Finally, this is the first "beta" of V0.9. What this means is that the main features are there and now it's all about polishing those to get this into V0.9. Some may wonder what this alpha/beta/release stuff is all about in an Early Access title - so to answer that: We use Early Access to be able to test things a lot, and sometimes, what you first get is really just an early prototype. You play it, we play it, we get feedback, we iterate, polish and improve.
The most important thing this new release brings compared to the previous V0.9 alphas is the gun mechanic (we already had a few releases with this on the guns and alphadev branches) but I'd like to take a more broader perspective on V0.9 with these release notes:
Procedural Beatmaps
We love perfectly timed rhythm game maps, and I get really annoyed when gameplay is off-beat, so all along Holodance was all about its native content with music produced specifically for the game, then we added licensed music (some of which we have licensed but not added, yet) and eventually added support for osu! beatmaps.
But there is something really awesome about simply starting playing any song you have in your local music library. Holodance can read files in the formats/containers: mp3, mp4, m4a, ogg, flac, wav, wma, opus. Some of the things we do for procedural / algorithmic beatmapping are also the foundation for our upcoming in-VR beatmap editor, like properly identifying "recordings" of a song, regardless of the encoding or even whether it's in your local library or on YouTube (YouTube support will come later during V0.9.x).
Feedback so far has been quite positive, even though we still need to let you properly select your music base folder. Currently, unless it's your Windows Music library folder, you need to copy'n'paste the path into the field "pathLocalMusic" in: \Steam\steamapps\common\Holodance\Configuration.json
You get five difficulties for each song, we're still working on polishing every aspect of this.
Casual Mode
Holodance has been all about precision all along but sometimes, you just want to casually punch orbs to the rhythm. We do, too. In Casual Mode, the orbs are larger, and so are the "catchers". A less obvious thing is that while you get the same time window for "perfect" timing, as long as you catch the orb at all, you don't miss it due to timing. This is to prevent the frustration a few players had when standing too far forward or too far backwards. Finally, Casual Mode automatically has Sliders and Spinners converted to orbs, because those are more advanced mechanics and not everyone enjoys them as much as I do ;-)
One important thing to understand about how we handle these modes: The mechanic setting in Settings / Style / Themes changes the catcher and also sets some defaults for orb theme, timing and converting Sliders / Spinners - but you can still change this according to your preferences.
Here's how it works:
Laserblades
Back in October 2016, I publicly mentioned an upcoming sword-mechanic for Holodance, which, due to our sci-fi theme would obviously be using a laserblade-style representation of the sword. In fact, adding more and different core mechanics to Holodance had been on my mind since October 2015, when I had to turn the catchers into little sword-like tubes due to tracking limitations with the Razer Hydra that I used for some of the early prototypes of Holodance.
One thing I learned when everyone started talking about Beat Saber was that I shouldn't wait with implementing ideas like that. So the laserblades mechanic is now available in Holodance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aNjSNJ9RKs
Again, you can select the laserblades in the mechanic settings, and it will set up some defaults, like the laserbeam orb theme - but you can change it, and for example also use the Firestorm orb theme which has fireballs flying at you that you can then deflect with your laserblades. There are two stages to this: Using just a single hand, or, for more advanced gameplay, dual wielding.
... and while I was at it I also added the gun mechanic that I had mentioned in January 2017 and that otherwise had drowned in a long list of todos:
Gun Mechanic
One of the tricky things with the now almost traditional VR rhythm game mechanic where orbs fly at you so you can catch or punch them is that time and space are essentially the same. So when an object moves, the perfect time to catch it is also the perfect location to catch it. It's still a lot of fun - but people that care all about the precision in rhythm games will always miss something with this approach.
So why not give players guns and let them shoot the objects? We use a very fast laser-gun that only works against orbs and drones (I still strongly believe in non-harming and non-violence ;-) ). While working on this I realized that for the fun of it, having a bow and arrow mechanic will also be cool. But that's not in this version, yet, and it obviously requires even much easier beatmaps than the gun mechanic (with the bow and arrow mechanic, since the arrow has a distance to cover at a lower speed, you'll have to shoot it just a little bit before the beat, so it gets crazy difficult).
So, if you want to try this, make sure to select maps below 2.5 in difficulty first. Our procedural beatmapper currently usually creates more difficult maps - we're working on fixing that during this beta-cycle.
https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=b2xzPq_4s9o
New Impact Timing Indicators
We have had impact timing indicators all along - but they never really worked that well, so improving them has been on my list for like almost forever. Finally, we have them, and now only do we give you five to choose from now, the original one, one where a circle goes all the way up on both sides, and clockwise and counterclockwise "timer circles" - these now also show the timing phase you are in with colors: Red means you'd miss because it's too offbeat, yellow means you'll catch it but it's offbeat, and finally green means perfect.
These can be selected in the Guidance area under Style, and the preview was also improved:
Time Dilation
We already had "Time Dilation" as part of Psychedelic Mode for a little while - we'll rename that to "Bullet Time", though, because it works very differently: Bullet Time in Psychedelic Mode slows down time around special event orbs, like the 48-combo 4x multiplier, long combos and of course, the full combo. The cool thing about Bullet Time is that it's predictable and you can use it for finishing moves.
