Hello mates, The Baron here with a little sneak peek at a cool bonus surprise being added to U11 that we didn't mention before. As it relates to graphics, this news is exclusively for PCVR (sorry Nomad folk).

As we have mentioned in the past, we are always striving to push the limit when it comes to PCVR. Whenever I would read anxiety comments from people concerned Nomad could mean the abandonment of PCVR, I was bursting to reveal this secret project because I knew it was being worked on these past months and that it is pure PCVR goodness. ːpraisesunː

As always, the following preview images are WIP and some things may change / not be final.

I present to you, the B&S U11 graphics makeover:



To really understand the impact, have a look at this comparison before and after of the iconic "Dungeons" photo as you would all know well. The top image is as it currently is in B&S, and below is the new and improved graphics.



And another before-after comparison - the top image is the old U10 Watchtower as you know it from U10, and below is the U11 rework. I should note, these changes are only impacting Dungeons right now, with plans to expand into the Arena maps at some point the horizon.



One of the most major changes has been to the lighting tech used; in short, everything in the environment now receives dynamic, realtime lighting from a much bigger variety of light sources. Before this change, static objects had their lighting fully "baked-in", and received dynamic lighting from
only a few sources such as hand-held torches.
In the new update, static objects receive beautiful dynamic lighting from nearly every light source in the game, most notably from the sun, and the result is much more vibrant and crisp than ever was possible before. To keep performance high, most shadows are still baked in and static.



Brick and stone architecture have received a big upgrade. Throughout Dungeons, you’ll feel a much greater sensation of 3D detail. However, this is not simply tessellation; these are individual bricks that are true 3D and can be interacted with, collided with, climbed, etc.
The Warpfrog environment team worked their butts off to make all this possible, so huge thanks to big brain Chris for all his work on this the past months, and to Kaou and Drags for their tireless asset and integrations work.



In interior assets, stone columns and many other elements have been upgraded, optimized, or rebuilt to increase visual quality.



Outdoor environments in Dungeons were improved also; rocks and cliffs assets have been swapped for higher quality ones and majorly improved.



This is about the point that your GPU starts sweating about performance hits. Don't worry! Everything that was reworked is significantly more optimized than the old versions.
Bits of cave rock that protruded out of the map and beyond the player's vision have been removed to reduce overhead. There were some cases where the total polygons and lightmaps for rocks were reduced by as much as 70%. In layman's terms it translates to simply better optimization for Dungeon rooms while still having it look awesome.



On top of the aforementioned big and obvious improvements, there are also tons of little graphical and environmental optimizations that you can experience for yourself soon enough.



Not so fast - one secret bonus is cool, but two are even better! Also coming to U11 PCVR, KospY has added support for post-processing profile options. This would be things like visual filters, such as "Filmic", "High Contrast", etc.



If you ever messed around with the "ACES" setting in U10 then you might have an idea what it is like already. This is super cool on it's own, but even better is that it will also be moddable. ːsteamdanceː That means modders could get in and make custom 'looks' for the game. This may be very appealing for modders making maps that want a complimentary unique look, or for players who want things like darker/scarier dungeons for example.

So that's the news, guys!


I feel you! I'm afraid it is the same news as last week; The team are compiling all their U11 work (today!) to make a playable internal build. With that, we will bug-test and make sure nothing is flat out broken, like the game crashing.
It's hard to say how long this will take because it is a bit like asking how long is a piece of string, and for that reason we decided it is best not to set any exact release date, just in case there is something unforeseen that pops up during bugfixing and delays things. It is better to have you guys be pleasantly surprised to discover U11 has released than be disappointed that a deadline was missed.


If you are reading this news the day it was posted, you might notice the date is April 1st... April Fools Day... How angry would you be if I told you it was all a joke? ːsteamlaughcryː Well don't worry, it's very much real, haha!
We wanted to do something for April Fools Day though, so my good friend Lyneca ("the magic man!") has whipped up something fun for you guys - a whacky April Fools Day mod. You can grab it on nexus here (pcvr only):

https://www.nexusmods.com/bladeandsorcery/mods/5921

What the mod does is for you to find out! Remember the mod is just a joke, and crammed with silliness that is not meant to be balanced in any sense.
The world modifier will change every 20 seconds for a range of weird and whacky status effects, including a few that are hidden - can you discover them all? It would be recommended to run this mod solo so that you can be sure to know what strange bizarro behaviors are being attributed to this mod.

Cheers!

Hello mates! The Baron here with a little sneak peek of some of the upcoming U11 magic stuff that I had alluded to in previous news.

Magic expansion was not directly advertised as one of the bigger features of U11 because we weren't sure how much would/could be included in time for U11, and as always we didn't wanna say too much in case it didn't work out and have people disappointed. We figured it is better that you guys are pleasantly surprised than disappointed. So, surprise! haha

The general design decisions for magic has been (as it always has been) to make Fire a more direct damage spell, Gravity more about utility and versatile function, and Lightning about crowd control. We hope that we can pad out magic with enough features that it can make full mage builds not only viable, but also fun and exciting to play.

So without further ado, let's take a look at some of the magic changes in U11!



[Do take note that all previews are of WIP stuff, so some things may be incomplete. Previews were recorded in a buggy alpha, so forgive any lighting strangeness or enviro glitches in the previews!]

