OutFox Alpha 4.9.8 Build

(Incorporates Internal Builds 4.9.7.1, 4.9.7.2 and 4.9.7.3)

(Alpha Statistics - 562 commits, 1,255 changed files with 33,866 additions and 6,663 deletions)

If you find that your histogram is slightly skewed one side or the other, like the example below, please take a moment to go into options -> audio offsync and recalibrate your offset. Since 4.9.7GG we have slightly adjusted the renderer pipeline to optimise how we deal with frames within the Kernel Timer of the OS. This is to prepare for new sound/render drivers coming in the near future, but as we’ve found with a lot in this game, baby steps to fix little blockers before we do major updates. We also have removed more of the Rage Engine in favour of modern mathematics algorithms, and this has needed a slight tweak to the order on how we draw things.

This example above shows the mismatched offset from 4.9.7GG

Using the sound offset menu to sync your system, you can get a much tighter response, and this will enable you to chase those fantastics!

This (slightly delayed) month’s update beings some inner reworkings to the gameplay and modes available to play. We are listing them here for your awareness so you can help test them with us, but they will be officially announced in a future release, so please be aware these new modes ARE NOT COMPLETE, and DO NOT REFLECT the final finished versions for their type, due to the fact most of them have no dedicated theme or style setup as they’ve not been touched in 7-15 years. We are going to stop the trend of ‘adding new stuff then doing nothing with it’ that was so common in the project we are formed from, so that is not going to continue with OutFox. All modes support all the modding systems that dance does, so for those of you that wish to explore, have at it! Most of these modes are sadly neglected and have been without support or a maintainer for upwards of a decade, so be a touch sympathetic to them if you decide to take the time to explore, they will be given the love they deserve.

Firstly, lets talk about the new modes. These are still a work in progress, but are functional for you to experience.

If you wish to autogen charts, you can go to Options -> System Settings -> Project OutFox Settings -> Autogen Steps to ON. Restart your game, and the autogen will make some charts for you to play the new modes. For a better experience, go to the ‘modifiers’ menu on player options (when you have selected a song, double tap start) and select super shuffle as it will rebalance the notes across the new modes, instead of favouring the left hand side. We will be fixing the auto-generator in a future release, but this works well for now for you to at least have a play.

The new keybindings for the modes will be updated shortly on our wiki.

This is a 9 panel (and 10 panel) drum mode based off of the DTX drum kits and inspired by DrumMania, that supports Midi drums and original controllers. Midi support is only on Windows at this time, but we will have a working driver for all platforms by the end of the summer. Gameplay is played on drums, (or keyboard!) and follows the drum use in a chart.

The theming for this mode is incomplete, as is common with a lot of the project at the moment, but again there is enough there to play and experiment with! The editor can be used to create charts, as the new DTX loader for this mode is being built and will be made available in the future. If you have comments or thoughts about this mode, let us know.

This mode is based off of the 3 fret/lane guitar mode inspired from Guitarfreaks, however, we have chosen to expand it to include the 5 lane (and a new exclusive 6 lane mode!) for OutFox’s inspired mode.

gdgf uses much tighter timing than the other guitar mode, so take a moment and test yourself if you’re feeling brave! This mode will use the new DTX loader when it’s complete, but you can also use Autogen or the editor to have a play with some charts in the meantime. Again, we have yet to build a theme for this mode, so please bear with us while we create new stuff for these modes.

This is a 5 lane (and 6 lane coming soon!) mode based off of a collection of popular games that used a guitar styled controller to press frets and strum along to bass and guitar parts of a song. We have added a new .CHART and .MIDI loader, and new note types and internal changes so this mode works without being squished around the old 4K dance engine side.

There will be new theme and broken down menu options for this mode in due course, when we introduce a new experience for those who wish to try it.

We support Jam Mode where one player can be one play type, and the other can backup or be rhythm. This has the benefit of adding variety into the play, and allows you both to play different parts of the song at the same time. You can do this on several of the styles.

One thing to note! You should go into the player options when selecting a song and ensure that you set the modifications to Constant BPM, and set the speed mod to around C450 to emulate the speed from clone hero or similar.

At the bottom of this menu, if you go to effects and scroll down towards the bottom, you will also see a new selection of modifiers available exclusively in gh mode:

The evaluation and results screens will be reworked in the next version, so ignore the fact it’s counting calories and pretending to be dance mode!

