This is one more release focused on Story Mode before we continue work on the Music Library / Free Mode.
Recent Major Release: V0.8
Just two weeks ago, we released Holodance V0.8, which brought a lot of polishing but most importantly, added a new approach to how Free Mode is accessed: Instead of having to download osu!, get osu! beatmaps, make sure osu! recognizes those beatmaps and then finally get them in Holodance, you can now immediately get started with Free Mode - browsing a library of around 12,000 songs and 55,000 beatmaps and including text-based search.
Our new Gameplay Teaser
Full Gameplay Video of our new Avatar system using Vive Trackers
https://vimeo.com/242714666
Note: We introduced the Avatar system in Holodance V0.8.3, about two weeks after the initial 0.8 release.
Near Term Roadmap
Work on the Music Library is not quite complete, yet. For example, the new UI design has a place for song / beatmap images but those are not loaded, yet. Also, the audio preview currently only works for beatmaps (instead of songs), and even there, it doesn't work properly with the full osu! library (for which it is most important). Those issues will be addressed shortly.
Having a really well organized, easily accessibly Music Library that lets you quickly find the songs you like, with the gameplay you enjoy, is a key feature for any rhythm game, so we will continue polishing this area - a lot. Part of this is giving you our in-VR beatmap editor, YouTube access, local MP3 access and community features that help you play the most relevant songs and beatmaps.
We also have improved Vive Tracker support and an Avatar system coming very soon, so development is definitely not getting boring any time soon.
Current Story Mode Updates
The last release (V0.8.1) and this current release V0.8.2 are all about story mode. The most important change in this release are remixes for the songs for levels 2 and 3 (V0.8 brought a completely new song for level 1). So now, Level 1 has three songs you can choose from, and levels 2 and 3 let you choose between the remixes and the original versions. Gameplay has not changed - but we have worked on the color schemes to make the orbs more visible.
And ... we have fixed plenty of issues. It may not be immediately obvious due to the strong focus on Free Mode in the recent year - but the polishing that came to Story Mode in V0.8.1 is a year worth of work by animators (even though not quite full time), and some major refactoring of old systems that turned out to not quite give us the intended experience. Now, the dragons are actually dancing and the foundation has been laid out to complete Story Mode (currently, levels 1 to 3 are very close to final, level 5 has a story preview but uses the song of level 3, levels 6, 10 and 11 have their songs and prototype gameplay but currently, the real fun really is in Free Mode).
Especially with levels 2 and 3, we really hope for feedback because right now, there is a lot of movement, and while advanced players may appreciate the challenge, it may be a little too much for newer players. So, let us know what you think in the forums.
Some people may have not followed recent progress, so here's the full list of changes that came with 0.8 (summarized), 0.8.1 and 0.8.2:
Holodance V0.8 - Summary
- Music Library: Browse and play a library of more than 55,000 high quality osu! beatmaps for more than 12,000 different songs, directly from within the game.
- New Environments: Sci-Fi Tunnels, Trippy Tunnels and Mutant Club, a creation by Virtual Reality artist Miguelangelo Rosario. Holodance now has a total of 12 environments from Story Mode (also available in Free Mode), 5 official bonus environments as well as several special purpose environments. This makes a total of almost 20 environments, ranging from a tropical beach or underwater environment with dolphins and whales, to trippy abstract tunnels or asteroid fields. Screenshots are available in our press kit.
- Progress in Story Mode: New song for Level 1 by Billy Maestro from Brazil, remixed by Sheipz, improved animations for Level 2, Preview of Level 5.
- Vive Tracker Support: Players can catch those orbs not only with their hands and head - but if they have two Vive Trackers, also with their feet - Kung Fu Style!
- Steam Trading Cards: Holodance now has 9 trading cards, themed with environments from both Story Mode and Free Mode. When players have completed a set and crafted a badge, they can get one of 5 profile backgrounds and one of 8 alphabet-based emoticons. These letter-based emoticons spell out HOLODANCE. Which also lets players write words like HELLO, DANCE, or DOODLE. The badges themselves are themed in the five elements, so that's based on Story Mode.
