After returning from PAX, our artist Shath was trapped San Francisco for a cancelled media event (don't worry, he made it home!), we've been adapting to the madness that is life working life with COVID 19.
So finally, custom levels are here. It's been a long time coming reworking some of the more complicated features that we do in Unity when authoring levels (setting the start offset, BPMs, speed up, speed down, multiple time signatures, titles and so on) - and we've implemented most of what you will want to be able to chart your own music.
What we haven't put in yet is things like mixing multiple audio tracks together, cutting sections out of songs, and preview loops (among other things), but we figure these are features that a very small percentage of players will want at this point - most of them you can do with audio editing software before importing into the game. What you can do is import .OGG files, create up to 5 difficulty levels for a single piece of music, set cue points name them, back up your charts for easy re-importing and more. We will post a full how-to video shortly, we want to polish up the editor a bit first. If you have any issues with how anything works, just hit us up in Discord.
We've also included the final 3 tracks from our SRXD OST Volume 1. These include tunes from Lena Raine, Phonetic Hero and Oxford Parker. We managed to include a fourth bonus track for this patch, Never Count On Me by Haywyre. We've wanted a Haywyre tune in the game for a long time and it's great to finally represent his unique style of beats in Spin form.
Another thing we have updated is the results screen. There is a lot more fanfare during the end of levels, including custom vocals for each grade, FCs and PFCs, as well as a new UI
UPDATE 6
This update brings full custom charting support, four new free levels (totalling 30) and a results screen update to make you feel like a boss no matter how you scored. There's also a new gamepad control scheme and Razer Chroma support. We've been busy!
- FEATURES
- Four new levels! This brings us to 30 total levels. - Go Outside by Phonetic Hero, showcasing Pete’s mastery of building hype and intricate rhythmic intrigue. - Beyond The Heart (Broken Heart Mix) by Lena Raine, composer on the indie hit platformer Celeste, which takes us back to the epic climb of Mount Celeste. This tune will pump you up and leave you energised, it’s real ear-worm. - Robo Trio by Oxford Parker, one of Australia’s finest jazz drummers who also writes wild chiptunes as his alter-ego. This beat features layers of detailed percussion and crazy synths. - Bonus track! Never Count On Me by Haywyre, an absolute masterpiece and a journey into the mind of an artist overcoming fears of self-doubt.
- Custom levels! - Create levels to your own music. Thanks for your patience on this one. We’re still going to be ironing out kinks and polishing our updated editor based on your feedback, so hit us up in Discord. - Players can now set start offsets, change BPMs, set multiple time signatures and more. - Remember, this is still Early Access, so check the editor guide we put together for the time being for some insight into the current quirks of creating a custom track. We will continue to polish our editor and add features.
- Updated results screen! - You should really feel like you earned your results now, with more hype, vocals and animation when completing a level. There are now multiple vocals for each grade, and a vocal for FC and PFC. - More stats! (Even more stats coming soon). - Links to songs on Spotify! Go support your favourite artists.
- New gamepad control scheme! - We were inspired by YouTuber Jibb Smart to reintroduce our retired gamepad control scheme whereby the analogue stick imitates the motion of the wheel - while not quite the same as Jibb’s (his uses an up-tap on the stick to engage the wheel / hit tap notes), it’s an interesting alternative control scheme you may wish to try out. - Turn it on in the gamepad options menu by hitting the “rotating stick controls” check box and tell us what you think. - Basically the stick will behave like a wheel once you hit the edge of the dead zone, by default taps are still the X button, beats on trigger, spins are accomplished by doing a quarter circle motion, and scratches by moving quickly left / right on the stick.
- POLISH
- Added an option for RGB peripherals (currently Razer Chroma) - on by default
- Added an option for frame buffering and defaulted it to single buffering for increased responsiveness when using VSync
- “Good” feedback is replaced with “Early” and “Late” text beside the track.
- Radar graph now scales values on some difficulties (so some gameplay elements don’t look empty or unbalanced). The graph also has a sweet animation as it moves between difficulties.
- All preview loops have been redone to be unique sections in each track, and to cut out dead space at the ends - David made an awesome script that automates finding these, so they shouldn’t pop up again unless we’re lazy and don’t run the script.
