bemuse

• Fixed sound cutting problem when playing bmson files. In previous version, sometimes there’s a clicking sound at the end of a sliced keysound. As of writing, Google Chrome is not very accurate when it comes to playing and stopping sounds. I guess that it rounds to the next buffer loop before stopping. The fix is to manually stop the sound by setting fading its volume down to 0 at a precise time.
• Fixed graphics blending problem. Related issue: pixijs/pixi.js#2188

Others

• Updated code style to use eslint-config-bemuse, which is based on feross/standard code style, but is less strict.

New Features

• Personal records. If you are signed in, you should be able to see your personal record in the music selection screen.

For Developers

• Node 5. The codebase has been migrated to work with Node.js version 5.
• Hot Module Replacement. Developing this game will be much easier with hot reloading. It is now possible to tweak the user interface code and have the new code injected. See this awesome talk if you haven’t.
• Refactored online system. The code for online system has been heavily refactored. It is very far from perfect, and we lose data caching ability (in exchange with simpler code). Caching (and cache invalidation) is a hard problem and would need dedicated effort to implement it in the right way.

This release contains mainly chore work to the game’s codebase and other minor stuff.

• Faster loading. Bemuse will now download 2 package files simultaneously. This should result in faster package downloads.
• The markdown parser has switched to use markdown-it library.
• The markdown will be parsed like GFM, which means line breaks will create a new line when displayed.
• Changed file names and CSS class names to be consistent with JSX class names across the codebase.
• Allow server query string to be used instead of the more verbose BEMUSE_MUSIC_SERVER.
• The bmson related code has been moved to bmson project, to be incorporated into bemuse-indexer, and subsequently, bemuse-tools, in order to give bmson support to these tools.
• Update isparta relying on a older version of webpack that uses an incompatible regenerator, causing build errors on the CI.

• The game will now display whether you pressed the keys too early or too late.

• Audio latency compensation now available. Just go to options screen and click the “Calibrate” button.
• You can now set the speed directly inside the options screen.

• Experimental support for bmson notechart, a new notechart format that will hopefully make authoring notecharts for rhythm games much, much easier. Please read the full announcement here.

Some people have been requesting this, so I’m glad to announce that it’s now possible to assign 2 keys to the turntable.

その他

• Performance improvements in the music selection and options screen.

This release of Bemuse comes with support for 5-keys BMS.

5-keys BMS support

This release of Bemuse allows playing of 5-keys BMS files. 5-keys BMS charts are highlighted in green.

It is only basic support, and the game will still display as 7 keys. However, when 5 keys BMS is detected, we perform column adjustments based on scratch position, according to this table:

As a result, these 5-keys charts on the default music server becomes playable:

• CHICKEN for the WIN
  • 5 SUMMONED
  • 5 BUFFED
  • 5 ENRAGED
• 僕たちの旅とエピローグ。
  • normal
• 가짜/인형/술사/이야기
  • 5Keys Normal
  • 5Keys Hyper

Dependencies Update

The JavaScript ecosystem is evolving fast, and we need to keep updating our dependencies to the latest version, in order to reap the most benefits from modern web technologies. Notable changes:

• We migrated to Pixi.js v3, which should be “faster and better in almost every way!”
• Babel, the JavaScript transpiler we use has been upgraded from ^4.3.0 to ^5.8.20
• And a lot of other dependencies.

その他

• The background image has been moved out of the game layer, and is now managed via the DOM.

• You can now see your own ranking in the music selection screen.

• Fixed a small bug where you cannot sign in / create a new account in the result screen, because keystrokes handled by the game subsystem instead of the user interface.

New Features

• Online Ranking System! A preliminary1 ranking system, powered by Parse.

Improvements

• The Custom BMS dialog will now pop up automatically when you drag something over the “Custom BMS” button in music selection screen.

