Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Hello folks, The Baron here with a bit of U8 news, but alas I have an unfortunate announcement first. At this point you have surely all heard about, and likely even been impacted by the Corona Virus. Sadly I must report that COVID has impacted Warpfrog too and caused some disruptions to U8's release schedule. Just as all this madness began going down, KospY was in the process on opening a new Warpfrog office and onboarding some fulltime employees. The idea was that having employees working side by side with KospY would greatly streamline the workflow, so the time invested in opening the office would be worth the payoff. Unfortunately the office was only open a week when news began circulating of businesses shutting down for safety, so to protect his employees KospY decided to temporarily close office and revert back to working remotely, which is not a great learning environment for any new employee... Furthermore, several of the new employees had relocated to KospY's city specifically to work for Warpfrog, but as they arrived right as COVID trouble began brewing, several of them didn't even have a chance to get set up with internet connections and are using phone internet to work, which as you can imagine is not great... The team are working out the workflow kinks right now and hopefully this situation will get better.

What this means - The team is pressing on as best they can, but U8 will be arriving late April at best. To avoid disappointment I would caution everyone to prepare for a worse delay, and that way if it is in fact late April then it will be a nice surprise. Everyone is working as hard as they can to get U8 released, so thanks for your patience and understanding, guys. If I get any more news regarding this I will keep you guys posted!

So then, let's jump into what's new with U8!

Model makers have been hard at work, churning out new weapons and armours to go along with the new tier system. With each weapon having 4-5 tiers, you can probably appreciate that it is a lot of work! Here are some of the latest models for early tier axe and some shields:





The bow aim bug has been fixed by the way!


Work on armour continues, and the team have been getting through the armours at a good steady pace. The latest additions were leather and plate; here is how they look on the models (still actively wip):

Finally, some concept armour for you on armour tiers still to come; to recap, each tier has a type of leather, chain or plate, but the tier reflects the coverage/functionality and each higher tier provides progressively more coverage / defense. Oh and some of you were surprised to hear this so I will say it again -- The player can wear the same armour as the AI. ːsteamhappyː And in fact armour is modular, so the player can mix and match armour pieces. You could wear a plate chest piece with leather gloves for example.

Leather Tier 1 (F)
Plate Tier 1 (M)
Plate Tier 2 (M)
Plate Tier 2 (F)
That's it for this week, folks. I'll keep you all posted on Reddit, Discord and Steam if I get any new developments. Stay safe!
Mar 8, 2020
Blade and Sorcery - The Baron


Hello folks! The Baron here, and I'm delighted to be able to deliver on my promise from last time to show you guys the much anticipated and illusive spell: Gravity! KopsY has been silently slaving away in the background but has now let me know that the spell is finished mechanically, but heads up that the graphics including the spawn effect and particles are not finished, so what you are seeing is a WIP.

So, what's it all about? There are very few games out there with a robust telekinesis system and even fewer that make you feel powerful and badass to use it. Dark Messiah was surely one of the few, and it is in this vein of inspiration where B&S Gravity comes in. The general idea is that this spell will allow the player to pick an enemy up, push him, pull him, throw him, and maybe even come up with some more creative punishments. :D

Another element of the spell is the ability to imbue weapons. A weapon that is imbued with gravity becomes weightless, making striking and wielding the weapon easier since the weapon is "lighter".

Enemies that are struck with a Gravity imbued weapon will become temporarily weightless, as teased in the gif from last time.

But now onto the juicy stuff. As mentioned some time ago, one aspect of the spell system is that spells can be merged to form bigger and more powerful spells. Well, you might wonder what happens when you merge Gravity with Gravity - The result is a powerful zone of weightlessness that will trip up enemies and scatter objects, giving you a tactical advantage if surrounded.

Enemies who are caught in the Gravity dome are weightless, which means they can be ragdolled around and punched with tremendous force. All in all, it should lead to some good clean fun.

That's it for the news, folks! I will post higher resolution clips to Reddit (Steam only allows 3mb gif format) and longer videos to Youtube. Here is a nice little video to tide you over. :D Cheers!

Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Hello folks! It's that time again for a little bit of news, and today I have some sneak peeks of upcoming weapons with regards to the tier system.

If you had not heard, since the last update B&S is moving to a tiered weapon system (just like armour) where each weapon will have 4-5 tiered variants, with each variant offering improvements on the previous. Higher tiered weapons may have some functionality bonuses, such as useful hilts, extra attack surfaces (a blunt mace might also have a spike for example), or a more functional design, such as a greatsword that has a grip for half-swording. Another wip concept is that higher tiered weapons will be able to retain a magical imbue longer.

The overall tiered weapon/armour idea is to bring a little bit of a progression feel to B&S to go along with the future progression mode ("campaign mode"), so that players will have equipment to unlock and strive towards. But for sandbox lovers, don't worry because there will still be a sandbox mode and all these tiered weapons will be freely available there.

The last goal of these reworked weapons is to take one more step further away from Unity store assets in favour of custom models. So with that said, here is a look at what our modeler has been working on with the Greatsword rework:







These are the Tier 0, Tier 1 and Tier 2 of the Greatsword. You can see how the lowest tier is rusted and even lacks a pointed tip, whereas the last tier is much more functional and versatile. They will likely be 2 more tiers of the Greatsword to come too (tier 4 and 5) but I just don't have any images of those at the moment.

Here is a peek at the reworked bow - (tier 2)



And good news, the inaccurate bow bug has been fixed for U8. KospY Sends his apologies for not including it in the last update!

That's all the news for now, folks. But then again, it wouldn't be a B&S news post without a little teaser, so here is a peek at the Gravity spell, imbued in this weapon. Hopefully next time I will be able to post some news and videos of Gravity. Cheers!




Feb 4, 2020
Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Hello folks! The Baron here with a little bit of U8 news for you, and today we are talking about Armour!

First up, here is the overview: Armour (player and AI) will be tiered and modular. The categories are cloth, leather and plate (metal), and within those categories you have tiers suggesting just how protected the person will be. For example, here is a comparison of the male Leather T1 vs Leather T2.





And a little bonus, here is little peek at the concept art design for Female Leather T1 and Male Plate T2.





The big unique factor about armour in B&S is that KospY wants to avoid "gamey" mechanics, most notably that in 99% of games when you see an armoured enemy, you can assume he is just some tougher guy with more HP. Well in B&S armour does not mean extra HP; it means armour, lol. Enemy are still as vulnerable as ever, IF you can get around their armour. Depending on the category and tier, some weapons may penetrate (leather, e.g.), but if the enemy is wearing something like plate, then the player will have to use new tactics to overcome them; using magic to sear a hot blade that can slice through metal, utilizing the environment, breaking out the blunt weapons or using finesse to stab between the vulnerable gaps in the armour.  

What's interesting about all this is that if you are a gamer for your whole life like myself you will relate that our whole lives we have been conditioned to think about armoured enemy as HP sponges that generally just require grind. But what if you came across a boss character in full metal who could be killed with a single dagger to the exposed neck? This is a real mechanic game-changer and I think it will require gamers to rewire their thinking to break the conditioning of traditional games. But if any game were to pioneer this then it makes sense for it to be B&S because I think VR players are a little more nuanced and open to new, game-changing ways to play video games. And then even more specifically within VR community, the B&S fanbase who had an open mind towards B&S' alien combat system that utilized physics based melee.

So the great news is Kospy was cranking away the last few weeks and has actually now finished working on the armour collision system! And best of all, he says the hitboxes are pretty precise and he is happy with them. Knowing KospY as a perfectionist, I know that if he is happy then I think that translates into it is gonna be awesome. He reworked all the collision and materials logic, so now there is stuff like dynamic damage by penetration depth, and maximum penetration depth relative to materials. This new system inherently means we will have a super cool non-roadmap, but very long requested feature: being able to push a blade into flesh without a windup! Yes you heard that correctly but let me say it again just so it sinks in: stabbing is now achieved by applying pressure!! This is such a huge fan wishlist request and was only possible thanks to the penetration rework. So related to armour, while a blade will easily push into flesh, it will not easily push into leather, and that's where force would come into it in order to break through the armour layer.

