» Category: Announcement

Workshop Character Pack Release Date

The time has come! Last April, we announced the inclusion of four community-created characters into the base cast of Rivals of Aether. After an intense year of development we’ve worked internally, with the original creators, and with our closed beta team to finally bring these characters to life in our next free update on February 3rd, 2022 on PC and Nintendo Switch.

What’s Included

Our latest FREE update.

The workshop character pack is filled to the brim with new content. Each of our four new characters come with their own stages, music, and Abyss Runes right out of the gate. Players familiar with their Steam Workshop versions will find updated kits, animations, sound effects, and much more.

Players who already own Rivals of Aether on Steam or Switch will automatically receive the Four-Pack update for free.

Check out that fancy new Character Select Screen!

Mollo

The Smoldering Rage from the future is here! Mollo is taking a break from the rebellion against the treacherous Loxodont to utilize his explosive arsenal of weapons in an all new battlefield. Item management and stage control are key to mastering this moth, as he can do serious damage from a distance, or up close and personal.

Hodan

The Hot Springs Sage cannonballs into Rivals of Aether! Hodan uses his expert technical abilities to empower himself when the time is right. Build charge by holding a downward directional input, then unleash the beast with powerful secondary versions of key moves.

Pomme

The Superstar Songstress has arrived on the scene and is ready to put on a show! Pomme’s unique understanding of sound waves allows her to quite literally float through the air, making her a potent threat in even the hardest to reach corners of the battlefield.

Olympia

The Amethyst Fist puts her deep understanding of martial arts to the test as she brawls her way through Aether! Olympia is a fundamental warrior with a clear game-plan of hitting her opponents hard and making each hit count. Stand your ground and strike fear into your opponents, because this one is going to hurt.

Rollback Netcode

Finally for those playing on Steam, we are excited to announce that Rollback Netcode is leaving our open beta branch to officially become part of the base game with the February 3rd update. Experience the Workshop Character Pack in all its glory with the launch of the long awaited rollback netcode update on PC.

We hope you check out the newest additions to Rivals of Aether this Thursday on Switch and Steam. Thank you to our wonderful community for being with us on this journey. These new characters would not have been possible without the fantastic Workshop community that has blossomed over the years. We hope everyone will have as much fun with them as we have.

Rivals Community Awards Nominations Open

The Rivals Community Awards nominations are officially open! Showcase your favorite creators and players in tons of categories spanning workshop, tournaments, and more. Get involved by writing in your top nominees on any category. Nominations run until Dec. 1st, 2021. Join us on December 8th as we celebrate our own in a live show hosted by the dev team and special guests.

Visit the Community Awards page >

Rollback Netcode Open Beta Available on Steam

Rollback netcode in Rivals of Aether has been a long time coming, and it’s proven to be quite the struggle to rebuild our original 1v1 netcode into something more modern. Today we are finally pleased to share that we have reached a point where we are ready to open our Rollback Netcode Beta to the public. Though this is only an open beta phase, it is the culmination of years of work from our team including YellowAfterlife, newcomer Yosi, and contributions from Zach Reedy and Juju.

If the phrase “rollback netcode” leaves you feeling a little lost, the short explanation is that this feature will massively improve online Rivals matches for laggy connections. Once rollback is fully polished up and on the live Steam branch, you can look forward to silky smooth matches with opponents far and wide. Check out this article on why it’s a great system for online games, especially fighting games, if you’d like to get more into the nuts and bolts.

A rollback JUKE from Menace13.

Please note that while this beta is functional, there are still some known quirks that we are working on internally related to one-sided rollback issues. We are also aware of a possible crash on match start, but are looking for more data to help debug this one. We expect to polish our rollback implementation over several months with the help of this beta.

Remember the more reports we get from players during this phase, the faster we can roll out fixes and get rollback into the live branch! With all that out of the way – here’s how to get started:

How do I get it?