1 By preliminary, I really mean it. While it should work fine, the online scoreboard system may need to go through several refinements. If necessary, the whole scoreboard may be cleared at any time before v1.0.0 final is released. Nevertheless, I would really love for you to try them out and give feedback.

This release brings offline support (and other small fixes). Now you can play Bemuse while ๆbeing completely offline.

Offline Support

Offline support is made possible through a new HTML5 technology, Service Worker, which allows web application to manage all network resouces (and more).

• HTTPS is Required — Service workers only work when using HTTPS, so you need to go to https://bemuse.ninja instead of http://bemuse.ninja.
• Browser support is very limited, as this technology is new. As of writing, only Google Chrome and Opera works. For an up-to-date status, check out the website Is ServiceWorker Ready?

その他

• Added preliminary documentation about Bemuse's BMS support and running your own music server.
• The sky background has been removed from the touch gameplay screen. It has been found to have caught frame rate drops in iOS.
• Added a disclaimer when playing a non-official music server.
• Fixed a bug where the game fails to load BMS files with special characters from the server. This is due to it not being properly URL-encoded, which makes files like #another.bms fail to load. ddb13eb

This release brings the custom BMS support, and other various bug fixes and improvements.

Custom BMS Support

We are excited to announce that you can now play custom BMS songs in Bemuse, right in the browser.

For those who don't know what BMS is, it is a playable song format for rhythm games. Every year, hundreds of songs are created in this format, and can be played in any BMS player, and Bemuse is just one of them. You can read about the history of BMS from this excellent article, “What is BMS?”

Currently, we only support Google Chrome. In the music selection screen, click on the Play Custom BMS button and drag a BMS folder into the drop area.

Then the song will be added to the top of the music list.

Now you can play that song like any online songs! I think we now really have a cross-platform BMS player1.

その他

• Fixed the problem where Bemuse refuses to read data from some music server. These servers report that the metadata is just a "plain text data" (as opposed to the expected "JSON data").
• New songs are now sorted in reverse-chronological order.
• Fixed bug where some keysounds failed to load when filename has wrong capitalization (for example, #WAV Piano-001.ogg is declared where the actual filename is piano-001.ogg).
• Subtle changes to how freestyle sounds (sounds played when pressing buttons without hitting a note) are played. See #186 for more discussion.

1 As it has been pointed out, this statement isn’t entirely accurate. Bemuse is not the first cross-platform BMS player. But to the best of our knowledge, it is the first one that is readily playable without having to compile from source on non-major platform and offers native support for BMS. We apologize for any misconception.

• Newly-added songs are now at the top of the song list.
• Twitter account is linked from the title screen. Follow @bemusegame on Twitter.
• YouTube videos are added to the Information tab of songs that has a music video.

• Songs are now sorted by difficulty of the easiest chart.

  From the play statistics, we have seen that, after finishing the Tutorial, most people start playing the next song in the list. Unfortunately, it was a hard song.

  Starting from this version, the game will show the song with lowest difficulty level first. This should help you find an easy song to play. Enjoy!

• The game is split into two modes. Keyboard mode for beginners and O2Jam players, and BMS mode for existing LR2 and IIDX players.
  • The keyboard settings are now separate between these two modes.
  • In keyboard mode, the default key settings are [S][D][F][Space][J][K][L]. There are no scratch lanes.
  • In BMS mode, there is a scratch lane and the key settings are (Shift)[Z][S][X][D][C][F][V].

• Error popups may now be closed (by double-clicking them).
• Fixes an occasional bug where an error popup appears when the game fails to synchronize the time with the server.
• Fixes a strange bug where an error popup appears when you push the Esc button to quit the game.

This release makes the game synchronizes the time with a time synchronization server. More info on that will be published in later version.

• Added About page.
• Check for supported browser before entering game.
• Start the game when player releases the start button (instead of when pressing). This fixes the keypress delay issue on Mac OS X and helps player concentrate more on the start button.

So many things from previous releases that I didn't even bother counting them. Just see the commit logs.