Going along with new armour we will also be getting new models! It has long been the desire to move away from Unity store assets in favour home something homemade that will be more fitting than discount kanye west and bald lady #1, so after a year of slaughtering the same gormless faces, the new models will surely be a breath of fresh air. Here is a sneak peek at the base mesh model (i.e. a "naked" enemy with no armour equiped)



That's all the news for now, folks! Non U8 related, KospY is in the final stages of taking on 3 fulltime employees with intent for them to get a headstart on "Dungeons" and make sure B&S hits its EA to 1.0 release date goals. Hopefully WarpFrog will be settled into their nice new office soon. Office pictures to come when they are all set up!
Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Hello folks, The Baron here with a bit of good news / bad news. Let me hit you with the bad news first — U8, which was penciled in for late Jan will now be delayed until Q2 2020, likely April. This breaks with the tradition of one big update every 2 — 3 months, but here is the reasoning and good news: U8 is now planned to include features from U9, including.... Functional armour! This will be a huge feature step forward, but also as a bonus the update will also include support for custom armour modding for the modders! One step closer to total conversion modding. ;)

So why the merge of updates? Kospy decided it would be best to conjoin U8 and U9 since the two build on related systems to do with reworked armour and material penetration. For example, remember the gif of the hot blade? Well the idea of the reworked penetration system is that a hot blade would be able to pierce metal armour where a normal blade would not. So it would just make sense to lump these two concepts together and work on them at the same time in order to keep momentum. So basically it means U8 is gonna be even more massive and feature heavy.

Here is how the revamped roadmap would look:
Update 8 (April 2020)
- New spell: Gravity
- New spell: Fire
- Lightning spell v2
- Spell merging, same class only (lightning/lightning, fire/fire, gravity/gravity, but modders can create new combination like fire/lightning)
- NPC and player armors
- New characters design
- Tutorial
- Overhaul of the material/collision logic and FX system
- Custom armor (modding)
- Custom spells (modding)
- New weapons

You might notice all sorts of unmentioned goodies on here that I couldn't discuss before, including spell merging! When I mentioned last time that lightning was changing to have a build up before firing, the mechanical reason for that is because players will now be able to merge spells together (combining them like orbs) to create more powerful / new spells. What's cool about this is that it also means modders can go ham with creativity since U8 will have custom spell support, so we could have some crazy custom spell merging combinations!

You might also have spotted the "Life" spell (now being renamed to "Soul") has been pushed off the update and saved for later. The reason is because Soul is going to be more of a support spell and thus more relevant for the Dungeon update. The mechanics of this spell are still not fully revealed however.

Work on the fire spell continues and KospY has it running pretty well now, with some effects in place. The fireballs will have some level of control over them when they are launched to help with accuracy. (a bit like Dark Messiah)



As well as shooting fireballs you will also be able to apply magic to weapons which will add elemental power to the weapon, as well as increase the penetration values. So as mentioned, this means a blade could now pierce metal armour, or even stone!







It's not just fire by the way. Here is another example of imbue in action to get your creativity flowing. (WIP!)



Other than spells, work continues on the revamped character designs. The modelers are adding to it daily, but it's still a bit too WIP to show the ingame models. However, here is some concept art for the new T2 warrior design, including their leather armour.





Given the delay, KospY agreed it would be good to keep you guys posted with updates and little teasers, so I am gonna harass him for info from now until release! In the near future I will be posting more news that elaborates on aforementioned systems, such as the new spells and armour. Cheers!



Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Hello folks, The Baron here with a little preview news about U8! As most of you know, U8 is gonna be the update that finally adds some long awaited magic into Blade & Sorcery. Being a big fan of magic and mages himself, you can be sure this is an update that KospY himself is really enjoying, and so he's hard at work with the goal of introducing magic mechanics that make you feel badass without the magic feeling too "gamey".

