1.17 Brings Two New Tracks & Even More Improvements
Howdy! We just pushed 1.17 live, which adds two new tracks, a handful of improvements and optimizations, and more.
Don't forget: if something about this update messes up your game, you can revert to the previous version (1.16) by right clicking the game, clicking Properties, going to Betas, and choosing the "last_update" beta branch.
Here are the updates:
New tracks: "Arirang" and "Night on Bald Mountain." It took quite a bit of work to find a usable recording of "Night on Bald Mountain," beatmatch it, and edit it down into something actually playable... but we're very happy with the results! It's one of the most iconic classical pieces of all time and we're glad to have it join the game...
Improved visual effect that triggers when "Champ Mode" activates.
Added two new secret achievements...
Tracks now attempt to resync at fixed intervals rather than resync being tied to tempo.
Significant optimizations to the display of lyrics.
Ability to toggle Motion Blur added to Graphics menu.
Other bugfixes and optimizations.
The new "Champ Mode" effect actually comes from the Nintendo Switch version of the game. On the Switch, the "light bloom" post-processing effect was causing the framerate to dip slightly, so we made a custom graphic and animation. After looking at both versions for a while, we realized that the Switch's effect is actually a lot nicer than the one on PC, which only used the bloom. (The PC version still has the light bloom, but it's been toned down quite a bit...)
A lot of the updates we made might be invisible to most users, but should slightly improve performance & possibly solve weird issues that can pop up with long, intense custom-tracks.
What's next for PC?... here's what we're working on:
With the addition of Korean, we're finally finished with localization on Nintendo Switch™, so we can start moving all of that over to PC. This is a big chunk of work, but since we've already done it on Switch, we're comfortable handling it!
We've started really digging into Steam Workshop integration! The trickiest part of Workshop integration is that users need to be able to create and submit content from the standalone game itself. We're beginning this process by starting work on a nice in-game level editor. We already have a level editor in the game - this is what we use to make the new songs - but it's horrendously janky and not really usable by the public. So, we're doing our best to take the existing level editor and make it actually usable. Since we actually want the level editor to be nice, this will probably take a while, and we don't expect Workshop integration to be functional until 2024. However, we may have a level editor available for testing purposes before then...
Stay tuned for more updates and thanks for your patience!
-Holy Wow Studios