The Rollback Open Beta can only be accessed via Steam. First find Rivals of Aether in your Steam Library. From there:

  • (1). Right click Rivals of Aether in your Steam library to bring up the options menu.
  • (2). Select Properties. Once that opens, select the Betas Tab on the left of the properties window that opened up.
  • (3). Open the Dropdown menu, scroll down, and select “rollback – Rollback Open Beta”.
  • (4). Once selected, you can close the menu.
  • (5). After you select this branch, you should see that Rivals has an update queued. If you do not see that, then close Steam and reopen it until Rivals of Aether has an update. When you open the game, you will know you are on the right branch if you see the Rollback Netcode Open Beta Loading Screen.

Important: You can only queue against other players that are also using this branch of the game. You’ll need to have no betas selected to find your opponents in official tournaments and events, which you can easily switch back to by following these instructions again and selecting “None” in the dropdown menu.

Access Betas on Steam with the instructions above.

Improving the Beta

To get rollback netcode out of beta and into the Definitive Edition, we’ll need your help! You can start by joining the Official Rivals of Aether Discord. Once you join, you’ll want to navigate to the #rollback-general channel. From there you can discuss the beta with other players, find players to play with and against, or submit bug/desync reports.

If you run into bugs or desyncs, you’ll want to navigate to the appropriate bug submission channel. There you can easily submit reports following the directions as pinned in the channel. This information is extremely valuable to our team and the more reports we get, the easier it is to find and fix issues. If you are participating in the open beta we highly encourage you to submit reports.

For desync issues that happen during testing we’ll want some extra information that you can provide like this. It’s important to send us both the desync data from yourself AND your opponent:

  • (1). Open the Run app by typing “Run” in your Windows search bar.
  • (2). Paste “%localappdata%/rivalsofaether/desyncs” into the search field and click “Ok”.
  • (3). Find the folder with the appropriate date and time for the desync you encountered. If you just desynced and went to report, it will be the most recent one! Organizing the view by “Date Modified” makes this easier.
  • (4). Zip the folder by right clicking on it, selecting “Send to”, and clicking “Compressed (zipped) folder”. Leaving the name as the time stamp is fine.
  • (5). Submit the folder. Give us everything from that time stamp and we can sort out the important information from there. Please have your opponent follow these same steps if possible. The more data we have, the better.

Navigating to your Rivals desyncs folder.

Future Features + Switch and Workshop

Right now, rollback is only confirmed for Steam and does not support Workshop characters or other modes outside of 1v1 online play. As we make progress in this open beta we’ll test it on other platforms like the Nintendo Switch to see if it’s feasible for consoles performance-wise.

We have no plans currently (or ability) to support Workshop due to how rollback needs a very controlled game state. For modes like teams, FFA, and spectating our goal is to eventually have those all working with rollback.

Rivals Patch Notes [2.0.8.0] – Summer Fine-Tuning and Creatures Steam Launch

As we enter August, patch 2.0.8.0 is ready to hit the beach before the Rivals Championship Series starts at Riptide next month. This patch includes a bunch of small balance adjustments that have come from our behind-the-scenes testing as we prepare to release our first new characters in 3 years. We are anticipating this patch will come to Switch in around 1 month. Work on both the Workshop Character Expansion and the Rollback Netcode Beta is also moving along so stay tuned for updates on those in the future.

In other news – Creatures of Aether on Steam for PC and Mac is launching alongside this patch today with crossover content! Help celebrate with our other Aether team friends at Tako Boy Studios for this big milestone. Download the game for free to unlock a brand new stage skin for Air Armada. Definitely give it a try on Steam if you’re a new or even returning player – the game has changed a lot in the past year!

Lastly, keep an eye out for more exciting RCS news as well. European and Australian monthly events are now available for registration:

And of course you can still sign up for the first North American event:

Onto the patch notes:

Switch Specific Notes
  • Fixed a bug that broke Ranno’s replays on Switch.
  • Diamond Grove, the Creatures of Aether crossover stage skin, is unlocked by default on Switch.