So, what to expect: New base spells that are being added are Gravity and Fire, with Lightning getting a little rework in the process. Gravity will give the player the power to control exactly that, lifting and manipulating multiple object with ease, like telekinesis on steroids. And you probably guessed it, this also means the long-desired ability to lift, push and pull enemies. Unlike telekinesis however, this will be a mana-based spell.

Fire is still in the very early days of development so it's a bit too early to discuss in great detail, but as of now KospY is working on a fireball. The player can cast the fireball and control it as it flies (cough, Dark Messiah) but it's all very WIP and this system could change; he's really just testing some stuff right now.



higher resolution

The lightning rework is only that lightning will cast differently. It will still be the same lightning effect but the idea is that it will have now a buildup before firing, to make it a little less OP (for player and AI) and reduce run and stun. This is also lending itself to setting up the groundwork for another big feature... that I can't discuss right now because it's too early days. ːsteamsadː

Good news for modders, U8 will have updated SDK support for custom spells. The modding community have already gone hell for leather tryna jury rig custom spells into the game, so it will be nice to see what they can come up with without their hands tied behind their back.

But it's not just magic in the works! I mentioned some time back that the WarpFrog team has grown to now include asset artists, vfx specialists and concept artists; well the expanded team is simultaneously working on the long term project of moving away from Unity store assets. Just as the player got a HD makeover, it is the ultimate goal to revamp and replace all enemy models with custom built, much better looking models that will be more "tone appropriate and badass looking" as KospY put it. This is not necessarily applicable to just U8 but I can't resist giving you guys a little sneak peek at what concept artist Kévin is working on:







The first two images are the approved aesthetic for the "Tier 2" of mages, and the third image is an example of a Tier 3 mage. Kind of similar to the tiered weapons, enemies will also be tiered with higher tiers being tougher difficulty due to their equipment and armour loadouts, as well as their capabilities. Just like the player, the enemy will utilize the slot-based (head, torso, legs, feet, hands) armor system when Update 9 (the Armour Update) drops (there won't be armour in U8). As mentioned, the model revamp is an ongoing process so it is still to be seen if any of these models will make it into U8 in time.

That's it for now, guys! There is much, much more, but as a lot of it is early WIP KospY is enforcing the good old "underpromise and overdeliver" mantra for now, so expect more news as the weeks pass by and we get closer and closer to U8 release. Because I know you are all gonna ask... A very rough, don't count on it, super breezy ballpark estimate for U8 dropping would be late January.

Well, the say finish on a high note so I'll leave you guys with this --



higher resolution



Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Hello folks, The Baron here! It's time for The Steam Awards 2019, and if I may be so bold I would humbly ask you guys to to show KospY some love and support by considering Blade & Sorcery for the VR Game of the Year Category.

It's been almost one year since Blade & Sorcery launched early access on December 2018 and it has been a rollercoaster of a ride. The game has grown tremendously in scope, 100% in thanks to the amazing dedication of the Blade & Sorcery community who took a risk by supporting a first-time developer with a radical physics-based combat idea. As a result, B&S was the pioneer of physics-based VR games, and proved to the market both that that it could be done and that players wanted it.

In turn, KospY sought to delight fans by adding many unplanned features that were simply fan favourites, such as dismemberment (I sure ate my hat there, didn't I), climbing, full weapon grip, draw cuts, scores and custom built assets in the hopes of moving away from unity assets. Other stretch goal features that moved form the realm of "nope" to "it's on the list" thanks to fan support include dungeons, stealth, physics-based armour, alignment (honor system), revamped character models and a campaign (progression) mode.

On top of that, it has always been KospY's intent for Blade & Sorcery to be wide open and unrestricted to modders as he has a strong belief that modders add value to a game. Currently the game SDK supports custom weapon and maps, with future support for spells, armour and apparel. Since launch, Blade & Sorcery has had over 2,500,000 mod downloads on nexusmods.com, which is bananas when you consider this is a VR game!

