Mode Specific
As part of our continued supporting of older hardware to prevent e-waste we have taken the time to support older versions of Linux, (primarily ubuntu 14.04 era). It is MUCH easier to install Linux on older hardware, than to try to keep it with windows. This is due to the way Microsoft handled their drivers in the late 2000s, and although we support back to Windows Vista (and XP somewhat), the best way to play on older hardware is to use Linux.
The extreme minimum requirement for OutFox is a Linux distro with a glibc version of 2.19-2.21 (Ubuntu 14.04 era)
To confirm your CXXABI and GLIBCXX versions you can do the following example on an ARM board:
open a terminal and type:
strings /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6 | grep GLIBCXX
strings /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6 | grep CXXABI
This will give you a list of numbers.
The important factor here - If your list does not show GLIBCXX_3.4.22
and CXXABI_1.3.11
you will need to update your system to GCC 7.0 (which is still supported even on this old distros!)
For ubuntu you can simply do the following in a terminal, add sudo/su where appropriate:
apt-get update -y
apt-get install software-properties-common -y
add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test -y
apt-get update -y
apt-get install gcc-7 g++-7 -y
update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-7 60 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-7
update-alternatives --config gcc
This will update your system to support the newer libc and g++ libraries you need for OutFox, and will keep the board alive.
The new 'arm32 legacy' build is for 32bit boards manufactured around the 2010s (2010-2016) often with a Tegra chip, with the Arm Cortex based processors of the time.
We have confirmed this with one of our players Chriswak who had an Nvidia Development Board, the Jetson Nvidia TK1
If you do use our legacy builds, we are always interested in what you are running us on! Tweet us your setups/cabs/weird ARM boards etc!
PLEASE, IF YOU FIND ANY BUG IN OUR GAME REPORT IT EITHER BY MAKING A ISSUE ON OUR BUG TRACKER REPOSITORY OR IN OUR DISCORD SERVER, WE WON'T BE ABLE TO FIX BUGS THAT ARE NOT REPORTED TO US!
0.4.17 passed initial testing from our valiant testing volunteers, however it failed the testing on cabinets and for those who use dance
and pump
modes for skill/technical based play. As the whole point of this LTS programme is to ensure stability and remove opportunity for the game to crash or have problems in general play this was unacceptable, and we went back to deep bug fixing which is why this release is later than planned, but provides a much more stable environment for play.
As with development we cannot guarantee you'll never crash, but we have reduced bugs and situations where that could happen while you're playing the game.
We hope you enjoy the fruits of our work, with this proper stable build, and appreciate your continued support!
bongo
!Based on a game for home consoles released in the early 2000s, this mode brings in a highly requested fan favourite to OutFox!
Played using the left drum, right drum, and clapping, this fun mode at the moment uses the games TJA and OTO loaders to support fan created TJA content, and Mode 1 from osu files, though bear in mind, many of the osu files are not designed with fun in mind, so it may become painful using your hands to play these files!
You do NOT need to enable auto-gen for this mode! It uses any TJA or OSU files in your folders already to generate tracks! Remember our taiko
support is ongoing, so some holds and effects do break sync, but we will be fixing these in time. We do not have a theme yet for this mode, so game-play is with the basic 'default' for now, so you can have a play and feel for it!
This is our 18th Working Game Mode that this engine supports, and we are truly humbled by the awesome support you, the players, provide us to continue to improve and expand on what this museum contains within it's wall of code!
We have designed this mode alongside the project OpenTaiko so that charts made using the new TJA letter types in the charting format will be cross-compatible between the two simulators moving forward.
As part of our commitment to getting the game out of the eventual development hell, we have had a discussion and all agreed to keep the alpha 4.xx branch active for the next year while we work on finalising the alpha V branch.
What this means to you, the end user, is that if you do not want to have to change builds all the time and deal with 'new feature' bugs, then this branch will be maintained (for bug fixes only) in a 1 month bug fixing schedule until December 2022, then will move to a quarterly release schedule (so 4 more updates) until it is retired at the end of December 2023 with the final release being 4.24.
This branch is stable enough for the removal of the 'alpha' prefix, and if you get any bugs or issues do report it. Things deemed important will be back-ported to the 0.4.x branch, but the team will be focussing more on 0.5.x in 2023 and beyond.
This month we also added a new logging system which will greatly help with any debugging needs that you have. We have changed the system, so that there is a main, a theme, and a crash-log now, and these have varying levels of detail, depending on need. If you happen to have a crash or need to debug a theme, or lua mod, this is now much easier to do.
On the log level preference, 0 shows full detail, where 5 will give you a reduced log-file, usually when you have everything set up and working well.
This release also sees some changes to the FFMPEG builds used in OutFox. We had discovered there is a memory leaking bug in upstream which doesn't really affect many of the video players out there generally, the code we use to acquire and display video data is based on the functions that are bugged in newer versions, so folks using banners or video backgrounds would end up with crashing and freezes due to this.
We have reverted back to a much older 'bug free' build of 4.x for the time being until it is fixed by upstream. If you get any quirks or errors on videos, do let us know; we tried a lot of different formats and videos commonly used, but we didn't cover everything!
This build adds a support option for those folks on some builds which have had evdev issues with the newer kernels (5.1+) making pads not show up.
By default OutFox uses the event system as this is recommended by distros like Ubuntu and Debian but with recent updates these can miss seeing pads and controllers.
