Hey, sorry to hear you're having problems. The original custom map was intended for maps like 'indoors', with a flat perspective and a wall right behind the players. The 'foreground' image is intended for the floor section under them. An image like this dojo would work best with the other style of stage like 'Temple', with blood spreading on the floor instead, but the Custom stage doesn't support that feature in the old build. Right now updates to the old build are very low priority for me since I'm so busy with the new version.
You read that right, when you do a 'high' attack the sword will end up in the low position and it will take some extra frames to bring it back up to the top again for subsequent high attacks, but you can combo it into a low strike for a faster follow-up attack. The less-snappy sword positions do make each player slightly more vulnerable, but it's only by fractions of a second, and you can still easily react to enemy strikes in time to block them because the attack windups take much more time. In practice it's not a huge change and the game feels much the same, but it now allows for more mind-games and tactical depth when reading your opponent.