So if you like what the developer is doing, and B&S has given you some good, wholesome, head-splitting entertainment this last year, then please consider nominating it for the VR Game of the Year category. From now until its release there will be some exciting news about Update 8 - The Sorcery Update coming down the pipeline, so stay tuned! Thanks, all!
Oct 20, 2019
Blade and Sorcery - KospY
The beta of Update 7 has finally ended!

So the beta was longer than usual as I took the opportunity to do a lot of internal changes as well as moving on the new Unity Rendering Pipeline (LWRP/URP).

The new rendering has still some issues with lightning but nothing game breaking and Unity should resolve this in the next coming update.
Anyway, the new rendering allows more performance optimization and players struggling with performance on U6 should appreciate it ːsteamhappyː

Here is an highlight of some features of U7:


Improved player character and hands




Wrist blade and new weapons design


Custom maps support, also allowing some new crazy challenges (credit to ddevo2x!)

Below the full list of changes from U6 to U7:

Features
  • Updated player male and female characters
  • Updated weapon designs (swords, spear, mace, axe, bardiche, buckler, wood shield and potion)
  • New weapon: Wrist blade
  • Added custom map support
  • Added a scores system (experimental, first step toward the experience/leveling system)
  • Added post process options: Bloom, Sharpen, Vibrance, Contrast, Brightness and Eye Adaptation
  • HTC Vive Cosmos support
Enhancements
  • Added optional comfort vignette option for players subject to motion sickness
  • Improved hand animations and fingers tracking
  • Added the possibility to jump while climbing if feet are touching a surface (should be easier to climb above surface)
  • Reworked map selection UI
  • Updated text color of the wave selector UI
  • Potion blot are now using the decal system
  • Improved UI sliders
  • Added a sign to show how to open the menu in the home
  • Disabled auto reload when dying
  • Improved level preview orb
  • Improved mirror shader
  • Creatures and items falling into water create a splash effect
  • Items falling below the home map will teleport back to the home start
  • Increased screenshot FOV from 70 to 80 (can be changed in the options file)
  • Improved some weapon textures
  • Allow using grip and alternate use while pointing an UI
  • Improved handling of short swords, rapier, dagger, spear, dual blade staff, staff, longsword and arrow
  • Improved two handed handling
  • Added new debug rotation mode option
  • Misc balancing
Performance optimization
  • Updated the game to the new Unity Lightweight Render Pipeline (LWRP)
  • GPU based decals
  • Reduced draw calls on maps
  • Improved physic collisions performance
  • Improved NPC spawning performance
  • Added async loading of asset bundles (prevent some freeze while loading)
  • Creatures and items falling below maps or in Canyon water despawn automatically
  • Improved wave spawner and catalog data lookup performance
Fixes
  • Fixed wave parameter "max alive" not working
  • Fixed potion liquid level being shared between all potions
  • Fixed shields not protecting the hand correctly
  • Fixed bare hand sliding along zip lines being too slow
  • Prevent hand to collide with objects grabbed with telekinesis
  • Fixed wrong body rotation while looking down
  • Fixed menu book creating a lag spike when opening
  • Fixed AI being stuck near a rock in the Market map
  • Fixed UI click not working when the Windows regional format is set to Turkish
  • Fixed item spawner sometime continuing to spawn objects when pressing a button
  • Fixed friendly NPC colliding each other when spawning during Warzone 3 wave
  • Fixed an issue with loot table not working correctly when an empty value is set
  • Fixed navigation issue of the stairs in the Ruins
  • Fixed some dismembering issues
  • Disabled upper leg slicing to hopefully fix an issue causing the sliced NPC to be stuck in T
  • Pose
  • Fixed wrong damager and parry orientation and position on some weapons
  • Fixed spear default grab position and orientation
  • Fixed some wrong collider material in Market
  • Fixed an issue preventing NPC to parry some weapon correctly
  • Fixed an issue with some modded weapon causing the game to break when the player spawn with them
  • Fixed controller vibrating when kicking
  • Updated some texts
  • Updated Unity to 2019.2.9
  • Updated SteamVR Unity plugin to 2.4.5
  • Updated Oculus plugin to 1.4.1
Modding
  • Added custom map support to the SDK
  • Added an example level in the SDK
  • Added custom level modes
  • Moved level module definition to level mode instead of level only
  • "ColliderGroup" and "WhooshPoint" on Item Definition are now a component and Damager Definition directly reference the ColliderGroup (prefabs done with the old SDK will need to be updated!)
  • Renamed Global.json to Game.json
  • Added parameters to Game.json to set the default levels, default characters, default JSON folder and saves folder
  • Added a launch parameter ("
  • game xxx") to specify the folder containing the Game.json (allow total conversion mods)
  • Moved wave spawner to level module
  • Added the possibility to set multiple wave selector with different spawn points and waves on the same map
  • Custom combat music support
  • Custom menu support
  • Added a scene in the SDK to create hand poses
  • Added potions support to the SDK
  • Updated TextData to support pages groups for in
  • game information messages
  • Added a brain parameter to disable attacks from NPC (for testing purpose)
  • Finding ID in the catalog are no more case sensitive
  • Improved the JSON serializer to support array updates using an identifier field
  • Fixed mug items using the wrong prefab
  • Added a field "alwaysAvailable" in wave JSON to force a wave to be available on all wave selectors
  • Added SliceFill material path in creaturedata
  • Asset bundle now use 3 extensions: .assets, .map and .uma (automatically named during export in the SDK)
  • Renamed physicmaterial json to material
  • Added forward and upwards particle direction in FX JSON
  • Updated FX JSON (projector renamed to decal)
  • Removed paintable parameter in item JSON and added a new SDK component to set which mesh is paintable in the prefab (mods will need to be updated to get blood on blades)
  • Added new global pin forces parameters in ragdoll JSON
  • Moved item text localization to text JSON (setting a localizationID will override the displayname and description fields)
  • Added custom center of mass support for ItemDefinition
  • Added new zone parameters
  • HolsterName are moved to customValue in container JSON
  • If no holster is set in the container JSON, the game will now pick the first available slot per default
  • Added custom storage categories support (by overriding storageIcons array in Game.json)
  • Added saved custom values support for items
  • Fixed JSON data override not working correctly
  • Fixed wave parameter "alwaysAvailable" causing wave to duplicates in every categories
  • Added custom faction support (see game.json)
  • Moved custom inertia tensor from item JSON to item definition prefab
Know issues
  • Objects lightning are limited causing flickering in some situation. It's an issue in Unity 2019.2, but it should be fixed in the next version (2019.3, currently in beta).
  • Some grass disappear unexpectedly
Sep 13, 2019
Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Steam users can opt into the beta with this key: dnkrozdnstuff

