Personal-life stuff consumed the first half of the year, so I've got a lot of ground to make up.
0.8.2 is going to mostly be quality-of-life stuff and things that have been allowed to be terrible for far too long. This is subject to change, but this is what I have in mind:
Key signatures in the sheet music.
User assignable input. (Just a first pass, but this should let you start controlling things with just your MIDI device.)
"Sticky" devices. (Start the game with device disconnected... defaults to something else. Start it again after replugging the device: it's reselected.)
Song library: faster loading
Song library: some sort of grouping to show/hide the contents of watched folders more easily.
Fix the crash that's been in there since day 1 when you disconnect a device while Synthesia is running.
Windowed mode on the Mac.
Better install experience on the Mac (think Firefox's dmg).
Internal tool to help add/update scoreboard songs for changes like the ones we just went through while adding finger hints.
A lot of good stuff coming up, and the fingering interface works great. Congrats again with that.
One thing I'd like to see regarding improved sheet display. It's a little disturbing that the display (the red line) wraps in the middle of a measure. I for one find it hard to remember how much I had finished of the measure when the rest of it reappears on the other end of the screen.
When you're reading a normal paper sheet music, you never start in the middle of a bar when a new line of clefs starts. You always finish one bar/measure and start at the next one on a new line of clefs, at the far left end of the paper.
Of course this is not a problem if you let the sheet music display scroll and the red line is fixed, but I prefer to have the note display fixed, let the red line move instead, and flip page-by-page. Hope it's clear what I mean.
Yeah, jimhenry just brought that up recently too. It's not for 0.8.2, but obviously I'm working toward "Sheet-only Song Display". In order to do that (in 0.8.3?) I'm going to have to tackle the problem you mentioned. There are a handful of rough edges I still need to smooth out and learning how to fully justify measures is one of them.
Actually, when sheet-only / multi-line sheet hits I'm worried it might be challenging to maintain the "scrolling" version of the display. I might have to drop that one altogether.
Key signatures would be great!
UI used in fingering is very nice, good work.
I also prefer not to "horizontally scrolling" sheet music.
On my computer I must reduce fpslimit and then reading sheet music becomes really difficult, so at the end it would be better for me to avoid scrolling.
MarcelMiguel wrote:Key signatures would be great!
UI used in fingering is very nice, good work.
I also prefer not to "horizontally scrolling" sheet music.
On my computer I must reduce fpslimit and then reading sheet music becomes really difficult, so at the end it would be better for me to avoid scrolling.
I remember there is option to choose "scrolling" or "not scrolling".
MarcelMiguel wrote:Key signatures would be great!
UI used in fingering is very nice, good work.
I also prefer not to "horizontally scrolling" sheet music.
On my computer I must reduce fpslimit and then reading sheet music becomes really difficult, so at the end it would be better for me to avoid scrolling.
I remember there is option to choose "scrolling" or "not scrolling".
Btw what is the difference between User-assignable Input and Keyboard-only Navigation in the voting page?
Even with the description they both mean the same to me.
Also you seem to go directly to keyboard navigation here right?
They're basically the same thing. One was intended to be a sort of first-pass. The other was intended to mean "super-awesome, fully-customizable, best you could ever hope for" or something. Maybe. I don't know.
I'm working toward the first development preview. This one is going to (hopefully) contain fixes for the 12 known bugs I have scheduled for 0.8.2 including/along with the MIDI device arc:
Don't crash on plug/unplug.
Sticky devices (if you don't touch the list, it'll restore a previously-used device the next time it's available).
Remove legacy "No Input" option from before the software keyboard existed.
The preview after that will (hopefully) be a few of the improvements you guys have been asking for in the song library for a while now.
Nicholas wrote:Just made a small update to the front-page video
What I find annoying with the video is that you actually are unable to play that background-song in Synthesia
It should be boundled with the software I think ...
Typhlosion wrote:What I find annoying with the video is that you actually are unable to play that background-song in Synthesia
It should be boundled with the software I think ...
+1
Sometimes I play the video just to hear the song. And then I want to play it myself, but I don't get very far without a MIDI or sheet music.
Songs learned using Synthesia: CT: Wind Scene, The Trial | FF7: Prelude | SMB: Overworld, Underwater | Tetris: Theme A | Zelda: Lost Woods | Other: Für Elise
Still, not only don't I have a MIDI version... but there would be some licensing thing to solve too. Because I'd have to pay someone like 9 cents each time it went out to someone, I would have to include it as a Learning Pack-only thing (otherwise, every "free" download would add up in huge costs for me).
While I don't mind the idea of song packs -- and those are exactly the kinds of things HDPiano and NewTempo Piano are working on now -- I want to try and keep the Learning Pack as legally unencumbered as possible.
(Still, while bundling MIDI and making sure the licensing is squared away is good enough, any "official" song packs will have all the usual goodies included: hands-split, properly quantized, finger hints, and any other metadata-type stuff that will make for a better experience in Synthesia. Anyway, anything like that is years away yet.)
Yes, and then I'd also have to worry about paying them too: either an up-front, one-time, royalty-free payment or we'd have to agree on a per-download licensing structure so it might end up being something like 9 cents + 5 cents each purchase. (Music licensing is gross.)
In other news: the bug pass is complete. Everything I had on my radar for 0.8.2 is fixed. Well, I've been tracking the "don't crash on unplug" problem as part of the device arc... which is still part of the next dev preview anyway. So, just have to do "sticky devices" and the unplug crash and it'll be time for the first 0.8.2 dev preview.
its good that you are fixing the crash when disconnecting cause i hate that.thanks for working on this project
