Project Heartbeat News

Project Heartbeat v0.2.6 is here, this update isn't as big as the previous ones due to me taking a break for a day, but it should still affect some of you.


[h2]Background image for music play in the floor[/h2]

This new background comes from the open source webcomic Pepper & Carrot, I recommend you go check it out, it's quite amusing.

Something else that is quite amusing is that a Pepper & Carrot JRPG was one of my first attempts at making a game ever, oh how tables have turned!

[h2]New song: Cloud Sky 2019[/h2]

Finally, new content, Cloud Sky is the next song to hit the hands of players, this song is slightly slower than the rest but it's quite catchy, currently an illustration is being made for it, and from what I've heard it's going to look very nice.

As always, this song has been masterfully charted by our charting backroom, in this case the whole song was charted by Twoncity.

• EDITOR: add playtest
  
• EDITOR: you can now move multiple notes at the same time
  
• EDITOR: clicking on the timeline will cause everything to be deselected
  
• EDITOR: timeline will now jump to make the playhead visible when playing a song in the editor
  
• Remove heart power
  
  I think I have to explain this one: PH doesn't really need a fever system, and user feedback towards heart power has generally been negative, so we've decided to remove it, when the life mechanic is implemented the former heart power meter will be used for it.
  
  
• New slide graphics (thanks Twon)
  
• Readability improvements for notes and judgement

• EDITOR: You can no longer set BPM changes to 0
  
• EDITOR: Fix hold indicator not showing the correct icons
  
• EDITOR: Fix slide chain pieces sometimes remaining visible while editing
  
• Minor game position calculation optimizations
  
• Switch to a less crash-prone NoteDrawer architecture
  
• Slide note sfx is now quieter
  
• Note outline thickness are now consistent
  
• Removed UWUs
  
• Removed Herobrine

FEATURES

Steam Workshop

This is the big one, possibly the most anticipated feature for Project Heartbeat, it allows you to download charts from the Steam Workshop with a single click (even when your game is running!).

If you are a charter, you can upload your charts using the "upload to workshop" option in the song editor's song selection menu.

In order to make it easier for you to enjoy charting, we have published an official guide.

After you finish playing a song from the Workshop the game you will be asked to give an opinion on it (although it is not mandatory to do so).


Chart verification

Songs are now verified when trying to edit them, there are different severities, depending on how bad it is the editor may require you to fix issues before letting you edit the chart.

There are also some workshop specific errors, these are checked when you click "upload to workshop".

More changes to how video download behaves

Video downloads now happen in the background, which means you can enjoy playing your songs while other files are being downloaded, you do not even have to worry about download notifications getting the way, as if you are playing a song the notifications are stored and only shown to you after you are done with it.

Imademo 2012 easy and normal charts

Long overdue, but the easy and normal charts for Imademo... 2012 are now available.

PPD Audio verification

The game now includes code to check if the audio file selected when selecting a file for PPD is actually an audio file and if it's of the correct format and using the correct codec (OGG Vorbis in our case).


FIXES & MINOR NEW FEATURES
- Fix editor not properly loading hidden layers
- All audio from video download is now automatically converted to stereo
- Fix multi-notes breaking under some extreme circumstances
- Fix EditorPlugins not showing errors
- Fix BPM hanges
- Fix timeline items scaling when zooming in
- Fix an issue that caused timeline lines to disappear when using offset
- Add area select to editor
- Fix moving notes snapping differently from when they were created
- Add option to automatically set the value of multi-notes in the editor
- Added kojima

This version is dedicated to my friend Jose Luis, who died from COVID-19 early last week, may he rest in peace.

Project Heartbeat 0.2.0 is here, with new fixes and some interesting new features.

NEW FEATURES

[h2]Video playback[/h2]
Project Heartbeat now supports using videos as backgrounds for your songs, with this come a new plethora of options to make life easier and adjust it to your likings, and some video download improvements make this easy to manage.

