Spin Rhythm XD News

What’s up Spinners,

This was meant to be a quick update to improve our calibration tool, with a little bonus UI polish. It ended up being a huge haul getting the UI looking universally excellent, so sorry for the delay on this patch.

We have now completed the Monstercat DLC levels, which only need backgrounds made for them. We plan to release these with 1.0.

Details below.




[h2]HDR UI OVERHAUL[/h2]

We have redone our entire UI in HDR. It looks shiny and delightful now, including the long neglected MIDI and KB&M mapping screens. Bask once more in the shiny glimmer of a new user-interface.


[h2]CALIBRATION TOOL UPDATE[/h2]



There are a few big changes to the calibration tool. Firstly, you can now calibrate at any time during play, as the tool will appear as an overlay. This is accessible via the pause menu.

Secondly, we now include video calibration alongside audio calibration. Please note this isn’t input calibration, just an adjustment of when the video signal appears (useful for TVs that are slow, or don’t have a game mode).

We have also added a ticker in the calibration menu, so you can adjust your audio and video values and see the effects in real time on the ticker.

We want to include a heatmap somewhere on the wheel in the future.


[h2]MP3 SUPPORT[/h2]

The patents for MP3s are all lapsed so we can officially support using them in customs. Does anyone even use these anymore? Either way, they work now! This should dramatically decrease the size of a custom chart if used.

Note that MP3s have a tiny amount (around 30ms) of silence at the start, a hallmark of the format and something which is unfixable.

Patch notes below.


[h3]FEATURES[/h3]

• Added a new HDR user interface
  - Including reskinned input mapping menus (MIDI and keyboard & mouse menus)
  
• Added new calibration tool
  - Calibration tool can now be accessed during play
  - Audio and video calibration is now separate
  - Added ability to check and adjust values to a ticker in menu
  
• Added MP3 support for custom charting
  
• SpinFM is now called “LIVE” in main menu
  
• Improved gamepad default mapping
  

[h3]POLISH[/h3]

• Gamepad users now have better interaction with drop down menus
  
• Gamepad users can now scroll between options menu tabs using triggers
  
• Improved “NEW BEST” display on success / failure screens when achieving a new high score
  
• Humanity Expert has been rerated to 16
  
• Customs radar graph has updated values (thanks to Prog for the stats)
  

[h3]BUGS[/h3]

• Fixed a bug where sometimes release note particles would not appear
  

Cheers.

Hey spinners, just giving you an update on what we plan on releasing over the coming months.

We do have a small update incoming, which includes MP3 support and an update to the calibration tool. We aim to deliver a tool that will let players compete with confidence, as well as include video latency calibration for TV players.

We have a long list of cool, fun and interesting things that would make the game slightly better, but we tend to go down rabbit holes of trying things, cutting them, experimenting and so on.

We sat down recently and made a plan to lock down all of our 1.0 Steam / Switch features in mid-August. This is to ensure we have enough time to properly playtest and produce launch / DLC trailers to target a mid-late October launch.

These features include:

• XD beginner experience
  
• Calibration tool update
  
• Tutorial update
  
• DLC content
  
• Achievements
  

The main thing that has caused us delays so far has been prototyping and throwing away single player experiences. It always blows out in scope and leads us back to square one.

We want to implement something involving completing simple challenges to learn the game's tracks and systems, something beginners can jump into and track their progress.

We always planned to support XD beyond 1.0, so we will save the following potential features for future updates. Some of these are weighted more heavily, some are easy to implement, some quite difficult.

• Editor update
  - including trimming levels, selectable backgrounds, mouse controls and QoL
  
• RemiXD levels
  
• Scoring system improvements
  
• Weekly w/ mutators
  
• Split screen multiplayer
  
• Steam trading cards
  

If any of this list is something you were deeply looking forward to, then I apologise.

As always, thanks for your support and patience.

Hey spinners, just giving you an update on what we've been up to.

David has successfully relocated to Canberra from Melbourne (about 650km away), Will is moving house right now, Dave is moving house in 3 weeks, it's absolute mayhem.

We somehow managed to finish the mobile version of Spin Rhythm at the same time (mad props to Steve who worked his booty off).


That's right, we have actually gone from a "when it's done" development cycle, and an "Android soon" to an actual release of both versions!

That's right, it's completely free on both Android and iOS. Go grab it!

