[Follow New DevLog Posts on our Discord!]

Hey there, since we've launched the game, we will be moving our devlog updates to our discord! There puppeteers can find out what's new and improved as updates are released.  Please come join us, check out the July Update post, and have a lotta fun!


Follow New DevLog Posts on our Discord!

Hey Everyone! We are excited to announce that Shadow Fencer Theatre is Available Now on Xbox One and Steam!

Find Us on Steam! Shadow Fencer Theatre on Steam!
Find Us on Xbox One! Shadow Fencer Theatre on Xbox One!

Can't wait for you to play!

Thanks Xonatron! Working on screenshots now actually. Since we updated our website we lost the screenshots that were on here 

Hey Everyone.  So we don't do devlogs very well.  Anyway, we are excited to announce that Shadow Fencer Theatre will be showcasing with Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX East 2019!  If you are there, stop on by and say Hi!

We also want to announce that the game is available to add to your Wishlist on Steam!
Wishlist Shadow Fencer Theatre Now!

Check out our Website for trailers, screenshots and more info on all things Shadow Fencer Theatre
Shadow Fencer Theatre - Official Website

Hey All!

Just wanted to say "Hi".  Also, we are demoing Shadow Fencer Theatre this week at GDC, so come visit us at the Intel booth in the expo hall Thursday from 10am-2pm!

Woo!

Oh boy…. So, apparently I wrote a devlog update to post back in December 2017 about how bad we are at doing updates… and then I never posting the darn thing!

So now it’s been 6 months since our last update!!! That’s real bad.

So this is the list of changes to Shadow Fencer Theatre we were supposed to post about:

• Improved joystick support (thanks Rewired)
• Rumble!
• New (still temp) menu to allow better selections. Meaning Player 2 can select their own character. And if playing solo you can select AI difficulty.
• Oh yea, Character select… that wasn’t in there before. (we call it “Casting”)
• And Set select.  (we call it “Scenery”)
• 8 new characters added (up to 14 total, only 2 more to go!)
• 1 set added (3 total, 5 left to go!)
• Music created for 5 sets (some still WIP)
• Changed scoring system from points to lives, which we are calling “Takes”.  Each time you get stabbed, you are basically messing up the play’s story, so the director will have you use up one of your takes.
• Added an “Extra Take” rule that makes it so players have to win by 2.
• AI scripting adds random attacks to reduce some predictability.
• Improvements on some physics performance by switching out collider types.
• Set a max velocity to the sword throwing, helps with blocking.
• Recorded and editing SFX for character deaths
• And finally added a rotation to the characters when they move past each other.  It was actually a rare occurrence so we never added it.
• Added a new death transition that looks like curtains closing.
• Added SFX for individual character selects.

There was more done, but since we didn’t start tracking stuff until recent, well…. It’s hard to remember.  Most of that was behind the scenes stuff, not necessarily additions, but making it easier to work with. Can’t believe I never used Playmaker templates before….


And then this is the list of changes we wanted to talk about for THIS devlog:

• Fixed sword collision after death
• Up’d the movement speed/mobility of the characters
• Fixed some rumble issues when characters are AI
• Tweaked the Physics to make them barely better
• Improved AI
• Numerous other bug fixes including making sure the AI attacks correctly when they rotate
• Demo loop that triggers when menu is idle (shows off the gameplay)
• Animations for transitions, etc.
• New Set - Castle!
• New Set - Graveyard!
• New Set - Wild West!
• New Set - Zoo!
• Updated the City Set
• Visualized a popup for Extra Takes
• New Character - Jusborn the Frail (wizard)!
• New Character - Butch Cactusi (a cactus… man?)!
• Animations on the menu
• A new ShuddaHaddaLottaFun website! (www.shuddahaddalottafun.com)
• A new Teaser Video for Shadow Fencer Theatre
• And probably more….

Holy cow, that’s a bunch of text.  Here, how about watching our new teaser video






In more super rad news, we are going to GDC! Shadow Fencer Theatre was selected as an Indie Game being showcased at the Intel booth on the expo floor!  We are super excited to be showing off our game in our first major public showing!  

We have much to do until then, and will be very busy.  The plan is to do an update after GDC to talk about how it goes.  But at the rate we do things, we’ll forget, and the next update will be sometime around the year 2057.

Peace out!

