air study animations. She has been instructed to take off ALL of her socks when tanning.

Paprika

Fixed a visual glitch where a dot would appear at the base of her neck during her victory pose.

Pom

Bark! can now destroy projectiles.
Bark! is now projectile invulnerable from the start of the move until shortly after the active period.
Pom’s magic meter now displays stock refills immediately as soon as they are available, instead of in a delayed sequence.

Tianhuo

Fixed an issue where Tian’s “Violet” palette had a miscolored leg during her character select and victory poses.
Fixed some visual defects on certain frames during Volcanic Crash and the start of Ran Shao Feng.

Predators

All predators can now instant-block (as was intended).
The snake and panther have improved animations across the board: dashes, jumps, all attacks, and super (for panther).
The panther’s base movement speed and dashes have been adjusted.
The panther’s A and B attacks have slightly adjusted tempos.
The panther’s C attack now groundbounces.
The panther’s super has adjusted timing, distance and damage (especially on the last hit).
The snake’s dash distance and timings have been adjusted.

Known Issues

Classic Lobbies are broken (the main menu update was not kind to them). We intend to fix in a hotpatch as soon as we can, but in the meantime, they’re greyed out.
In Arizona’s tutorial for her super attacks, the game sometimes doesn’t recognize the input buffer on Rebound properly, and will not register a successfully executed move.
Utility 1 still shows up on button config, clinging to dear life. It’s vestigial, but it’s still hooked into some code things and will be properly extracted in a later patch.