Spin Rhythm XD News

Hi everyone

With the new scoring system having been in the wild for a month now, we've made a few small changes to clean it up and make it less punishing or discouraging for new players, without the need for any kind of leaderboard resets.

Details below.


[h3]FEATURES[/h3]
The main feature of this patch is the refining of our recently updated scoring system. Having a score reduce from PFC > SFC > FC ended up feeling like multiple layers of punishment for not being perfect, so we have simplified the whole system.

• Updated scoring timing windows
  - Good - 79ms
  - Great - 59ms
  - Perfect - 38ms
  - Perfect+ - 16ms
  - Release timing remains slightly more lenient than the above values
  
• Removed Superb Full Combo (SFC)
  
• Combined Superb and Great into one bracket
  
• Anything below Great is now Early / Late
  
• New Perfect+ display options (customise menu)
  - Choose between Rainbow, Bright and None Set this in the “customise” menu to make Perfect+ stand out more or less to your liking
  - “None” will remove the + and only show “Perfect” (when either Perfect or Perfect+ are hit)
  

[h3]POLISH[/h3]

• Updated calibration wording to be a little clearer in its instruction
  
• Note / beat stack dithering effect now supports two notes instead of one
  
• Fixed dithering issue with “Your Pain” background elements
  
• Using custom backgrounds will no longer affect the practice background
  
• Removed some annoying features when placing notes in custom editing
  - Match note stacks no longer appear when placing two match notes on the same tick
  - Placing a spinner on a spinner will no longer jump to the next note tail
  - Placing a scratch on a scratch will no longer jump to the next note tail
  

[h3]BUGS[/h3]

• Fixed the broken recently wiped leaderboards including
  - Inject XD
  - Beyond The Heart XD
  - I See Lite XD
  - Robo Trio XD
  - Reach You XD
  - Twist Sound XD
  - VOLT XD
  - Believe XD
  - BUBBLES XD
  
• Fixed a backspin in The Magician Expert
  
• Fixed a backspin in Mimic Expert
  
• Fixed a backspin in Colorblind Easy
  
• Fixed a bug where the custom menu UI could become transparent
  
• Fixed a bug in custom editing with the D function where selection could malfunction after using playback with notes selected
  
• Fixed a bug in custom editing where selecting would take multiple attempts to be successful
  
• Fixed a bug where using a combination of Prism Bucket and 2 Minutes backgrounds could soft lock a chart permanently
  
• Fixed a bug where combined beat / match stacks did not take wheel position into account
  
• Fixed an issue with No Limits background
  
• Fixed Daily Leaderboard
  
• Removed our beloved Steve from the top of multiple leaderboards
  

Our last planned big update before 1.0 (unless we get sidetracked) is redoing our menus to be more controller friendly, as well as including a basic level up / unlock / cosmetic system.



See you next patch.

Hey spinners,

This hotfix turned into a warm fix with Steve away and Dave dying slowly from Covid (basically it took a little longer to get out than we'd hoped). Thanks as always for your patience!



FIXES

• Re-added option to enable note clearing on hit
  
• Removed “video latency” text near calibration tool
  
• Fixed a bug where leaderboard ties weren’t displaying perfect+ totals as tiebreakers
  
• Fixed some bad colour swapping in some redone charts (sorry, some of these may have been reset again).
  - Beyond The Heart XD
  - Bubbles XD
  - Velours XD
  - My Museum XD
  - Robo Trio XD
  - Reach You XD
  - Twist Sound XD
  - VOLT XD
  - Believe XD
  
• Fixed some extreme track turns at higher speeds in many XD tracks (thanks to Edge for finding these and the bad colour changes above).
  
• Fixed some jank sliders (super close together) in Inject XD. Took the opportunity to remove all the level’s jank and made it play like an actually fun 23
  

Cheers

This is Update 18

We weren't sure whether we wanted to update our scoring system before 1.0, but we started chatting on Discord with many of our players and went down a rabbit hole.

It's not a sexy or glamorous update, but it's one that we think will benefit everyone, whether competing at the highest level or just starting out. Our new system ditches the accuracy bonus (measured in ms and shown at the end of a level) for a simpler one with more grades of precision.

We were hoping to get this out before the Steam sale, so sorry to our new players for the leaderboard reset. This should be the absolute last reset before 1.0.