The first things you will notice in-game is magic got some really nice VFX and audio overhauls. There are a lot more particle effects going on including small stuff, like being able to see pebbles from the gravity blasts, as well as in general things just look cooler! These gifs don't really do justice to how cool it looks in VR.

Fire has some beautiful new particle effects, smoke, and heat haze FX. The overall effect makes fire imbue look more like the character in the poster art.



Gravity has a new shimmering haze and purple mist, emphasizing the more vortex-nature of this spell. The new audio similarly has a much more fitting and menacing bassy sound improvement.



Lightning is more crackling, erratic and beefy in the lightning streaks.



So let's get into some feature specifics, starting with Fire.

You may have noticed from that first gif a sneaky fire merge happening... Yes, indeed! Fireball merge is finally complete (being dubbed 'meteor'), and I think you will be surprised to see how crazy it is in-game. ːwftogrinː



Using it is as simple as merging two fireballs (similar to gravity bubble) and then launching it forward. It is pretty powerful at the moment, so you can Kamehameha to your heart content!

Fire staffs finally have a proper feature! By pressing the 'alt' button ("A" on Index) you can utilize the Firesling effect; this launches fireballs from the staff as though your were hurling a rock.

In classic B&S fashion, it is easy to use and mess with, but difficult to master! But once you get a feel for it you will be lethal.



Slamming the staff on the ground activates the Twin Firebolt feature. These bolts will circulate and home in on enemy, a bit like a magic missile (although with a chance to miss).



Next up, Gravity has received some more utility additions.

The player is now effected by their own gravity bubble, making you lightweight inside the bubble, and able to jump higher and slower. You can combine this with the new Gravity ability to "Gravity Jump". This is achieved by simply blasting gravity on the ground to launch yourself upwards; very useful for Dungeons! Combining the two effects can give you some strategic advantage and leap great distances.



Continuing on this note, one of my favourite new additions is the Gravity Glide. This new feature is achieved by simply blasting and holding gravity downwards (think Ironman or something) as you fall, to engage in a featherfall type effect where you can glide to safety.



As well as being just cool to do, these new Gravity features should open up some new traversal options for the Dungeon, and alleviate some problems for players who hate climbing.

Gravity now has a staff alt effect too! Being dubbed "Gravity Hammer", the staff can whip up objects and suspend them as though they were weightless, allowing the player to slam enemy with them or launch them like missiles.



If you were wondering if you could also whip enemies up into the air - not at the moment! We are thinking about adding this, though it is technically still possible to do by grabbing the weapon in their hand and lifting the weapon with them holding onto it, haha.

Finally, Lightning.

Lightning is still heavily WIP so some stuff is missing in this preview due to missing final VFX; namely the staff slam feature, which blasts a shockwave around the player stunning everyone - the ultimate in crowd control! So maybe I will keep this one a surprise that you can see in-game yourself.

But here is something you might like, the new staff feature: Lightning Arc



It's so fun! It's still majorly WIP in terms of balance and bugs, but to activate this you simply press and hold the alt use button to create a lightning whip-type arc. The arc will stun those it touches, but it also decapitates! Swing it at the legs of an enemy charging towards you and both legs will slide off. ːpraisesunː

Also, here is something fun: Lightning now has proper metal conductivity.



Lightning transfers between metal objects, so this can lead to some really crazy scenarios with lightning blasting everywhere. Be careful you don't accidentally charge all your enemies swords!

But on that note, 'overcharging' enemies will also cause them to release their weapons, so no more enemy infinite blocking your lightning with their weapons.

___

That is about all for now, folks! Still no word on the Soul spell, which is still not planned until the later updates. I should also note that this features listed above are not everything planned for magic! There is still a whole bunch of more magic features coming, but likely in U12 (or possibly U11.X at a stretch).

If you are wondering about U11 release time, still no solid date, sorry! I am sure a few people are getting antsy because it was slotted for Q1 and we are now technically approaching the end of Q1. This is why we never give release dates anymore, haha.
We are looking like the update could be finished by the end of Q1 (end of March) but we would really like to / need to do testing and bug-finding, so realistically it may not be available until April. Perhaps there will be an open beta, or it might be more efficient to just do an internal beta bug-fix blitz and then release the live update sooner (which means less version confusion/mods breaking a million times during beta versions). I will keep you guys posted when we know the release plan!

If any Nomad players are reading, here are the answers to the questions I know you will have, haha: Yes Nomad will received these updates (minus the graphics changes), the update would be released some time after PCVR (maybe a week or two), and still no news on scripted modding! (I promise I will let Nomad players know immediately as soon as there is)

Cheers!

Hello mates, The Baron here with the latest news from Blade & Sorcery, and to give you a little preview at what is coming down the pipeline.

The team is fully in U11 mode, and we have been expanding quite significantly which means Warpfrog is a beehive of activity right now with everyone working on lots of different systems and features simultaneously. So here is a glance at some of the wide variety of cross-department things that are in development at the moment --


Here is a classic B&S example of one of those type things that wasn't even supposed to be a thing - We were surprised and pleased to see how many U10 players were gravitating towards stealth type playstyles even though we had warned the stealth in-game was pretty rudimentary.

Well, for these folks we have added some nice new features and AI improvements for you!

Big stealth improvements for AI mean they now become alert when being touched, if a weapon or object is thrown or dangled around in front of them with telekinesis, if they find a dead body, or spot light from a torch.



