Project Heartbeat News

For the Steam Autumn sale Project Heartbeat now has a 30% discount, go get it while you can or tell your friends if you already have the game!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1216230/Project_Heartbeat/

Project Heartbeat 0.7.0 is now available, this update is one of the biggest yet and is the culmination of an effort to bring some long-requested features to the game.



[h2]NEW SONG: Blossoming Spell[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Blossoming Spell is our first song from Impedance Eurobeat, our new partner, there are many more songs coming from this artist circle in the future. Blossoming Spell is an interesting catchy song. The chart was created by Twoncity.



[h2]New leaderboards & leveling system[/h2]



After many months of work the new leaderboards are finally available, this new system allows all workshop and PPD songs to be ranked. As an extra feature we have also added a level and experience system.

[h2]PPD Downloader[/h2]



A new tool to automatically download PPD charts from their URL has been added, this is an experimental tool at this time (and performance isn't great) but I hope it's useful to someone.

[h2]Audio Volume Normalization[/h2]

Audio normalization has been added through a new rust module, this makes all songs sound like they have the same volume.

[h2]Loading Screen[/h2]



The game now features a new loading screen, this loading screen is used to have some time to do the audio normalization and other things.

[h2]Mouse UI[/h2]

The ability to use the mouse to navigate most menus has been added, some menus still don't entirely work but for most usual tasks such as playing songs should be working perfectly.

[h2]Song Cache[/h2]

Songs are now cached, this decreases startup times by storing song metadata in a cache file, the same goes for audio normalization.

[h2]youtube-dl error handling[/h2]

youtube-dl now shows errors when they happen, we have also switched to a fork of youtube-dl that is still in development after the RIAA's unlawful takedown of the main youtube-dl repository earlier this month

[h2]New UI scaling and styling & note changes[/h2]





The UI has been changed to be prettier, this includes design and scaling changes, the scaling should now be consistent so that users with higher and lower res screens will see the game with the same element sizes.

The main menu has also been changed, with new elements and the removal of the music player (a pop-up now replaces it).

The basic PlayStation notes have also been changed with a different design and sizes based on your feedback.

The sliders now have a new hit effect with stylized stars.

[h2]DSC importing[/h2]

Project Heartbeat is now able to load DSC files from FT and M39s from within the editor, with more game formats support to follow in the future.

It was planned to have the possibility of simply pointing the game to a legally-obtained copy of those games to load it automatically (including mdata) but this wasn't ready, although it's still possible to use this feature through command line arguments if you want so ask around in the discord for more info on this.

[h2]Nintendo Switch homebrew port[/h2]



An experimental port of the game for Nintendo Switch has been added, this is fairly broken and won't receive any official support but feel free to use it, check the text file in the game's folder for more info.

• Fix custom song WAV loading not properly using the file's mixrate and stereo data.
  
• Change great and excellent thresholds to 90 and 95.
  
• Use scrolling labels for song titles in a lot of places.
  
• Add missing logo to song list preview.
  
• Fix UGC download message error.
  
• Fix slide chains in multi with other notes (I hate you a tiny bit).
  
• You can now precisely place notes in the editor by pressing shift + arrow keys.
  
• Also, there are now labels that show the current time in the timeline.
  
• The note ratings are now drawn beneath the note if the note is too high.
  
• PPD notes that are too close to each other (10 ms range) are now merged into multis, this is because in PPD multis don't really have to happen at the same time, yeah I don't get it either.
  
• You can now hide the artist name so that only the logo is shown.
  
• Editor selection limits have been removed
  
• Fix an issue related to voted items breaking leaderboard and result entering.
  
• Sliders now vibrate the controller.
  

I'm much better mentally, I started taking anti depressants, I still plan to work on this game, sales are going decently well so I'm confident in working more on the game.

I have obtained permission from a local japanese-themed EDM musician to use his music, more info will follow soon.

I haven't touched the Xbox port yet, I'm trying to find ways to make it without having to write an all-new DX11 renderer, probably with ANGLE.

I have cancelled work on the new game for the time being.

Project Heartbeat is available with a 20% discount! Get it while you can!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1216230/Project_Heartbeat/

Hello! Welcome to Project Heartbeat 0.6.0, this update introduces many under the hood changes yet again, but also some new features, let's get right into it.



[h2]Practice mode[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

A new practice mode has been added, you can move forwards and backwards throughout the song, create your own waypoints to return to later and even see extra stats to help you know how well you are doing.

[h2]Folders[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

You can now create arbitrary folder structures to organize your songs however you want. Check the video above for a quick rundown of this feature.

[h2]Custom note sound support[/h2]



You can now make your own note sounds and use them by placing them in the custom_sounds folder in your content folder.

[h2]New button prompts[/h2]



A new button prompt system has been added, this will accurately change based on the controller you are using, if this doesn't work for you you can override it in the game's settings.

[h2]Decimal BPM support[/h2]

You can now add decimals to BPM

[h2]Icon & hit effect changes[/h2]



The way the game's icons look has changed, the outlines have been increased and the underglow has been fixed, additionaly the color on some of the notes has been changed to make them stand out more.

Hit effects have also been slightly changed to make them more visible.

[h2]Analog input changes[/h2]

I've changed how analog inputs are handled in general, this means that you no longer need to setup analog sticks differently from analog (slide) actions, it should also be more consistent.

[h2]Icon pack support improvements[/h2]

Icon pack support has been improved and it should be way more stable now, also a new simpler icon pack has been provided, you simply have to edit the atlas.png and the icon_pack.json to change the name.

You can find the easy pack here:

https://github.com/EIRTeam/ph_modding/releases/tag/1.0

[h2]Editor video & backgrounds[/h2]



The editor now has backgrounds just like the game, video also works but it's slightly yanky, you can disable this in the bottom right buttons, next to the grid toggle.

[h2]Gamepad visualizer[/h2]



You can now visualize the current gamepad's input, you can do this by pressing Control+G.

The visualizer is enabled automatically in practice mode.

• Double notes (including hearts) are now slightly bigger.
  
• Multi-threaded game loading has been partially disabled, now only song loading is multi threaded.
  
• Added sustains for arrow notes.
  
• A scrollbar has been added to the editor tools tab.
  
• Fixed some issues with the arrange tools.
  
• The way multi note lasers are made has changed, which should fix some issues some people faced with them.
  
• Fix user receiving a perfect rating when showing result with only wrong failures.
  
• Fix slide chain loop sound being unused.
  
• Fix custom icon loading.
  
• Fix a single character error for imademo.
  
• Song volume now affects editor and main menu playback.
  
• Fixed offset tool in editor.
  
• Capped note selection in editor.
  
• Game should fallback to GLES2 automatically instead of giving errors.
  
• Support has been added for hybrid (F2nd and AFT style) PPD charts.
  
• Message queue size has been raised to support bigger charts.
  

I have spent the last month struggling mentally, so this is the reason why this update is so relatively small, however I have also been working on the promised new leaderboard system with promising results, hopefully I can ship it in 0.7.0 or 0.8.0.

New songs are being worked on, we have over 5 new songs in the backlog.

I have also begun pre-production on a new game, and I hope to reveal new information on that soon.

Shoutouts to Estrella, Emmilly and Helena for making my life better.

Project Heartbeat is available with a 20% discount! Get it while you can!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1216230/Project_Heartbeat/