Hello Everyone!  Just wanted to let everyone know that we have not disappeared off the face of the planet like extras on the show The Leftovers.  Granted, we have not put in as much time on this as we would like, but changes and improvements have been made.  For instance:

• Completely overhauled the physics in game to provide a better feel of control while still maintaining the goofy wobbly action.
• Reworked the AI to be smarter and actually react to the players action instead being a sequence of random events.
• Added a disarming mechanic that can...dis-sword… your opponent.
• Added a Throw Sword mechanic for those that don’t like to keep nice things.

As well as some other improvements here and there.  This is all over a period of something like 6 months, so really not as much as we wanted.  Life caught up ya know? But here’s the thing; we started working on this more a couple weeks ago or so… and then, we got a nice unsolicited (as far as we know) post on alphabetagamer.com

Here’s a link! We are super happy about it!

http://www.alphabetagamer.com/shadow-fencer-theatre-beta-demo/

We still don’t understand why this article out of nowhere, but we are super thankful, especially since it kicked off a new round of Youtuber Let’s Plays!

https://youtu.be/DhyKkubBlhI

https://youtu.be/_6YGtUHhtiQ

(if anyone wants to translate the overall vibe on this one from Russian to English, we’d appreciate that! Otherwise we’ll assume it’s just overwhelmingly positive).

We want to thank everyone who has talked about our game, made videos, and everyone who has played our demo on itch.io. We also want to let those that enjoy our game that we are actively working to make it bigger and better and making it a quality product.

Cheers,
ShuddaHaddaLottaFun Team

Well I'm sitting in the game, in case someone else sees this and wants to battle!

Initial thoughts without an opponent.  The movement in the game feels sluggish.  Like, the character starts moving, then there's a hiccup in his step, and the continues moving at what is perceived to me as a slightly slower movement speed then that initial step.

Then when you let go of the movement key, the character takes a few steps Back then forward to the stopping point.  it's a strange springy feel.

Another factor to the sluggish feeling is the dash is not instantaneous.  Presumably the Dash is a dodge-like mechanic to avoid being shot. But it takes so long to get to that dash speed, that you have to be pretty forward thinking to utilize it (again, these comments are without playing with others)

I'll stick around to see if someone joins.

Thank you two for playing! We are really glad people like the visuals and sound!

So, about the whole combat mechanic.... You are right... but it's a two-fold issue.

The first part is yes, the movement is really loose, and can be hard to get in control.  This isn't a great thing, and I'm working on tightening that up, while still leaving enough to "feel" like shadow puppets fighting. I will make it feel more responsive.

The Second part is my AI player SUUUUUUUUUUUCKS.  It's not good, it just does random actions.  This is because I didn't want to focus on spending a lot of time working on the AI until I felt like we had the core gameplay mechanic more or less locked in.  So this is why we are looking for people that can test the 2 Player mode.  I think it becomes more understandable gameplay wise with 2 people playing, because there is a lot more defense in the works (parrying, backing away to reset yourself, etc)

Speaking of which, the gist of the sword controls is the the tip of the sword will push back the opponents sword on contact.  so if your sword tip hits somewhere along their sword, their sword will be push back leaving them open to get a kill.  If they hit your sword and push yours back, well then you have to back up, and give space so you can try and pull your sword back in front of you. 


Again, thank you for your comments.  I will do my best to make it feel more responsive.  And if there is anyone out there looking for a 2 Player game to play, please please please check out our game!  I need to know if it's fun with 2 players! I hope it's not just us that thinks that   

[Thank you so much!]

Hey People!  We at ShuddaHaddaLottaFun are in the beginning stages of developing our game Shadow Fencer Theatre, a 2 player shadow puppet fencing game. We’ve got a Devlog all about it as well, so be sure to check that out!

bit.ly/fencerdev

But the reason that we have you gathered here today is that we recently posted a new build of our game, and would love for you to give us feedback/thoughts on the game. You can find the demo here:

www.shadowfencertheatre.com

This demo focuses on our 2 Player mode (there is a 1 Player mode, but the AI isn’t great yet). So, if you have a friend to play with, that would be awesome.  Also we are developing with a controller focus. Although there are keyboard controls, if you have a gamepad, Please use that!

Specifically, we are looking for your thoughts/feedback on:

Is the game fun?
Do you see replayability?
Is this something you’d want to play when you have friends over?
What would you like to see added to the game, or the core fighting mechanic?

And of course if you have feedback on anything else, we’d love to hear it! Thank you so much!

Hello Everyone! We’ve been talking about a new demo of the game for a little bit now, but we are glad to say it is finally available for you to play!  Please check it out!

www.shadowfencertheatre.com

Please tell us all of your feedback, good and bad, because we would love to know what people think.