Sight is now based on light level and crouching, so a player crouching in the dark is much harder to spot than one standing in the light, and similarly bodies hidden in the dark will be less visible to an AI.
There is also now a small grace period between the AI seeing you to become alert. This means you will get less AI insta-spotting you from across the map and beelining towards you with murderous intent.

As well as vision related improvements, sound was also improved regarding stealth; the AI will now react to noises beyond just footsteps.



And of course, this means they will also become alert if they hear an ally yelling. But to counter this, here is something fun:



You can now muffle enemies for a proper stealth kill! Muffling enemies will silence them from alerting any of his friends. Although if you wanna go straight for the kill, the system has also been improved so that head stabs yells are more sedated while neck stabs/throat cut are completely silent. So no more guy shouting AGGHHHHH when stealth killed.


There is a ton of work being done in magic but unfortunately not a huge amount to preview as everything is heavily WIP, so things are missing VFX, etc.

Our last spell is still a way off ("Soul" - unlikely to arrive until U12), but in the meantime we are padding out all the missing mechanics of the current fire, lightning and gravity spells. This would be to flesh out the current spells more like Gravity, which has multiple functions, merge effects, staff effects, etc; we are adding similar functions for the other spells so you can use staff effects, and so on. I think you are all gonna be surprised when you see just how much extra utility is being added to the current spells. This should make full mage builds a lot more viable and interesting to play.

Although there is a ton of progress on this it is all very heavily WIP so I reckon this work on magic deserves its own featured news; hold tight and in the future when I can gather some clips I will do a Magic-specific news and go into more detail.

But I can't leave you empty handed, so here is a little sneak peek at a fun new function for Gravity:




Work has begun on the new system for wearing clothing; this will be an important aspect of Crystal Hunt mode and the introduction of a shop where players can purchase and equip things.

Like everything else "non-gamey" in the B&S design philosophy, we are wanting to avoid any kind of UI for the shop and shopping experience. As such, items will be "on the rack" for purchase rather than a simple menu item, so you can take things from the counter and see how they are before you buy.



The wearing of armour is very simple; simply place it on your body.



Since the armours are segmented, this means the player can mix and match different armour pieces to make the perfect set. Perhaps you like the leather gauntlets but the metal breastplate for example.


Another one of those things that has been on the todo list forever. We have been lacking character customization options for the longest time, ever since we redid the character system in U9.

While it is unlikely that the scope of character customization from U7 will ever return due to technical reasons (making troll characters with big long arms and messed up faces, etc), we wanted to at least have a selection of player faces and skin tones to represent different ethnicities. Our modeler is currently working on these new player faces, and here is one he completed just recently:



A little side note to this is we are working on official lore right now, and have someone designated for this. We are hoping to plot out all the fictitious cultures and lands of the B&S universe, as well as faction stuff.
You might have heard me before say that B&S will never have a story mode, but instead would likely lean towards some "low level" lore; the kind that a player pieces together from the environment rather than a narrator VO that just spoonfeeds you. In this universe the player character is not "the one", where the world revolves around the player like so many other game tropes. But I digress!


Nothing to preview for this unfortunately, but an inventory system is being worked on in anticipation of the shop and Crystal Hunt mode. It's still in the early stages, but the idea is a player could pick up clutter-type items (not weapons) and store it for later, with the application here being for collecting Dungeon loot. Of course knowing the B&S community, the ability to collect clutter is surely going to lead to a surge of game clips featuring all sorts of prop shenanigans.


Dungeons will continue to grow all the way to 1.0, so it should be no surprise to hear it is still being worked on.

The team continue to work on adding rooms to the Dungeon (by 1.0 we are hoping for at least twice as many rooms as current), while another section of the Warpfrog team are working to squeeze the best graphical fidelity possible out of PCVR - There are some crazy exciting visual improvements being made, but I don't think it will be ready for U11 so this will be definitely a news for later.

In the meantime, here is something fun coming:



Doors! Such a small addition but with big ramifications for how Dungeon rooms can be designed.

Our doors will of course have full physics simulation with fine hitboxes. This should enable all sorts of interesting stuff, like kicking in doors, smashing them open, wedging them open with knives and so forth.


As mentioned earlier, we are constantly pushing PCVR to be the most visually stunning it can be. Our VFX team member is working on some new spell effects that include smoke and trails.






Work on the Animation Overhaul has finally begun! I know this is one of the top hype changes coming for many people, so I'm really delighted it is now underway. However, this is a huge undertaking and there is a lot to do so I am unsure exactly how much / little of the AO will be included in U11. It will depend on how well the development goes.

The goal of AO is to make the AI more responsive in defending itself through parrying, while relying less on dodge-jumping backwards. Enemy attack animations will be improved by replacing derpier attack animations with video captured combat animations that are being custom made. And finally, some of the sillier behaviours would be ironed out, such as not having AI thrust with an axe, etc.

Here is some very early-WIP tests for the AI doing a better job at blocking attacks. (ignore the red bar over the enemies heads btw; it is an invisible mechanic for the player related to the AI alertness) Do take note that this is literally only the beginning, so these are just glitchy and unpolished internal tests!

