Project Heartbeat News

0.11 is here, this update is pretty big, amongst the news are Lino joining Project Heartbeat development as a volunteer, the return of the switch version, and many many long-time requested improvements.



[h2]New song: Through the night 2019[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Through the night 2019 is yet another song from SuganoMusic, the song is sang by Renko (same person who sang core creation) produced by Sugano, charted by Yahoo.
The art was comissioned from and masterfully created by guinii4, a local Spanish artist, please check out her work!

[h2]Return of the switch version[/h2]



The switch version for hacked machines of Project Heartbeat has now returned, you can learn how to use it by reading this guide.

Included are some upgrades to the switch code that plagued the original one with issues, it's still fairly slow because we aren't using any illegally obtained SDK, instead we are using the community developed libnx and mesa nouveau video driver, which is unfortunately slow, but it's playable at least.



[h2]New history format[/h2]

The history now stores the score ratings and percentage separatedly, so whenever you get a higher number in any of those it gets saved.

[h2]Direct joystick access[/h2]



Direct joystick access allows the game to access your controller's joysticks directly, this allows the two axis directions (vertical and horizontal) to be combined, which prevents issues such as spinning the joystick triggering heart notes, because some people (ab)used this for heart spams it's an option.

This feature only works with controllers that are in the internal controller database (They are now marked as known in Options -> Input).

[h2]Menu optimizations & changes[/h2]



The menu now uses some new optimizations that makes it faster, the internal render targets are now scaled according to your resolution.

The menu animations are now bouncier.

You can now press R3 or G to show the currently playing song.

The song list also now shows when a song needs its media to be downloaded

[h3]Results Screen[/h3]



The results screen has been changed to look nicer (thanks lino)

[h2]SFX system rework[/h2]

The game now separates between heart notes and slide notes, plus it also has a different sound when pressing a heart or a slider without there being one nearby.

[h2]Auto download workshop songs in multiplayer[/h2]

The game will now download workshop songs automatically when you are playing in multiplayer

[h2]Borderless windowed[/h2]

The game now supports 3 window modes, windowed, borderless windowed and fullscreen, additionally you can now select the display in which the game will be displayed.

[h2]Show console option[/h2]

The console is now hidden by default, it can be restored in the options menu.

[h2]Editor changes[/h2]

[h3]Waveform preview[/h3]



Taken from Godot's source code, I've ported some code related to the waveform preview subsystem and used it in the editor timeline.

[h3]Circle transforms[/h3]



Courtesy of Lino we now have new options to create circles

[h3]Minor changes[/h3]

• Add the ability to pan around the timeline using shift + scroll wheel
  
• Show selected timing point count in the info bar
  
• Disable main game input while testplaying
  
• The editor now allows holding to the left and right to navigate the timeline quickly
  
• The rotation transform spinbox is now editable
  
• Correct the way the flip slides transforms selected notes
  
• Autoarrange is now smarter
  
• Notes are deselected when changing songs
  
• Added shortcuts for many things, check the editor manual for info on them.
  
• Testplay now shows the song's name
  

[h2]Other Minor changes[/h2]

• Heart and slide inputs now ignore each other
  
• Limit discord rich presence poll rate to 5 polls per second
  
• Rewritten memory management in preparation of switching to release mode
  
• Add angle flipping transformation
  
• Add select all to editor
  
• Volume now goes up to 750%
  
• Use string filename sanitizer for difficulty json
  

[h2]Bug fixes[/h2]

• Make script runner force an inspector sync
  
• Fix song list stealing focus when clicking between items
  
• Check for shift only if event is InputEventKey. in SongList
  
• Make song jump work more more nicely
  
• Revert back to normal note attributes when there are no multis (with automulti)
  
• Give love to save as dialog
  
• Fix editor zoom bug
  
• Fix: Shrink UI width for the transformation tab. bug
  
• Fix workshop uploading issues
  
• Prevent the user from creating holds on slide chain pieces
  

PH still has some development ahead, but I feel it's very close to getting out of early access, but I'd like to do that after the engine gets native vulkan support in godot 4.0.

I also work on some new games in my free time, that I will be revealing soon, but rest assured, this isn't taking much time (if any) away from PH's development.

I have to share my absolute massive hype for the Steam Deck, I think it's a great fit for PH and I plan to request a devkit as soon as they come out to ensure it works fine on the platform!

Cheers, and on to 0.12!

Project Heartbeat 0.10 is here! This update was slightly interrupted by me having surgery so it isn't as big as usual it is also mostly a housekeeping and bug fixing update, but it does bring some new major features and new content!



[h2]NEW SONG: Core Creation[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Core Creation is a song by Renko and Sugano, this song is a cover of the popular "Bad Apple!!" song from the Touhou Project series, the chart was made by blizzin and the artwork was created by Mariale. I hope you will enjoy it!




[h2]Resource Packs[/h2]





Project Heartbeat now has a Resource Pack system, with a brand new editor to boot, you can replace graphics from the game with custom ones, change properties and even upload them to the workshop!

The graphics that can be changed and tuned will be expanded upon in the future.