- Editor should have histogram (wave form) on by default (hotkey is H to enable / disable)
- Beat holds have been added to the radar graph. Each difficulty now has its own “badge” which correlates with the shape of the radar graph.
- You can now go to practice mode from the success / failure screens - replaced the almost useless “next” button.
- You will be warned before entering Hard (or above) to try the Hard tutorial
- Scratches should no longer fail so quickly after they start. We will also be fine-tuning their performance on low sensitivity mice in a coming patch as they’re basically impossible with incredibly fast but low-distance motions. Just go slower and wider for now.
- When you miss a spin with note clearing off, you can now still use the tail of the dead spin note to gain the auto aim for the next tap. You won’t receive any score, but it should help with general game flow.
- “Hold Mouse Click to Move” option is now located in the “input settings” tab.
- Radar graph will now scale its elements in certain difficulties. This should more accurately display the true challenge of a track across its various difficulty levels.
- Editor note chart has solid black colour behind it now (as opposed to transparency which often made it hard to read in noisy backgrounds).
- Note click sounds (if enabled) should no longer happen during calibration.
- We’ve done a bunch of stuff that should hopefully improve the stuttering some of you have been experiencing. We’re always on the lookout for reproducible stuttering issues, so hit us up in Discord if you still have issues. We will get to the bottom of this!
- Scratch zones have been made slightly easier for low sensitivity mice (and probably slightly easier overall). Let us know how they feel.
- BALANCE
- Most Hard levels have had mixed beats (beats + other note combos) simplified - Hard is meant to be an introduction to ambidextrous play, some levels - particularly earlier ones - get a bit carried away with stacking them on top of other note types. These elements are now gradually introduced throughout hard.
- Most Normals (from Believe to Velours working backwards) have been made slightly easier.
- Highscore (Hard) fixed an incorrect spin, removed some beat mixing, slight design polish.
- Rattlesnake (Hard) fixed an incorrect spin, removed some beat mixing, slight design polish.
- I See Lite (Normal) made quite a bit easier.
- I See Lite (Hard) fixed an incorrect spin, removed some beat mixing, made slightly easier.
- I See Lite (Expert) fixed the broken tap colours at the end
- Hypersphere (Normal) fixed a rogue set of two match notes (thanks Jongi).
- Razor Sharp (Expert) the weird tap has been removed from the start of a scratch zone.
- Twist Sound (XD) the wonky claps have been fixed.
- Adventures (Hard) has been made flightly easier.
- Adventures (Expert) has been made slightly easier, but has more beats (especially later in the track).
- New Year has been bumped up to a difficulty 6, but difficulty lowered overall so it should fit better in the tracklist now.
- New Year (Easy) made slightly easier.
- New Year (Normal) made quite a bit easier.
- New Year (Hard) has been made quite a bit easier, more in line with its new rating.
- New Year (Expert) has been a bit easier.
- Reach You (Hard, Expert) slight polish.
- Believe (Easy) has been made slightly easier.
- Superimposed_RGB (Easy) is now actually easy.
- Coming Too is now a difficulty 8 track, the level design remains the same.
- Coming Too (XD) fixed a rogue hold note towards the very end
- My Museum (All) fixed the start offset (had 30ms delay from when the track was an MP3, that has been removed so it will no longer feel slightly rushed).
- Hold note scoring is now simplified, you will either get max points or you will fall off, there is no resetting of the “ramp up” in score if you’re slightly off. Hold notes should no longer be a wild card in your quest for the top scores. We shouldn’t have to reset all leaderboard from this as the max possible scores from each hold note remains the same.
- BUG FIXES
- Added a few missing items to prepooling (avoid stutter during gameplay).
- Small optimizations (stutters and framerates).
- When DLLs can’t be loaded (such as Razer Chroma) because of antivirus or other solution, these features will be automatically disabled.
- Fixed entering into practice mode with low health leaves you stuck in low health mode.
- MSAA Anti-Aliasing options are now applied to the backgrounds.
- FXAA and SMAA Anti-Aliasing options now work when quality is set to Very Low or Low.
- Failure crowd sounds should be properly hooked up again.
- Crowd audio flow has been redone, but should no longer hurt your ears.
- Low health warning will no longer remain when entering practice mode in a near-death state.
- Korean text should display better in SpinFM.
- Beat wings should properly appear in the Hard tutorial
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Happy spinning!