News

Hey Guys!

We are back with another exciting Developer Update for Rivals of Aether. If you have been following us at our twitter or our subreddit, you may have already seen some of our updates this month. But fret not, because we have even more awesomeness in store for you.

First, we have yet another new member to announce. Trevor Youngblood is joining our team as our Development Intern! We met Trevor at GDC and he expressed great interest in getting on board. After looking over his experience and his Game Maker Studio skills, we felt he would be a great fit to help expedite some of our development tasks. Trevor will be working on Rivals from June through August!

We’ve been hard at work polishing multiple aspects of the game, including our menus. Thanks to the efforts of flashy and Trevor, our local multiplayer menus now have buttery-smooth animated transitions between screens:

We have also redesigned our Pause Menu to match the rest of our UI. We added the angular blade designs that are found throughout the rest of the game:

We have been polishing some of our in-game effects too. There is now a visual indicator when a powerful blow is dealt so you can see the strength in attacks that are likely to KO your opponent:

Today we are also revealing the Aether version of the Treetop Lodge! When playing on the Aether stage, you will likely encounter the Sylvan Beast, wonderfully animated by Johan Vinet. The creature lurks beneath the lodge and only reveals itself when opponents are flung over the ledge.

If you are caught by the beast, you are instantly swallowed up and dragged down to your doom. Quite the grizzly death. Fortunately, there is a warning to alert the fighters of this horrible fate. You’ll notice that there are wisps floating upward from the forest below, and it’s not just for show. When the wisps are calm and emanating a green color, that means the beast is nowhere in sight and the area is safe. When the wisps flash red and move frantically, that means the beast is lurking down below and hungry for its next meal. Launch an opponent toward the red wisps to feed the beast:

The Sylvan Beast lunges viciously at players from below. But all is not lost: if you can quickly move or air dodge right as the beast clamps its powerful jaws, you can narrowly escape death. However, if your opponent combos you into the frantic wisps, then avoiding this fate is unlikely:

The Aether version of the Treetop Lodge is a great stage for setting up awesome combos that end in instant death, or having fun with a group of players while trying to work around the beast. If you want a barebones fight, then take it to the Basic version where the wisps are always peaceful and the beast is absent:

Finally, we would like to feature some of the great work that is being done by our playtesters and our community.

• Zetterburn / Bones – The aptly named Zetterburn has become the early top player for the character. He has been compiling bugs for Rivals at smashboards, showing the game off at large smash tournaments and is even working on a combo video featuring all the characters thus far!
• Relax Alax – Alax is a youtuber who was accepted into our playtester group. He put his video skills to the test and created an introduction to Rivals on his channel and reviewed the first five characters.
• Cirby – Cirby has been a playtester for a few months now and has been active on our subreddit and smashboards. He also keeps a youtube channel where he releases a variety of videos all relating to Rivals of Aether!

June is going to be pretty huge for Rivals. We plan to reveal our 6th character about halfway through the month. With that reveal comes another trailer and some great art and music to experience! We can’t wait to show you what else we have brewing behind the scenes!

Hey Guys,

I hope you all enjoyed our April Fools post. No, Rivals of Aether has not been redesigned. We did hear all the feedback that people are interested in a “Tetherball Mode” for the game. We find it intriguing as well. Currently, we have no plans to introduce it as an official mode, but if time allows then we will explore getting it in there as a fun, alternative way to play.

For now though, we are back with another developer update! The month of April has been very important to Rivals development, particularly to features behind the scenes.

We have begun development on Online Multiplayer. There are many parts of the engine that need to be updated and tweaked to support playing online so we are working through those changes now. We are aiming to have our first tests with the feature in June.

In March we implemented Profiles so players could add names and save their settings. In April, we increased the settings for a player to customize by adding Custom Controls! On the character select screen, all four players can customize their controls. If they are using a profile then their options will be automatically saved to that profile for future use. Players even customize the right stick to trigger something other than a strong, such as an attack, special, jump or dodge.

For custom controls, you can easily see if a player has them set by seeing a yellow icon next to their character name or profile name. If you are swapping players constantly, then you can press the back button to set all options to default and unassign your profile. This is a quick way to pass controllers around without having people mess up your own profile by changing the controls. Custom Controls currently only support XInput controllers. That means this feature is for Xbox360 or Xbox One Controllers only. We have plans to support DInput as well but we have not decided if those will be customizable inside or outside of the game.

During April, Ellian has been hard at work on sprites and animations. We have actually completed the sixth character and have moved onto character seven. We are not ready to tease our sixth character just yet, but expect to see it in our next trailer. The next character is a ton of fun to play and Ellian did a fantastic job with animation. We look forward to seeing your reactions to the reveal.

Also during April, Johan has been putting in hours of work on updating one of our first stages – the Treetop Lodge. Some of you may remember seeing the stage in early trailers and promotion. While the stage keeps the same layout, Johan has overhauled the atmosphere and created a location that truly represents the Aetherian Forest. The stage is dark and mysterious and shows off the pride and prosperity of those who dwell high in the trees.

The Treetop Lodge will also have its own unique interactions, but we aren’t quite ready to show them off. You may be asking, what character calls this locale home? We will be happy to show you in our next trailer!

Ryan Sicat has been working on some great new promotional pieces and frozen moments for our next trailer. They are coming along really well!

