Release – Notedrop Ar10Δ

As you may have noticed, a new release of Notedrop has been released! The changes in this release are aimed to increase accessibility while also making the game a bit more fair. I increased the size of normal notes and made the backdrop behind them darker to make notes easier to see, and I also decreased the base fall speed a bit. Finally, be prepared for a little surprise when you enter the game!

SNOW! SNOW EVERYWHERE!I ruined the surprise.

Detailed release notes can be read below. Various footnotes are present at the end of the release notes.

Notedrop Ar10D-Ab19D Release Notes

GENERAL
• Error console text can now be edited, mainly for deleting if it gets ridiculously big (and also because the text causes lag).
• MultiBPM added (see CHART PROCESSING section).

MAIN MENU
• SNOW! SNOW EVERYWHERE!

SETTINGS
• Fixed a bug where volume would be at 100% regardless of the saved setting until the Audio/Data tab in the Settings Menu is accessed.
• Fixed a bug where the Audio Synchronization Tool would report inaccurate values if timing offset was changed, and the tool was reloaded (left Audio/Data tab and returned to Audio/Data tab).
• Uniform/Alternating set as new default for Shift Mode Lane Color Style.
• Edited shortcuts (Esc/~, Enter, S exit when not doing keybinds; Esc/~ stops keybind entering, Enter moves to next w/o changing, arrow keys move keybind entering).

CHARTLIST
• Made a small optimization to chartlist entry display code.
• Added a small highest ranking achieved display underneath difficulties on chartlist entries.
• “Select a keymode,” “Select a difficulty” now ALWAYS show, because of confusion while using the chartlist.
• Fixed a bug where pressing play before the eyecatch loaded would cause the game to freeze at 100% load.

EFFECTORS
• Rebalanced effector score bonuses/penalties, and rebalanced speed effector limits. [3]
• Speed effector passive speed increase is now based on number of notes hit, +0% corresponding to 0 notes hit and +20% to the minimum amount of notes required to not fail the song due to health.
• Added more keyboard shortcuts (E to exit, Enter to exit).

CHART PROCESSING
• Notedrop now supports MultiBPM; the line “MultiBPM|1” has to be in the song metadata file, and a text file Artist-Song-MultiBPM.txt in the song data file. Because MultiBPM files will usually be made by a chart moderator, charters only need to know the format in order to figure out what beat something actually falls on.
• MultiBPM files only contain lines in one format: [offset],[newBpm],[newBeatsPerMeasureLine],[newBeatCount].
• [offset] is the whole song’s offset (integral, in milliseconds) that the new section starts at. The beat value from the previous section is retained.
• [newBpm] is the bpm of the new section.
• [newBeatsPerMeasureLine] is the new number of beats that there are between measure lines.
• [newBeatCount] is the new beats count for measure line purposes. If it is negative, then the beat count is retained, but modulo’d to the new time signature. If it is any other value, then the beats count is set to that value (and modulo’d by the new time signature). Be warned: much faggotry can occur due to the difference between a new section starting BEFORE a beat and AFTER a beat. The beat value CHANGES ON the beat (there’s no such thing as a “partial beat” for these purposes). Henceforth, it becomes apparent that the measure lines can become misplaced by a beat if the new beat count is not set appropriately based on the offset. Because of rounding errors, it can be really hard to tell which value is the correct one, so I suggest just letting it go and changing it when you notice stuff screwing up in the game.
• Fixed a bug causing rare specific charts to have massively misplaced notes. [4]

GAME
• Base fall speed reduced by approximately 13%. (Effectors for fall speed have not had their limits changed, effectively nerfing their difficulty.) [1]
• Scoring system changed to reduce score from breaks based on percentage of breakable notes (without dying) broken instead of linear amount of notes broken. Scores are overall higher now, and ranking limits have been adjusted to the new curve. Since the metadata used to calculate scores has not changed, scores are not reset. They will change, though, and sometimes the ranking will change too. [2]
• While full combo is maintained, a pulsating indicator is active.
• Increased the size of the current ranking that has been achieved on the score bar.
• Added a red pulsating “lost maximum score” effect on the score bar.
• High score indicator turns red if it becomes impossible to achieve.
• Fixed a bug that would break the game if a P rank is achieved.
• Height of standard notes increased for better visibility.
• Back of note area of gear darkened for better visibility of notes.
• Added indicators at the top-right corner for “non-official” or non-scoring play, e.g. offline play, practice mode, etc.
• Very very very tiny optimization.

CHART COMPLETE MENU
• Added an indicator for non-official play, i.e. offline play
• Removed selectability of ranking text.

SCORE DATA
• Moved ranking code to score data class.

[1] I found HighSpeed (200%) to be a bit faster than I wanted it to be for faster songs, so I reduced the base fall speed.
[2] The previous score scaling based on breaks was overall too harsh, and was much harsher on songs with large amounts of notes. Changing it to be based on the percentage of total notes made easy songs harder in scoring than hard songs, so I made it the percentage of total notes breakable, which is higher in easier songs. That balanced out the scoring, which now scales quite fairly with song difficulty and is generally much nicer (removing around 5% score for the first break as opposed to 13% originally).
[3] The new fall speed effectors are at 200%, 300%, and 400%, rather than 200%/400%/600%. Originally I thought of “increases of 200%,” but I didn’t realize that the original speed is 100%, so while the first increase is of 100%, each successive increase is 200%. That made SuperSpeed (orig. 400%) already a very fast “sprint,” and SS+ (600%) really hard to keep up with. The new speeds are much more consistent with the “paced run” (HS), “quick run” (SS), and “all-out sprint” (SS+) paces I wanted, increasing by 100% each time.
[4] Yes, this was the bug that made I Want You 4K HD spaz out.

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