  • The Diamond Grove stage skin is now available for Air Armada. Download Creatures of Aether on Steam for free to unlock.
  • Your selected workshop character now shows their current version number on the CSS.
  • Setting the Hide Hud rule override in a workshop stage to 2 will hide the standard hud while still running draw_hud.gml.
  • Bug Fix: The bottom blastzone only raises up during hitstun if you’re moving down on the frame hitpause ends.
    • The blastzone was adjusted earlier to be higher for those in hitstun to reduce self-destructs while keeping spiking KOs. But one side effect was that weak attacks or projectiles would KO someone who was recovering low because the blastzone would come up to meet them. Now the blast zone is only higher if you were sent down by the initial attack.

Zetterburn’s Up Air is being adjusted to match his visuals and reach lower at the end which also improves the attack as a landing aerial. Forward Air’s hitbox has also been adjusted to better match the swing’s visuals.

  • Uair now has an added sourspot on his hands.
  • Uair Sourspot Angle: 75 -> 70.
  • Uair Sweetspot KB: 10+0.6 -> 8+0.825.
  • Fair’s sweetspot has been increased in size.

Bubbles are getting a minor nerf allowing players to SDI out of them more effectively while Back Air is getting an adjustment to have weaker base knockback and higher scaling so it KOs slightly later.

  • Bubble SDI multiplier changed, 1.0 -> 1.2.
  • Bair 2 KB changed, 9 + 0.9 -> 8 + 0.95.

Kragg’s Up Tilt is going to be more reliable. The angle is being adjusted to combo better while also not being techable. He is also getting a quality of life fix to Up Special so now you don’t have to know if the pillar reached you or not when hit out of the vertical stall.

  • Utilt Hit 1 Angle: 125 -> 150.
  • Utilt Hit 1 KB Scaling: 0.1 -> 0.
  • Utilt Hit 1 SDI multiplier: 1 -> 0.
  • Utilt Hit 2 hitbox extended down by 10 pixels.
  • Uspecial now refreshes doublejump and airdodge as soon as Kragg freezes in place.

Forsburn has his hurtboxes adjusted so you can’t attack his cape on multiple attacks. His Down Strong has been adjusted to have more hitpause and we are bumping up its knockback to compensate since it will be more consistent to DI it. Forward Strong is getting a buff to be more reliable and also have more knockback scaling.

  • Cape has been removed from his hurtboxes on multiple moves.
    • Namely: jab, ftilt, dtilt, dash attack, nspecial, uspecial, nair, fair and dair.
  • Dstrong BKB: 8+1.05 -> 8+1.15.
  • Fstrong’s Hit 2 hitbox has been extended forward.
  • Fstrong Hit 2 KB Scaling: 0.8 -> 0.9.
  • Dstrong now has 0.9 hitpause scaling, was 0.

Dash Attack 1 hitpause position move has been adjusted to be more reliable. Back Air 2 hitbox has been increased also to be more reliable.

  • Changed position Dattack 1 pushes enemies in hitpause, 60 -> 50.
  • Bair Hit 2’s height increased, 50 -> 65.

Down Tilt hitbox now matches the art better and Up Strong is being fixed so its multihits can no longer be SDI’ed.

  • Dtilt’s hitbox has been changed to use a rounded rectangle instead of a circle. It’s also been extended downwards by 2 pixels.
  • Bug Fix: Ustrong’s multihit SDI multiplier: 1 -> 0.

Menace finally got through to Trevor and Dan and they crumbled and made an adjustment to make Etalus’ Forward Strong more reliable.

  • Fstrong’s second hitbox has been extended inwards on both his armored and unarmored versions.

Charged Flame hit lockout was removed because it was preventing cool charged flame into aerials while not affecting kill confirms with it. Forward Tilt is no longer so disjointed since Ori is not meant to have good disjoint. Dash Attack startup and knockback has been adjusted so its not as spammable into itself because Dan played against 3 Ori players in a row on ranked earlier this year and couldn’t handle it anymore.

  • Charged Flame hit lockout removed, was 6.
  • Ftilt now includes the tail on the hurtbox.
  • Dash attack KB: 9+0.3 -> 9+0.45.
  • Dash attack Angle: 45 -> 50.
  • Dash attack startup: 6 -> 8 frames
    • This also slightly reduces the Dash Attack distance.
  • Uair’s sprite has been changed to match the hitbox better.