[/img] And another example of the enemy trying to block and riposte. (glitches and wonkiness present, as expected) [img]https://media4.giphy.com/media/WnJhoooOaNW9zAYxgZ/giphy.gif?cid=790b76112c4bc79160eb1927630e3d5b0ba7b5003ebd237c&rid=giphy.gif&ct=g[/img] So as I say, very WIP and glitchy but a promising start to a better system. A stretch goal for AO (as in we will see!, no promises) is that we could have custom animation pools for different weapon sets. So for example a rapier AI would have a fencing stance and only use rapier specific animations, whereas a sword and shield guy would have his own set of animations, a dagger guy another set, etc. The feasibility of this will greatly just depend on time and progress! [h3]PERFORMANCE[/h3] If you have been following the B&S development over some time you will know this is a perma-task! However I did want to reassure PCVR players that although we are always pushing the graphics and effects, any extra overhead is countered by performance gains. New progress has been made on improving performance for collisions, effects and audio, as well as map optimizations to reduce any strain from increasing the graphics and effects. ___________________________ That's it for now, folks! This was just a broad look at everything going on, but as these different components become more refined I can start to do more in-depth looks at each individual one. 2022 should be an exciting one for B&S! Don't forget you can follow the roadmap for PCVR [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/629730/discussions/4/1743355067106410776/]here[/url]. And because I absolutely know Nomad players are going to ask - U11 release for Nomad would follow PCVR after it is sure the release was free of any game-breaking bugs. So the best guesstimate you can get for Nomad is to look at the PCVR roadmap and add a few weeks to the PC estimated release dates. Che
gif

And another example of the enemy trying to block and riposte. (glitches and wonkiness present, as expected)



So as I say, very WIP and glitchy but a promising start to a better system.

A stretch goal for AO (as in we will see!, no promises) is that we could have custom animation pools for different weapon sets. So for example a rapier AI would have a fencing stance and only use rapier specific animations, whereas a sword and shield guy would have his own set of animations, a dagger guy another set, etc. The feasibility of this will greatly just depend on time and progress!


If you have been following the B&S development over some time you will know this is a perma-task! However I did want to reassure PCVR players that although we are always pushing the graphics and effects, any extra overhead is countered by performance gains. New progress has been made on improving performance for collisions, effects and audio, as well as map optimizations to reduce any strain from increasing the graphics and effects.

___________________________

That's it for now, folks! This was just a broad look at everything going on, but as these different components become more refined I can start to do more in-depth looks at each individual one.

2022 should be an exciting one for B&S! Don't forget you can follow the roadmap for PCVR here.

And because I absolutely know Nomad players are going to ask - U11 release for Nomad would follow PCVR after it is sure the release was free of any game-breaking bugs. So the best guesstimate you can get for Nomad is to look at the PCVR roadmap and add a few weeks to the PC estimated release dates.

Cheers!

Our biggest update ever is now available! This was a huge undertaking for us as the effort was borderline making a new game. We really hope you enjoy it, as it is the first step to Blade & Sorcery becoming 'more' than a sandbox.

If the download doesn't appear, try restart the Steam / Oculus client.

Remember to remove all your mods! Like every major update, U9 mods will not work in U10 and will need an updating. Delete all your mods from StreamingAssets/Mods and/or Vortex or your game won't work. Please be patient in giving modders the time they need to update their mods; they are well aware they need to update their mods but just need time.

After deleting your mods it is wholly recommended you delete your U9 save file to make sure your game is nice and fresh for U10, which is a major update. You can do this by deleting the folder located at Documents\My Games\BladeAndSorcery\Saves. This is a good idea even if you had no mods, as sometimes Steam can do strange things on updating. If you have any issues at all, especially with loading, it is almost certainly this cause.



The big one; semi-procedurally generated Dungeons with pre-spawned, patrolling enemies. This was a gargantuan undertaking, but the goal of Dungeons was to add a sense of structure and objective to Blade & Sorcery for players who craved something a little more than a pure sandbox experience.



This release is the first step on that road. It should be noted that U10 Dungeons is still a sandbox experience, in the sense that you can take with you any weapons you spawn from the Home, and currently the only objective of Dungeons is to get to the end.

The long term goal which will follow in subsequent updates is to have a loot system, skill trees, and an objective to Dungeon delving. But for now, this U10 release will give you a really solid idea of the direction we are going, as well as a peek at what B&S looks like at a higher development scope.



Currently we have approximately 50 rooms in the generation pool - by full release we are aiming to at least double that.

You can access the Dungeon from the Home map menu by selecting to travel to "Greenland".


A huge step for B&S AI; enemy in the Dungeon will not be spawned by the player through the book spawner. Dungeon AI will have patrols, idle animations, a FOV, and will respond to sound. However, as we mentioned before, please don't expect a polished stealth game; our 'stealth' system is basic but we will continue polishing and maybe even expanding it based on community reception.




Given the madness that has been ensuing on Reddit and Discord, we think you guys have all figured this out already, but if you watched the U10 trailer you may have seen 'the surprise' we had mentioned on the roadmap was in fact... the chicken! But it is not just the chicken itself that is the surprise! In actual fact the chicken is symbolic of something bigger: It is the first ever non-humanoid creature added to B&S, which means... you guessed it, B&S will officially support custom creatures for modders! That's the surprise!

