When we set out to ship Golden Fantasia on Steam, we had two goals in mind - localize the title, and make the netplay better than it used to be. The second proved to be a much more difficult, and completely new endeavor for those of us at MangaGamer.

For the English localization team, lead by a small group of former Melty Blood players - endeavored to improve the total experience of playing the game. At the time, outside of GGPO and closed-source alternatives, rollback netplay was the most available, successful, and well-documented. MadScientist had worked on this form of networking extensively, and graciously accepted work with us to implement rollback netplay. It was later maintained by our on-team staff to solve configuration options after release.

However, as we opened up to a larger pool of players we found that rollback netplay was not always the best solution. Though it did allow for lower ping and smoother gameplay - there was a key problem on some chipsets. Rollback netplay had always been primarily designed on 2D retro games. While Golden Fantasia is 2D, it uses plenty of graphically intense special effects, which were very new when the game was initially released in Japan. Depending on the hardware, rolling back these intense graphical effects could sometimes cause an undetectable desync between the players.

Though these instances are few and far between, something we have wanted to have is an alternative solution without undoing the dream of low-latency doujin game netplay.

So today we want to offer that new option, and a new way to play all together, to anyone who may be affected by desyncs - and that is the integration of Steam Remote Play and also Steam Broadcasting - for those who have wanted to stream their games and broadcast in lobbies of sorts.

More Setup Details Here: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/550340/discussions/0/3074243590157862304/

Trading Cards have now been enabled in Steam, and we have posted on the Steam discussion forum all the latest patch notes, along with our intentions for the next upcoming patch!

You can read the full notes here:
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/550340/discussions/0/1692659135902124629/

Thank you to everyone for helping us out over release week! We've been able to make so many improvements to both the netcode and finding errors in the localization this week thanks to your help.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/550340/Umineko_Golden_Fantasia/

As such, we've been able to work out an extension of the release sale over the course of this week! Be sure to let your friends know about Golden Fantasia and come play with us over at our discord server!

https://discord.gg/xsgJKjh

Also today, we released a new minor patch. The current patch notes are in the same thread, and can be found here:

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/550340/discussions/0/2549465882915541389/

Even more thanks to the help of the community this week, our release tournament was a huge success. Congratulations to our victors!

1st Place: Larry
2nd Place: Solkiskey
3rd Place: piova12

You can view the full bracket results here: http://challonge.com/UminekoRelease

Thank you everyone for your continued community support! We'll be working on another patch this week!

Netplay desync fixes, and credits too!

Today we pushed a new build in the hopes that it resolves the majority of the desync's some users have been experiencing.

Because this and the lobby bug has been fixed in the last patch, we encourage everyone to play in the public lobbies as much as possible to stress the lobby server and code as much as possible!

This patch also included a localization of the developers names and titles, along with some hard-coded system messages.

You can find the full patch-notes at: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/550340/discussions/0/2549465882915541389/

Today we pushed a patch for fix system messages in the English build, and to fix the public Steam lobbies further.

A full list of the patch notes can be fixed here: http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/550340/discussions/0/1617220671493608880/

We are planning another patch for this week! Thank you everyone for working with us throughout the release.

Hello everyone!

We wanted to thank everyone for the quick and speedy feedback over release night and yesterday. Today we pushed a patch that restores the localization of the movelists, some system messages, and the music tracklist as originally intended.

Credits and some system messages will be available in the next few days, along with some lobby fixes we're planning this week before our release tournament. We have compiled a full list of bugs we're aware of and working on below. There are also some workarounds you can do on your end for some common issues.

http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/550340/discussions/0/1499000547485690319/

Thank you so much for the reports everyone! It's been a big help! Please join us in discord! https://discord.gg/xsgJKjh

Drawing from the highly-acclaimed visual novel, this 2D tag-team fighting game features 19 different characters from the series that can be paired to create a wide variety of different match-ups! Combine meta world abilities and fighting styles between partners to create your best tag-team for crushing the competition! Change-up your tag-outs to control the flow the battle--whether pressing an attack, halting a rushdown, escaping from potential stun or guard break, or to recover chip damage--timing your tag is an important key to victory!

Featuring rollback netplay, online and local multiplay versus modes, achievements, and a single-player story mode this exciting new fighting game is now available from MangaGamer on Steam!

To celebrate the release, we also have an official discord server for Golden Fantasia and plans for multiple tournaments are already underway! So if you love fighting games and are looking to test your skill against others in official match-ups, be sure to join the channel and stay in the loop:

https://discord.gg/xsgJKjh

The first official tournament runs in a week, so get training!

Hello Everyone!

Today, we, poverty anime fighting game players and umineko fans alike, will start mashing on our new completely overhauled netplay system for Golden Fantasia (Ougon/OMK)! If you would like to learn what rollback is, we invite you to check our blogpost[blog.mangagamer.org] and learn about the concepts behind bringing you low-delay netplay for fighting games!

Every rollout is not without it's difficulties. Golden Fantasia is a title with very heavy effects, which can cause CPU issues while rewinding on rollback. While we tested each character in the game, we are expecting some desyncs to occur during the release week of Golden Fantasia.

The good news is, you, as a player, can directly contribute to improving the netcode of Golden Fantasia and help us diagnose common issues which lead to desyncs and laggy netplay. And here's how!

Grab a friend, and enable debug mode when you create a game. Debug Mode will allow you to record extra logs to help us analyze netplay results.

Normally you wouldn't want to enable this option, since it does increase logging and thus lag on your CPU. While it's on, play with your opponent. Every game you play will create a file, "debug.log" in your Steam folder, likely under C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Umineko Golden\

Debug.log will disappear and recreate each time you relaunch the game, so anytime you experience a desync, close the game, and pull this file.

Then, both you AND your opponent can submit their debug.log files for the same gameplay session to #bugreporting on our community discord[discord.gg].

From there, we will be analyzing game logs all week to make the netplay better and iron out all the wrinkles with the netplay over release week!

Hey Everyone,

http://store.steampowered.com/app/550340/Umineko_Golden_Fantasia/

At release, Golden Fantasia will be priced at $19.99 over release with it's 20% discount, base price being $24.99.