Them's Fightin' Herds update for 12 April 2019

Our 04/11/19 update is now live on Steam. If you haven't yet, restart your games to receive it. Verify your files to get the update instantly.

Oh boy! We've got another round of animation updates, bugfixes, and balance changes for ya'll, but unfortunately, not everything we wanted for this patch made it in by the deadline. Here's the situation:

In our most recent development update, we promised the return of Arizona's pixel lobby and the overhauled AI system. Regrettably, neither of those features are included in this patch. Long story short: they're not ready to ship yet. They need more time in the oven.

This is no doubt disappointing, but even though the flagship feature of this update wasn't ready in time, there's still plenty of tasty stuff to dig into today. We will continue working on AI improvements to accompany the release of our Salt Mines update in mid-May.

We want to do more for you guys in exchange for more time to work on AI. Arizona and Paprika's lobbies are millimeters close to being finished, so we're gonna bump things up and do an intermediate patch later this month for a triple-scoop pixel lobby update. Arizona's lobby will be reopened, Velvet's lobby will be receiving some small upgrades, and Paprika's lobby will finally become available for the first time ever! The Alpake Highlands could certainly use some livening up.

As promised, we're doing a post-patch stream this coming Monday, April 15. Same time (3pm PT), same place (https://twitter.com/ManeSix)

During the post-patch stream, we'll be reviewing the thought process behind the changes we made, responding to feebdack, and answering your questions. Here's who will be there:

• Oreo (QA, master of ceremonies and of the streams)
• Cam (QA, community manager, knower of things, just went to japan and we're all jealous)
• MPK (community manager, now an official staff member, let the hazing begin)
• Aaron (production manager, the floggings will continue until morale improves)
• Nappy (lead designer, responsible for all of... this)
• Hope to see you there! If you can't make it, no worries. You'll be able to catch the VOD archived on Twitch and on YouTube.

Okay. That said, let's get into the patch notes!

Gameplay

Temporary Fix

• Some folks have been experiencing performance issues in Pom's stage, and we believe we've finally found the culprit: the flowers. Yes, the flowers. As a temporary measure, we've removed all of the flowers from Pom's stage until we can find a way to prevent them from causing unusually high CPU activity in certain computers.

General

• Reduced meter gain both given and received on multi-hit attacks (per hit) across all characters.
• Attacks that force standing on hit no longer cause stand blocking. (The previous change to this presented too many underlying problems that would have ballooned later on.)
• Fixed pushblocks still allowing chip kills.
• Fixed situations that allowed players to block while still running straight towards their opponent.

Arizona

• Can no longer whiff-cancel launcher into everything on the planet.

Velvet

• j.C recovery animation frames fixed.
• Air throw now properly counts each hit of damage ingame and in training mode info.
• Fixed the cancel windows across all :D: snowballs. (The previous animation update shifted them around, our b).
• j.B animation effect is no longer cardboard.
• j.C animation effect is no longer cardboard.
• 6A (Anti-Air) animation effect is no longer cardboard.
• 3C (Launcher) animation effect is no longer cardboard.
• Shatter B fixed crumble animation effect.
• Shatter C ice cracks on animation effect no longer show up on top of players.

Oleander

• Cleaned up page flip animations.
• New character select animation.
• Fixed incorrect book coloring on 'Mecha' and 'Eastern' palettes.

Paprika

• The second hit of 6C,C,C (Free T-Shirt) now pulls significantly harder towards Paprika.
• Can now cancel 6C,C,C (Free T-shirt, all hits) into Kiss (command grab) on contact.
• 5C and 2C are now active for longer.
• 2C now slides forward a bit.
• Teleport C now has paprika more closely fitting the hitbox area
• Teleport C gets closer to the ground before Paprika lands, so it now hits opponents more reliably.
• Eating a gift you created now locks you into the eating animation for less time, with no penalty to the total bonus health/meter.
• Fixed weird eye color bleeding, missing leg colors, and various other artifacts during several animations.
• Super 1 (Smother) no longer triggers off of Arizona's Magic Counter. It's now treated as a blocked attack.
• Cinnamon Roll no longer self destructs if Paprika blocked an attack before the roll touched the ground.
• Fixed a situation where if Paprika's super is performed after being pushed blocked into a corner, the superflash disappeared entirely.
• Paprika now breathes heavily during her "selected" idle in character select.

Pom

• Fixed minor artifacting during 3C (Launcher) animation.
• Fixed specific situation that caused Pilot Pup to groundbounce unusually high.

Tianhuo

• 5A has a new animation.
• j.A has a new animation (during Ran Shao Feng).
• Stand Throw has a new animation.
• Volcanic Ash animation has been updated.
• Volcanic Bash animation has been updated (ground version).
• Fixed being unable to do Volcanic Ash during Ran Shao Feng.
• Tianhuo no longer loses her ears during character select and victory poses (whups).