Hello everyone! We're back with a new update! Its almost the 1 year anniversary of Soundelta's release! It would have been cool to release this update on the day of(April 12th), but we wanted to get this one out as soon as possible so we're a few days early. Thank you for following our journey this past year.
This update is focused on polish and quality of life, as well as many behind the scenes technical improvements. We're now nearly done with our technical goals and can go full speed ahead on content from now on! Please look forward to it.
These are going to be some long patch notes, so buckle up!
New Song
Being a technical update doesn't mean it doesn't include any new content!
AXiS - POLTERGEIST
SD 6 / HD 9 / ED 12
Available in Singles Pack
Introducing POLTERGEIST by AXiS, a punishingly difficult song featuring wilder mapping and VFX than any previous official map! Good luck and have fun
Clarity
One of the main goals of this update was improving gameplay clarity, and we've made several changes to help with that.
Note Colors
You can now set individual colors for each lane of notes, helping you see what's coming up next.
Updated Spin Model
The Spin model has been updated to better indicate its direction with its shape.
Graphics Tweaks
Notes and hit effects are no longer affected by bloom, which could turn them into distracting glowy messes when VFX gets more intense.
Quality of Life and Polish
Next up, improvements to the player experience and presentation of the game!
Unlock and SP Cost Changes
Let's be real. The unlock system was too restrictive, especially for more experienced rhythm game players. That's why as of this update, all songs in Singles Pack now have their SD and HD difficulties unlocked by default, and SP costs have been significantly reduced across the board to streamline the unlock process.
Other Little Things
Song select has had some animation improvements and strange behavior fixed. Sorting has been improved, falling back to alphabetical when sorting cannot be performed, and Number Fonts have been made more consistent across sections of UI.
The Graphics and Performance settings have also been cleaned up and reorganized. Notably, Force Native Resolution is now a part of the Resolution setting as the "Auto" option and Vsync is now a part of the Limit FPS setting. We've also reorganized and renamed the two categories.
Technical improvements
Next, technical improvements! Making the game better at its core, one step at a time.
Audio Improvements
We've begun implementing a new audio system that allows the game to play sounds with low latency. Thanks to it, we can now play hitsounds on your actual inputs! This setting is marked as experimental for now.
We've also replaced the old Low Latency Mode with the Audio Buffer setting, because it didn't fit the large variety of audio devices out there. This new setting allows you to dial in latency reduction to what's just right for your device.
Antialiasing
Have you ever thought the lane lines looked strange? MSAA is here to fix that! The Antialiasing setting has been revamped to include new options!(Previously the game only used SMAA)
And last but not least,
Vector Graphics
A large amount of the game's UI has been changed to vector graphics, allowing it to cleanly scale to any resolution!
Editor
We love adding new features to the editor!
New Effect
This update adds Film Grain to the effects list, for your grainy, noisy needs.
Don't Interpolate
To streamline the effect workflow, effect points now have a new parameter, Don't Interpolate! When enabled, this makes the value snap directly to the point's value instead of interpolating from the previous, making this common behavior much simpler to make.
Bugfixes
More bugs have been squashed with this update, largely relating to the UI and navigation. Once again, we are sorry about how long its taken for this update to come out. If you find a bug, please do to tell us about it. See the full patch notes below for more information.
And before we forget,
Unity 6
The game is now updated to Unity 6!
What does this mean for you, the player? The game no longer has the Unity splash screen, speeding up startup times! That's mainly it for things you'll notice immediately, but it also helps with a lot of behind the scenes things we're doing and makes development a little easier.
That's it for this update! See you next time.
Thank you for playing Soundelta!
Full Patch Notes
Soundelta EarlyAccess Update 2(Build 1163)
Additions
- Added new song: AXiS - Poltergeist
- Added settings: Realtime Hitsounds(experimental), Lane color
- Added film grain to effects system
- Added Don’t Interpolate to effect channel points which will instantly snap to the value at the time instead of interpolating from the previous point
- Replaced Low Latency Mode setting with Audio Buffer setting. This is able to fit different audio devices better than a single toggle could. The setting value should be automatically determined by whether you previously had Low Latency Mode on or not, however please check it.
- Added new Antialiasing options, including MSAA
Changes
- Updated game to Unity 6
- Converted most UI elements to vector graphics
- Optimized Song Select and Results UI performance
- Changed spin note models to better indicate direction
- Notes and hit effects are no longer affected by bloom
- Decreased SP costs of unlocks
- SD and HD difficulties of Singles pack songs are now available without unlocking
- Spin notes now additionally display judgement on the centered position in both input position modes for more clarity
- Changed colors of various ui elements in editor for better contrast
- Merged Force Native Resolution setting into the Resolution setting as a dropdown option called Auto
- Merged Vsync into Limit FPS setting as a dropdown option
- Removed some unused settings internally
- Moved some settings between Graphics and Performance categories and renamed Graphics category to Display and Performance to Graphics
- Song select sorting now automatically falls back to alphabetical for cases where it cannot sort (such as if you do not have a score on that song while sorting by score)
- Switched order of rate clear and rank icons
Fixes
- Fixed long song artist names going out of the box in gameplay UI
- Fixed an issue with calibration where after clicking restart, the first input would be ignored
- Fixed a bug where you could hit hold notes earlier than their actual timing window
- Fixed a bug where the game could sometimes not load the cover art of a ED difficulty
- Screen resolution detection is no longer affected by inconsistent decimals in refresh rate numbers which certain displays have
- Fixed a bug in editor where it would sometimes not load the song
- Certain key presses no longer pass through into song select while settings or profile menu is open
- Effect channel output on a newly created channel no longer disappears if you do not set a value the first time you select it
- Loading screen when selecting a pack now properly waits until all of the songs in the pack are completely loaded
- Fixed the sort method dropdown in song select being too large
- Fixed a bug where sometimes the up and down arrow keys could do nothing in song select
- Song select no longer plays the cover art changing animation if the cover art is the same when changing difficulties(And some misc animation fixes)
- Fixed some number font inconsistencies