There will be a creature framework for modders to add non-humanoid creatures into B&S. On launch there will be no documentation or a sample creature to work from, so modders will have to fumble around a bit until we get that to them, which will be asap! It should be a huge boon for the modding community to be able to add non-humanoids creatures with native support. And who knows, maybe we have some non-humanoid creature plans of our own.. ːsteamsunnyː



But what about this fella? His name is Jonathan... apparently. We did not expect such an outpouring of love for this little guy, nor did we anticipated that people would like him as a pet in the Home, which was not planned haha. However, based on the insane response to Jonathan we decided to add a little Jonathan easter egg into U10... Let's see who out there can figure it out first. ːwftogrinː


Bye-bye to our trusted old black void character screen. We won't show you any preview here so that you can enjoy the surprise of getting a sense of how much bigger and grander in scope B&S has become.


And speaking of goodbyes, the home that has been used since the alpha will also be retired. This new home is a modest little dwelling, but we are formulating plans on expanding it under 'The Progression Update' concept. We have pretty cool ideas, but you know how we like our little secrets, so we will just tease you for now! ːsteamdanceː




The newest weapon additions should give you a little taste of what we meant when talking about "tiered weapons". It still might not make full sense until progression and purchasing weapons/armour is implemented in future updates, but you should get an idea of how the quality and reliability of weapons range from some new T0 (tier zero) to T3 weapons. However do note that nothing is really balanced, so expect tweaks.



The higher quality the weapon, the longer it retains an imbue whereas T0 weapons will not retain an imbue at all.




While still not the "animation overhaul" we mentioned before, NPCs have been addressed to stop the behavior of them charging into you and have some better range-finding, so less swatting air. Some new animations have been added in as well as some old ones removed (RIP jumping spin attack).





Some polish is still needed however; in attacks you may experience some "Achilles spam"... we will keep refining!


In an effort to make the Blade & Sorcery universe more homogeneous when it comes to lore, some old arena maps have been revised with updated textures and colours to better mesh the locations together under a more consistent art direction.






Similar to the revised maps, some enemy armours have been revised to be more lore appropriate. This will be an ongoing process until we hit 1.0.




All these Dungeon rooms are nice, but not so much if no one can play it! As always, work on performance optimization continues for U10 (it is a never ending process). Unlike normal arena maps, Dungeons does not load in one big chunk, so (hopefully!) you won't get the same kind of performance strain as you would with a huge map like Citadel for example. Dungeons will load in concealed chunks to give the impression of a continuous, seamless dungeon but without the performance strain of loading the whole thing. It's really cool!

Some (not too many) rooms are very large, and have many enemy all at once. Those will be the expected trouble rooms if we have any, so we are eager to see how players get on because even on those large rooms there was a lot of work done on optimization.

We also have the new system implemented where enemy outside a certain range will have their physics disabled, so they don't contribute to overall physics strain. Only enemies actively within fighting range will impact performance. This should mean you could have more enemy on screen in the background without any issues!

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Well, I think that is everything! Please enjoy this update and thank you to all the fans who have supported us to get to this point. Blade & Sorcery started out as a small wave area game, so please know that it is truly the fan support and enthusiasm that makes magic happen and propels the development!

And a big shout out and thank you to the full Warpfrog team, who busted their chops on this ambitious update.

Hello folks, The Baron here with another little bit of Dungeons news, and some updates on what KospY and the team have been working on as we enter the endgame stages for U10 release.

The biggest activity around here has been coding work, arguably the most important work but makes for the least exciting news! This is the kind of stuff like optimization, performance fixes, and bug-fixing whack-a-mole.
However one exciting breakthrough has been another major optimization that gives a good performance boost, where only engaged enemies with the player will count towards physics strain. This change should be imperceptible, but will allow more NPC on screen, something that a lot of player should like, as well as modders ːsteamhappyː



Dungeons work continues and we are finalizing the rooms we have for U10. As mentioned in the last news, there won't be as many rooms in the U10 build as we intend for the final game. We were hoping that by 1.0 release we will have double or even triple the amount of rooms that are included in U10, as well as adding more content in them for the incoming progression mode in U11/12 (interactable stuff, loot, etc...). We are actively adding to the Warpfrog team to help with this workload.





It's nice to finally be able to show off some pictures, because some people were apprehensive that "Dungeons" would mean boring underground corridors upon corridors, but that's definitely not the case, the Dungeons rooms are hand-crafted and even include some outdoor "rooms" (albeit enclosed areas).





There is also a mix of castle-like indoor structure and cave systems (also hand-crafted). The intended goal here was to give the player a sense that they are really exploring some old ruin and grounds that sprawls over an area as opposed to feeling like a self-contained indoor location. A pretty far departure from the familiar B&S arena type gameplay, but we want it to feel like an adventure!





Dungeon enemies are still being tweaked and worked on; we are getting there, but don't expect any crazy AI for now as we still have much to do to make them react realistically to all the interactions a VR player could do in B&S (telekinesis, spells, touching etc...).
Stealth is possible, but as we said in a previous news, don't expect any level of polish of a stealth-focused game, (especially in U10!) as the main focus will remain fighting.

On this point, we did some improvement to combat, and you should sense an increased difficulty in hard mode, as AI dodge more often, have some new attack animations, and finally have learned how to hit you better. ːsteamdeadpanː
Dungeons will have 3 difficulty levels to choose from, with the easy mode being closer to the difficulty of the current AI difficulty of U9.

We still don't have a release date for U10 but we will surely release a trailer for it, so you will know as soon as we know.
So with that, I'll wrap up here for the day and leave you with a little patented Baron Sneak Peek. Cheers!

