So this version that I have just pushed to default does away with the old song browser, and now has what we now call "The Music Library". I'm calling the V0.8pre1 because there will be one or two more releases (within the next 24 hours), and then, V0.8 is the official new version of Holodance.
If you get to play Holodance today or tomorrow - please let us know if you run into any serious issues! Just post the issue to the forums and I'll keep track of everything.
Basically, what the new Music Library gives you us (almost) immediate access to the full library of all ranked osu! maps. So that's approximately 12K songs, 55K beatmaps. You can browse by artist, title and genre (more ways to browse to come). Genre doesn't work as well as it should because that data simply isn't really available, yet. I think it's still useful enough to keep it.
We now also have a "random" feature, under "Take Shortcuts" (in the music library). Already, I've had a lot of fun using this, and found some songs to play with that I wouldn't have found otherwise. This one had been requested a long time ago.
Full Release Notes
- New Song Browser: Added button to exit environment; this is the button with the level selection area screenshot.
- New Song Browser: Added "Game Settings" button to the song browser settings screen, so you can now navigate to the settings without having to enter pause.
- Fixed issue in startup where "Loading Virtual Clubbing" was wrongly displayed and then overwritten in a very ugly way.
- Major Fix in our UI-system: Previously, when entering pause while some other UI-screen was active, unpausing had that previous screen removed, sometimes leaving you in UI-less states where there should have been a UI (e.g. when pausing after a session). Now, in the new song browser, you can enter the game settings (which are equivalent with pause), enter pause, browse to the same menu, exit pause (by pressing the menu button for a second again), and Holodance will be right where you paused. In the case that you had for example Style Settings in the game settings, and also in pause, it will look like nothing has changed (it's the same screen after all). But behind the scenes, Holodance will have removed all the screens in-between and when you navigate back, you go exactly where you expect to go (to the game settings and then song browser).
- New Song Browser: Showing complete lists of Artists, Titles and Genres now works.
- New Song Browser: Scrolling now works like in the old song browser, just a little better.
- "New Song Browser" is now called "Music Library" - because that's really what it is. (edited)
- Music Library: We now have a system in place that lets us have two lists at any time, so you have a little more context of where you're coming from. When you click an item on the right list, you drill down deeper (so a new list appears on the right, the list on the right moves left, and the list on the left disappears under the player platform). When you click an item on the left list, you replace the list on the right.
- Music Library: Browsing no longer causes framedrops; it's now all asynchronous.
- Music Library: Changing filters while browsing now automatically updates the lists.
- Music Library: "Preselection", which was never a term I want to stay with but used for lack of something better, has now been replaced with "Take Shortcuts" - because that's what you do when you take this route.
- Music Library: Major refactoring; cleaned up responsibilities of all the different (ui-)components involved for easier maintainability, higher robustness and quicker adding of features.
- Music Library: Added much improved handling for text search, with animations, selection highlighting and audio.
- Music Library: Fixed issues with SteamVR keyboard (this caused the game to pause when opened, and it could appear in the wrong location when the UI was not in front of the player base position)
- The new clubbing environment previously called "Sci-Fi Club", of which we had a prototype in the Experimental area, now has its original name "Mutant Club" and is in the game in a fairly final version. We'll still polish this, and there may be more coming in this one later down the road, but for now, it's complete.
- Finished initial version of Sci-Fi Tunnels.
- Moved Sci-Fi Tunnels, Trippy Tunnels and Mutant Club to the main Free Mode area and assigned minimum scores to unlock them. So these are now officially part of the game :wink:
- Adapted Party Mode UI to new style (more or less)
- Officially moving to version 0.8 now (the previous 0.8.0nN versions were all alphas / betas for that release).
- Party Mode: Added Twitter-handle to player data
- Music Library: Re-arranged filter checkboxes to make more sense. We now first have Native, because once we do have the in-VR beatmap editor, those will be the most fun to play. Then, we have built-in, because those are in a way "Native" (only that we include them directly in the game). Next up is "Auto" because ... layout (sorry), and finally StepMania. This whole first row is currently not available and we may actually hide it for a little while after release. Next line is the different osu! beatmap types; with those, there was only one change: Taiko is now before Mania, because Taiko in a way is the "better version" of Auto (it only gives us timing information - but we automatically define the locations of the orbs, kind of like in Auto, except Auto is fully procedurally generated). Mania is last, because StepMania and Mania are similar in many ways.
- Music Library: Browsing lists with more than 100 items works but isn't really that much fun. So, whenever the new Music Library now encounters such a long list, it automatically groups it, e.g. by alphabet. You can still get the long lists, if you want to, by simply clicking the first entry, "All Artists" or "All Songs" ... but that's up to you.
- Music Library: Played Depeche Mode "Wrong" using the new song browser - without having previously downloaded the beatmap! YES!
- Music Library: Added navigation buttons to move back and forth in the current selection.
- Music Library: Moving on from search that yielded specific results (instead of the groups) didn't work - now it does.
- Music Library: Browsing via genres now works - but genres aren't tagged all that well, so this is only of limited use.
- Music Library: Added last played, favorites and random.
- Music Library: Temporarily removed a few sections like Added Date, Difficulty, Tempo and so forth. These will return soon.
- Music Library: Leaderboards are now working; adding/removing favorites is now working.
- Music Library: Audio Preview now works; not perfectly, but good enough for now.
- Fixed disabled images for new environments (Sci-Fi Tunnels, Mutant Club, Trippy Tunnels)