The new Time Dilation features works differently: Time now moves based on how fast you move your hands: When you groove naturally with the music while catching orbs, time passes normally - but when you slow your hands down, time slows down with them. If you hold your hands still, time almost completely stops. As you can imagine, this opens up quite a large range of new approaches to how you play our rhythm game. It's all about style.
The Time Dilation mechanic works especially well with our laserblades because while we do track rotational velocity as well for the score bonus, it does not influence time. So you can do some really tricky advanced moves while playing with rhythm and time.
https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=lA3rkI3PF0U
And time dilation works in both directions: When you wildly swing your arms, it's like fast-forward. So you can make slow songs more fun this way, too.
Bounce Back Mechanic
We needed this for the gun mechanic because having the objects fly all the way to the players isn't that great. The idea, however, is much older and was about solving the same issue that the gun mechanic now solves much more elegantly: Being strict with timing. For now, we have this as one orb theme.
Give it a try and let us know what you think. If we keep this, it will become part of "precision mode", which is more strict in every aspect of the game, as our "standard" mode.
Player Progression
All of these new mechanics will be part of a new progression system that is based on skills. We already have the accumulated score to unlock environments. That's pure grinding, and we'll fix the loopholes used by cheaters (in case anyone wondered ;-) ). With the mechanics, the idea is that you need to have a minimum skill to have fun with the advanced mechanics. So those will be unlocked based on your skill.
However, it won't be a linear progression because some people may want to get to the gun mechanic as soon as possible, and are not even that interested in the laserblade mechanic. So you will be able to select your own path through the different mechanics. Single / dual will be linear because you can only play easier maps with a single laserblade / single gun, and then, for the more intense one, dual wielding is unlocked.
Streamer Mode
One thing that was super-annoying with Streamer Mode until this version was that not all cameras worked in all environments. That's still the case, but now, cameras that don't work in a specific environment are automatically excluded from the automatic camera switching on the rhythm.
Also, your settings are now saved persistently, so you don't need to set up the times again and again for each session.
That was a lot to cover - the details for this release are actually just a few:
Release Notes for V0.9.0b1
- Guns: New Gun Mechanic
- Pause Menu: Moved the "Move World" UI forward so that it is closer to Rotate World / Rotate UI.
- Target Areas: We can now support different target areas (only in "Free Mode", though). For now, this is only used to internally switch between the distant guns target area and the standard close target area. But this can also be used to activate special areas for feet, so this is a big step forward.
- Guidance: Changed "Show Impact Points" to "Show Impact Timers" because these points were actually always meant to be "timers" and now will become that in a much more obvious way. Guidance: Changed wording - the "Show" was a little redudant. It is no more.
- Guidance: Added animation for one orb, its impact timer and timing laser.
- Impact Timers: Previously, impact timers had to be adapted to the size of the orbs - this is now down automatically.
- Impact Timers: Added osu style impact timer (contracting circles). Hit Sounds: Added Explosions Hit Sound Theme.
- Guns: Added much improved activate / deactivate animations.
- Guns: Added explosions for drones orb theme.
- Guns: When using guns, Time Dilation behaves very differently from orbs and laserblades, so we adjusted the relevant curves for more interesting gameplay (having ultraslow time almost all the time isn't really fun).
- Streamer Mode: Added number of bars before switching Avatar, same as we already have it for the cameras.
- Streamer Mode: Made settings for the cameras persistent so we don't have to set everything up each time we start the game. You still need to activate Streamer Mode through the flatscreen UI, and also Switch Cams in the Rhythm because if we'd activate that automatically as well, this could cause some troubles.
- Party Mode: Start Streamer Mode can mess up the UI at the end of a session, so this is now disabled by default.
- Streamer Mode: Added camera exclusion to environments so that automatically switching cameras does not mess up recordings anymore. Most camera views are available in all environments, and some don't work that well when the main ScoreHUD is active (i.e. Gamer mode in guidance, instead of Zen mode). Especially Sci-Fi Tunnels has been significantly cleaned up because a lot of perspectives didn't work in that one. If you find any perspective in any environment that you feel should not be included - please let us know!
- Streamer Mode: Reduced field of view of first person camera in Streamer Mode from 80° to 65°. This is still a larger field of view than the regular headset view but it's no longer like almost fisheye view that makes things right in front of you appear kind of small.
- Orb Themes: Added "bounce back" orb theme. We may move bouncing back into a separate area so that you can play any theme with or without bouncing back. Currently, the gun orb themes are "bounce back", and this new Bounce Back theme. The bounce back logic is a part of "precision mode" which requires much higher precision in gameplay then standard mode. So eventually, we'll have Casual (requires less precision especially in terms of timing), Standard and "Precision Mode" which is much more strict.
- Impact Timer: Added "Full Circle Up" timing indicator. This is also the new default.
- Impact Timer: Added color-coding for the time-phases from missed (red), via offbeat (yellow) to perfect (green). Drone Orbs: Due to the explosions, the OrbScoreHUD was hardly ever visible with drone orbs - so this has now been moved about a meter closer to the player.
- Asteroids Environment: This was pretty overexposed. Reduced exposure from 2.28 to 1. This is still a bit brighter than without color grading, but no longer eye-cancer bright.
- Impact Timers: Added clockwise and counterclockwise impact timer styles.