Articles

• Tiny-Foxes & OutFox Community Team Sep 2021 Update

  Sep 25, 2021   Community

  It's September time! Welcome everyone, time to see your monthly blogpost, this month has been a bit chill as we're getting close to the end of 2021, now let's do this:

  TinyFoxes Status

  Speaking as the TinyFoxes creator, this project/organization has become bigger and more than I ever expected it to be, at the moment of writing this, we have 43 open source projects that range from translations to themes/noteskins/judgments/guides/tools/templates..etc. To think that this started as an organization to host OutFox language files, it obviously became more than that, and it reflects on the community vision of Tiny-Foxes.

  As a community manager of Project OutFox, I always keep a look at community comments, ideas, and how they see us and that gave me the opportunity to also see how TinyFoxes is seen as, some believe that it was created to control modding on OutFox so we can control the quality of those contents as an Alpha product, I want to clarify that this isn't my or OutFox Team intention, no content is forced to be on TinyFoxes to exist or to be considered by us, TinyFoxes is content approved and looked upon that will be showcased as officially verified community content, it's why we showcase at our official website.

  Anyone can submit content to TinyFoxes, you only need to contact the OutFox Team to verify if the content is allowed. Now, let's clarify some things:

  • Any content that is made for OutFox will be considered to join.
  • Content that is not made for OutFox but works will also be considered, but we will expect maintaining content to be future proof. (For example: CMD removal)
  • "What is considered OutFox content/Allowed on TinyFoxes?"
    • Themes
    • Tools that interacts, creates, updates, deletes OutFox files.
    • Noteskins
    • Judgments
    • Chart Pack(s)
    • Announcers
    • BGAnimations
    • Backgrounds
    • Toasties
    • OutFox related Guides.
    • Programming code made for OutFox.
    • OutFox Documentation (Research also counts)
  • "What is NOT considered OutFox content/Allowed on TinyFoxes?"
    • Exclusive SM5.1/5.2 or lower content made explicitly not to work on OutFox.
    • Non-original edits of created content.
    • Unlicensed content.

  With that out of the way, I'd like to announce that starting next year, TinyFoxes blogposts will be released every 4 months instead of each month, I hope this gives the community more time to finish their content before being featured.

  Project Updates

  OutFoxPTBR

  Archived lines for OutFox Alpha 4.9.10.

  Aqui-Alpha-Noteskins

  Had a major September 2021 update

  <- 2021 UPDATE ver 2.1 ->

  • Revised 8th note colour to better contrast against holds
  • Reverted Holds and Rolls to colour-coded blue and green
  • (help aozora can't reconcile with it for some reason)
  • adjusted mine colours

  New 2.1 tag created.

  RyutoSetsujin-Customizations

  Added new "popira" noteskin.

  Tiny-Web

  Updated RyutoSetsujin member information.

  OutFox-Web

  Updated to math recent website changes.

  Tiny-Webini

  Updated to match OutFox-Web.

  Released 1.9 Beta

  Matches websites changes after serenity pack release.

  • Removed FAQ page. (We have wiki now)
  • Updated About Page
  • Added Serenity Pack page (You can't translate everything)
  • Fixed missing "=" on elements properties.
  • Updated home page to showcase latest website elements
  • Removed the old move-freely page, will be supported again later.
  • Updated home page title (and as such, the program title)

  OutFox-zh-CN

  Updated contents for OutFox alpha 4.9.10.

  OutFox-Translations

  Updated zh-CN content for OutFox alpha 4.9.10.

  smtheme-soundwaves-community

  • Updated theme to match 4.9.10 soundwaves content/features.

  a4.9.10 tag created.

  ---

  That's it for now everyone, hope you all have a nice month, see ya.

• Alpha V preview: New User Experience(s)

  Sep 07, 2021   Dev Notes

  "Alpha V" is our internal codename for the next major alpha of Project OutFox, Alpha 5.0; we have a number of new things planned for it, and one of them is a new default theme.

