Hey there, Spinners,
We tried killing two birds with one stone in this update. What if we could completely redesign the tutorial system, and also refactor everything about how things were (previously very lazily) loaded and unloaded in our game, as well as change the entire structure of our AssetBundles?
This of course lead to a bigger cleanup than we anticipated, but the results will be worth it for future ports such as the Switch version. Nintendo places strict limits on patch size, and very specific requirements for gameplay displaying their hardware in-game.
Another thing we did was redo how our translation system works. We have moved to a Google Sheets system which can import into Unity in a single click. It’s now super easy to change strings in-game as we don’t have to deal with an external translation system (OneSky), saving time, money and revisions from translators who sometimes did not fully understand the context of a rhythm game.
Huge thanks to Discord users Raoul1808, Gamer97, Mapy, Edge, DJ_Mike, TreXDer, G4, A. Park, 20/3, CrunchyRominaeLettuce, Auth, Dr Chicken, NeoDuck, haomakk, SleepingKotofey and our mobile publisher Habby for your work on this.
If you think there are any particularly bad strings in your language of choice, let us know and we can fix them far more quickly than before.
Patch notes below.
UPDATE 13 - TUTORIAL OVERHAUL
FEATURES
- New tutorial system!
The gameplay mechanics for SRXD are slightly unique in the rhythm game space. While it clicks once you understand the game and have played for a bit, we want to make the initial experience with the game as easy as possible for players new to the genre.
We now have 4 separate tutorials that quickly teach all of the game mechanics one note at a time and in a way that is relevant to the difficulty level the player is attempting to play.
- Easy - match notes, spins with a tap at the end, and scratches
- Normal - hold notes and tap notes
- Hard - beats and hold note releases
- XD - beat holds and beat hold releases
The tutorials show correct keybinds if remapped, and clear demonstrations of how to play using 3D animated glyphs of gamepad buttons, keyboard keys and a mouse.
If you miss the old tutorial music, you can still create a custom track and it will be the default music.
Another feature we have wanted for a long time is proper text explanations of how each mechanic works, and clear “objectives” (number of times the player must hit a note to proceed). There was also previously an issue where if a player didn’t understand an issue in the tutorial, they could get stuck in an endless loop of negative feedback. Now if a player fails twice, the tutorial will rewind and play the demo section with text explanation and animated 3D glyphs.
Levels are now gated by having to play a tutorial (which is easily skippable for seasoned players), and tutorials are always accessible from the level select menu (without having to dig around the track list).
Other features:
- Refactored the way everything in the game is loaded and unloaded
- Completely restructured our assetbundles to allow for leaner patches and better resource use and future optimisation
- Improved translation system (now using a Google Sheets file)
POLISH
- Improved beat release effect
- Improves beat note hit effect
- Improved the effect hold notes have on the background heightmap (removed flickering)
- SpinFM no longer spams track select sounds when moving quickly through difficulties
- Menu navigation SFX is more consistent between input devices and menus
- Audio spectrum visualiser (in-game HUD) is now properly aligned in the center
- Made the options menu wider, made the debug buttons (bottom of options menu) fit all languages
- Incorporated all feedback from the chart feedback form
- Re-added the track info in the bottom left corner during play, and made long titles scale properly
- Added missing HDR to some elements in the key binding screen
- Fixed “next leaderboard in xx:xx time” text overflow in some languages
- Updated Chinese and Italian translations for many in-game strings (thanks to Gex, Edge and 20/3)
- Added translation string for “add input” in controller / MIDI mapping menu in all languages
- Added dynamic resolution scaling on track preview (level select) and wheel preview (options menu) - these should look better at higher resolutions
- Improved album art loading process (now loads with a smooth transparent crossfade)
BUGS
- Fixed RichText working for Steam names in SpinFM
- Fixed a dodgy looking text raycasting issue on level select menu
- Fixed a bug submitted by user 20/3 (IndexOutOfRangeexception) caused by putting too many legacy tutorial notes in a custom chart - the game will now ignore the tutorial notes and mark them as chart errors
- Fixed a bug that could cause a crash when quickly scrolling through hundreds of customs
- Fixed a rare bug that could cause the game to never launch due to resolution being too low
- Fixed a bug where the final ping of the audio calibration tool would sometimes not play
Keep spinnin and keep grinnin.