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VZX Player News

VZX 20 Years Anniversary Sale & Podcast

On Friday the 21st of April, 2023, it's been exactly 20 years since we first released a GPU-accelerated music visualizer.

To celebrate this anniversary, this weekend all VZX products will be 50% off.

We've also recorded a chat (podcast style) between the two developers who started the project which can be found on youtube. In it you can also see a preview of the "Lightning Conductor" visual which will be in the upcoming DLC pack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcI_dldzZ8E

VZX Player v0.9.4.1 Patch Release

Bug fixes:
  • Some visuals (mainly with particles) wouldn't work on recent AMD drivers.


If this version causes problems for you, you can go back to a number of previous versions.

They are available under Settings -> Betas along with release date.

VZX Player v0.9.4 Released

[h2]Does this new release cause problems?[/h2]

With every new release there is the risk for some hiccups. We have tried our best to test and have had a public beta, but there can always be something.

We would like to try to help you fix any issues. Please report issues in our discord server. In 95% of cases bugs affect others too. Using the review system to write a negative review to report bugs/crashes is not very good for you since it makes it difficult for us to get back to you - many people ignore Steam notifications.

[h3]What you can do right now about problems[/h3]
  • Previous releases (including v0.9.3.1) is available in "betas" in the Steam settings for VZX Player so you can still run "what worked before" until we have been able to fix the problems in the new release.


[h2]About this version[/h2]
This isn't a huge release in terms of actual features, but it's pretty huge under the hood, preparing for future releases.

[h3]New Feature: Auto Gain[/h3]



Previously you had to have your music player on max volume for the visuals to work correctly. With auto gain enabled, the player will try to nudge the gain up all the time until reaching a set attenuation value. From our not-so-accurate manual "this feels good"-testing, -1.0 db seems to be a good attenuation value.

[h3]New Visual Pack: With one visual[/h3]

What? Only one visual in a pack??

The pack is free for all, and a special "beta" pack. Reason for this is the visual is using our new graphics engine, so by using it you help out solidifying this pretty huge (in terms of code) new addition to the graphics backend.



This visual shouldn't be enabled by default, you have to explicitly enable it.

If everything works well, this visual will be added to the other free visuals in an upcoming release.

[h3]No more Watermark[/h3]

You no longer have to buy DLC to get rid of the watermark. It doesn't exist!

[h3]DLC improvements[/h3]
  • Smooth spectrum dark's colors can now be customized


[h3]Bug fixes[/h3]
  • A crash in the audio receiving code has been fixed.
  • A crash in the price updater which occurred when having no internet connection )or flaky DNS resolving capability) might have been fixed.


[h3]Config and playlist files are now versioned[/h3]
In %APPDATA%\vovoid\vzx_store_player you find the config files. These are in JSON. This version will read old files to the best of its ability but save new ones with the version number. This means that if you go back to older versions (which don't have features like auto gain etc), you will also go back to the settings you had then. The reason for this is there is a crash (null pointer exception) in previous versions if there are references to non-existent packs in the playlist json, so we decided to also add version numbers to other config files. The tweak files are the same however, a visual rarely loses options.

[h2]Thanks to beta testers[/h2]

We saw almost 4% of users during one week helping out with testing. Thank you!

Public beta test for v0.9.4

Hi,
we invite you to try a public beta which is available at the beta branch:

"public_beta"

To opt in, go to settings (in Steam not inside VZX Player), betas and click the drop-down to select it.

[h2]What's new?[/h2]
  • A new visual using our new rendering engine available in the "beta" pack. If this pans out, we have more visuals in the works for a DLC pack later on.
  • Auto-gain, a feature which will mitigate low volume settings
  • Watermark is removed for those who don't own DLC
  • Lots of internal / smaller bug fixes


[h2]I have something to report![/h2]
Check the list of known issues available here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/981590/discussions/0/3428949623343211282/

If it's addressed there, you don't have to report it.

[h2]It's not on the list, where do I report it?[/h2]
Join our discord server ( http://vovoid.info ) and report it in the channel #vzx-player-beta. Thanks!

VZX Player v0.9.3.1 Patch Release

Improvements:
  • On dual GPU gaming laptops with NVidia or AMD GPUs where an Intel HD Graphics GPU is also present, VZX player should now start on the discrete GPU by default even if the control panel is set to use the Intel HD Graphics by default. This could solve issues for laptop users and hopefully prevents some crashes which inevitably happen when starting on Intel HD Graphics. Also means you don't have to change the setting to make VZX Player work.
  • A garbled dialog showing when Steam is not started has been fixed.
  • The garbled one-time question about ignoring intel cards has been removed. Instead a warning if you launch the player on an Intel GPU comes up every time.
  • Added some minor logging for the tweak bar in an attempt to diagnose a rare crash the we have seen but which is hard to understand.


Bug fixes:
  • Watermark was not updated with VZX Logo.


If this version causes problems for you, you can go back to a number of previous versions.

They are available under Settings -> Betas along with release date.

Let us know in our discord if you have any problems!