Apr 15, 2023
All text is now way sharper. This took longer than it should have given how scaling works in spriteKit. The previous lo-fi look was intentional, but the crisper text feels fresher
Random and Random (by same artist) songs are now displayed on the Score screen so you no longer need to start the song to find out. I also added the ability to randomize the next songs
New star medallion graphic added. Same star designs also show up on Discord Rich Presence
Mar 24, 2023
Just one new feature that was long overdue. For Guitar Hero charted drums I never addressed the Star Power, now I have. I just wasn't aware of how they worked. Every time I played a GH track and there were no SP triggers it made me wonder and then I would forget
Mar 19, 2023
When adjusting the Master Volume while in the Menu screen, the volume was applied to the currently playing preview. Likewise, when the Preview Volume was adjusted during game play, the preview volume was applied to the song playing. This is now fixed
Volume settings now save immediately - before if game crashed, the setting would be lost
This is only an issue with OGG files. In the song menu if a song got deselected right as the preview was about to play, the preview didn't get canceled and it played on top of the next preview. I kinda fixed this, but not quite. The preview will cancel after the next move. There is a race condition inside FFMpeg that I do not understand
Also fixed a crash related to OGG previews triggered by similar timing as above. FFMpeg is a black box to me and I don't know what's going on. There is no issue if music is converted to native formats
May 13, 2022
Noice now keeps track of FC count. It only tracks the count for the FCs achieved in the highest difficulty. Meaning that when a higher difficulty gets achieved, the count resets to 1 and continues from there on
There is no visual representation FC count yet, just the record keeping
The camera in the string instrument scenes was different from drums. This messed up some of the visual effects that are based on camera distance. It all looks better now
I forgot to link the tentacle models to the String instrument scenes. Tentacles now show up in all instrument modes
Mar 5, 2022
Guitar & Bass are almost feature complete and ready to play. I had not touched this since very early development and at some point I broke what little there was, but now it's good. There are still features to add and I'll be focusing more on guitar
All new designs to reflect guitar controllers. They are placeholders but I still took care to make them feel right
Made new particle effects for button presses and sustains
Sustains now track score, and Overdrive is working properly - except for additional overdrive gain with whammy
This now works for guitar as it does for drums
Some versions ago I changed very important parts in the code and never updated guitar, so guitar didn't even load at all. It now works of course and it's better than ever
If the last note had a sustain, it displayed wrong and beyond the length of the song
I changed the activation timing to reflect Rock Band's. When reaching a multiplier, it now applies to the note that set it. Before it would only affect the following notes. In guitar, notes within a chord would count as a combo, now only the chord does
I updated the cutoff calculations to be more balanced between songs
The notes for overdrive sometimes were misaligned. This happened in the previous version but now it's fixed
Feb 15, 2022
All the issues listed in version 0.13 have been fixed. There may be an unknown bug in there somewhere - time will tell
All features were also updated to be on par with the native files. Fading in/out, instrument muting, crowd sing alongs, rewind, etc, are all working
Added more details like Phrase, Charter, etc. If a song is missing detail information like Album, Phrase, etc, it now displays alternate information
Feb 12, 2022
That's right, I finally added OGG support and it's not perfect! This are the current caveats:
EDIT: All these have been fixed in v0.14!
This is because multi-tracks go out of sync when jumping to a location on the track. I'm working on a solution. Game plays fine as long as you don't use the Pause feature
Because of the sync issue, if I jump ahead in the song, the tracks get out of sync. Single track and native files work fine. Also not an issue if a "preview.ogg" file is included
Things like Fade-In/Fade-Out are not implemented… yet. But not sure If I'll be able to. As is, just changing the volume causes Pops
I just haven't implemented these features for the Ogg player. As noted above, I hope when I do, it doesn't cause pops when muting them. Also I don't have a fade transition for the crowd, so it would be a bit jarring to just turn it on and off
My implementation of ffmpeg created a race condition because when the player "stops" the ogg stream gets deallocated from memory. Noice might crash when code tries to access the stream after this happens. It is stable enough for now
With that said, natively supported files (m4a, aac, mp3) run better. For OGGs I'm using ffmpeg libraries which I could potentially use to convert files from within noice
Sometimes when you beat the high score it would say you tied it. This was caused by a race condition where the old score was getting updated with the new score and then compared. The correct score was always saved and displayed tho
Fixed condition where a song preview would keep playing after transitioning to another song or menu
Feb 5, 2022
Let your friends see what song you are playing, how many stars you earned on a song, or if you are just browsing your extensive song library. This only shows if you have discord running before you start noice and have status enabled
More statuses to share and artwork variety
Jan 27, 2022
FCs are now tracked and saved. On the score screen this is only displayed as a placeholder that reads "[fc]", but in the selection menu FCs are shown as a Gold record for expert and as Silver for other difficulties
When playing random, the song title and artist is displayed at the beginning so there is no waiting to recognize the song
High score is displayed during game play and counts down as you approach it with a new score
A few fixes
Jan 2, 2022
Noice now runs on M1 native and it is silky smooth.