The new pref UseLinuxJS
(Use Linux JoyStick) sets /js* by default, so folks can access the controllers correctly. If you want the older behaviour, take a moment to set this to 0 in your preference.ini file in the /save folder. We will keep an eye on this for now, and if you get any errors about 'access denied' ensure your user is in the 'input' group using a terminal and:
sudo usermod -a -G input USERNAME
where USERNAME is your current user (type whoami
) to see what this is in a terminal.
Let us know if you have any issues, and pop into the Discord server if you need any help!
pump
fixes!This month we have been working with the players and developers of the Infinitesimal theme for pump
with fixing the hold situation in the simulation of this mode. With a lot of revisions and testing, we can happily report that the holds are operating properly now, and we are grateful to those that gave their time helping us perfect it!
Always on Top
Preference!This preference was requested by a lot of our streamer players, as they said it can cause issues with the streaming and capture methods they use.
This preference which is simply entitled AlwaysOnTop
is set to 0 (false) by default, which is the normal behaviour of the game. To enable it while you stream you can set this to 1 and the game will always be on the top of the screen even if you click off or have a window behind it.
Thanks to Zui and Shrmp0 in the Discord for making the suggestion known to us and for our streamer friends for enjoying the game on different platforms.
AllowRotation
Preference!This preference was back-ported from Alpha V as some of our users have requested support for rotational options. This pref is off by default, and allows rotation for vertical based screens where the resolution/display is rotated, mainly for vertical options.
For songs which have a multiple chart in the folder, like pump
, be-mu
, po-mu
, kbx
via osu etc, there is a slight bug in the way the game sends the 'length' data to the theme/engine that counts stages at the moment. This is a long upstream bug and we are working on a fix in Alpha V, and will backport it when it is ready.
The issue is, if some charts are different lengths, they will show correctly in screen game-play, but only display the LONGEST length in the music wheel, or 'ScreenSelectMusic' as it's known to themers. Fixing this bug will also benefit other modes so it is something we want to work on.
This release has an updated installer that better reflects the feel of OutFox, and gives us a better platform to use moving forward. We hope you like it!
be-mu
/po-mu
songs on Endless Mode may have a crash on song loading. Please be aware that course mode for these modes are a bit temperamental at the moment!gh
mode: Some charts may cause a crash when loaded into the gamegddm
/gdgf
mode: We do not support the XA codec at this time, it'll play those keysounds silently.Mode Specific
bongo
: NEW! Added new bongo
modebongo
: Added support for tja file chart auto-generationbongo
: Added support for osu file chart auto-generationbongo
: Added new note-skin supportbongo
: Added editor supportbe-mu
: Fixed bug with MusicThread endlessly looping on BMS/PMS filespump
: Fixed mini-holds (128ths/192nds) from auto-hitting themselvespump
: Added new code path for hold checkpoints and mini holds so they work and are not incorrectly scored / hit according to SM5 dancepump
: Fixed hold display issuepump
: Fixed timing on holds for missespump
: Fixed pump hold issue with hit timingpump
: Adjust pump micro-holds to be closer to what players expectdance
/smx
/techno
: Fixed bug with life on non-pump
holds killing the playerbe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Auto switch to HQ mp4 movie BGA if availablebe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Fixed title being overwritten resulting in the directory name being usedbe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Fixed regex causing #TITLE to be emptybe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Removed SM3.9 era cruft from the parsers be-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Removed defunct Unicode conversion as we do it properly nowbe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Fixed CommonSubstring overflows resulting in bad #TITLE/#SUBTITLE titlebe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Fixed bad SM4 code breaking some #SUBTITLE entriesbe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Fixed multi-layer backgrounds not being initialised correctlybe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Removed bad converting code for #ARTIST and #GENREbe-mu
/po-mu
/gddm
/gdgf
: Fixed bug causing cache generation lagging on initial parsing on first bootbe-mu
& po-mu
: Fixed bug with MusicThread endlessly looping on BM*/PMS filesbe-mu
& po-mu
: Fixed bugs with keysounds returning empty, which fixes extended BMS/PMSkbx
: Fixed bug with early ending holds in osu filestaitai
: Fixed bug with songs ending 2 notes earlytaitai
: Fixed note placement on editorEngine
AllowRotation=1
in the preference.ini if you use a vertical orientated monitorAlwaysOnTop=1
in the preference.ini to enable this. Good for streaming!Windows 7+ (Win32 and x64):
Linux:
UsingLinuxJS
to 0 to set to use /dev/input/event and use evdev.MacOS (Universal):
ARM32/ARM64: (Raspberry Pi etc)
Mode Specific
be-mu
& po-mu
: Fixed bug with 2 old BMS channel layouts left in by accidentbe-mu
& po-mu
: Fixed bug with endless loops on long chartsdance
: Fixed bug with hang on lights on menus in some weird casesdance
: Fixed bug with some older charts causing a 'loading' hangpump
: New! Added AVMod scrolling modepump
: New! Added fourV2lane colour noteskinskbx
: New! Added NoMines to PlayerOptionsSimple()kbx
: Fixed bug with pump auto-gen charts not working correctlykickbox
: Fixed bug with missing items and layoutskbx
: Fixed crash on loading .qp and .osz packed chartsEngine
Windows 7+ (Win32 and x64):
Linux:
MacOS (Universal):
ARM32/ARM64: (Raspberry Pi etc)