Synth Riders News

Hi Riders!

Just a small update here with some bug fixes and a couple of nice QoL items for you all.

• Changes to Settings > Colors:
  
  • Individual reset options for notes, obstacles & score;
    
  • The left/right hand color swap button is back;
    
  • RGB hexadecimal values may now be entered for each color option.
    
  • Default values for perfect hits and wall colors changed.
    
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• Improvements for synchronization of multiplayer room teleporting and player positions.
  
• Resolved issue of player avatars momentarily going through the player standing on the gold hex when returning from a song or changing stage.
  
• Corrected the score detail display for Longest Streak and Notes Hit where they could show incorrect data.
  
• Practice and Play button no longer overlap when entering and exiting settings.
  
• YUR Watch gaze dot now works on all hexes in Multiplayer. It also now works correctly when the player uses Room Adjust.
  
• Minor fixes for avatar positioning in the Multiplayer lobby, better handling while players are in settings and using Room Adjust.
  
• Song Offset is taken into account correctly, with large song offsets no longer cause a premature end to a map.
  
• Resolved crashes for SteamVR players with certain graphics cards on launching the game.
  
• Brightness of wall outlines now reduced again to allow you to go back to a more regular wall color and to allow opacity to give expected results.
  

As always we welcome your feedback and bug reports on our Official Discord server (Invite: http://discord.synthridersvr.com) or in the Synth Riders Official Community on Facebook.

If you want to support the development of Synth Riders, we really appreciate reviews left on the Steam Store!

Hey Riders!

From the bright neon of The Rooftop in Spin City, Synth Riders goes out of this world, touching down on the surface of The Planet! Spaceships soar and walkers stride around the base during the totality of an Eclipse. Gorgeous new visuals, an enhanced multiplayer room for more interaction possibilities to coincide with the introduction of Custom Experiences, a reimagining of “Spin City” and a brand new spin stage called “Eclipse” await you in this update - along with much, much more!

[h3]SPIN STAGE & HOME STAGE UPDATES[/h3]

• Enjoy a brand new Spin Stage, “Eclipse” which takes you to another planet far, far away - where robots roam and spaceships rule the skies.
  
• Our existing “Spin City” stage has been completely redesigned, adding a new level of richness and depth never before seen in Synth Riders.
  
• Both these stages are also available for selection in standard play mode, or as your Home Stage (Settings > Visuals > Home Stage) as "The Rooftop" & "The Planet".
  

[h3]AN IMPROVED MULTIPLAYER EXPERIENCE[/h3]

• Players can now teleport around in the Multiplayer room, which is now a shared space! Just point to an empty hex where you wish to go and pull the trigger to jump!
  
• More intuitive interactions with other players are now possible, as avatars reflect your movements and positions correctly relative to the room and each other!
  
• Player name tags will always face towards you, and a speaking icon appears above the name tag to make it easier to know who’s speaking when not looking at the board. Voice chat in the lobby also includes spatialized audio to help you know who’s talking.
  
• Player platforms are also closer together, so step towards a player if you want to interact more closely, or just stay in the centre of your hex if you prefer to keep your social distance!
  
• If you find crowds a little overwhelming, you can always find a clear space in “The Room”. Go to Settings > Visuals > Home Stage and select “The Room” and “Load Stage” to enjoy the voice chat only experience from the comfort of your futuristic apartment!
  
• Room hosts can now mute a player for the whole room at once using Global Mute. A less severe option than a ban, great where someone has a malfunctioning microphone, or where you need to take control of a situation. Hosts can just return to the Multiplayer Room and select the cog next to the player's name to see the new option.
  

[h3]HIGH QUALITY GRAPHICS OPTIONS[/h3]

• The regular Synth Avatars get a polish on PCVR with a shiny new skin!
  
• The Glow Is Back! Additional “Beautify” Settings for PCVR players! Use Settings > Visuals > Effects: Neon Bloom - turn on / off and control the level of the neon bloom effect
  
• Settings > Visuals > Effect Display: Neon Bloom Effect - control whether the effect is displayed in headset and/or on screen
  
• Settings > Visuals > Advanced Settings > Neon Bloom Quality - control the quality of the post processing effects applied
  

[h3]OTHER GRAPHIC AND VISUAL IMPROVEMENTS[/h3]

• New "Contrast Corridor" option under Settings > Gameplay determines whether to display a dark contrast corridor in the line of play to improve visibility on some stages.
  