The new options allow you to disable video entirely, only for PPD songs, disable the visualizer when a video is playing or even set the resolution and FPS of the video downloads.

Currently only h264/av1 is supported.

[h2]Video download changes[/h2]
The very smart people looking at the game's internals might have realized that Project Heartbeat downloads videos together with songs, this was originally due to the simplistic way in how the video download worked.

Among some of the changes, the download code will now check if the files exist and ask you to download them if they aren't, this means that if you disable video downloading, download a song (which will only download audio) you can then enable video again and it will ask you to download the video. Same goes for missing video/audio files.

All this means that you will have to download your videos again (but you won't have to enter the URL again for PPD songs).

[h2]Work in progress features[/h2]
One of the things I am currently working on is Steam workshop integration, this should be interesting to see.

[h3]Other fixes[/h3]
- The editor now runs in windowed mode automatically
- Make closing the editor chart open popup on startup send you back to the main menu
- Ensure you can only enter youtube URLs in the PPD URL entry
- Fix circle target size discrepancy
- Rewrite the hold indicator to not work sloppily
- The game now writes the version string to the logs
- Fix simultaneous multi-slides (why tho)
- Fix main menu right being cut under some circumstances
- Fix the results screen ignoring wrong notes when calculating full note count
- Fix editor midi importing

Project Heartbeat is now available to purchase on Steam as an Early Access title!

Some time ago we asked on twitter and on our discord to throw any question you had about the game at us, here are such questions, and the answers to them.

[h2]This looks a lot like a clone of a game I know of... What about that?[/h2]

I assume you are asking this question because this is a clone game. Clone games have historically had no trouble existing, except in cases where a software patent exists, if no such patent exists and the game doesn't include any code it isn't allowed to include there are no legal issues. I have carefully confirmed all of this with a lawyer, so there's nothing to worry about.

Here are some examples of clone games (some commercial) you might be familiar with:

- Clone Hero.
- PPD.
- Rockband.
- Osu!
- All AoS/Dota clones: League of Legends, Smite, Heroes of Newerth, Heroes of the Storm.
- All autochess clones (League of Legends' Team Fight Tactics, Dota Underlords etc...).
- Minecraft


[h2]How many songs are included in the base game?[/h2]

Regarding the song list, there will be five songs by SuganoMusic, two of them are Touhou Eurobeat arrangements and the rest are traditional Eurobeat. This is subject to change.

EDIT June 2020: This has now changed and many more songs will be added, stay tuned for more news.

[h2]Are you legally allowed to use the PlayStation buttons?[/h2]

Project Heartbeat infringes no patents, no copyright and no trademarks. Clone games are generally legal (see StrikeLine, RockBand, Heroes of the Storm, HoN, League of Legends, Candy Crush, commercial uses of StepMania, AutoChess and its clones etc...)

Regarding the DualShock4's buttons:

While the letter X is not copy protected, the specific cross used on the controller, along with the other shapes, are trademarked. Using your own art to represent the buttons, is OK under fair use, specifically nominative fair use. Where the qualifications for nominative fair use are one of the following situations:

• The product or service cannot be readily identified without using the trademark (e.g. trademark is descriptive of a person, place, or product attribute).
  
• The user only uses as much of the mark as is necessary for the identification (e.g. the words but not the font or symbol).
  
• The user does nothing to suggest sponsorship or endorsement by the trademark holder. This applies even if the nominative use is commercial, and the same test applies for metatags.
  

[h2]In the multiplayer mode, how many players can you play with at once (size of a lobby)?[/h2]

Technically we could fit 250 people in a single lobby, but for sanity reasons it's set to 5 right now, but it's a simple one line change to increase this limit if the community wants it.

[h2]Are console versions planned?[/h2]

They are being worked on, more info later.

[h2]Is mayonnaise an instrument?[/h2]

If you try hard enough yes.