- Major improvements in the look and feel: A completely new UI, much improved look of Orbs and Sliders - with outlines for better visibility against various environments, new Orb Score Bubbles, that can be customized, and a completely new Sci-Fi based HUD used in several environments; also completely redesigned achievements icons. The Catch Area grid that helps players know where to best catch the orbs now has five styles, from just an outline to various graphical designs.
- Mixed Reality: Plenty of fixes in our default SteamVR-based implementation, including Vive Tracker support, cooperation with LIV, built-in MixCast Support
- Major improvements in Streamer Mode: Players that use Holodance to produce content for YouTube or Twitch can now set the timing in musical bars for when each camera switches to the next. Also, the 3rd person cameras in Streamer Mode have been significantly polished for much better footage. Eventually, Streamer Mode will let players produce complete videos by playing a single session, with little need for post-production.
- Ruirized Achievement: For catching orbs in difficult osu! beatmaps only with your head
- Major performance improvements, environment specific performance settings
- Heavy project cleanup, countless bugfixes and polishing, resulting, among other things, in much improved loading times
- Improvements on how Scoring is handled, detailed statistics on how scores are calculated are now available to players after each session
- Not all players enjoy Sliders and Spinners, so those gameplay elements can now be converted to regular Orbs with an option in the settings.
Holodance V0.8.1 - Full List of Changes
- Level 3: Integrated new animations with voice-acting and proper dancing animations
- Fixed skipping issues in levels 2 and 3 - skipping should now work properly in all states in those two levels.
- Level 2: Fixed one audio track missing from the song.
- Level 5: Added new, significantly more polished dancing animations.
- Level 5: High five sequence now works. We will still streamline this one a little.
- Level 1: Added new animations with lip-sync and significantly improved dancing animations.
- Applied a fix for Level 2 (Vayusah didn't show up), and also improved robustness of Music Library, right after the release (and did a hot fix for that).
Holodance V0.8.2 (Current Release) - Full List of Changes
- Story Mode, Level 1: Improved first voice acting animation to make it more lively.
- Internal refactoring: Put all new story mode into their appropriate locations because those are no longer experimental (but were in the "experimental" area internally).
- Story Mode: Fixed issue where resetting player state (this is available through the old settings menu) would cause a restart of the game, which would result in the controllers disappearing. That restart is not necessary anymore, so we no longer do it.
- Improved how loading of audio is handled. This should prevent long delays with voice acting and built in songs.
- Fixed several in issues in how levels / environments are being loaded, which could cause glitches like the dragon animations starting before you could actually even see them.
- Story Mode, Level 1: Fixed all known glitches in the animations.
- Pritvitej can now be stroked / tickled as often as you like, instead of only once.
- Story Mode, Level 1: Fixed voice-acting animation for "Gimme Five and we will dance again". Also, this should now only be played when the player did not previously complete the tutorial (in this session; in other words, the "very well done" voice-act and animation will always be played when the player has just completed the tutorial; it will also not be played when the player skipped the tutorial).
- Story Mode: We previously had the dragons at a larger distance and therefore needed to have the orb first approach quicker and then slow down a little bit. With the new animations, the dragons are at a more appropriate distance, so this hack is no longer needed. In fact, this caused the orbs to be too slow where you'd catch them in previous versions, resulting in much more difficult gameplay (because you needed to be much more precise). Fixed.
- Fixed Story Mode ScoreHUD: The current score was fairly glitchy, sometimes curved, sometimes not, sometimes going back and forth. This now works properly.
- Fixed several audio issues in Level 3.
- Fixed orb colors in Level 2 and Level 3.
- Fixed issue in Level 3 where Apastarrr overshoots at the end of the song, resulting in a jump when he starts swimming towards player.
- Story Mode, Level 2: Fixed ScoreHUD appearing behind Vayusah, instead of above Vayusah.
- Story Mode, Level 1: Fixed issue that dragon audio from intro was playing even when entering the level without the tutorial.
- Improved quality of loading-screen skybox
- OrbScoreHUD for head orbs: Moved up a little bit so this is no longer right in front of your face, which can be fairly annoying.