Flashygoodness has been working on the next song for the game which will be played on the Treetop Lodge. This song will capture the culture and atmosphere of the forest while also being wonderfully catchy like the other tunes in the game. You can look forward to hearing it soon in our next trailer!

Rafael Langoni Smith is currently working on sound effects for our latest character. Most of the special moves will have their own effects to match the character’s unique abilities.

And that’s all for April. May will be another month with a lot of work behind the scenes but it will all be worth it to show off the new characters and features.

Hey guys,

We are back with another developer update. This month we have another change in personnel! Midio has done a fantastic job doing the cleaned up sprites for Forsburn. The character just oozes with personality and we’re quite happy with how he turned out. However, as Midio has other projects and responsibilities that he must attend to, Forsburn will be the last character from Midio. We thank him a ton for his great work. As a sample of his quality, here is Forsburn’s Forward Strong Attack:

With Midio leaving, we have secured another talented pixel artist to fill his shoes and pick up on the next character:

Ellian is a pixel artist from France who has done some great work on his One Game a Month (#1GAM) projects and the indie project, Catam. His style matches quite well with the character sprites in Rivals of Aether and we feel Ellian will be a great fit on our team. He will be tackling sprites for our newest character and we can’t wait to show you what the next Rival has in store!

We have also been improving the game engine this month. After a great GDC, we made some balance changes to Zetterburn, Kragg and Wrastor, who we discovered had tricks which made them quite powerful compared to the rest of the cast. We also introduced Forsburn into the mix and while we are looking to improve him over time, he does fit nicely into the roster’s balance so far.

We have been working on implementing additional features in the game. One such feature we can show you now is Player Tags!

Player Tags allow you to customize the text above your Rival to display a name of your choice up to 6 characters long. The cool thing is, we’ve designed the interface to allow you to choose, create and delete tags right on the character select screen. There’s no need to back out and visit other menus just to add a player! We are also reworking our control logic so that by the end of April, players will be able to store their custom controls into their Player Tags to have quick access to their preferred control scheme. This means when friends come over, they won’t have to keep setting up their controls every time!

With Player Tags, you can style on your opponent and make sure they know who’s doing it! They will also be useful in tournaments to give spectators an easy way to keep track of who is playing which Rival.

The month of April holds a lot for the development of Rivals. We will be diving headfirst into network multiplayer as well as improving the engine all up. At the same time, we are developing the next character who we hope to reveal in early May!

And lastly, tomorrow we have a very important announcement regarding the future of the game that is sure to blow your minds! Be prepared.

We are very excited to reveal the latest character to join the Rivals of Aether roster!

Profile:

Forsburn is the disgraced, eldest son of the Firelands’ ruling family. While his brother Zetterburn served the kingdom through leadership on the battlefield, Forsburn was the Firelands’ chief diplomat. Forsburn was the right hand of the Fire King, and he could be relied upon both to broker treaties and to quietly take care of threats to the kingdom. However, after years of unquestioning service, Forsburn began to smell corruption simmering beneath the surface of the Fire Council. But before Forsburn could expose the conspiracy, his father was discovered slain with Forsburn’s own dagger protruding from his heart. Assumed to be the assassin, Forsburn was condemned by his brother and barely escaped the Capital with his life. Left wounded and nationless, he wandered for months before meeting a groups of rebels on the outskirts of the Firelands. These outsiders of the kingdom had rejected flame and mastered the way of smoke, a philosophy of truthful deception. Forsburn joined the smoke tribe, soon becoming their leader. He plots to reclaim the Fire Capital from the Fire Council and their unsuspecting pawn, Zetterburn.

Elemental Powers:

Smoke Screen – Forsburn can use his Neutral Special to obscure the battlefield allowing Forsburn to remain hidden inside a cloud of smoke.

Decoy – Through his Forward Special, Forsburn can create a smoke facsimile of himself that can attack opponents. The illusory Forsburn breaks into smoke after being hit by a single attack.

Consume/Combust – By using his Down Special, Forsburn can consume his smoke clouds back into his body. After consuming three clouds, Forsburn is charged up and can use Down Special again to combust: knocking opponents away at high speed.

Gameplay:

As Zetterburn and Forsburn are brothers, they share some similarities in how they control. However, their fighting styles are as different as night and day. While Zetterburn is straight-forward and relentless, Forsburn’s gameplay is based around deception and trickery. Forsburn will keep your opponent guessing and give you an edge in the mental jousting of a 1v1 match.

Forsburn can hide behind smoke while other characters remain visible. However, this cover is not permanent, as a single attack from any player, including Forsburn, will clear the smoke away. Using his Down Special, Forsburn can absorb clouds of smoke. Once he’s absorbed three, his fur becomes filled with smoke and changes to match the smoke’s color. His smoke clouds are removed and he can no longer hide, sacrificing his deception style while relying on his powerful Combustion attack.

Forsburn uses his signature dagger in his combos. He can also use his Strong Attacks to whip his smokey cape and draw opponents from afar closer to him. Forsburn excels both in the air and on the ground and can be seen as a well-rounded fighter in that regard.

Forsburn’s Decoy is a valuable technique to learn and to master. The Decoy that Forsburn creates is fragile and can only take a single hit before bursting into smoke. However, a skilled player can protect their Decoy and even learn to create deadly combos with the smokey illusion.

Additional Screenshots:

That’s all for now! Expect to see more Forsburn action in our third trailer coming later this spring!