Following Blade of Darkness re-release in October of 2021, publishers SNEG and Fire Falcom didn't quite stop with just getting the game out the doors on Steam. Admittedly, the re-release came out in a poor state, starting from minor audio glitches to more severe bugs causing savegame corruption. These issues seem to have been largely fixed however.
There has been a VERY highly requested feature ever since the demo first appeared and many were disappointed to see no effort done to integrate it in the re-release - native controller support. There have been community workarounds for several years, such as having an external program that would convert controller inputs into keyboard and mouse, but none of these solutions have been ideal, as fundamentally the game's control scheme was designed with keyboard and mouse in the first place (although controller support was considered during development).
This remained the single most requested feature of what seemed like would never happen...
Until now!
On November 19th of 2021, a Steam announcement was published that controller support was indeed coming following the many requests from the community. This promise was upheld and on 7th of December, a Beta build with controller support was released on Steam. This was followed up by a full release version on December 17.
Full Controller Support - v83 (Dec 17, 2021)
The new update brings full controller support to the Blade of Darkness. The key changes introduced in the new build:
- [new feature] full controller support
- [new feature] optional smoothed camera (OPTIONS --> VIDEO)
- optional vibration (CONTROLS --> GAMEPAD)
- ability to remap controller controls (CONTROLS --> LAYOUT)
- visual reference for controller's bindings (CONTROLS --> GAMEPAD)
- updated tutorial, mindful of controller experience
- automated combo panels (respond to input device)
- dynamic support for controller's glyphs (Microsoft, Playstation)
- fixed empty screen during loading
- fixed various crash scenarios, improved stability
- fixed os.utime function
- various localization improvements
As we can see, the update also introduced some backend changes which might break mod compatibility as it reworks the way the F1 screen is displayed. This fixes some important issues - such as weapon names or special attack inputs not matching what they should be.
The controller integration is actually very smooth, and it automatically changes the button prompts depending on whether your last input was with a controller or keyboard.
Another feature often requested has been a smoothed out camera that would jump around less, which was previously very noticeable on certain characters when dodging.
This can now be optionally enabled from the Video options menu.
The major update was later followed up by a couple minor hotfixes which further improved the stability of the game - v86, v88 and v89.
Happy New Year to all the Bladers out there and hopefully these updates will soon enough be followed up by long awaited updated mod tools!
