UseOldJoystickMapping preference to choose your input systemThis edition features another rewrite of the Input System for OutFox. Due to windows updates, (and Ubuntu updates) that have directly affected several of our users, we have taken the time to bring forward our plans to fix this sooner rather that later.
What this means to you, our players. You now have a choice of using the XInput which will be enabled by default, (and has been the norm since alpha 4.5) which gives the familiar buttons on the XBox controller. We have added a new controller option row in the 'Experimental Settings' which will allow easy change, you will need to reboot your game to reinitialise the input system, but we will make this a non-game reset option in a future update. There is also a preference you can edit which is called UseOldJoystickMapping setting this to 0 sets the XInput mode, and setting this to 1 enables the legacy (HIDAPI) mode for your controller or pad.
You will likely need to check your offset for this update, if you are swapping modes, as some controllers behave slightly different in legacy/XInput. This is true especially of custom Arduino pads, so take time to remember to test this.
If you use older controllers, please ensure they are plugged in BEFORE you start the game. Because we do not depend on DirectX anymore, we need to initialise the system on game start. We are looking into this, but once the system is live, controllers can be added and removed as normal. We really do not want to go back to DInput7 or DInput8 as Microsoft is really punishing use of these system and will remove them outright eventually.
Keyboard players can use either method, this update fixed a couple of awry driver update issues on steelseries/Corsair keyboards to fix their polling issue, so you can play as normal.
If you have an SMX 4k/5k/pump pad, you can use either mode, but some players have mentioned that legacy 'feels tighter' than XInput for this pad. Give it a try and let us know your thoughts.
This new mode allows for more than 4 controllers (which XInput is limited to by design), and does not require a mapping for the gamecontrollerdb.txt file which XInput pads require. This new mode allows the older Joystick path to run, which is based on HIDAPI, thus giving us a greater level of controller support than ever before. If your controller does not show up in OutFox, or has become troublesome since the operating system updates, this is the mode for you. If you have any issues with the new system (bear in mind, you WILL need to go to Key mapping and map all the buttons for your controller to their actions. YOU DO NOT NEED TO USE CONTROLLER MAPPING WITH THIS MODE!
The legacy mode returns to a slightly more familiar system from 5.1/5.0 so those of you with particularly troublesome controllers will no longer have issues. The ParaParaParadise Controller prefers to be on legacy. So if you use OutFox for Para/ParaStar/EKS-D remember to set this in your game, and restart. The PPP Controller needs to be plugged in BEFORE you start the game, due to how windows operates now. This is true for Ubuntu also. Mac OSX now also properly supports this controller.
On the subject of ParaPara Paradise, this month has seen a lot of work and collaboration to finally fix some of the glaring issues for this mode. We will continue to do this for all our modes, so look out for updates!
We hope you all enjoy the new revamped Para Mode, and remember it's also playable on MacOS fully for the first time! If you have any feedback or questions please do not hesitate to contact us on the discord!
This version sees the launch of a new loading window, which has plagued the game since 2007. We plan to use this new window for more features in the future, and it will become fully themeable for those of you that wish to modify it. It is cross platform so replaces the legacy Linux Loader, and the horribly bugged MacOSX loader. The other good thing about this mode is when you load songs, it will check your audio files for availability. What this means, if the file is corrupted or damaged, or just unable to be loaded by the game, you will get a notice in your log file. For ease of viewing, you can scan the games songs with the new version, then check out info.txt in your /logs folder. if you have any damaged songs or corrupt mp3s etc, they will be logged here. An example from my own simfile collection:
WARNING: Sound file /AdditionalSongs/parapara/Big O/Big O.ogg couldn't be opened: . Please check it is not corrupted and redownload the file.
We hope you find this a welcome addition, as it will prevent some sudden crashing or silence being played in the song wheel. This feature will be worked on in the future, so if you have any ideas please throw them our way! Sometimes the window will look like it's 'locked up' on Windows - this is just the SSC cache being generated! Give it a moment and it'll sort itself out, it only does it once.
We have plans to allow the online patcher and for configurations to be changed/set up for the future, so I'm hoping it is stable for you all and works as designed.
This has been in the background for some time. LibMAD has been a bit of a thorn in our side for some years, and as it is also GPL, it does not really fit with our closed source phase, so we have spent the past 3 months working on a resolution. We have two drivers, Libmpeg123, and dr_mp3. Libmpeg123 will be added when we are open source, and currently is on a closed branch not for distribution. dr_mp3 is the new library we have chosen to fully support as it finally adds VBR support, it's lightweight, and also finally stops one of the broken_pipe problems on the Raspberry Pi 2/3 boards. It also has meant we have taken the time to identify more problems with the sound delivery in the game, so we will be fixing these in the future. For now we have tweaked the pipe to be consistent across drivers, so this also has given us a better experience across the different modes. We also will be looking at a new asynchronous loading mode for Keysounds, primarily for beat/popn so the load times will be reduced and this will deliver a better player experience.
If you experience any issues with the new sound driver, do let us know, but it has had some serious testing so we're hoping it is stable and sane for you guys!
The other fixes for this month include:
ALL:
Windows:
Access Violation issues with older videosLinux:
MacOSX:
ARM/ARM64: (Raspberry Pi etc)
Community Content:
(The 'source' code below is the reporting issues template, it is not the source for OutFox)