• When using spin stages outside of Spin Mode, the spin mode emitter will always remain present as a contrast panel in front of the note origin to aid visibility.
  
• Minor cosmetic changes to The Pit & The Void home stages and Glitch stage.
  
• Improved visuals in the Multiplayer results screen for Quest.
  

[h3]CUSTOM STAGE CHANGES & CUSTOM EXPERIENCES[/h3]

• The long-awaited Custom Experiences are now available for creators! More documentation on how to set up and use this feature is listed separately here, please join us on the official discord (discord.synthridersvr.com) to share and learn!
  
• Custom Stages are now cached, extra information is available in-game about them, and they will be reloaded when you reload your custom songs! To accommodate these new features, a new custom stage template has been released for this version onwards, available here. Our stage makers are encouraged to migrate to this new template for all new stages.
  
• Removed an extra offset which was added to custom stages (thanks Gruntled).
  

[h3]TWITCH INTEGRATION IMPROVEMENTS[/h3]

• QUEUE & HISTORY labels were missing for "The Pit" home stage (both Multiplayer & Solo play).
  
• Global cooldowns (any user any feature and this user any feature) don't apply to !srr and !oops anymore.
  
• Added sorting history in reverse order, changed history to sort by time deleted instead of time requested.
  
• Disabled bot reply to cheers when invaderz are disabled.
  

[h3]BUG FIXES AND IMPROVEMENTS[/h3]

• New option in Settings > Calibration to allow players to customize the position of the controller orbs.
  
• Volume control on the song selection menu and multiplayer lobby are now in 5% increments
  
• Note values display correctly in the song select screen.
  
• Exit button & platform clock visuals improved.
  
• OST songs with Experiences are now easier to identify with a “EXP” slash on the album cover.
  
• Settings > Visuals > Advanced Settings menu cleaned up, Calibration and bHaptics menu cleaned up on Quest.
  
• On the main screen you can use Tab to disable the In-Game News panel, then again to disable the game UI, and then another will bring it all back.
  
• Sort & Filter results persist through song plays.
  
• Fixed an issue where the spin emitter would show over the pause menu.
  
• Fixed an issue where if a playlist loaded had an error, all playlists were deleted (thanks Whipstickgostop).
  
• Pausing a song while in multiplayer and failing while still in pause will no longer leave you forever playing.
  
• Song hash is now the only option used to determine whether all players have the same custom song for Multiplayer. Previously, this would failover to a song ID. This will prevent players from playing with different maps in the same game.
  
• Players with 0 score in multiplayer no longer vanish from the HUD at end, and if all players score 0, no longer generates a blank summary screen.
  
• Fixed an issue around LIV fade out/in on scene transitions for avatar and mixed reality.
  

A huge shout out to our beta testers who signed up and joined us to test! You are all amazing - thank you for being a part of this, enjoy sharing it with the world!

As always we welcome your feedback and bug reports on our Official Discord server or in the Synth Riders Official Community on Facebook.

If you want to support the development of Synth Riders, we really appreciate reviews left on the store!

Hey Riders, we are happy to announce that we've teamed up with the developers of Ragnarock for a VR rhythm bundle!

“Rock’n’Ride VR Rhythm Bundle” combines two of the highest-rated VR games on Steam - Ragnarock has an impressive 96% of positive reviews!

The bundle is flexible so if you own one of the included games, you can still grab a 20% discount for the missing one.

Check out the trailer:
https://youtu.be/TKn68IfmgHM

Here's a link to the bundle:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/20952/

[h3]The "Adrenaline" Music Pack is now out featuring 8 new songs![/h3]

Packed with the greatest hits of iconic punk rock artists including The Offspring, Bad Religion and Rancid, these songs will have you jumping straight into the mosh pit!

The song “Come Out And Play” by The Offspring comes bundled with the second Synth Riders Experience, this time packed with punk style and rock attitude tailored to match the track with perfectly synced visuals. Check it out in the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkRjIZeLOFE

[h3]“Adrenaline” comes with 5 paid DLC songs:[/h3]

• The Offspring - “Come Out And Play”
  
• The Offspring - “Self Esteem”
  
• Bad Religion - "21st Century (Digital Boy)"
  
• Rancid - "Time Bomb”
  
• The Interrupters - "Gave You Everything"
  

[h3]And 3 songs free for everyone:[/h3]

• Pennywise - "Never Gonna Die”
  
• Too Close To Touch - "Hard To Love"
  
• Plague Vendor - "New Comedown"
  

Free songs are already in your library! DLC songs can be purchased for $1.99 or as a bundle with a 20% discount.

