Welcome to this funky update, including not so many new features and a truckload of bug fixes!

New song: The nostalgic messenger

[previewyoutube=itBQ5pVuFN8;full]https://youtu.be/itBQ5pVuFN8[/previewyoutube] This is a song that has been in the works for two years, thanks to mvluna for the charting, to Cusi for the music and to RheaBee for the artwork!

Song list changes

After a lot of iteration and input from the discord I finally came up with a design I like. The new design features difficulty lists that are easier to read at a glance, this will also be used for score based filtering (the individual difficulties that don't match the filter will be greyed out). Currently the difficulty colors are either hardcoded (for the 5 canonical difficulties) or generated from a hash function, you will be able to set your own difficulty colors in the future though. There's also a much requested unsubscribe button!
On another note, when scrolling through the song list (specially when wrapping around) you will now see some placeholders, these are there to prevent having empty spaces and to give you something to look at while the short scroll finishes, this prevents having to load all the song UI elements.

OOB system

This is something i've wanted to do for a while, basically, I want to have system that lets you configure basic PH features right on first start, such as the note skin or the health system. You can also just skip it and use the defaults like before!

New judgement graphics

Judgement graphics have always sucked in PH, they were nothing more than labels, i finally got around to designing new ones, I also made the combo count use some new number graphics as well, might use them for the score counter on the top right too, who knows.

Stats tab

The results screen now has a new fancy stats tab, I hope you guys like it! It was made with help from the PH discord and specifically from Steven, I still plan to make some cosmetic improvements. On another note, the stats and the graph tab now do their math using a multi threaded task system, so they should no longer stall the game.

Results screen changes

I made some changes to the results screen based on user feedback, I hope you like them, there's still one more feature I want to add to it, but that will come later.

Pulsating buttons

I did some workaround to allow having animated buttons, the animation is rudimentary but works pretty well I think.

Slide note behavior changes

I have made the slide notes match the behaviour in the brazilian girl's game, specifically I made it so that it won't give you a WORST until its at the end of the window. It's a bit hard to explain, but you'll understand when you try it.

Video player improvements

The video player subsystem has been improved and it now supports different playback speeds, so you can have videos in nightcore more and in the editor when changing the playback speed.

Range sliders redesign

The range sliders in the options menu have been redesigned to be much nicer and more usable by mouse.

Bug fixes

• Fix not being able to move the start of sustain notes in the editor
• Fix workshop browser not using the adequate input actions
• Fix gamepad list display in options menu
• Fix mouse auto hide behaviour
• Fix song cache dialog overflowing
• Fix song list song container clipping
• Fix video scaling in editor playtest
• Fix first time playing a song in the editor not setting stream position correctly.
• Fix crash on negative duration songs
• Fix content reloading showing a black square in the middle of the screen.
• Fix scripts and midi loader popups having wrong column expansion settings
• Fix offscreen sustain line drawing
• Fix scripts and midi loader popups having wrong column expansion settings
• Fix some practice mode stupidity
• Fix laser renderer not being deleted with groups in the editor under some circunstances.
• Fix editor shortcut creation
• Fix running editor scripts
• Make video downloads using audio only actually only download audio
• Fix code editor font
• Fix Game showing wrong emblem in progression list
• Fix video restarting without notes in practice mode
• Fix practice mode exit focus issues
• Add subtick functionality to some missing places
• Improve universal scroll list clipping and performance.
• Switch to comfy-like heuristics for grouping slide chains (hopefully)
• Removed old task queue and switch song filtering and sorting to use new engine features
• Fix skin editor serialization
• Fix skin editor font editing
• Fix skin editor outliner right click menu not showing up in the correct location
• Fix song list not selecting song when returning from gameplay session
• Fix song start scheduling fucking with practice mode when first entering it
• Fix some sort options not working properly
• Fix practice mode sometimes causing stray note groups to exist
• Use new video player playback speed mechanism in video player
• Fix taill preview images overflowing music player thumbnail
• Fix diagonal and full width snapping in the editor
• Fix workshop browser filter by difficulty
• Fix "Deselecting all difficulty filters breaks difficulty displays" and "the text above the filtered songs still says "(0-10+)" regardless of what the filter actually is"
• Improve lyric phrase timeline item behavior
• Various minor fixes to windowing
• Fix sorting by highest score
• Add a few resource pack things and generate mipmaps
• Fix a few minor memory leaks
• Fix content dir selection
• Fix holds in autoplay
• Fix: Disable and enable UI as needed for the tempo map tutorial.
• Fix: Make sure autoplace works when moving notes around.
• Port Arc tools to Godot 4 editor
• Fix leaderboard score alignment Fixes #98
• Fix some more buffer behaviour leftovers
• Fix autoplay not doing holds properly
• Fix histogram lines usign placeholder values Fixes #101
• Fix auto translate triggering for percentage delta label. Fixes #102
• Fix editor transform preview on export
• Fix Full Width and Diagonal Step Arranging.
• Fix potential memory leak in tabbed container
• Fix star filter not working in workshop browser
• Fix failure to start practice when song assets aren't loaded
• Fix main menu bg swap not happening when returning from playing a song
• Fix Song menu doesn't remember previously highlighted song
• Fix options sections having a default scroll that made them cut off
• Fix some more editor stupidity
• Fix timeline scrolling and make more shortcuts visible to the user.
• Fix opening charts by double clicking.
• Fix order of arc and circle tools.
• Disable minimap while area selecting.
• Fix angle arrange again.
• Fix timeline stealing clicks
• Fix song list folders and workshop tab not working and resetting respectively
• Fix some options menu spacing issues
• Remove invalid deserialized charts from in-memory metadata
• Fix sort prop not being applied to filter songs task
• Reset scale up/down shortcuts properly.
• Fix circle size sliders.
• Fix zooming in the script editor.
• Fix scrollbar issues when resizing editor modules.
• Fix latency tester
• Fix error cleaning up thumbnail requests
• Improve & fix workshop automatic download after subscription
• Fix rare main menu news list error
• Fix note scaling in practice mode with custom note scales
• Fix issue when mashing accept on restart
• Fix crash on startup on some linux distros

Other minor changes

• Adjust note hit effect and slider piece particles
• Make use of new videoplayer.process_while_paused
• Improve gamepad list display in options menu
• Add practice mode video seek debouncing
• Make importer replace chart check be checked by default like in 0.17
• Replace results screen share to twitter with score URL copy
• Add the ability to filter and sort in folders
• Added appear animation to confirmation windows
• Improve workshop item thumbnail behavior
• Add subtle shadow to most labels
• Generate mipmaps for song assets

Future

Some personal issues have prevented me from pushing this early, I managed to cause myself a neck contracture (I barely get out of bed recently so it's starting to affect me) and my grandma is in a coma, which is for sure not good for spirits, the doctors say she has porphyria. Regarding Swansong: I have completely stopped working on it and I'm unlikely to resume it, as the people that were going to help me make it a reality are unable to work on it anymore, unfortunate, but it is what it is.
I have instantly pivoted to working on another kind of game, a less niche one, tailor made for consoles (particularly switch/switch2) so I can hopefully make some money, I don't want to talk about it until I have something to show though, I wouldn't want to disappoint again, but if you are around in the discord you probably know what it is. On a more positive note, sales have been insanely good recently, so I'm very happy with that, I finally have some air to breathe financially! See you next update, which will hopefully be the one that gets the game out of early access. Oh! about those rush notes I owed you... Soon! Enjoy this picture of my late grandpa's work van and my MR2 to top off this update: