OutFox-alpha.4.10.0 Build - Believe it or not, the bus can't swim...

(Incorporates Internal Builds 4.10.0-rc0 to 4.10.0-rc10)



Signed Mac builds update!

We have continued to worked on our Mac builds since the last alpha, and this alpha will be released as a universal binary. This means we do not need to quarantine, nor worry about the systems we needed in the past to get the game to work. OutFox is fully signed and notorised, so this means installation is convenient and easy moving forward; you do not need to worry about which build to grab, as both will function as expected.


BMS updates!

Difficulty Changes:

4 10 0-BMS01

We have adjusted the way the game reads these files, and as a lot of the charts are seen as the same difficulty we would end up losing a lot of the information in them, and half of the charts would be missing and unplayable. We are in the process of improving this further for the new theming, so it will be better in time.

4 10 0-BMS02

This month continues our work on BMS support, and we can happily announce we have proper Land Mine channel support in the game for the first time! In previous versions there was a blanket math overflow which meant that a lot of the channels were not being identified correctly, and thus flagging for extended channels were not being used.

4 10 0-BMS03

This month also sees some fixes with the Long Note support offered by the game, we did not seem to parse these correctly due to the flag sometimes being applied in the wrong manner, which meant some of the holds were not being applied in charts.

We have also restored #RANDOM support again this alpha, as it was still using a legacy codepath we did not clear up in 4.9.10, apologies for that! This alpha allows for the #RANDOM n where n is 1 onwards.

This alpha also included several behavioural changes in the way the files are parsed, allowing for the correct Base to be used in reading channels and allowing us to enable the missing hidden sounds as well as the missing channels that were inaccessible before.

Land Mine damage based on the channel value will be added next alpha, so we can add this final part to the game.


po-mu updates!

4 10 0-PMS01

Like with BMS, the fixes with the difficulty are passed along to all of the BMS-like parsers, so we are now able to view all of the difficulties a file may contain.

4 10 0-PMS02

We have been able to adjust the channels used for po-mu to support Land Mines for the first time as well, and this also includes BME based po-mu files are properly supported as well in this alpha, though without locale emulation, they will not load in native Windows 10 at this time. A fix for this is coming soon.


gddm updates!

4 10 0-GDDM02

This mode has had some internal reworking due to recommendations from some of the DTXMania community (thanks APPROVED!) to ensure that we do a few things a little bit more to how players expect. One of the important features was the ability to change the lane setting from 10 to 9 lane, or 9 to 10 lane, depending on the e-drum kit you have.

We were already able to read and support multiple lanes in older alpha builds depending on the 'dominant' right hand lane, but now if the game does not spot it as the style you wish you can change this in the options menu.

4 10 0-GDDM01

Real mode is 10 lane, and New mode is 9 lane. This gives you the flexibility to play the game how you wish moving forwards with the new theme and makes things less awkward if you do not have a 10 piece e-drum kit.

This alpha has also worked a bit more on the latency issues plaguing some users, we have tweaked the keysound flow a lot this build, so please give it a try and let us know if this has improved gameplay for this mode.

4 10 0-GDDM04

This build also has had work on the 'Channel 02/BL' support to remove the old BMS era restriction. This means any measure change/time signature change is now respected, and thanks to APPROVED to making this chart which was a literal BPM Change / Time Signature Change Spam Chart we were able to effectively fix this for good. This change is also reflected in the gdgf mode as well as the GDA parser.


gdgf updates!

4 10 0-GDGF01

Before this alpha, all the game was able to use on this mode was Autogen based charts. Thanks to Squirrel and Jousway, the parser has been finally fixed and implemented to allow 3 fret and 5 fret guitar and bass charts to finally load natively in engine.

Thank you all for your patience while we worked on this, it was a slog to try to transpose the system to something our game recognises!

GDGF is based on a row system, and our internal mechanism is column based, and has been for some time, so ensuring this methodology is carried over was important. We still have a lot to do before simulation is better here, so please bear with us. We do NOT support the holds yet that were introduced in DTXMania AL, these will be done at a later date.

4 10 0-GDGF02

This mode also has had the 6 fret custom mode that we promised back in the spring, as we know a lot of folks wanted 6 fret availability in OutFox. We have chosen cyan as the sixth fret to follow the colour scheme of Yellow Pink Cyan from the original.

4 10 0-GDGF03

This mode also supports full up, down, and forward WAIL controls, as requested by members of the community. To map this you will need to ensure your controller has the options to allow for wailing, as many newer guitar controllers have special 'button' modes for wailing. We will add new controller pages to the wiki to help players set up their games in due course.

We have also begun a project to release a new proposal for a BMS-like BGF based parser for this mode which will include all 6 frets. Squirrel will be adding the information for this on the wiki for discussion and feedback is more than welcome!

Remember! The game styles have changed for GDGF in this alpha. We will update the OutFox Serenity pack to reflect this during October


gh updates!

4 10 0-GH01

We have continued to work on the internal mechanics on this mode, so do forgive us while we fix things! This alpha sees new backplate (highway) support, (thanks Jous!) and new noteskin support within the engine. the measure lines and textures now behave as expected and thanks to those of you that requested these features.

The internal notefield and scrolling system has seen some updates as well as we move towards Alpha V.


dance updates!

This mode also saw some updates this month; the RNG system was given a revamp, the stageseed generation was also fixed, as well as better audio parsing. Thanks for all the reports of the odd edge cases with some of the odd 'stuttering' bits and pieces you sent in! this was due to an undesirable response in the sampler expecting a calculation from the 'old' resampler path that didn't exist on the new resampler so we tweaked it to stop this.

There has been other engine adjustments, we discovered a few other weird bugs in how the buffer works due to the new Keysound code for BMS and po-mu and this has resolved a bug for dance modes.


techno updates!

We fixed the methodolody of the lifebars and the odd crashes with the styles and different play styles available to this mode. There were a lot of edge case crashes which we have fixed for now. In regards to styles, we WILL be fixing the ability to play different styles per player. It's disabled for now to just prevent arcade cab crashes.


KNOWN ISSUES: Alpha 4.10.0

  • ❕❌ ISSUE Playing beat/popnsongs on Endless Mode may have a crash on song loading. Please be aware that course mode for these modes are a bit tempremental at the moment!
  • ❕❌ ISSUE gh mode: Some charts have no real 'standard' and will cause a crash when loaded into the game
  • ❕❌ ISSUE gddm/gdgf mode: We do not support the XA codec at this time, it'll play silent.

ALL:

Mode Specific

  • ❕✅ Updated gdgf graphics for wailing
  • ❕✅ Updated gh graphics for highway
  • ❕✅ Fixed BMS/PMS missing background on channel 04 support
  • ❕✅ Fixed BMS/PMS missing background on channel 07 support
  • ❕✅ New! GDA Parser Support
  • ❕✅ New! BMS Fixed #RANDOM math overflow
  • ❕✅ New! gddm REAL to NEW mode (10 Lane to 9 Lane support)
  • ❕✅ New! added bass3, bsss5, bass6 to gdgf
  • ❕✅ New! added guitar3, guitar5, guitar6 to gdgf
  • ❕✅ Fixed crash in non-guitar modes due to the new gh backplates/highways
  • ❕✅ New! BGF Parser Support, in prep for proposal
  • ❕✅ Updated gdgf parsing channels to support the new methods
  • ❕✅ Fixed crash in BGA and guitar channels overflow into drum charts
  • ❕✅ Fixed invalid channels being parsed in DTX loader
  • ❕✅ Fixed B36 GDA parsing
  • ❕✅ Fixed DetermineStepsType on DTX/GDA guitar/bass
  • ❕✅ Fixed PMS channel layouts
  • ❕✅ Fixed DTX channels not being correctly interpreted as 'admin' channels
  • ❕✅ New! added 'ChartType' system for correctly identifying DTX/GDA chart splits
  • ❕✅ Fixed gddm 5 panel layout
  • ❕✅ Fixed
  • ❕✅ New! implemented true BMS/BME/BML/PMS Long Note support
  • ❕✅ New! implemented true BMS/BME/BML/PMS LandMine support
  • ❕✅ Fixed missing hidden channels on BMS/PMS files
  • ❕✅ Fixed wail overflow due to 'wail up' and 'wail down' existing
  • ❕✅ New! Hidden layers of channels for DTX/GDA
  • ❕✅ New! #BGAxx support finally restored for BMS/PMS ends 19 year old bug.
  • ❕✅ New! #AVIxx support added to BMS/PMS
  • ❕✅ New! #OGGxx support added to BMS/PMS
  • ❕✅ New! Channel 02 support for DTX/GDA parsers for variable measures/time signatures
  • ❕✅ New! Engine side Taiko hitsounds to reduce playback lag
  • ❕✅ New! Loading screen for any mode with keysounds
  • ❕✅ Fixed offset missing in CHART parsing closes #376