We put this build together in part for a local event we did, but also as part of the Finally Finish Something Jam on Itch.io.  It helped us to have a deadline to bring the game up to a more polished point that we were happy with.  We also really wanted to update the game online because we get people playing it everyday, but they are missing out on what the game is today. 

Behold! Bloorgan the Mighty!  Commander Jeff stands no chance against this alien lord…. Or does he?  He might… depends on the player really….

So, Bloorgan uses it’s tentacle as it’s “sword” which as of now is the only character that does that.  We plan to make updates to the design of this character since we are not 100% satisfied, maybe replace it’s legs with more tentacles.  But for now Bloorgan is in the game, and will be part of the new demo which we will post tomorrow most likely.

Working to finish up a few bugs for the web build so we can push it out to get more feedback, including fixing this bug that spawned a copy of every AI player characters....

Maybe we should turn it into a game mode!

New build will be out soon! Stay tuned!

Hey everyone!  Been a bit quiet the last few days, mostly due to working on a new build of the game for a small local event, InnovateDBQ.  We had around 75 people check out the game, and got some good feedback.  It was also good seeing groups of people come back over and over to play again.  That’s always a good feeling.   

We did not however get good pictures of the event though.  When we’d have a big group of people playing, we got busy talking with folks, and forgot to take pics.

So now we are going to mull over the feedback, and plan out our next steps. Figure out the changes or additions to the core gameplay mechanic to make the game the best we can.  But before that, we are going to fix a couple of bugs from this build, and update the web version hosted on Itch.io.  That should be within the next week, so stay tuned for that.  We are going to be asking for some playtesting and feedback, and would love if you are able to help!

skimmed through this devlog and saw the animation of going through the wormhole, and just fell in love with it.  must follow.

So we shoot to try and rate at least 100 games each time.  That for sure gets us a 100% coolness, but i do know that actual number you need is less.  Unfortunately it can be tough to rate that many games while providing proper feedback.  The real work of LD is not the jam, it's the judging afterwards! 

Hey Torcado! I've always liked the look of this game, so I'm super glad to see it's still in development.  I remember when it was an LD entry, and it was one of my favorites.  Such a unique look. Expect an update in 3 weeks.

Update Time!  We are in a push to make an updated demo for a local event in 2 days, which became a much bigger issue then it should have been.  We just needed to add in one more character and arena (which we will post about when we get the time to make beautiful screenshots) but once we did and tested the game... a whole lot of broken showed up.

First off was 2 player mode was broken.  I had been testing all by my lonesome for so long that I didn't realize that the switch to check which game mode was set wasn't actually changing in/out the AI scripts with the player control scripts.  I'm still not sure why that stopped working, but a deadline is a deadline so I had to go through each individual character (6 of them now) and hardcode the change up.

Second was my computer was starting to run slow... I blamed the computer... because it's old.  But nope, it was (mostly) the fact that I was doing about thrice as many 2D physics as I needed.  As I scaled and made changes, I never corrected the things I didn't need.  So, deleted some colliders, changed some polygon colliders to boxes, and made a bunch of rigid bodies static and ta-da.... back to normal.

The original plan was to put this demo online, replacing our original jam version that's out there.  But things are not going to be quite where we want them for our event, so we may push back the online upload a bit to polish up.

Then we get back to it, more characters, more arenas, and hopefully with the feedback from the event plus when we  post online, we will fine tune this mother-fudger.   

But enough time wasting! I want to get this puppy finished tonight, and I also want to sleep.... both of these things cannot happen at once unless clones.

He’s an astronaut.  And he has a space wrench… so…. Pretty much the perfect character.  Don’t even need to spend a lot of time naming the guy if he’s an astronaut with a space wrench.  Just call him “Commander” something, and you are good to go.  I mean, common, he’s an astronaut! Eats out of tubes! Pees in a vacuum!  What’s not to like?

Plus, we’ve got this GIF

Oh yea, he’s a slightly slower, floaty character.  He lives in space. 

Raise the Anchor! Hoist the Barnacle! Harness the… Stick!  It’s time for an old fashion Sea Shanty!

The first pass on our pirate ship arena is in the game.  In this scene, players battle it out on the high seas as the ship rocks in the waves.

**ShuddaHaddaLottaFun is not liable for cases of seasickness due to hyper-realistic effects.**

And what’s a pirate’s life without an old fashioned sing-a-song? Well we’ve got that in the works too!

https://soundcloud.com/mrshoestore/shadow-fencer-theatre-sea-shanty



***If anyone knows how to embed soundcloud on these forums, let me know! I'd much prefer that.