Welcome to Project Heartbeat 0.9 this is our first update of 2021 and also the anniversary update, Project Heartbeat will be turning 1 year old next month, so this update celebrates its release!
Let's get right into the new stuff.
NEW CONTENT
NEW SONG: Sands of Time
Sands of Time is now live, the artwork was masterfully made by artist Mariale, the chart was made by Blizzin.
The song comes from the Initial D inspired games "Densha de D" based on the manga of the same name, it's produced by Sugano and sang by Travis Stebbins.
NEW FEATURES
In-game workshop browser
New functionality to browse the workshop from inside the game has been added, this allows you to subscribe from within the game and will automatically download media. You can make the media auto-download only download audio through a new option added to the options menu.
Mini-tutorial
To help new players I've added a mini-tutorial before the song starts that tells you how to hit the notes that it contains.
Editor minimap
The editor now features a minimap to aid with scrolling to sections of the song quickly.
New latency display
A new Osu! inspired latency display has been added, this shows you what the difference between your inputs and the perfect timing is and also shows an average, the different bands show different timing windows (so COOL in the center, FINE next to it and so on).
Editor slide chain flipping
A new transform has been added to the editor's transform tools that allows you to flip slide chains horizontally.
Audio only downloads
It is now possible to download only audio for songs that use videos, before you needed to download the video and then disable audio, this new option disables it and then downloads only the audio.
New song list
The way the song list works has been changed, the new code is more efficient and makes the song list look and animate nicely, it also makes it much more mouse friendly, this code is also used by the workshop browser, and will slowly be used in more places in the game where scrollable lists are involved.
As another change, locally installed, workshop and editor charts are now separated in the song list.
This song list also wraps around, fancy.
The new song list also adds a new look for the song's cover art and an animation when slecting it.
Controller input changes
Previously the game would use the input from the latest controller to press a button, this was problematic because it would cause double inputs and performance issues when using emulated controllers.
The new system only allows for one controller to be used, it will automatically use the first controller it finds the first time and store it, so that every time you run the game that controller will be used.
If when running the game that controller is no longer present, it will default to the first controller it finds.
The controller in use can be chosen in Options -> Input
Note hit effect changes
The note hit effect has been changed, it now feels a bit bouncy, I have also optimized how note hit effects are displayed and removed which should lead to better performance particularly for slide chains.
Epilepsy warning
You can now enable an epilepsy warning in the graphics tab of the song metadata editor, this is encouraged for charts that have videos with rapidly flashing colors.
Editor scripting
Editor scripting allows you to write scripts to change notes around, this is like a supercharged version of the expression editor.
Chart note usage display
Charts in the song list now show what types of notes are used in it, this is per-song and per-chart.
Intro skip marker
You can now mark the point to where the intro skip feature will jump to in the editor.
Nintendo notes
There are new notes for nintendo controllers, the new shapes created for them has been also adapted for use in the xbox icon pack, so they share the shape but not the colors.
Achievements
Achievements have finally arrived to Project Heartbeat, more will be added in the future.
Engine changes
The engine version has been upgraded to a newer version of the godot 3.2.4 branch, also a patch by RandomShaper has been added that should make some threaded operations safer and thus reduce crashing.
BUG FIXES & minor changes
- Optimizer visualizer code
- Added the ability to toggle the game's UI (control+H)
- Fix layering in multiplayer
- Fix results screen showing info partially before waiting for workshop vote info
- Optimize slide particle deletion timing
- Fix long standing bug that caused button prompts to not change when changing them in options.
- Disable leftover test.png debug feature
- Add a HACK to fix case issues for charts made on Windows for Linux users
- Fix issues with folders section
- Fix audio preview playback being out of order sometimes
- Fix opening song settings in-game
- Add new PPD deprecation disclaimer
- Fix being able to make illegal notes in the editor
- Update youtube-dl and force it to use the python3 alias
- Fix editor plugin tools not behaving properly
- Fix song preview graphics not showing when pausing
- Fix many memory leaks
- Remove usage of SFX pooling for ordinary SFX
- Use song volume normalization in editor playtest
- Fix returning from a song that's in a folder
- Make youtube-dl create cache folder in user dir (fixes downloaded video list not being saved when using custom content directories)
- Fix opening song settings in-game
- Add new PPD deprecation disclaimer
FUTURE
I'd like 0.10 to have a focus on new UGC stuff, so I would like to have a new tool that facilitates making icon packs, maybe UI packs, I will also be working on linked hearts finally. I've gotten better at writing code so I'll try to get as many things done as possible as always ;)