The options menu now has a Resource Pack section, from here you can select what resource pack you want, you can also override the currently selected resource pack's notes with the notes from another pack in case you are used to them but want to enjoy the rest of the selected resource pack!

[h2]Extended PPD Loader[/h2]



By popular request, I've added a way to import your whole PPD installation's song folder, the only difficulty is that you have to provide the .dll/.so files that are able to load h264 files like the ones PPD uses, the new importer maintains your PPD folder structure and can play MP4 files, AVI files and a long et cetera.

If you are interested in this feature, please hit us up in the discord, we'll gladly help you.

[h2]DSC Loader improvements[/h2]



Initially I was considering removing the DSC Loader altogether, but I was convinced not to do so, this is why I've expanded upon what types of files it can load, I've also given them their own category.

The DSC loader can now load Project DIVA Dreamy Theater 2nd/DIVA F/DIVA F2nd DSCs, this was motivated by the closure of the PlayStation Network on the VITA and PlayStation 3 to be able to preserve those edits in PH, although the closure seems to have been aborted now the code was already done so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The way DIVA OGGs are played has also been improved, the voice and instrumental will now sync better and the loading times will be improved.

You can also load the full song list from a copy of DT2nd, fancy.

[h2]Changes to how some notes are handled[/h2]

Previously, multi notes with two notes of the same type didn't work, this has been fixed, hitting other notes during sliders has also been fixed, this means that some very old charts and some PPD specials work again.

[h2]Editor changes[/h2]

More usability changes have been made to the editor:

[h3]Community charting guide[/h3]

Snail has kindly provided a new charting guide, which you can read here, this guide is also included in the editor, and complements the editor manual.

[h3]Keyboard Lyrics Workflow[/h3]

A new way of working with lyrics has been added, you can now use the following hotkeys:

Control+J: Create phrase start
Control+K: Create lyric
Control+L: Create phrase end

[h3]Editor action notification system[/h3]

The editor will now display some actions as floating text when you enter them, for example pasting, saving, etc.

[h2]Video playback changes[/h2]

The way videos are played back has been radically changed, they should now be much smoother to use, for example when rolling back from a pause the video frame we are seeking to is fetched in the background and not when the rollback is done, which prevents minor stuttering when rolling back, this also makes editor video playback much more accurate.

[h2]Results screen graph[/h2]



There's a new tab in the results screen that lets you see a graph, this graph will help you see where you made a mistake and how close you were to your targets!

[h2]VRAM usage optimizations[/h2]

I discovered some ways to reduce VRAM usage greatly, this is also in part thanks to the new resource pack system.

[h2]Main Menu viewport scaling[/h2]

A new optimization has changed the way the main menu is drawn, this makes it vary some internal resolutions depending on the resolution the game is running at, which should increase performance when using resolutions other than 1080p.

[h2]Color channel swapping filters[/h2]



The ability to swap some of the game's color channels has been added, this has the potential to aid some people with some forms of colorblindness, it's an imperfect solution but it was simple to add and it might be useful to someone.

• Fix scroll list hold to scroll on drifty PS4 controllers.
  
• Optimize VRAM usage
  
• Add the ability to change sound volume per sound effect
  
• Add song count indicator to song list
  
• Show difficulty in workshop browser using pre-uploaded metadata (doesn't work for some old charts).
  
• Change how note hit effects are drawn to make them faster
  
• Entering a property in the inspector will now release focus from the field you are editing.
  
• Place the multi note laser behind all graphics
  
• Change visualizer algorithm to a smoother one
  
• Make menus use the SFX audio bus
  

Bug Fixes

• Fix hitting two notes of the same type in a multi
  
• Fix hitting notes during slide chains
  
• Fix epilepsy warning placement
  
• Fix editor note selection with clock arms disabled
  
• Make YTDL force IPV4 because microsoft are completely braindead
  
• Fix sustain Z order
  
• Rework wav loading to prevent crackling noises
  
• Make hardware clock option selectable
  
• Multiple scroll list bugfixes
  
• Fix leaderboard scrolling being disabled sometimes
  
• Fix button overlapping in the workshop tabbing system
  
• Fix input overlapping issues in song list
  
• Fix newlistitem error
  
• Prevent subsequent playback issues when finishing a video in the editor
  
• Fix issues with controls rebinding
  

This article lists the hotfix changes done after the release of 0.9

• Fix epilepsy warning placement
  

• Make YTDL use IPv4 because windows likes to slow downloads down to a crawl if using IPv6 ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
  

• Update ytdl
  

• Change custom sound loading code to properly load audio chunks and prevent clicking noises.
  

• Sands of time lyrics correction
  
• Don't show hotfixes in main menu news list
  
• Fix running the game with DSCLoader
  
• Prevent clicking sound by ignoring anything after the data chunk when loadi…
  

• Update ytdl
  
• Fix laggy I/O print statements when hitting slide chains
  

• Fix holding to scroll in the song list
  

• Fix gigantic VRAM leak
  

- Fix holding to scroll in the song list

Hello Project Heartbeat gamers, this is a small patch issued to fix a small issue with the game.

- Fix gigantic VRAM memory leak

Cheers.