We also spent a couple of weeks greatly polishing the gamepad experience for Switch (and PC). It was feeling super nice, but there are still a few annoying things that break in specific situations, so we're going to roll that back and add it in a future update.

In other news, Steve has gone to Canada for about a month. Shath and Dave are going to work on the Monstercat DLC (updating the levels to suit the current design standards, and make some slick backgrounds), add the final 5 levels, and work on trailers etc.





[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

[h3]Updated scoring system[/h3]

• Updated scoring thresholds (D, C, B, A, S etc.) to better reflect the actual performance of the player
  
• Multiplier now increases faster, meaning missing some notes won't be disproportionately more penalising than others in certain situations
  
• Added more grades of scoring (Perfect+ > Perfect > Superb > Great > Good > Okay > Miss) to differentiate top players in the absence of a ms accuracy ranking
  
• Updated results screen stats
  

[h3]Updated calibration tool[/h3]

• Added negative values
  
• Added independent values for different input devices
  

[h3]Updated the way hold notes feel and work[/h3]

• You can now push against the edge a little without breaking the hold note
  
• If you fall off, you can jump back on and only lose a little bit of score
  
• If you release the tap (or beat hold) you can press again to continue the note
  
• All very short hold notes have had their curves changed to be tighter
  
• Shortened very tight releases (and beat holds) that require another tap (or beat) too quickly
  
• A general polish pass on all H / Ex / XD charts for hold notes and beat holds
  
• Editor: Pressing 4 on a hold note will now create a tailless hold note. Pressing 4 again will create the tail one tick away from the start note
  
• Editor: When placing a duplicate start of a hold, spin, beat hold or scratch, the timeline will jump to the ending tail note.
  

[h2]POLISH[/h2]

• Added a much nicer looking accuracy bar
  
• PFC star has a more noticeable set of animations (going from PFC to FC to miss)
  
• PFC star now shows what level of perfect (PFC / FC etc.) you are currently achieving
  
• ‘Loop Section’ has been turned off by default in practice mode
  
• Added an option to disable audio calibration warning popups (and a checkbox in audio options to re-enable them)
  
• Match notes, tap notes and hold releases are now clearer when stacked on top of beats
  
• Re-added the starry blue simple background
  
• Updated achievement translations for Chinese (S), Russian and Korean
  
• Fixed a Portuguese judgement text overlap issue
  
• Re-rated Lovesick XD to 25
  
• Re-rated The Kraken Ex to 20
  
• Re-rated Dance With Silence XD to 27 and increased difficulty towards the end
  

[h2]BUGS[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where “grab wheel” didn’t work when using motion controls
  
• Fixed a bug where increasing audio calibration value past 400ms would break audio
  
• Fixed a bug where pasting notes in the level editor would create match note stacks
  
• Fixed a bug where default HUD distance was displayed incorrectly in the options menu
  
• Fixed a bug where practice mode gamepad hotkeys weren’t being displayed correctly
  
• Fixed a bug in the customs menu where streak over 4 digits (1000+) overflowed incorrectly
  

See you next update.

Hey Spinners, welcome to Update 17

This turned into a way bigger patch than we had planned. As soon as we started tinkering with the editor it turned into a huge QOL update. No mouse controls for note placement yet, but there’s a ton of new fun features to mess with in the editor.

Huge thanks to everyone who helped out with testing this patch on the beta branch.

Mega thanks also to our community translators who do such a killer job. If there are any Japanese fans out there who want to contribute, just let us know in Discord.

Massive thanks also to our modding community for always pushing us to implement their cool features (customisable backgrounds, accuracy bar and so on). We love you.





[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

[h3]Three new tracks! [/h3]



We’ve picked three very weird and wonderful tracks for you this patch to bring our track total to 50 tracks!