There is also a new splash screen
Aug 22, 2021
I updated the textures to the note highway. Overall they are higher resolution, but also the Star Power mode has a new paisley design
When in the score display you can hit blue tom to play a random song from the same artist. If there is only 1 song from that artist the previous song will replay
I was displaying "***" for when the singer is idle, but some songs had idle tags even when the singer was, well, singing. So it would cause very rapid animation changes and sometimes the wrong lyrics would display. I removed the "***", and also updated the animations so there is no overlaps or funky animations
In very edges cases, when missing a note right before a Star Power(SP) run, SP triggers would appear. Sometimes doubling up with other notes
Also changed the score checking method. Before if you hit a trigger during a note break right before an SP run, it would invalidate the run even tho it hadn't technically started. Now the run is only invalidated after the first note in the run is in the hit window. This is an actual game changer since it can affect the score. I never caught it before because it required a specific mistake I usually don't make
Jul 2, 2021
I made the mistake of running different builds with the same build number. This causes the signature to get revoked and all previous software released with that certificate to not run anymore - Apple also throws in a nice little warning to the tune of "This software will destroy your computer… throw in trash and report to Apple". Anyway, I got a new certificate so this release should be working again
I fixed a case where the song info would not update correctly, now it should always work
I fixed some of the Lyrics. Some songs floating around out there don't have lyrics properly tag as lyrics. This lyrics weren't displayed before and now they do. Instead of reading the lyrics event tag, I just ignore it completely and try to figure out what should be an event and what is a lyric. Please report any issues
Jun 8, 2021
New state machine behind the scenes fixed a lot of menu issues with objects ending in the wrong place when animations are interrupted by navigating too fast between menus.
I changed the encoding for reading midi files so more Lyrics display correctly - this should fix all lyrics in Latin languages, but I'm not sure if it will break others. Please report if other Lyrics are broken. FYI, some lyrics may not display because they were marked as "text" in the midi file instead of "lyric".
Fixed the crash that happens when starting up Noice and selecting the first song too quickly. I've tested several times and haven't been able to crash it.
Jun 8, 2021
By pressing Orange (Bass kick or Spacebar on the keyboard) you can invoke a help screen with the current menu options. The menu is contextual and goes away by pressing any button
Now there is a display and comparison of the best streak
Crowd volume control now does stuff - it scales with the master control. When coming back from random play or the list menus song info now updates correctly. Finally, hitting the blue cymbal from the score screen will restart the same song
Mar 18, 2021
Now you can get a list of the latest songs added to the library. Simply press the minus key on the keyboard
Lists also have labels now
The pentapus now reacts to Hits and Misses with new texture animations. This is still a work in progress with more improvements to come. I ran into issues with shader modifiers and had to leave some stuff out - but I submitted a bug report to Apple and they responded, so fingers crossed
Also made a few other graphical improvements
The volume setting didn't change the Drum tracks volume, making them too loud in some situations. Now it does
Navigating too quickly between Song Menu and Gameplay would make some menu items appear in the wrong context. Fixed it! (you can still navigate too fast and get strange effects but it's very stable)
When the song preview is muted, the last 2 seconds of the preview would play at full volume. Fixed it!
Some situations would cause the song to start at the wrong place. Fixed it!
Fixed a couple of mysterious crashes. There is still a crash sometime when quitting the game
Made other misc. improvements
I'm going to continue refining the background animations and visuals, setting up templates for custom backgrounds. Also more sound controls
Mar 14, 2021
New background animation. This can be turned off and on from the application menu (menu > kraken > release?). Changes to this setting only takes effect after starting a new track
Future feature for this will be customization
Individual volume controls for overall songs and song menu previews. The preview volume is a percentage of the overall volume
Note: crowd volume slider doesn't do anything yet
If you run into any issues, feel free to ask me directly or leave a comment below
email: [email protected]
Twitter: @artecolote