  While Soundwaves served us well as a transitional interface, it was still built around many of the same behaviours associated with StepMania, including a "one size fits all" approach to handling game types that is less than ideal, and dizzying options menus that even we have trouble navigating. Long story short, on Alpha V we plan to replace Soundwaves with a new default theme, which will be modern and better-suited to our current direction.

  Actually, no. There will not just be one replacement for Soundwaves, or two, or three. Our goal will be to give every major game type its own default theme. Each game has its own requirements, including different ways we need to render gameplay, different behaviours we have to simulate, and so on, so it quickly becomes unwieldy to put everything in the square hole as we have in the past. A general goal with these new themes will be a narrower focus, modularity, and improving support for different input methods. We are also aiming to support frequently-requested features, such as song favourites and different sorting methods.

  In this post, we will be previewing just a few of the new themes we have been working on, with a focus on those that have had the most in-engine work so far. You may have already seen in-game footage of some of these new themes in the OutFox Serenity trailer, or teased in discussions on our Discord server.

  Some of these images are mockups, and in any case the designs are subject to change based on feedback and implementation. If you have any feedback, ideas, or questions regarding these Alpha V, we have added a new #alpha5-wishlist channel to our Discord server where you can discuss them.

  pump

  Our new pump theme features a more familiar layout and control scheme, integrated with OutFox features such as our chart statistics and NPS displays, as well as mouse/touchscreen support.

  All screenshots are in-engine.

  

  dance

  The new dance theme is also being designed with mouse/touchscreen support in mind, carrying over popular features from Soundwaves, but with an overhauled codebase, a revamped workflow, and official support for vertical aspect ratios (portrait mode). The color scheme system from Soundwaves is also being revamped, making it easier to share your creations with the community.

  All screenshots are mockups except for the gameplay screenshot seen below, which is in-engine.

  

  para

  The para theme is designed to reflect the aesthetic of Eurobeat, downplaying scoring and visual chrome to put a more prominent focus on the gameplay and routines.

  All screenshots are in-engine.

  

  beat

  The beat mode is also set to receive a major overhaul, and we have some internal design concepts with a redesigned user experience, and a steampunk-inspired design.

  All screenshots are mockups.

  

  taiko

  This mode will feature a theme comprised of original assets, arranged to resemble a popular franchise involving a Japanese percussion instrument. Though, we've also brought in some of our original ideas, including an optional stats and NPS graph to show just how much of a storm you're drumming up.

  All screenshots are mockups.

  

  gddm/gdgf

  Also internally known as "concert", this theme is designed for both gdgf and gddm, and has a visual aesthetic inspired by live music. The gameplay screenshots showcase a combination of noteskins, theme-level code, and new theme features introduced on Alpha 4.9.10 that enable a more familiar gameplay layout.

  All screenshots are mockups except for the gameplay screenshot seen below, which is in-engine.

  

  gh

  Our new gh theme will have a more streamlined look and feel, and a more familiar workflow. We have also been testing out a new system for customizable "backplates" for notefields; while it was designed with gh in mind, it is also usable in other game types with a few simple theme metrics.

  All screenshots are mockups. Backplates are avaliable now in a nightly build.

  

  pomu

  And finally, Halloween is coming a little early! With a classic design, original characters, and being the first PMS/pomu client with multiplayer support, we hope that you'll have a lot of fun with this.

  All screenshots are mockups.

  

  This is just a small taste of what's to come; we will have more to share with you over the next few months, so stay tuned! Once again, if you have any feedback or suggestions about Alpha V, visit the #alpha5-wishlist channel on the Project OutFox Discord server.

• New community policies

  Aug 31, 2021   Announcements,  Community

  Dear OutFox Community,

  As we move closer towards the release of Alpha V, and after the issues we had with the release of 4.9.9, we would like to address some of the things that as a team we have noticed over the past few months. As a community, we're not sure if the addition of a Discord server has caused some of these issues and behaviour, or if it's the fact that we are more easily accessible than if we were on a forum or IRC channel. We are writing this post to make our stance and that of our staff and volunteers, as well as those who contribute time or content to make the game better.