Hello mates! The Baron here, and delighted to finally give you some juicy information on the long awaited "Dungeons" mode. Since it has been a while since our last news, I made it an extra long one for you guys.

Some important news is that the roadmap has shifted again, but this time it's a positive thing because the plan for U10 is no more only the new home and smaller improvements, but bringing Dungeons to life!

That means we are finally able to show some progress on Dungeons, so here is the first little sneak peak of the initial dungeon entrance that will be added for U10! (as usual, everything is WIP of course!)



As you can see, Dungeons is not only about interiors, the team worked hard to make dungeons not feel claustrophobic / too dark, with "rooms" changing between interiors and exteriors. This was not an easy task, as it required a custom lighting solution, but we are really proud of the result!

The first dungeon will be called "Greenland", and it will be the first "Biome" that the player will see in-game (more on biomes later)!



But first, there was a lot of "will it, won't it" for this, and this was the cause of the big delay in getting you guys this news because as always we didn't want to overhype and then let you guys down if it wasn't gonna happen. However do note that this will not be the final version of Dungeons. It will be an early access version that will be missing rooms and areas compared to the final plans, and this version will only available from the current sandbox mode.

The player progression with the skill tree, shop, etc, will not be in U10, (more likely U11 or U12), and will probably be renamed to something else than dungeons to avoid confusion (something like "progression mode" maybe).

Our goal with this early Dungeon release is to share with you our progress, validate our lighting tech, and get the feedback of the dungeon flow and new AI to adjust our work before starting mass producing rooms and areas for further release. ːsteamdanceː



So without further ado, here is an FAQ about Dungeons!


Thanks to the support of Early Access fans, KospY has been able to push Blade & Sorcery far beyond his initial vision for the game and add an ambitious new element that probably should have been a second game lol. ːeaglegagː This will be "Dungeons" mode - a semi-procedural Dungeon crawl mode that will come in the form of a free update, and will aim to give players some linear gameplay and sense of progression. In U10, Dungeon will remain in sandbox mode and simply be a new location on the home map. But the final goal is that the 1.0 version of the game will have two game modes: "Sandbox" and "Progression" (title not yet decided), and you will make a unique character for each modes.


Sandbox will be much as the game is right now, with all maps and weapons unlocked, debug mode and cheat options available. There is no plans to change that, and sandbox is here to stay. U10 introduce Dungeons in sandbox mode, meaning you can do whatever you want in this new location.

By the time of final release, Sandbox mode will have all weapons and armour tiers will included, so the number of weapons will be approximately quadrupled from current U9 (most of these weapons are already done, but we want to keep some surprises for when the progression mode arrives). It is uncommitted how many maps will be included in Sandbox by the time 1.0 rolls around, so that will likely be dictated by the "how busy is it" factor.


Even if we are progressing on our universe building, there will be no story to Dungeons in the sense of a storyline, dialogue, NPCs, etc, but possibly there will be a very light lore flavored backdrop (think Darkest Dungeons rather than Skyrim, eg), but this is uncommitted right now. Mainly we ask that you please don't expect a campaign or something like this, as this is not our goal for B&S final release (1.0) and we don't want people to be disappointed.




No, Dungeons won't be open world nor will the dungeons themselves be an infinite crawl of never-ending rooms; each generated dungeon will have a definitive beginning and end. The Dungeon will be comprised of rooms and areas handcrafted by our team that act like "parts" that fit together, so the ultimate goal is you will have Dungeon maps that feel handmade, but don't have that blandness and arbitrariness that comes with full procedural generation, while still retaining the replayability.

But what this also means is that because all the prefabs are handmade, there will be a finite number of rooms made by Warpfrog. We will seek to make that number as big as possible of course, but if you sink hours upon hours into Dungeons then you will inevitably see everything until we can make more rooms. And before you all ask, yes, dungeon will be moddable, though the SDK may not be ready for release right away, so it may come a bit later. Nevertheless, we fully expect to see new dungeons type mods by modders on way or the other, because you can't stop the ingenuity of those guys. ːsteamhappyː


In these dungeon maps, enemies will be pre-spawned (not waves) and will have patrols and field of view, which means playstyles like stealth may be possible, though I would like to make it clear so as not to oversell that this is not a full stealth game like Assassin's Creed or Thief, so any stealth mechanics will be surely rudimentary compared to dedicated stealth games, especially in U10.

Progression through the different generated sections will be random, so for example there may be three different ways to leave a room. So let's say the library room spawns in your playthrough and has three potential exits A, B and C, where A is a doorway, B is a crawlspace hole in the wall, and C is a hatch on the ceiling, but in the iteration you are playing the exit to continue the dungeon crawl is A. Next time perhaps it is B. The next time, you might not even get that room generated at all. So this is how the randomized generation element works.



There will be situations where physical progression though the map may require climbing, or even magic later (skill related - still working this out). Sometimes a little climbing can be a 'shortcut', though generally there will be a non difficult path for people who are less physically able for the climbing in VR. The balance for us will be encouraging player innovation and exploration without forcing frustrating mechanics on the player. We will also later add a "parkour" difficulty rating to each Dungeon map, to display the likeness of generated rooms requiring climbing.




Some players don't like the unstructured "make your own fun" of sandbox games prefer goals or objectives to drive a sense of progression, so that is what we hope to provide with the help of Dungeons.

