This patch fixes some important bugs as well as adds two new experimental features in. Some monsters have some crappy animations for countering, but of course this is all temporary.

Bugs

-Fixed the circles under the trainers duplicating

-Fixed not being able to leave your party. Since changing the game to third person, there wasn’t any way to leave a party due to the mouse not being available to click a button in the UI. Now you can once again leave your party by going into the monster menu(TAB) and using the mouse to click on the red close button on the party list. You can also leave your party with a controller by using RT+B while in the monster menu.

-Fixed a bug where if you were on the second page of abilities and then changed to a monster that didn’t have enough abilities to go to a second page, that monster would then not be able to pick any abilities or switch pages.

-Fixed enemy monsters being highlighted at the start of battles. This was carrying over from having them targeted prior to the battle.

-Fixed a bug that made abilities activate twice causing the animation to bug out.

—–

Gameplay

Cancel & Counter commands are new and may provide new exciting ways to battle. However, this is all still in testing and either of these could easily be scrapped if it ends up not working out. I think players would rather test this stuff rather than just hear about it, and since the game is still in an early state I’m going to put it out there so you can do just that.

-Cancel Command

-Allowing you to give a Cancel command to quickly cancel abilities at the cost of some stamina and meter. Will be cool to see how this comes into play. This will be done by pressing C on the keyboard or LT on the controller. If you have an ability queued up, it will cancel the queued ability. If you use it again while no ability is in queue, it will cancel your current ability at the cost of a bit of stamina and meter. The amount of meter consumed is the same amount as is gained by starting the ability that you cancelled up. So in the end you don’t gain or lose any meter.

Once abilities are within a certain amount of time until finishing they will no longer be able to be cancelled. For example, Scratch doesn’t have enough time to be cancelled once it has been activated. Fireball can be interrupted well within the activation time because it has a much longer cast time. Cancelling projectile abilities can be a good way to fake out your opponent. Just don’t spam it or else you’ll run out of stamina.

All abilities can be interrupted before they start activation, meaning melee abilities can be cancelled while your monster is still moving towards the enemy. The exception are charging abilities like Charge and Tackle. These cannot be cancelled once movement has begun.

-Counter Command

Counter is here to help give another option vs getting rushed down. It is meant to be a risk that will help you come back from a losing battle by properly reacting to attacks and dishing some back. I am unsure whether this version of Counter truly does all this but I will tweak it from here.

Allowing you to use the new Counter command. This will be done by pressing the SHIFT+SPACE on the keyboard or RT+LB on the controller. It’s easier to remember it by thinking of it as EX Block. This will put your monster in a counter state after a short delay. If struck with a melee ability during this state, your monster will interrupt the ability.

Countering will briefly stun the enemy and give you advantage on your next ability. A successful counter will also reward you with 15 Stamina in order to help counter-attack. A quick ability following a counter will be hard for the enemy to interrupt but armored abilities can counter it effectively. A slower but stronger ability will punish armor attempts as well as blocks but will get interrupted by quick abilities.

I really thought it would be good to make counter a base ability rather than limiting it to only certain moves. This gives you the freedom to follow up a counter with anything you want. I’m sure there are more possibilities beyond my testing that I haven’t thought of.

You can cast Counter while blocking which makes it much safer to use, though more predictable and slower from neutral. I’m unsure on whether this will remain in the game but for now it is possible to do so.

-Heavy Projectiles Break Through Obstacles

Heavy Projectiles can now break through obstacles like Rock Wall. EX Rock Wall won’t break to heavy projectiles and Reflect Barrier will still reflect them.

-Non delayed casting after blocking

Casting an ability immediately after having just blocked will cast the ability without delay. The standard delay to abilities is pretty small but makes all the difference in the heat of battle. This will hopefully help with getting rushed down by opponents.

—–

Bugs I’m still working on

-Third player entering multiplayer games cannot move. Can currently be fixed by being invited to battle or sometimes by pressing T.

-Local Multiplayer isn’t quite working since the third person change because both players have to share a camera. I’m working on a splitscreen feature that will activate when a local player joins but that will go away if the both of you battle each other.

-Monsters charging in the wrong direction. Still unsure as to what is causing this.

-You can enter arenas that are full making the max player size when creating arenas pretty useless as long as it’s greater than 1.

Hope everyone has fun testing these new mechanics. Take care everyone.