Update: Twisted Blades and Replication Commissions

Dear swordsmiths,

While we’re furiously working towards Chapter 3 (release date tba), here is an update for you that introduces a new Creative Mode feature, fresh **Replication Commission **visuals (and clarity!), and some bugfixes as well as performance and quality of life improvements. Let’s have a closer look!

Twist

In Creative Mode, you now have the ability to twist the blade around its own axis! With this much-requested feature, you can finally forge those coiled swords, screws or whatever you come up with. We can’t wait to see it, so please share your twisted swords via Steam or on Discord.

Replication Commissions 2.0

Replication Commissions, introduced in Chapter 2, add variety and a different flavor to Bladesong, so we gave them another pass. We changed their gameplay slightly by not revealing the entire sword until you have ‘explored’ the space, and resolved issues of clarity by rethinking the visuals from the ground up.

As a side-effect, we also made some changes on the underlying sword/commission generator: Whereas previously this generator would mostly use simple ‘standalone’ parts for the swords that commissions are based on, it is now capable of combining modular parts from the sword part books available to you, making for more interesting commissions.

Performance on Low-End Hardware

As hardware prices keep going insane, we want to make sure that wherever possible you can enjoy Bladesong on the hardware you already have. We’ve added settings for Post-Processing Quality and a toggle for Motion Blur. Turning them down can help if you’re playing on slightly older hardware or integrated graphics. In addition, we have found and fixed performance culprits in the line renderers used during forging (on the blade, and on sword parts during bending/stretching) and in a few story locations. This is an ongoing effort, and we will keep pushing to improve Bladesong’s performance on min-spec systems.

Sword Search

As your Creative Mode library grows, it can become tricky to find the Needle in the haystack. We have added a search function to the Creative Mode overview, allowing you to filter swords by name to quickly find what you’re looking for.

…and there’s more!

The start and stop position of camera flights is now saved, loaded and shared with swords. This is especially useful if you are doing fun stuff like Overlay Tracing and want to come back to it in a later session. We have also fixed a number of bugs. Most notably, customers should no longer ask for outrageous (>12) amounts of resources, and engravings should now have reasonable resource cost. See below for the full changelog.

We hope you’ll enjoy this update. We’re going back to the development anvil now to hammer on Chapter 3, and will be back with news on this as soon as we can. Astrid’s story must continue, after all.

– David and the Bladesong team ⚔️

Full changelog:

• New: Twist blade ability

• New: A new way to generate commissions that will include more sword part books for variety

• New: Overhaul of Replication Commission visuals for more clarity

• New: Post-Processing quality option (turn off for a performance boost on integrated/low-end graphics!)

• New: Motion Blur option (turn off for a performance boost on integrated/low-end graphics!)

• New: Creative Mode search filter to find swords quicker

• Fix: Story mode savegames with more than 24 hours playtime now display properly

• Fix: All attached sword parts now scale correctly on "Y-split" parts without a primary socket

• Fix: Engraving resource cost and style are now computed correctly

• Fix: Blend handles no longer detach from the blade in strange ways

• Fix: Customers should no longer ask for outrageous (>12) amounts of resources

• Improvement: Camera flight start/stop is now saved/loaded/shared with swords

• Improvement: Performance of line renderers during forging

• Improvement: Performance of various story locations

• Improvement: House of Quiet artwork

• Improvement: Various story sound effects across Chapter 2