  We love OutFox, and still love a lot of the things that StepMania was. The name change was needed so we can sign our MacOS (and soon Windows) builds. There is no conspiracy about moving away from the core playerbase. There are no other issues about us 'abandoning' our dedication and efforts on improving StepMania via it's own repository in the future with some form of update from our team as discussed with Shakesoda. There is also no conspiracy theory about us hating 'dance' based games. Just because 4/5 panel is not literally everything we live and breathe does not make it correct for you to throw out misinformation or treat us in a way that moves toward literal cyberbullying to the team. We understand your passion and drive for the modes that you play, but this does not give you any right to try to enforce that view in a negative manner towards us.

  What we don't love at all is continued demands and entitlement - something that over the past two to three months has begun to get extremely volatile from certain communities and individuals. OutFox is not our life or existence. OutFox also is not our job. We code and develop (and support) OutFox as our fun and to drive us to do better. We will always do our best to fix things or do things as fast as possible, including updates, bugfixes, support, handling feature requests, supporting legacy 5.1/5.0 code, providing support for players who don't even use OutFox, etc. This also is true when that demand is your first or one of your only interactions with our team or server.

  Before you ask us, (or anyone else in your life) to do something for you, please take time to carefully consider what you are asking for, and where this expectation has come from. We are extremely patient and generous here at Project OutFox, so some expectation of us for very little in return is something we have become used to; including community support, bug support, even code support and providing test builds to fix issues folks have. What you are not entitled to however, is to expect some defined service level or response time, or to demand information at a whim. We do things as quickly as constraints of life allow. Whether that be minutes, hours, days or weeks, you have no entitlement to expect one or the other. The game gets improvements as and when - if you cannot see the improvements this brings to your specific mode of play, then that is a shame. As we improve the engine it benefits more than just a specified mode, and this is the future of OutFox. It will become more than what it was when we took the reins, and that is to support a brand new rhythm game sandbox moving forward.

  We thank you for continuing to support the project, but for the sanity of the team, we felt this issue needs to be addressed before it gets out of hand, or worse we suffer from the demands of people who do not consider how their actions affect the team.

  ~Project OutFox Team

• Tiny-Foxes & OutFox Community Team August 2021 Update

  Aug 28, 2021   Community

  Hi everyone, what a busy month, we managed to get one of our biggest projects done and we're definitely gonna talk about that, so get ready to read!

  OutFox Serenity

  If you haven't seen it already, a community pack was in the works and is now released with OutFox Alpha 4.9.10, the community team worked hard on this with the help from you to make this possible.

  You can read all about it here, but let's talk more about it, the progress, the problems we faced, and solutions, after all, transparency is the source of trust.

  The announcement of a community pack

  A new version of OutFox was coming, and it was one of our best-known versions yet, it added support for many gamemodes, new functions, new features, it was awesome and our team was also hyped about it so much that we came with the idea of a community pack after we saw the old attempts of it. We didn't really expect it to be as big as it is today but many people found the idea awesome so we ran with it.

  Submissions

  Now that we know a community pack is what people expect we need to open the contributions, with the help from Lirodon we created a page to open content submissions (which is still open btw) and saw the wave of people wanting to help, after some time we also created categories and channels for our Discord server as almost everyone who wanted to contribute was already there.

  Chart Organization

  This is the part where things get a bit tricky, we had internal files for up-to-date submissions and templates for our members, it felt good enough at the start but we quickly saw the problem.

  Most submissions included other charts from notes that are not completed yet, attacks were also affecting charts from other people, speed mods, changes, warps, and we had to waste way more time than expected fixing that.

  An unexpected situation happened with one of our community members where helping us manage the content got almost impossible so we had less management than usual which made things slower.

  We also noticed some of our internal files were in an unexpected folder, and more than half the files were missing because of that, WHOOPS.

  The testing week

  After some time we were able to things done to launch a testing week were people to help find missing content/issues with release candidates, it was really important and helped us discover what we couldn't find.

  The first day was a bomb of issues, but it quickly turned into just a few issues here and there later, this means the community is active and helpful and we thank everyone for that, really.

  Oh wait a second, this is a community pack and it includes charts, charts have notes and people want to know how hard those notes are, this means...RATING!!