This mode has been around for a very long time, but has not really had any support or been looked at since before 2010. It was side-lined into the BMS loader, which actually broke a lot of the needed changes PMS actually uses, and as a result most PMS files with 7 or 9 lanes, would be added to the game as beat 10 lane or 14 lane charts. It was known there were issues with this mode, but we were not aware it was broken as bad as it was.

Squirrel would like to thank the anonymous japanese player we’ll name “竹 (Take)” girl, for reporting this bug, who wanted to play Nitro’s PMS chart of the song on OutFox, but experienced the issue above, and there were also issues with how the keysounds were being loaded for this song in popn mode and she took the time to give a very detailed report in DM on discord, but deleted her account before we could see her username. I thank you a lot for the report, and if you ever read this, please come and say hi in our discord!

Squirrel took the time to investigate it and it was decided to code a new modernised PMS loader to the game, which now correctly loads PMS songs as they should be. This also removes the oddity and edge crashes when anyone wished to play popn mode on OutFox. This song, ‘竹’ (Bamboo) charted by Nitro was used as a testbed to debug and ensure it properly works correctly in the game, so we took time to fix it so it would be recognised as a 9 Button PMS file. I’d like to thank Nitro for charting this as we would never have had the report which meant we could fix 13 year old bugs on our PMS and BMS loaders, and to 竹 girl for taking the time to bring it to our attention so we could fix this properly and have a restored mode. You can find them at https://twitter.com/NitroX72 - Thanks again Nitro!

We also have added 2 new noteskins from our community member Daniel, which really add to the style of the game. We have cat, cat-retro, bun, and bun retro!

(The theme will be complete for the summer)

We have taken some older PMS files from the talented folks at Colorful Channel that also did not parse and work correctly, and these now do show up and play as expected once again.

As per the BMS/PMS specification, we also have added for the first time, new #BGA channel 06 (POOR), 07 (BG2) and 0A (LAYER 2) support, and will code these effectively when the theme for this mode is complete. We also support the missing LN# (Long Notes) that have never been in this game before, as well as the #ITEM channels.

We will continue to adapt and add the missing functionality from PMS moving forward, now it has it’s own loader. This loader now also supports 3 lane (in preparation for battle support), 4 lane for hello pop’n (ハロー！ポップンミュージック) and 5/7 lanes for pop’n portable (ポップンミュージックポータブル). These have been coded and added to the game, with the 3 lane awaiting new PMS code and subtype item code to be added before it will work. There is also a rumoured 18 lane mode, which I’m trying to research. If you know any sources/samples/charts, let Squirrel know!

Just adding this here to show the ‘miss’ or #BGA06 POOR layer in action. As is typical, we have no theme…

This needs coding and the proper layout supported, as moving forward we also want to add and support the missing BMS specification as well as add new support via BMSON in the future. It is just part of our pledge to support new and interesting modes moving forwards that we hope folks will enjoy!

We have added the missing 9panel/18panel support from this mode, as requested by a few folks. There was enough demand to add the extra panel. You can create charts for this on the editor, as we do not believe there are any sims for this yet!

18 panel example gameplay is here:

This mode requires good mobility and that you don’t use too much polish as slippery pads can lead to falls!

A Techno 18 panel in the wild, with a cat token collector!

This one is important. Due to the need to change the system for the new BGA/Layer system for the BMS/PMS/DTX etc mode support, we have had to adjust the methodology in how the pause menu is drawn by the theme. On the default theme, the hold escape to give up option has been swapped to give an instant display of the menu. Older/OutFox supported themes that are specifically for dance will experience no change here, as we have kept backwards compatibility for them. We will look at re-adding this ‘hold’ option in the future perhaps if it can be sorted within the new modes.

** New Feature **

This function will add a tail note to all holds and lifts, making it so that you have to lift your foot/finger/etc from the end of a hold. This adds a little bit of a challenge for files, and can help with training for foot positions for players that wish to progress to higher chart difficulties. The benefits of removing the foot at the correct time can enable better preparedness for upcoming streams or any technical that the chart may have, which could be lost because of inaccurate foot removal from holds or rolls.

On rolls, they have the same behaviour as before, however, the last lift will be done on the ‘beat’ of that roll. Once more, this trains for better foot stance and movement when a roll ends especially for stamina play. The player will be recorded a normal note ‘miss’ if the tail lift is not performed at the correct moment.