Mods WILL NOT WORK with U7 beta, so be sure to uninstall all mods for now while modders update. If you have issues you could even try deleting Streaming_Assets in the game folder and the verifying the game on steam to reinstall that folder.

If you want mods and don't want bugs, you may wanna sit the beta out and wait for full release. Cheers!

Blade and Sorcery - The Baron
Hello folks, The Baron here with a little sneak peek at some of those U7 goodies I alluded to before. ːsteamhappyː

KospY has been super off the radar as of late because he is working hard on getting U7 finished and he is aiming to do so before Sept 12th. I had mentioned that U7 is largely gonna be a small update consisting of just the SDK Maps (custom map support) but with some possibility for goodies. Well here is a peek at what KospY has been cooking up in secret with his new character designer: The beginnings of a full revamp of B&S character models to make them better, crisper and all around shinier.









The images above are not to be mistaken for "The Armour Update" which will hopefully be arriving in U9 (ie where player and NPCs can equip armour pieces) but instead these are the "base" character, when he wears no armour. So for example, this character could not parry with his bracer like he could in the armour update.

Right now this upgrade is only the player character, but the hope is by U8 / U9 all models will get an upgrade, including revamped NPCs from scratch! That is, an endgoal of new 3d models, new skins/textures, new faces, new hairs / beard, etc...). A huge overhaul that should move the game toward something more professional, with art direction that makes the game look more original and fantasy / badass. Super exciting for a "bonus" addition. ;)

Cheers!
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