Jab 2 has been adjusted to not whiff when Jab 1 lands very close. Up Strong is being adjusted to reduce the Up Strong fishing that we see late game especially with DACUS. If you have ever played against a Ranno online, then hopefully you understand.

  • Jab 2’s hitbox has been extended inwards and downwards.
  • Ustrong’s wide sourspot KB: 7+1.15 > 7+1.0.
  • Ustrong’s tall sourspot KB: 8+1.15 > 8+1.1.
  • Ustrong recovery: 23 -> 25 frames.
  • Ustrong wide hitbox’s hitpause changed, 8 + 0.35 -> 7 + 0.6.
  • Ustrong tall hitbox’s hitpause changed, 6 + 0.35 -> 8 + 0.7.

Clairen Down Strong is getting a little bit of love as a KO option. Now the angle is consistent and the scaling is slightly higher so both the Clairen and her opponent can react to the attack better. Forward Strong is getting a consistent angle on aerial and grounded opponents which will make it just as strong of a KO option during a combo as it is raw on the ground.

  • Sour Dstrong: 7+.9 > 7+1.0.
  • Dstrong’s tippers on hit 1 now have angle flipper 6.
  • Dstrong is now angle 70 on all hits. (previously some were angle 50).
  • Fstrong’s angles on all hitboxes have been changed, 361 -> 45.
  • Fstrong tipper hitboxes now all have 1.2 KB scaling.
  • Fstrong sour hitboxes now all have 0.9 KB scaling.

We found out that people would like to at least try to DI’s Sylvanos’ Down Strong.

  • Dstrong Hitpause scaling: 0 > 0.7.

Missiles are cool but it can be annoying when they are used to combo break and the opponent has already forgot about them. The new offscreen indicators should help the opponent be more aware of their positions.  Up Tilt with heat has become a nasty kill confirm for Elliana and while we still want it to be strong, we are adding recovery frames so it’s not as guaranteed. Neutral Air and Forward Air are having their angles flipped because Neutral Air has outshined Forward Air in nearly all Elliana scenarios. Now we hope that both can see usage in high level play. Neutral Special early hit was adjusted to combo into the rocket fist more reliably.

  • Fspecial’s missiles can now be seen offscreen.
  • Utilt’s recovery time scales from 10 frames to 20 frames based on how much heat is used.
    • Fixed utilt’s recovery time not resetting along with KB.
  • Nair’s sourspot and Fair have swapped angles and knockback values, detailed below:
  • Fair Angle: 361 -> 60.
  • Fair KB: 5+0.45 -> 6+0.4.
  • Fair’s hitboxes have been widened by 20 pixels and moved inwards by 5.
  • Nair sourspot Angle: 60 -> 361.
  • Nair sourspot KB: 6+0.4 -> 5+0.45.
  • Nspecial early hit KB: 7+0.3 -> 8+0.

Shovel Knight Down Tilt was adjusted to not whiff inside him when it looks like it should hit. Down Air was adjusted so the spike has a sweet spot and sour spot since the late spike can feel cheesy to be caught with late.

  • Dtilt 2 extended inward.
  • Dair Spike sweetspot lasts 2 frames (same as normal sweetspot).
  • Dair Spike sourspot lasts forever with .55 scaling (sweetspot has .7) and 8 damage (sweetspot has 10).

We hope everyone has been having a safe and fun summer so far in 2021! Let us know what you think of the patch in the comments below or on social media.

Rivals Championship Series Season 6

Get ready for RCS Season 6!

Following the record-shattering attendance of Riptide and the recent announcement of Genesis 8, we are ecstatic to announce the newest Rivals Championship Series installment! Season 6 of the RCS will bring back monthly Online Majors, but will also mark the return of live events with our first hybrid season. Join us as we celebrate Rivals in even more regions on our biggest stages yet!

We’re going workshop steam punk for Season 6!

Format and Schedule

Despite the tough year last season was a fantastic success thanks to our community, breaking attendance records on multiple occasions during an exclusively online season set on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving into Season 6, we have seen local events slowly emerge with the increasing accessibility of vaccines. Keeping this in mind, we are bringing the North American RCS back to in-person majors on three separate occasions in conjunction with four unique online majors.