These modifiers are available in all game modes, however, not all noteskins will have the support for them, and some themers will need to add these to their player options menus if they wish to add the availability to their theme.

• ❕❌ ISSUE gh mode: Some charts have no real ‘standard’ and will cause a crash when loaded into the game
• ❕❌ ISSUE gdgf mode: The input mode doesn’t correctly register strums
• ❕❌ ISSUE techno/popn/gdgf/gddm/gh/para mode: Trying to use the sync audio screen will crash the game - Use dance to sync your game for now
• ❕❌ ISSUE Nvidia 460 series drivers: Some issues have been reported and we are investigating
• ❕❌ ISSUE beat/popn some early (pre2013) songs may play some sound samples / keysounds at the wrong speed

• ❕✅ Fixed video banners
• ❕✅ Fixed missing str2int support
• ❕✅ Added new sanity check for notes in the StepCollector
• ❕✅ Added multiBaO support stub for future use
• ❕✅📝Fixed F6+F3+3 restart on screen gameplay crash #23 (Thanks @pcboygames!)
• ❕✅📝Fixed Video Rates not being in time to beat #220 (Thanks @SilentTempest83!)
• ❕✅ Fixed DrawMode C style error with some legacy modfiles using -1
• ❕✅ Fixed initial scoring tables to ensure fallback scoring was consistent
• ❕✅🐲 Added Random Unsigned capabilities
• ❕✅🐲 Added DDR style random generator for BG Anim
• ❕✅🐲📝 Fix Python2/3/ExtIO/Satellite from sitting in a never ending loop (Thanks Dalcor!)
• ❕✅🐲📝 Fix Crash on Python2 boards on windows 7 (Thanks Dalcor!)
• ❕✅🐲 New working touchscreen code
• ❕✅🐲 Multi-touch finger support
• ❕✅🐲📝 Fix Menu buttons remapping on restart #278 (Thanks @Areldyb!)
• ❕✅ New Higher Res icons for the default theme
• ❕✅🐲 Add new Reflex and SMX HIDAPI driver stubs
• ❕✅🐲 Add new Reflex Player 2 and SMX Player 2 HIDAPI driver stubs
• ❕✅ Optimise VideoModeParams
• ❕✅🐲📝 Fix Math in Tween Sub systems #271
• ❕✅🐲📝 Remove Heap and Memory Stack issues with Tween System #272
• ❕✅🐲📝 Add Remaining 4 point Tween animation functions #273
• ❕✅📝Fixed Game Crash when song preview ends #305
• ❕✅📝Removed final batch of cmd in fallback #298
• ❕✅📝Removed Pause Menu from the game due to QA #269
• ❕✅📝Make Profile information load upon loading #297
• ❕✅ Add support for multi-layered press check on mouse input for Lua
• ❕✅ Fixed ‘sticky’ mouse keys on some screens not honouring bIsPressed = false
• ❕✅ Added proper Mouse / Touch co-ordinate system to the game
• ❕✅ Added 1080/720/480p screen co-ordinate support for non-default / legacy / 5.x themes
• ❕✅ Added new streamlined pause menu which is not hidden when mods or gimmicks are used
• ❕✅ Fixed missing pause menu on BMS/PMS
• ❕✅ Fixed index overflow with some background movies
• ❕✅ Fixed duplicate start sound playing on edit menu
• ❕✅🐲 Restored smooth tween back to the game
• ❕✅ Removed smooth tween from Lua
• ❕✅ Adjusted behaviour on orient to be more accurate on placement when close to notes
• ❕✅ Renamed guitar to gdgf to ensure clarity
• ❕✅📝Corrected ‘moteskin’ typo (Thanks Moneko!)
• ❕✅ Fixed Para noteskin
• ❕✅🐲 Added new upscale filter options for FFMPEG
• ❕✅🐲 Added new DTX loader skeleton
• ❕✅🐲 Added new BMS-DTX space support
• ❕✅🐲 Added new #BGA 06/07/0A support for PMS/BMS files
• ❕✅🐲 Added new BMP loader stub
• ❕✅🐲 Added new TJA loader skeleton
• ❕✅🐲 Added new CHART loader stub inspired by Mikex5
• ❕✅🐲 Reworked and rewrote CHART loader to function effectively with OutFox
• ❕✅🐲 Added new MIDI loader stub inspired by Mikex5
• ❕✅🐲 Reworked and rewrote MIDI loader to function effectively with OutFox
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed initial parsing modes with chart and midi not producing playable charts
• ❕✅🐲 Added gh Guitar 5/Bass 5 mode to the game
• ❕✅🐲 Added new note groups: hopo, open, strum
• ❕✅🐲 Added gh fever system
• ❕✅🐲 Added gh multiplier system
• ❕✅🐲 Added gh anchor system
• ❕✅🐲 Added ability to play as main and backing in gh mode
• ❕✅🐲 Added new gh noteskins
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed and rewrote midi parser to support expected note types