As mentioned, Dungeons will stay in sandbox mode for now, but later the progression mode will add looting mechanics which will allow you purchase new weapons and armour from a shop linked to the home where you return after each run. The Home will be your hub, if you recall the most previous news.

You will also unlock skills, which is a major part of the progression element and something we haven't really discussed yet... and are not going to do now either lol. The reason is because it is still WIP, but news will come, so don't worry.

But while skill trees have not yet been discussed or revealed, I can assure you it wont be lame. Like other 'gamey' mechanics we sought to avoid, we are trying to avoid as much as possible skills that give you +5% damage. Then the next level up is +10% damage, etc. We are not a fan of these types of "progression", and a much more interesting skill tree to us is something like in Dark Messiah, where when you unlock something it is actually something new and exciting that will change or give options to your playstyle, as opposed to just a boring stat crunch.

And lastly, the mechanics for interacting with the skill tree should be rather different from most games; KospY himself is working on this and he is pretty much hyped about it, so this is a good sign for something more interesting that look as boring text-based skill tree. ːwftogrinː




NO! We can't stress that enough. The U10 release of Dungeons will be missing tons of features like progression (skills, purchasable equipment), rooms, polish, and the AI will probably be a derpy on the first pass as it will all be new and untested by a wide audience. Instead of it being the proper unique progression gamemode as planned, for now you will enter a Dungeon map by accessing via the usual Sandbox map, and all the dev options will be available etc. So we are essentially considering this like "Dungeons Sandbox" and this will be a full blown WIP beta.

The reason for doing this is a few things -- If we hold off and continue to work on Dungeons until it is 100% ready, you guys may be waiting a long, long time before you see any update. Also, it will be useful to get performance feedback on how Dungeons is running and see exactly what is broken before going too far, versus releasing a super-massive update and suddenly realizing tons of things are broken. We have been there before, lol. ːsteamdeadpanː So it will be easier to fix things in a piecemeal way and make sure things are stable as we go.

As such, early access enthusiasts who enjoy betas, seeing unfinished WIP stuff, and helping the game develop will enjoy this. But players who want the final product right now or hate seeing unfinished or broken things may not enjoy this! And in that case, I would encourage those players to avoid playing until full release if you can resist it.


For now and up to B&S 1.0, we are only planning one kind of dungeon biome "Greenland". But new dungeon "biomes" are definitely planned post 1.0. How it will be added is still not decided yet (free update, expansion pack, etc...). Speaking about that now would be surely too soon, but the idea is to keep expanding the game as long as players support us, and KospY really hopes that it will be the case because he still has a lot of ideas to expand the game, as he said there is still many, many game mechanics that we didn't explore in VR yet!


Yes of course! While it might not have full support or documentation straight out the gate, it is always the plan to make Dungeons as easy and open as possible for modders to make their mods (like everything else). We love modders and mod communities bring tons of vibrancy, variety and life to a game. ːluvː

For U10, we also added some new moddable elements to the game, but we will talk about that at a later time! You may be pleasantly surprised. ːpraisesunː


You know the drill - there is no confirmed release date! But if you twisted our arm for a ballpark estimate, based on current pace it would probably be around Q3-Q4 2021.

So that is it for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed this news and plenty more juicy stuff to come on new weapons, Dungeon AI, the skills system, and more. ːsteamsunnyː We'll also have more previews of Dungeons in the future of course, including video of the actual room-gens, patrolling AI, etc. Cheers!

Hi guys, just a micro-update for you. TLDR: Unity XR plugin causing some people issues has been removed.

If you hadn't read the news from last time -- We switched to the new Unity XR Plugin (the legacy system is going to be deprecated on the next major Unity version), however it was causing some people to have launch failures (red exclamation unity error), black screen errors, and performance issues. Long story short, it is removed for now.

So nothing too exciting for now, but should have some nice WIP sneak peek news for you guys soon.

• Removed Unity XR plugin (hopefully fix a rare crash / black screen)
  
• Misc changes for the arcade version of the game

Hello folks, The Baron here with the latest in Blade & Sorcery news. Too long we have gone without preview news because there was so much technical stuff going on with 8.4 and the road to U9. Well the worst of that technical stuff is behind us now, so I thought we could celebrate with a little sneak peek of some WIP stuff as we gear back up for regular news cycles.

In development, there is much to discuss as a bunch of parts are moving simultaneously, but today's news will be focusing on the cool WIP revamp and changes that are coming to the Home. This new Home will be introduced in U10, though additional expanded elements will be added to it as updates continue. So please note that some of the following information relates to the final product (ie 1.0 full release) and not exclusively to what will be present in U10.


The ultimate reason Home is being revamped is to bring it up to standards with what is cooking for Dungeons. In the future, the player's Home will serve as the hub between all Dungeon spelunking adventures and it will be where the player stores his weapons and armour. It will also be where the player manages their skills (more information on that on a further news) and there will be an access to the future shop where we could buy equipment.

(Images are WIP)



The new home will be smaller, but will be more functional, with some QOL improvements for the map, etc. The ultimate goal will be to have some element of customization over the home, where players can have mannequins to store their outfit kits, and potentially even storing trinkets and little treasures retrieved from Dungeon adventures.





Adding to this, there is also the idea that the player can use the wealth earned from Dungeons to purchase new and better homes! Each tier of the homes become bigger and more fancy, potentially adding more storage utilities or equipment displays for the player and their loot.