We hope you will enjoy the new Music Pack! You are invited to join our Community on Discord and write a review to support the development.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/20242/


[h3]Improvements & Bugfixes[/h3]

• No fail works correctly for Practice Mode (thanks Gruntled).
  
• A retry button is now available when connection to the leaderboards fails
  
• Player's choice of note textures will be used for experiences now to ensure better visibility for all
  
• Updated rail textures & rail ends.
  

bHaptics Support Included
We’re excited to announce cross-platform support for bHaptics in Synth Riders! You can now use the enhanced haptics of the bHaptics TactSuit or Tactosy and really feel that rhythm and look out for the walls!

There’s a lot more to this release than this we are always listening to your feedback, and looking for ways to make getting in and playing Synth Riders a better experience for everyone. So there’s lots of great “Quality of Life” (QoL) improvements included with this release.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PObdLS_kCfw

Sort, Filter & Random Song Improvements

• Sort & Filter saved between songs.
  
• Selecting "Random Song" from the song summary screen will not repeat songs you've played in the current session.
  
• "Random Song" will try to stick to the song difficulty of the first song when available. If the difficulty is not available in the next random song, it picks the nearest available.
  
• Previously only available while using Play Non-Stop mode, the Pause menu now always shows song information.
  

Multiplayer

• Banned players can no longer rejoin a room by manually entering the room name.
  
• Individual player settings panel size increased to make it easier to access controls for adjusting mute, relative audio level (all players) and ban (room host only) for other players in the room.
  

No Fail -50% Penalty Only Applies When You Fail

• There’s no reason not to use No Fail with friends in Multiplayer Mode now! When you enable the "No Fail" modifier, the score modifier and leaderboard tag will only apply when your energy bar reaches zero. At that point while playing, instead of failing out of the song, you can continue playing but your score for the song will be halved and your score will be tagged as "No Fail" on the leaderboard.
  

Camera Improvements (PCVR Only)

• Selecting Settings > Visuals > Display Camera > Off now correctly disables the camera on the menu scenes. This is recommended for performance if you are not capturing the window.
  
• Settings > Visuals > Display Camera > Window Size settings are now sticky.
  
• Scriptable, simulated camera movement through making the playspace rotate while you play is now available. This is an awesome effect which content creators can use to make their mixed reality videos even more amazing! For more information on this, please see https://bit.ly/srcamera
  
• LIV SDK Updated to 1.5.4.
  
• Controller trails updated.
  

Improvements / Bug Fixes

• Back button in the settings menu goes back to the previous screen if a sub-panel is open (e.g. Advanced Graphics -> Graphics).
  
• Changes to behaviour when playing songs with Custom difficulties that specify a Note Jump Speed (NJS) to be used AND using a Note Jump Speed modifier essentially players will only receive bonuses and score marking if the actual played Note Jump Speed is greater than that specified by the map (thanks Tititor).
  
• You'll now be prompted for a water break at the song end screen, rather than waiting until you return to the main menu (thanks HeavyGee).
  
• Finished Challenges display correctly when in Multiplayer.
  
• Room Adjustment now applies correctly while playing on Quest.
  
• Various typo fixes.
  

Twitch Integration

• When Power-Ups are disabled, score uploads are no longer disabled for !color, !invaderz, or !warp as these do not help the player. In addition, they are only disabled for !vanish and !prismatic when used in conjunction with the corresponding gameplay modifiers.
  
• Bot is no longer disabled if pub sub fails.
  
• Fixed error for follower updating when bot is disconnected.
  
• Improved behaviour when switching channels.
  
• Added a disabled reply for invaderz when in command mode.
  
• Added message if a command is unavailable due to being in channelpoint mode.
  
• Improved handling of blank/empty twitch channel name.
  

As always we welcome your feedback and bug reports on our Official Discord server (Invite: ) or in the Synth Riders Official Community on Facebook.

If you want to support the development of Synth Riders, we really appreciate reviews left on the Steam/Oculus Store!