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed and rewrote chart parser to support expected note types
• ❕✅ Fixed bug with some songs generating NULL after being loaded with the midi loader
• ❕✅ Added 5 and 6 lane modes to gh mode
• ❕✅ Added 6 lane mode to gdgf mode
• ❕✅ Added anchor support to gh mode
• ❕✅ Fixed holds in gh / gdgf / beat / popn / para fading to black when hit
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed #LN holds being drawn erratically on beat/popn modes when using older parser
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed unable to hit >4 pop-kuns at the same time bug in popn
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed unable to hit row of 9 in a row pop-kuns at end of ’take’ in popn
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed unable to hold more than 2 pop-kuns at the same time bug in popn
• ❕✅🐲 Added new popn PMS loader rewritten for OutFox
• ❕✅🐲 Added new popn loader modes and styles missing from the game
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed Vorbis overflow with some PMS files when loading a mix of .wav and .ogg keysounds
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed crash on restarting song from pause menu when loading a mix of .wav and .ogg keysounds
• ❕✅🐲 Added new colour key effect, mainly in preparation for new BGM support
• ❕✅ Fixed overflow in notefield on techno 16 and 18 styles
• ❕✅ Fixed merge error in Game manager that lost gddm on some options
• ❕✅ Added new Vorbis check statements for new formats
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed missing GL1.1 hook that mis-fired and allowed ancient hardware to crash
• ❕✅ Added 9/18/20 lane support for missing modes
• ❕✅ Remove RageVector4 from the game
• ❕✅ Remove RageVector3 from the game
• ❕✅ Remove RageMatrix from the game
• ❕✅ Remove RageColor from the game
• ❕✅📝Add additional actor support for noteskins (Thanks chairodactyl!)
• ❕✅ Fix renderer context handover
• ❕✅ Fix diffuse errors on theme elements
• ❕✅ Added Techno support for Broadhead
• ❕✅ Fix duplicated function calls in BMS/PMS parser
• ❕✅ Modernised Fallback code (Thanks Moru!)
• ❕✅ Removed broken song selection for gh
• ❕✅ Fixed Pause Menu System drawing errors when BGM/Modfiles could hide it by accident
• ❕✅ Fixed Pause Menu counting collection
• ❕✅ Fixed NextSong unpausing
• ❕✅ Fixed ScreenMessage handles being corrupted
• ❕✅ Fixed Crash on HandleMessage
• ❕✅ Fixed Crash on GetTopScreen() when pause was hidden
• ❕✅ Fixed White fade in quads on the new fallback updates
• ❕✅ Added new support for 240/280hz Monitors by adding a new delta clocks call. (You may need to readjust your offsets!)
• ❕✅ Set fallback to skip caution menu on non dance modes
• ❕✅ Change the ’effects’ menu to Modifiers, as it should be
• ❕✅ Don’t show dance specific stats outside of dance modes
• ❕✅ Fix spinning requirement on modern-2d
• ❕✅ Modernise the Lua Mouse Broadcasting methods to be system wide supported
• ❕✅ Fix libusb causing crashes on linux and mac
• ❕✅ Remove life punishment from gh mode
• ❕✅ Modernise note types
• ❕✅ Fix AV crash when loading more than 254 wav files on a PMS, caused by a pointless ASSERT…
• ❕✅ Fix AV crash when loading more than 254 ogg files on BMS/DTX, caused by a pointless ASSERT…

** New Feature **

• ❕✅ Added New VideoUpScaleFilter Preference

This is for people who took the time to request this availability in the video renderer. The default value is 0, which will do no filtering. If you have an older system, take the time to experiment and see how it affects your performance, as this will add a little load onto your system.

The accepted numbered values are: 0 - none <- Recommended for Rpi/Low end machines 1 - fast bilinear 2 - bilinear 3 - bicubic 4 - X Sharpens + Contrast 5 - Point 6 - Area 7 - Bicublin <- Recommended 8 - Gaussian 9 - Sinc 10 - Lanczos 11 - Spline

Take your time and experiment with the aesthetic you want for your videos, and your performance of course.