• The Kraken by Teminite - another of his pirate dubstep masterpieces, with one of the strangest and most addictive drops you’ll hear
  
• No Limits by modus and Loudar - Spanish EDM artist modus brings his signature style of finely detailed production and rhythmic precision to SRXD
  
• One Esk Nineteen by Praxis Axis - a dark, heavy-hitting 6 minute epic with samples of Balinese monkey chanting. This is like nothing you've heard before and makes for a very challenging and fun rhythm game level
  

[h3]Graphical overhaul[/h3]

We have completely overhauled gameplay visuals. The game now runs entirely using a single camera, which should improve performance greatly

• All notes are now rendered in 3D and have an updated look
  
• The audio spectrum is now circular, and has been combined with the gates that the ship flies through
  
• Track angle / ship distance / note speed has been slightly adjusted for balance
  
• Background object / track collisions are now handled with a dithering shader. If you find any weird collisions that are broken please let us know
  
• Beats have an updated effect
  
• New scratch note look (colour flashing can be disabled in the accessibility menu)
  
• Plus many more smaller things
  

[h3]Track turns[/h3]

We have added 250 unique flight paths by hand to make the gameplay experience feel more alive

• Some of these might be wack, please let us know if you find any that don't work
  
• Track turns can be disabled in the accessibility options menu for that classic gameplay feel
  

[h3]Difficulty update![/h3]

All Easy levels (and some Normal levels) have been updated to be easier. We want this to be a difficulty that any rhythm game newbie can jump into and have fun with. Hopefully these changes will achieve that goal.

• Taps have been added to Easy in simple streams
  
• Scratches have been removed from Easy
  
• Motion, note density and colour swapping have overall been lowered
  
• The early Normal levels have been made slightly easier to ensure a clean transition between difficulties
  
• Tutorials have been updated to align with this new design
  

[h3]New "Customise" tab in options menu[/h3]



Players can now further customise their in game experience using the new “Customise” tab in the options menu, including:

• Placement of the accuracy bar
  
• Placement of the judgement text (“perfect” etc.)
  
• Placement of the track time remaining bar
  
• An alternate HUD layout (angled instead of rounded)
  
• Distance of HUD elements to the track
  

[h3]Other features[/h3]

• Editor keys are now fully customisable (enable these with a toggle at the bottom of the keyboard mapping screen
  
• An accuracy bar has been added to allow players to see how precisely they are hitting taps, beat and releases
  
• A new accessibility menu custom colour “highlights” which allows players to change the colour of the elements on the side of the track and wheel
  
• Bloom slider! Protect your eyes from overuse of bloom with our handy new bloom slider. Those with fancy monitors are encouraged to turn it up
  
• Custom levels can now have custom backgrounds! (set these in the left panel when in the note editor). Mix and match a background and a colour palette from any of the 50 base game backgrounds to make some truly interesting and unique backgrounds
  

[h2]POLISH[/h2]

• Added the full sax solo to Believe (Hard). You Hard players deserve it.
  
• Fixed some out of place notes in Arcana Engine (Hard / Expert)
  
• DJ Hero Controller input has been deprecated
  
• Improved design of contrasting notes (accessibility option)
  
• All scrolling windows / dropdowns now work properly with scroll wheels (no more slow scrolling)
  
• Added feedback for spin notes (particle burst coming out of the wheel portals)
  
• Improved hold note behaviour when charting
  - Note tails are generated closer to the hold note start
  - Pressing 4 a bunch of times will extend the tail note
  - Pressing Alt + 4 will extend the tail out by 1 beat (or create a longer hold note to begin with)
  - When placing new holds in the middle of existing holds, the auto generated tail (to the left) is now a single tick behind
  - Hold note tails will no longer erase other notes when auto generated, they will just be made slightly shorter by default
  
• Spins now fade slightly at the end of their tail for clarity when followed by another spin
  
• All Editor notes are now a few pixels fatter (which should help with charters working in higher resolutions)
  
• Release notes have their own look, and are thus clearer in the editor timeline
  
• Wider note tails (spin, scratch enders) are wider and can no longer be pointlessly moved around
  
• Hold note tail motion is now visible in the timeline
  
• When switching between note editor and clip info editor, the current time will match
  
• Editor hotkey list has been cleaned up, with spacing added and common actions grouped
  
• Editor hotkey list has been updated to include all hotkeys!
  
