I'll be honest: Large updates like this are scary. It's always fun to put out new things on the alpha and beta channels where people kind of expect that sometimes, things may break. But having everyone try an official new version is a different story. Like, the first time I tried this one was right after rebooting the servers, to give them more processors (they were becoming too slow) - and both, the global leaderboard and new game progression panel that are now quite prominently in the arena selection area came up empty. Ouch. Apparently, it was just one service taking a little longer to boot but still ... SCARY!!!
So just in case this update breaks something severely for you - you can always go back to previous (it's one of the "beta-channels"). But be sure to let me know, either here on the Steam forums, or Discord, or Twitter.
New Teaser and New Trailer
With that out of the way, here's a shiny new teaser that also shows the new Beat Drop mechanic that is now officially in the game (and called Unique Rhythmic Punching in the trailer ... oh well ;-) ):
Too quick? I have another one that takes a little more time for everything - and this one also has a brief section with the updated Mutant Club arena that I mentioned in the previous posting:
I have also Tweeted about these and appreciate your retweets!
The Beat Drop mechanic, similar to shooting and slicing - but even more severely - illustrates one of the bigger challenges we have in Holodance: We have (a few) native songs, let you play with your local music, or use any osu! beatmap or one of the maps created by the BSMG. And you can catch, or punch, or slice, or shoot the orbs, drops, and drones. So the game gives you lots and lots of possibilities.
But not all of the combinations are actually always fun for everyone.
What's so special about this mechanic? Hard to describe in words but if you were ever annoyed by the fact that punching and catching in VR rhythm games is more about location than about rhythm, this mechanic is for you: Because here, you have to beat the rhythm (pun intended) and you can't cheat it. And because it's still punching, you still get that visceral feel that's so cool about VR games.
For now, the biggest challenge with it, however, is finding maps that work well with it. Because with this mechanic, when a map has multiple events in a row at the same location, it just won't work. In general, BSMG maps will work better with this, and are also more interesting to play due to the directionality, than many osu! maps, especially if they have streams. But my favorite map with this so far has been Blaster & Extra Terra - Spacecraft, mapped by Pandize (Easy), with one of the easier difficulties. You'll find plenty of me in that leaderboard.
While in theory, some of this could be handled with smart filters and algorithms that analyze the patterns, machines are never as good as humans (fu Agent Smith ;-) ).
That is why Holodance 1.3 introduces ratings:
Song and Beatmap Ratings
After each session, you can now let the game know how you liked the song, what you thought about the gameplay, and how challenging you found this specific beatmap, in this specific session. The only rating where you should at least try to be as objective as possible is the gameplay rating.
We store these ratings together with your style setup: So ratings that you gave for the same beatmap but using the laserblades for slicing drops will go into a different bucket from your rating of that same beatmap with the new Beat Drop mechanic. One may have been pure flow, the other unplayable. It's the same principle for having different leaderboards for different play styles (in addition to the combined ones).
The song rating obviously is just per song. That one should eventually help you find more music you like.
Also, while you get better at playing the game, your perception of how challenging a specific map was will change - so you can always change your ratings after playing a map, and your current skill level will be taken into account when recommending (or not recommending) the map to other players.
For now, the ratings are just collected but I'm already working on a new area in Quick Access of the Music Library that will then suggest maps for the mechanic you picked, that worked well for other players that used the same mechanic. This will make a huge difference especially for new players that are often overwhelmed with all the options ... but it will also be helpful for seasoned players that look for more challenges that are actual fun to play.
YUR.watch to Maximize Your Fitness
Holodance has always been a fun workout, and YUR works for any VR game, so it was possible to use Holodance with YUR before, and I certainly did. But now you can not only use the YUR.watch to directly log in to YUR and start tracking right away, and watch your current stats right at your fingertips - but we have also added meta-data so you can check out which kind of gameplay burnt what amount of calories, so you get graphs like this one in the YUR app (available on Steam, for free):
See my Tweet thread about this for more details (and more graphs).
Furthermore, we have also integrated calories burnt into our game progress and leaderboards:
Game Progression and Leaderboards
Holodance is designed to be a (long) journey through sound. While we have been tracking your progress all along (and migrated away from Steam before ending early access), and even had a Game Progression section hidden in the settings menus, and even had the global leaderboards with the "grind score" behind your back when you entered the game ... it was time to bring some consistency into how you progress through the game.
Right when you enter the game, you now see the game progression to your left, and the global leader board to your right. More importantly, you can now switch between the total accumulated score leaderboard, skill and style level leaderboards, and new leaderboards for total calories burnt while playing Holodance, and your maximum burnrate while playing Holodance (these last two obviously require using YUR).
If you have been playing Holodance since early early access (well, not that early), your total accumulated score may have been much higher than what we've tracked with the new system. That data isn't lost, it's still on Steam, used for unlocking the arenas, and the old accumulated score leaderboard still gets updated. For a while I kept "Steam stats" as an option in game progression but this is becoming increasingly time-consuming to maintain. As usual, please let me know what you think: If it's really important to you, I'll find a way to put it back in ... but some of these complexities take time that I could also use to finish the beatmap editor or the new map recommendation system.
Play Session Stats
Also, after playing a session, you now can select between a leaderboard that has all sessions, and a leaderboard only for your specific style, plus two new leaderboards based on calories burnt (multiplied with your achieved score), and burn rate (multiplied with the percentage of orbs you caught). Plus nicer stats ... which are still work in progress (so we went from ugly work in progress to good looking work in progress - but progress is being made, more on that in the next announcement ;-) ).
Rich Presence on Steam and Discord
Discord now shows where you are playing, with which weapon, and what mechanic and map:
Steam shows significantly less:
Hello Valve, can you feel the heat?
More Done, and More to Come
I still have a long list of items that were done and that I haven't put into the recent release notes ... but those will go into a separate posting. And, as usual, work on Holodance continues, so there will probably be a few smaller updates during the next few days (including some comfort updates - I did not forget about those, just didn't manage to put them in, yet).
I have also made significant progress on the beatmap editor, so that will be fun once done.