Windows 7+:

• ❕✅ Fixed several issues with SDL2’s pipeline that was causing weird slowdowns
• ❕✅ Fixed SDL2 issue where sound would crackle and pop on MK9 cabs
• ❕✅ Fixed Issue where XInput controllers wouldn’t be seen when in arcade pad mode
• ❕✅ Fixed issue with HIDAPI handles freezing on older Intel OHCI boards
• ❕✅ Changed 2 options to fix a crash with older Intel GPU chips
• ❕✅🐲 Fix buffer overflow on Reflex Pad Driver
• ❕✅🐲 Fix edge crash on 3000+ combo flashes on Reflex Pad Driver
• ❕✅ Add RTIO driver stub

** New Feature **

• ❕✅ Added New UsingArcadePads Preference

This is for people who have Python Boards, You can set this to enable the driver to work natively without any freezes. As per the work on ‘starworlds’ you need to set your preference.ini InputDrivers=Python23IO,SDL. This will set up your board driver, and allow you to use keyboard/XInput/Bluetooth controllers to control the game while you’re on your pad. You will need to set UseOldJoystickMapping=0 so the game will initialise the XInput controller driver alongside your Python board.

This preference only currently supports the Python23IO driver, but will be expanded to Reflex and other drivers in the future. PLEASE NOTE: You need to add the SDL on your InputDrivers or you will have no keyboard input!!

Windows XP Service Pack 3 (32bit):

• ❕❌ ISSUE Identified the issue that is preventing builds running on this OS, fix is in testing for next alpha
• ❕❌ ISSUE Identified an issue with compilation that is currently being investigated with FFMPEG

Linux:

• ❕✅ Added tweaks to the initialisation method for low level windows to prevent X sometimes hanging
• ❕✅ Added new WayLand stub, full support hopefully next alpha
• ❕✅ Added LightsDriver Linux Stac, (Thanks Din!)
• ❕✅ Fixed Edge Crash with ScreenMessage on Ubuntu 18.04/19.x
• ❕✅ Fixed Rare Game Freeze with ScreenMessage on Mint 16+
• ❕✅ Fixed Edge Crash when plugging in Red Octane dance pads on Ubuntu 16.04+
• ❕✅ Fix Linux compile for actors

MacOSX (Intel):

• ❕✅ Added tweaks to the initialisation method for low level windows to prevent the loading window from never closing on Sierra/High Sierra

MacOSX (Arm M1):

• ❕✅ Fixed issue with an edge case lag spike with M1 Airs with using Bluetooth Sound/Controllers
• ❕✅🐲 Fixed issue where playing some songs could crash the M1 Air

ARM32/ARM64: (Raspberry Pi etc)

• ❕✅ Fixed compilation issue on Raspberry Pi 3 that prevented the game from running for folks with 1.0/1.1 revision boards
• ❕✅ Fixed bug with Raspberry Pi 3 and Orange Pi that didn’t expose 64bit support properly
• ❕✅ Fixed AARCH64 hooks causing a memory segfault

Colors

• ❕✅ New colour scheme Y2K from jack5github
• ❕✅ New colour scheme DragonFire from Lirodon

Music

• ❕✅ Added new menu music courtesy of https://sanxion7.com/album/rush (Go see them @ https://twitter.com/SaxxonFox )

NoteSkins

• ❕✅ New popn noteskin: cat from Daniel Rotwind
• ❕✅ New popn noteskin: cat-retro from Daniel Rotwind
• ❕✅ New popn noteskin: bun from Daniel Rotwind
• ❕✅ New popn noteskin: bun-retro from Daniel Rotwind
• ❕✅ New popn noteskin: default from Lirodon
• ❕✅ New gh noteskin: default from Jousway
• ❕✅ New gh noteskin: shotrhythm from Jousway
• ❕✅ New gh noteskin: modern-2d from Lirodon
• ❕✅ New gdgf noteskin: default from Jousway
• ❕✅ New gddm noteskin: default from Jousway
• ❕✅ New techno noteskin: default from Lirodon
• ❕✅ New global noteskin: broadhead-columns from Lirodon
• ❕✅ New global noteskin: webbed from Lirodon

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)

(The ‘source’ code below is the reporting issues template, it is not the source for OutFox)