In the mobile version gameplay loop, players work their way through tracks as they level up, and mastering each level will reward the player with medals. With enough medals, you unlock career mode setlists (a mix of a few unlocked tunes) - mastering these will reward you with loads of coins, which you can use to purchase new levels, boosts, event tracks and such.

One of the main differences is the entire game has been redesigned to be played one-handed. This means tap notes are now beats, and there are no scratch zones (it felt pretty weird on a touch screen).

Please note that this is not XD in your pocket, it is a much more casual experience. Level design and monetisation is all handled by the Habby.

If you're interested, have a play, let us know what you love, what you hate, if you find any bugs and so on. It's best to log everything via [email protected].

For the next week or so we are going to monitor the release and jump on top of any major issues and bugs. We also have to figure out the kind of workload involved with supporting mobile, and get the team back on XD updates as we work towards 1.0 Steam and Switch.

Happy speening and as always thanks for your patience and support.

Hey Spinners,

This is the last part of our recent “warm fixes” (small updates) after our accuracy update.

In our next larger update we want to improve the tutorial and calibration tools among other things. David will be moving interstate so we may have a brief hiatus on updates (he will be out of action for two weeks).

Details below.





FIXES

• Backgrounds can now be scaled to low, medium and high quality - this affects the number of segments in the floor of the background - which aims to improve performance on lower end machines
  
• Customs metadata should reload more frequently (specifically when changing a track’s difficulty rating, and enabling / disabling difficulties)
  
• Hitting the beat button after the last note in a track will no longer remove a PFC / FC
  
• New players will now be prompted to play the Easy tutorial before starting an Easy / Normal level
  
• Tutorial track should once again be the first track displayed in the chart list
  
• Pressing the beat button in Easy / Normal should no longer affect your accuracy (if you can reproduce this please let us know)
  
• Very short beat holds no longer display a tail that crosses the beat part of the note
  
• Fixed a bug where failing a chart would display the incorrect chart length
  
• Fixed a bug where after renaming a custom chart returning to track select, the nearest named (to your old chart) track would be selected
  
• Fixed bug where disabling looping in practice mode would show invisible notes in some circumstances (until moving to a nearby cue point to reload note data)
  
• Tutorial notes can no longer be placed by using CTRL + L / R in track editor
  
• Fixed a bug where low BPM beat markers were causing strange issues - these should behave appropriately now
  
• Fixed a bug where enabling or disabling customs difficulties would lock you out of editing those difficulties
  
• SpinFM will now display the correct score, factoring in accuracy
  
• Fixed a bug where the background of practice mode would change depending on how you entered practice mode
  

Cheers.

Hey Spinners,

This warmfix was supposed to be a quick patch to sort out a few issues we couldn’t slip into the accuracy bug hotfix, but we ended up doing a bunch of complex stuff with how customs are loaded, which took a little longer than we thought.

Details below.



FIXES

• Custom chart loading has been greatly improved
  - Customs now run off a metadata cache system (the game no longer had to load each .OGG to find chart length, and load all the note data to display difficulty / radar graphs)
  - Loading no longer happens in 1 frame upon entering the customs menu, and should be much faster - all subsequent opens should also be much faster due to running off metadata
  - Sorting should be much faster
  - Art will load asynchronously (prioritising art closest to your currently selected track) to relieve pressure on memory - art that isn’t loaded yet will display a default artwork while loading
  
• Volume will no longer start at 100% then instantly drop to your setting level on game launch
  
• Radar graph has been re-added to customs
  - The maximum graph value is currently based off the most extreme example in your current list of customs, in the future we will clamp these values so that meme charts with a million match notes don’t destroy all other charts graphs
  
• 2 Minutes (XD) backwards spin has been fixed
  
• Using simple background will no longer cause editing a custom chart to bounce around the timeline
  
• Skyboxes display properly again (the stars in the background) - and should look higher resolution
  
• When creating custom charts, editing notes should no longer lag
  
• Fixed a bug where SpinFM would load into a black screen
  
• Fixed an asset bundle bug which caused no audio and an inability to play anything
  
• Fixed a bug where creating a custom failed to load and play
  
• Fixed a bug where creating two customs in a row caused the game to load bad data
  
• Fixed Superimposed_RGB background flashing beat hold bug
  
• Fixed a bug where creating a chart when sorting by chart length would copy the chart above
  

See you next patch, speen cowboy.