With a live finals event planned this year, we are also bringing back flight vouchers for the Top 4 North American league point holders at the conclusion of our December online event. North American players who top the leader board during the regular season will be given a complimentary flight to our Finals at Genesis 8. For our friends in Europe and Australia, the top point holder from each region will be awarded 500 USD for their accomplishments.

Here is our official schedule:

Event Date Region
Riptide (Registration Cap Reached) September 10-12,2021 Sandusky, OH (NA)
Hot Springs Major September 18, 2021 Online (NA)
Hot Springs Major (EU/OCE) September 2021 Online (EU/AU)
Melody Major (NA/EU/OCE) October 2021 Online (NA/EU/AU)
Heat Wave 4 (Registration OPEN) November 13-14 2021 Phoenix, AZ (NA)
Fireworks Major (NA/EU/OCE) November 2021 Online (NA/EU/AU)
Crystal Major (Registration TBA) December 2021 Online (NA/EU/AU)
EU/AU Regional Finals (Registration TBA) January 2022 Online (EU/AU)
RCS Finals at Genesis 8 (Registration OPEN) January 28-30, 2022 San Jose, CA (NA)

More information regarding events in Europe, Australia, South America, and Asia can be found below.

Regional Finals and Opt-In Events

We are aware that the COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing battle, with some areas struggling to return to a sense of normalcy more than others. In order to accommodate regions affected by event uncertainty and travel restrictions, we are introducing regional online finals for Europe and Australia. Each finals event will feature uncapped shop goals to allow players to fund their own scenes directly. In addition to our new finals events, we have a brand new Opt-In system for local events in Europe and Australia, and online events for the emerging regions of South America and Asia.

For Europe and Australia:

  • As local events return in a safe and functional manner, tournament organizers will be able to apply for RCS prize support for their events.
  • Events added through our Opt-In system will receive prize support but will not give players league points in order to prevent unfair advantages on the leader boards.

For South America and Asia:

  • South America and Asia will both have opportunities to receive DLC support on par with the other regions.
  • Tournament organizers from each region will be allowed to apply for one event every month, starting in September, to receive new and older RCS exclusive skin rewards.
  • Sub-regions that are unable to compete in certain events, such as Brazil, can contact SBS or Etalus to ensure that they can have their own tournaments included.

Monthly Themes

Elemental themed months are returning from Season 5 with a fun twist! Starting in September, each month leading up to our January finals will have a special theme based on characters from the upcoming Workshop Character Pack that will affect how the community interacts with the series including special bundles from our upcoming shop, a chance to acquire brand new and previously retired RCS DLC skins, and even unique prize opportunities for competitors participating in each major.

When each month’s major event comes around, we highly encourage players to record every character used on their tournament runs. The highest placing competitor to exclusively use rivals matching the month’s elemental theme will receive an item from the Season 6 RCS shop. If a player happens to WIN the monthly major using only Rivals matching the month’s elemental theme, they will be awarded a voucher from us for a custom controller by our friends at Controller Chaos.

Season 6 Reward Structure

As mentioned above, there will be special rewards for the highest placing player(s) using only rivals matching each month’s elemental theme, but that’s not all. Each month’s online event will have a dedicated prize pool and each finals event will have an uncapped prize pool, all funded by our shop. On the DLC front, we are happy to introduce brand new skins (TBA) for participants of each online major. Offline events will also feature pot bonus compendium goals and new themed skins!

 

Season 6 Rankings

For those curious about how our yearly rankings will be weighed, players looking to qualify for the Season 6 Top 50 will need to enter a minimum of 3 RCS events. We understand that there may be some hesitancy for players to mix online and offline events together, so players will only be ranked according to their placements at their best three events of Season 6 (player matchups may still be considered for all events).

Links!

This post has a lot of information to digest, so please refer to all relevant links for event pages! Stay tuned in the weeks to come for more RCS news as we lead up to the start of the season this September!

Registration is now OPEN for our November online event, Heat Wave, and for Genesis 8!