Hoo boy, it's been a while, and we apologise for the wait, but between upgrading Unity versions to fix a critical bug in mobile build, trying to combine our mobile and XD builds in one (never again) and having only half a team on XD, we fell a bit behind with this patch. There were around 85 bugs alone with just getting the game back to where it was. But we're not here to complain about the perils of independent game development, we're here to talk about our next update. Welcome to...
UPDATE 11 - MORE LEVELS, LONGER LEVELS
Three new tracks brings our total to 41! Our EA milestone was always 30 tracks, which we're glad to say we've smashed out of the park. We still have one more licensed track up our sleeve (the epic Final Boss by Nitro Fun), so stay tuned for when and how that will appear in the game.
We expect this patch to have a lot of things to hotfix, so if you find any jank, jump into
discord.gg/spinrhythmxd and report it.
[h2]LONGER LEVELS[/h2]
One of the main complaints we hear is that Easy levels are too short. In this patch we have extended every single Easy level to at least Normal length, extended 11 Normal (and thus Easy) levels to the length of Hard levels. Overall there should be more content for players who aren’t chasing mastery of SRXD, but want to chill and have fun. We feel this is a happy medium between full length charts for every difficulty (over half our charts are around 4 minutes or longer) and some of the current Easy levels which were only around a single minute of gameplay.
[h2]SCORING SYSTEM OVERHAUL[/h2]
The scoring system has had a complete overhaul. We had a few goals when doing this:
- To make sure there is score differentiation at the top of the leaderboards
- To make it so that notes have a more balanced value relative to their skill required to execute
- To make it so that missing a note doesn’t lose you a disproportionate amount of score depending on when you failed
- To improve competitive (tournament) SRXD play
To achieve this we have made the following changes:
- Multiplier now starts at 4x, increases quicker, increases with note score (as opposed to streak), increases with notes that increase score over time (holds, spins etc), and only ever drops 1x per hit taken
- Note values have been updated:
- Match notes 5pts
- Taps 12pts
- Holds 30pts/sec, no longer increases over time
- Hold releases 12pts
- Spins 12pts to start, 20pts/sec (quick multi spins are worth more score than one long spin)
- Scratches 40pts/sec
- Beats 16pts
- Beat holds 40pts/sec
- Beat release 16pts
- This means higher max scores for levels, so your existing grades will be lowered
- Players are now awarded an accuracy bonus for all plays (measured in milliseconds - ms - and based on your average deviation from 0ms per rhythmic note hit) - this caps at 150ms (0 bonus)
- This final value is viewable in the extended stats page on the results screen
- This is capped at 10% of the total achievable note score of a chart
- There is no longer a score penalty for hitting ‘early’ or ‘late’, just an accuracy bonus overall
- Players are awarded a small bonus (10% of total note score of a chart) for achieving a PFC (this can not realistically be outscored by the difference between a PFC run’s accuracy and an FC run’s accuracy rating, unless you are a god or robot)
- Taking a hit of any kind will penalise with a 150ms accuracy rating per hit (equal to approximately the widest window you could hit a note without missing)
- Score is now split across multipliers (if you would have achieved a multiplier increase part way through scoring a particular note)
- For example, if you are on 1x and are 2 points away from hitting 2x, and hit a beat worth 16, you will receive 2 points at 1x and 14pts at 2x
- Massive thanks to all those Discord users who helped refine this system in the short closed beta - we still want to refine this based on user feedback if necessary
[h2]DIFFICULTY OVERHAUL[/h2]
There have been many frustrations with the difficulty of SRXD. People of all skill levels complain about the transitions between Easy to Normal, Normal to Hard and so on being too tough. We agree, so we played through every single level in order multiple times and made some serious changes to the design of most of our levels.
While we try to be as thorough as possible, there may still be hidden jank due to multiple revisions. If you find any jank please let us know in
Discord.
We had a few goals here:
- To find humps or plateaus in the difficulty curve overall and smooth them out
- To make sure that players who play through and master each level in order can move on to the next, eventually mastering XD
- To ensure that numerical difficulty ratings can be used as an accurate gauge of your skill
To achieve this we have made the following changes:
- Every difficulty now shares the same amount of health (this means more health for Hard and up)
- Default XD track speed has been lowered by 0.1
- Reduced the complexity of XD difficulty. It should feel more like a step up from Expert rather than a cheap slap in the face
- Reduced complexity of beats in Hard mode. Originally we intended to only introduce beat in isolation in Hard, now we have stuck to that design philosophy
- Reduced the difficulty of the later Easy levels
- Improved chart readability and playability overall by removing center taps before spins, excessive drift (moving in one direction too often), made better use of scratch zones, removed excessive hold note releases and more - thanks to Discord user Trexder for helping catalogue these in every single level
- So many individual small changes to levels it’s difficult to even log them
[h2]BACKGROUND OVERHAUL[/h2]
Our work on mobile bears fruit for XD. We have implemented a new background system that means making backgrounds is simpler and the result is levels with more dynamic sync with the music, as well as improved performance.
Every single level now has its own unique background inspired by its album art.
Taps and match notes create pulses in the world, beats create shockwaves, and spins create waves in the direction of the spin, and nothing relies on hand-placed elements in our internal track editor (that could change as chart length or cuts changed). There are now more interesting floating elements in all levels, beautiful fog, sandy wind, digital skyscrapers, clouds, gates and more.
We hope you enjoy these as much as we enjoyed making them.
[h3]OTHER FEATURES[/h3]
- 3 new tracks!
- Body F10ating in the Zero Gravity Space by Camellia - When Camellia dropped this album a few months ago we knew we had to get it into SRXD, and it makes a ridiculously fun chart - the genre is described as ‘speed speedhouse basscore UK hardcore’
- Heading East by FarfetchD - This Glitchhop bop slaps long and hard - hide your kids
- Let Me Hear That by Haywyre - This masterpiece suits our game so well, we had to have it. We actually licensed the live YouTube performance which has a few interesting twists
- New hit FX when taking damage (in the form of a small, flashing star)
- Beat notes have a silky new look!
- Beat holds now have a smooth ending by default (one that does not require a release)
- Hard tutorial now contains both beat hold types
- Wheel colour editor track preview now contains both beat hold types
- A new option has been added in Audio to ‘disable audio filters’ (the audio effects when taking damage, or when on low health)
- These have also been toned down by default, and should be less jarring
- MIDI players can now bind for ‘context menu’ (sorting etc) - Beat button is no longer used
- Tracks can now be sorted by ‘times completed’ (can be used to show new, unplayed tracks)
- BPM should now display a range if the track contains a tempo increase
- Track speed override now goes to 60! Thanks to Discord user Mapy for having the toxic mind and vision to demand such intensity
- Editor QOL fixes
- Holding D should no longer skip notes ever, this was an issue with quantisation where notes were sometimes fractions of a millisecond apart and the game couldn’t tell which order they were in
- Quantise should now properly quantise in all situations (related to the above issue)
- When stacking notes, beats should always show underneath in all situations
- Match notes will now show on top of beats in the timeline
- Scratch zones should now be more visible (thinner - clearer when combined with beats)
- Clap notes should always play properly on stacked notes
[h3]POLISH[/h3]
- New Game XD is now the true full length of the track (includes outro)
- Updated Italian translations (thanks to Discord user Dj_Mike238)
- In the calibration tool you can now use both the beat and tap buttons
- Match notes now show up more clearly on the track when stacked on top of beats
- Animations, particles and objects should now be pooled better - this hopefully results in a smoother experience for everyone
- Track beams are now brighter by default
- Track lines are less bright by default
- The trail following a hold note should no longer obscure the wheel wedges so much (it has been made more transparent)
- Hold note zones now glow a set amount (instead of increasing over time) - and overall much less when active and inactive
- Beat hold zones should be clearer now (when active and inactive) - with reduced visual noise on the track when active
- Colorblind and Arcana engine have more accurate note mapping on the speed up sections
- VOLT is now more accurately mapped to tempo (there is some weird rubato in this track which we didn’t fully appreciate) - thanks to Discord users TheWay and RAD for helping with this
- Post-processing has had a once-over, everything should just look the same, except better (some glowing objects were a little broken)
- Custom chart backgrounds should automatically roll over to the new background system
- Edit mode in Customs now has its own background separate from Play Mode (to distinguish the two and to reduce fatigue when charting with base game backgrounds)
- The spin tap rotating diamond now spins both ways depending on which spin preceded
- Level select track preview has been scaled up (to show more notes / less wheel)
- Album covers have all been resized to powers of 2 (ie 1024x1024) for better compression and memory usage (if you are using custom album art for your charts, having max 1024x1024 will greatly improve load times)
[h3]BUGS[/h3]
- Sorting customs by track length (with large numbers of customs) should be much quicker
- Launching a non-favourite song from command line with ‘show only favourites’ checked no longer soft locks the game
- All notes (including match notes!) now properly elevate on top of beat notes for additional clarity
- When starting a new level in SpinFM, gameplay should no longer stutter while assets are loading
- When sorting songs by order, the order should now always remain the same (there were some instances where tracks by the same artist would swap positions)
- Disabling the current difficulty in the Clip Editor now swaps to an appropriate difficulty when returning to the note editor
- Beat holds should properly display on the timeline when placed at the start of the track
- AI should now play scratch zones properly in track previews
- Hold notes should now behave properly when hit late (there was an issue with fast motion immediately following a hold note start)
- Gamepad input is no longer active on parent menu when context menu is open
It's great to be back Spinnin'