So while the T0 is small and cramped, the T1 home (the one we are adding for U10) would be a step up, and the T2 home would be even more luxurious. We thought this would be fun and a little something to give extra flavour and character for Dungeons, as well as giving the player more of a sense of progression and achievement.





But wait, there's more! One cool feature planned is a day / night cycle for the Home, just to give a little extra immersion. So you could go explore a Dungeon in the morning and when you come back it will be nighttime.






In other news, if you have been having some issues in 9.2 with video or having a non-mod related launch failures (typically this is a red exclamation unity error), we are sorry about that! The long story short is we moved on the new Unity XR Plug-in Framework since U9.1 (the legacy system is going to be deprecated on the next Unity version), and that looks like it is borking things up for some people, especially Quest users.

We are investigating the issue and trying to find a solution that will hopefully be included in U9.3 hotfix. In the meantime, you can revert to the game version U9.0 and you should have no issues. U9.0 is only missing a few bugfixes too, so it will still be a good version to play on while a solution is in the works (mods will still work, etc).

Here is how to revert to U9.0:
Steam: Right click the game in the library > Properties > Beta > U9
Oculus: Go to the game on the Store Page > Scroll down to "versions" > Choose U9 from the dropdown.

That's it for this time, folks! Cheers!

Hello folks! U9.2 is now available; mainly fixing bugs, including the issue with SteamVR force launching the game in Oculus mode and more performance optimizations on some maps.

• Added infinite arrows option in debug menu (spawn an arrow when a bow string is grabbed)
  
• More performance optimizations on Citadel, Market, Ruins and Canyon
  
• Game window resolution will now reset to 1080p on start

• Fixed issue preventing the game to be updated on Oculus store
  
• Fixed ashes color on fireball impact
  
• Fixed some warnings on start
  
• Fixed steamVR/Oculus launch on Steam
  
• Fixed arm gap on plate armor
  
• Fixed spectator cam using inputs from VR controller thumbstick
  
• Fixed water splash effect not playing in canyon
  
• Fixed console scaling issue
  
• Fixed issues with some small stones and plants in Canyon
  
• Fixed navigation issue around the dead tree on Citadel

• Updated SDK for update 9.2
  
• Prevent an error causing the weapon to not spawn when a paintable is not correctly configured

Hello folks, hope you are all enjoying U9 so far! A small U9.1 patch has now been released and contains some nice little enhancements and bugfixes. U9 mods will not be broken, no worries! :steamdance: Please see the changelog for the full list of changes.

If you having any U9 issues be sure to check the pinned help topics in the Steam Community Page "Issues and Troubleshooting" section or do a quick search in that board and very likely you will find the solution already listed.

EDIT: Hi guys! How could we not do an April Fool's joke when releasing on April 1st, hahaha. So as you all have figured out, the original changelog was of course just a joke, but the update is very much real!
Below is now the *real* changelog.

• Telekinesis can now be used to grab rewards in survival mode
  
• Misc improvements to feet climbing IK
  
• Added physics-based lanterns to Market
  
• Added blood decals to Potion and Baguette Sword
  
• Adjusted bottom of well in Market to remove glowing ground
  
• Small adjustments to props in Market
  
• Added character and item decals toggle in options (for low-end computers)
  
• Setting max env. decals to 0 in the options will disable environment decals completely
  
• Quivers now store 50 arrows (instead of 12)
  
• Infinite arrow option now automatically spawn an arrow when the bow string is grabbed (instead of setting the quiver infinite)
  
• Updated to XR plugin

• Fixed some issues when picking rewards in survival mode
  
• Fixed an issue where Survival items were despawning when the limit of dropped items was exceeded
  
• Fixed plate armor shoulders not spawning correctly
  
• Fixed an issue preventing the game to load when paint was disabled
  
• Fixed multiple issues when reveal was disabled
  
• Fixed some performance issue with feet climbing IK
  
• Fixed sliced limbs doing too much damage and knocking down others NPC
  
• Fixed post processing not disabling correctly
  
• Fixed ragdoll colliding with hands when ungrabbing
  
• Prevent waves and items UI selector to cause a CPU spike when being enabled
  
• Fixed animation issue when NPC are hit while standing up
  
• Fixed a shader issue which may have impacted performance on maps
  
• Fixed scores not working correctly with survival mode
  
• Fixed character shirts using incorrect shaders
  
• Fixed male character underwear using an incorrectly configured material
  
• Fixed missing ropes in market
  
• Fixed some grabbable stones colliding with player locomotion collider
  
• Fixed some decals issues
  
• Fixed heartbeat audio not playing when health is low
  
• Fixed incorrect physics materials on arena

• Added a safeguard to avoid paintable to be enabled for pooled items (will prevent possible mods memory issues)
  
• Added additional holder points support for items / holders
  
• Added an option to transfer maps (textures) to reveal on RevealDecal
  
• Added game lit and reveal custom shaders in the SDK to replace paint on weapons (see BasSDK wiki for more information)
  
• Holders can now store more items than the available slots (extra items will be saved as ContainerData.content)
  
• Moved ItemModuleQuiver logic into holder interactable (custom quiver mods will need an update)
  
• Automatically set the custom shader bundle name prefix to export folder name to avoid duplicates GUID with the auto generated builtin shader bundles

Oh and in case you were wondering, the only two true statements in the joke changelog were about swinging on the marketplace lanterns and then the statement about the true statement itself, heheh.