Engine

  • ❕✅ Fixed CD Audio style loading methodology being called from 2006
  • ❕✅ Fixed CDDA Audio hard coded lag amount being added to everything
  • ❕✅ Fixed Edge Crash with 'EOF' being reached in Keysound Loading
  • ❕✅ Fixed Freeze with Pre-2001 BMS/BM98 files with Keysound playback
  • ❕✅ Added Sanity Check on themeprefs from StepMania#2153
  • ❕✅ Added binarytohex lua command from StepMania#2150
  • ❕✅ Fixed #PAN math causing playback blackouts for some arcade cabinets
  • ❕✅ Fixed #PAN clipping with 2 players
  • ❕✅ Fixed editor IsFake detection
  • ❕✅ Fixed radar calcuation of rolls
  • ❕✅ Fixed #RANDOM generation - Thanks Taro for recommending a file to test with
  • ❕✅ New! added GetCrop() functions for lua actors
  • ❕✅ New! Ovceptor system for placement of receptors over notes
  • ❕✅ Fixed crash with style clashes in legacy themes
  • ❕✅ Fixed 'Folder Contains Music Files' warnings and logging
  • ❕✅ Fixed notepath not drawing from ovceptor
  • ❕✅ Fixed HoldTail entries in NoteData tables
  • ❕✅ New! functimer() for C++17
  • ❕✅ Fixed math overflow on timer, from 2008
  • ❕✅ Fixed pos handler being interpreted for zoom handler
  • ❕✅ Fixed Tipsy/TanTipsy take ModTimer into account when calculating results
  • ❕✅ New! New Lua functions: FlipCoin() and RolltheDie()
  • ❕✅ Fixed punishmultitap being active on autoplay
  • ❕✅ Fixed missing keysound tracks
  • ❕✅ Fixed keysounds sometimes crashing recycled pre2014 po-mu cabinet hardware
  • ❕✅ New! Added non-clamped version of SetDancePointLimits
  • ❕✅ New! Added Ex versions of the Back and Elastic tweens
  • ❕✅ New! Added new method to allow Sprite.LinearFrames to have a variable starting point
  • ❕✅ Fixed Colour values being converted 3 times
  • ❕✅ Fixed Matrix math overflowing due to compiler optimisation
  • ❕✅ New! Added short/ushort/long/ulong/longlong/ulonglong RNG engines for mode support
  • ❕✅ Fixed unsigned RNG overflow in compiler for armhf/aarch64
  • ❕✅ Fixed math error on seeding the global RNG system
  • ❕✅ Fixed missing RNG generation on return to game main screen
  • ❕✅ Fixed PlayerOptions storing two players values in several for loops
  • ❕✅ Fixed divide by zero edge crash closes #414
  • ❕✅ Fixed race condition in new sampler due to old rounding errors in legacy code
  • ❕✅ Fixed jukebox mode selection and two player crashing shenanigans
  • ❕✅ Fixed final syncmachine edge crash on pre-2010 cabs

Windows 7+:

  • ❕✅ Fixed compilation warnings
  • ❕✅ Fixed crash on creative drivers on Windows 11

Linux:

  • ❕✅ Fixed GL dispatcher based on Ubuntu advice (may break other distros, do report this)
  • ❕✅ Fixed potential infinite loop in seek() on audio playback

MacOS (Universal):

  • ❕✅ New Universal binary - no more 2 package issues
  • ❕✅ Fixed crash on plugging in a PS4/PS5 controller on Monterey (Mac OS 12)

ARM32/ARM64: (Raspberry Pi etc)

  • ❕✅ Fixed some latency with ALSA causing broken pipe() errors on Pi3/3b
  • ❕✅ Fixed potential infinite loop in seek() on audio playback

Community content

Noteskins

  • New! gddmnoteskin: default with real support from Jousway
  • New! ez2 noteskin: default from Lirodon
  • New! taiko noteskin: crystal-taitai from Lirodon
  • New! taiko noteskin: shizuka from Lirodon (graphics) and Jousway
  • New! taiko noteskin: taitai and taitai3d from Jousway
  • New! gdgf noteskin guitarDTX by yaladre

Theme

Translations

  • ✅ Translations updated from Moru, SHRMP0 and SheepyChris (Brazilian Portuguese)
  • ✅ Translations updated from Moneko (Polish)
  • ✅ Translations updated from Hanubeki (Japanese)
  • ✅ Translations updated from Jose_Varela (Spanish)
  • ✅ Translations updated from Daniel Rotwind (German)
  • ✅ Translations updated from Ksempac (French)
  • ✅ Translations updated from Snil4 (Hebrew)