• Editor hotkeys will now update themselves when you update your bindings
  
• Editor tabs (chart info, hotkeys) now open and close independently
  
• New hotkey! Use O and Alt + O when a group of notes is selected to remove the beats only or remove the notes only from the selection
  
• Placing notes no longer erases beats (and vice versa)
  
• Placing new notes on existing notes will erase the existing note
  
• Placing two match notes will now mirror and colour swap allowing quick creation of match note stacks
  
• More note stacks now show up as errors (including match note / tap stacks of the same colour)
  
• Clip info editor and note editor layouts have been cleaned up to look a little nicer
  
• Editor controls and functions have been cleaned up
  - All note tails (releases, and hold notes) are now cycled through in one direction, beat releases and hold releases now change type when moving in the same direction
  - Alt is now exclusively used for “large movements” (now Ctrl + Alt + move does 1 beat movements)
  - Ctrl + left / right no longer cycles through note types, it cycles note tail types instead of Alt (as this made no sense) - this means you can select large groups of hold notes or beat notes with tails and change them all at once to release / regular note tails without butchering the start notes, which is pretty neat
  - Alt + left / right now does a large movement left / right (this was previously Shift which made no sense)
  

[h2]BUGS[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where low quality backgrounds could clip through the track
  
• Fixed a bug where cleared tap notes could be snapped to multiple times
  
• Fixed a bug where short spins would not align to the next note
  
• Fixed a bug where replacing a beat hold start with another beat would cause a broken note
  
• Fixed a bug where Switch Pro glyphs were invisible in the tutorial
  
• Fixed a bug where very short hold notes with releases could trigger the release before the hold was even pressed
  

See you next update.

Hey spinners, it's been a while since we posted anything, so here's an update on what's coming up.

We've been spending the last 6 weeks or so doing a few big changes at once. The focus of the changes is to hit 60fps on Switch, which we have hit! There's a bit of detail below, and it might be a bit game dev-ish but hopefully it's interesting.

We will be previewing these changes at the end of our upcoming Elite8s tournament (in a couple of days), so follow us on Twitch, bit the bell, like, comment, subscribe etc. if you want to catch an early look.



Jump in Jump in Discord for details on when the stream will precisely be.


[h2]Twisty track![/h2]



Twisty track is making a comeback. After many years of being absent (despite being a prominent feature of our Early Access trailer), we are putting the twisting flight paths back in the game. They do make the note reading slightly more difficult, but they make the game look a lot more awesome, and can be disabled in the accessibility options menu.

We had a few issues with world objective cutting through the track (clouds, crystals etc), but we have developed a dithering shader that fades objects as they collide.

All the track twists have been entered by hand, so if there's anything particularly egregious or busted, let Daverwob know and he will fix it up.


[h2]Two new tracks[/h2]



We're up to 49 tracks! We may be able to slip another in before this patch to hit 50, which would be epic. The two new ones are similar in that they are both a little different.

First up we have The Kraken from Raise The Black Flag by Teminite. Definitely one of the weirder drops on the album, but tons of fun to play.

Next up we have a relatively unknown artist with a wild track - One Esk Nineteen by Praxis Axis. It's 6 minute, primal, dark and epic tune that balances analogue Moog synth arps and Balinese Kecak chanting samples. There's nothing quite like it, and we love finding these undiscovered gems. We hope you enjoy it when it finds its way onto the playlist (it's on the upper end of the difficulty spectrum).

Check out The Kraken here

Check out One Esk Nineteen here


[h2]Easier easies[/h2]

Easy was always meant to be a difficulty that anyone could pick up and play, no matter your experience level with rhythm games. By the end of the track list, the levels actually got ridiculously hard for beginners. We witnessed many of our less gamery friends struggle with these, so as Easy didn't fulfil its role as a beginner difficulty level, we decided to redesign all of them.

We have removed scratch zones and added tap notes in simple streams, greatly reduced the complexity of colour swapping and match note movements, and reduced the number of multi spins.


[h2]New audio streaming technology[/h2]

We developed a new way of streaming audio for the mobile Endless Mode. Basically it means the accuracy of how and when audio is played in the game is much higher and more efficient, making genuine DSP issues (hopefully) a thing of the past. It also means we can implement an endless mode in XD (something we've wanted to do for a while).


[h2]Graphical upgrade[/h2]

One of the main ways we optimised the game visually with our recent work has been by reducing the number of cameras to one.

This has meant redoing the HUD (which was on a separate camera) to something a little more immersive, redoing the wheel mesh to be simpler (making it easier to add additional wheels in the future), and redoing the way the track appears in the world.

We are also redoing all the notes to be in 3D (instead of a mix of 2D and 3D)

Unfortunately when changing so many things at once, there's a lot of testing to do to make sure all the features work again. This is why our current patch is taking a little longer than hoped. Thank you for your patience!

Keep on spinnin'