  Yes...we didn't have a standard rating yet, but thanks to our active community we quickly were able to decide one, for dance, it was very split with ITG and DDR X, we choose DDR as more concrete reasons were given for it. The community then helped by re-rating every chart for every mode, which you can see here, again thanks to everyone for helping.

  Music license

  Some content wasn't licensed with CC, it was only given as a right for Project OutFox to distribute, while is good enough for us to release a game with it, it isn't for us to host on Github, we choose to respect the artist license decision and remove individual files from music that do not include/use a CC license and improved our credits to reach out to more content of the artist.

  Launch!

  With charts, graphics, music, everything ready we decided to launch the pack with next version of OutFox so branding content started to be made, Lirodon created this awesome trailer and the new splash screen which calls back to Serenity, our website was also changed to fit with those changes.

  What we learned

  Making a pack is both fun and rewarding for both the team and the community, it requires great work but it sure pays off. For the next volume, we will be using our Github repository to better manage the files with the content creators so they can interact in real-time with the files we have. With the experience we got, expect fewer errors and more communication between you and the team on how everything is going, this is also true for OutFox Development Team.

  New Project

  konko-module-system (by Sudospective)

  Konko is a module system based on the Kitsu template that allows for beat-based tweens without a gameplay screen or even a song.

  Konko is object-oriented. You can create nodes that act as extended actors that can have beat-based tweens appended to them. You can also create a global-ready or update function to add beat-based tweens to existing nodes.

  Projects Update

  Tiny-Web

  Updated to add konko-module-system

  Aqui-Alpha-Noteskins

  Got a 2021 update (part 1) with updated noteskin graphics.

  smtheme-soundwaves-community

  Got update with Alpha 4.9.9 theme content.

  kitsu-template

  Updated code structure, nodebuilder, and more functions.

  OutFoxWeb

  Updated content to reflect website changes.

  Tiny-Webini

  Update content to reflect with OutFoxWeb changes.

  RyutoSetsujin-Customizations

  Got a major update to its repository, content, and naming.

  TF_Wheels

  Fixed sorts, added new splash, added taiko support, fixed metrics, and new DDR HD note skins.

  OutFox-ja, OutFoxPTBR, OutFox-fr and OutFox-Translation

  Updated to add the new lines for OutFox 4.9.10

  ---

  That's it for this month, everyone, the team is gonna rest a bit and update the community pack with leftovers, but this doesn't mean exciting content isn't on the works, something new is coming to OutFox...just wait.

• Project OutFox Alpha 4.9.10 + OutFox Serenity Volume I released!

  Aug 27, 2021   Announcements,  Releases

  Today we have not one, not two, but three big announcements:

  Project OutFox Alpha 4.9.10

  Project OutFox Alpha 4.9.10 builds upon the work and bug fixes from the Alpha 4.9.9 hotfix builds, and also contains some new internal features that serve as building blocks for current and future content:

  Alpha 4.9.10 contains a number of new details, features, and bug fixes for some of our game types;

  

  • The interactive sync/calibration process now supports other game types besides dance.
  • We have fixed issues with rate mods and the sound resampler.
  • In pump and taiko, we now support timing windows from both games (with pump having Normal, Hard, and Very Hard settings), and have added judgement fonts to them as well.
  • In pump, we also gave the default noteskin a refresh to improve visibility, and changed the design of the center panel graphic in response to feedback.
  • In gddm, we now support the older GDA format for BandJAM/GDAMania-era six-part drum charts. We also fixed a bug that caused crashes when loading DTX charts that don't use all nine lanes.
  • In beat, the noteskins have been updated to have button sprites under the receptor line.
  • As demonstrated in the OutFox Serenity trailer, we now support showing judgments per-column. By default, per-column judgements are displayed in modes that typically use them, such as gddm and popn.
  • We now support displaying a loading screen before gameplay when the game needs to load keysounds in game types such as beat and popn. Previously, this occurred over a black screen with the game appearing to hang, which was just a little disconcerting. The default theme features a reference implementation of this feature, but themers can customize it to their heart's content.

  As always, this is just a recap of the major, user-facing features. For a full change log, as well as a developer note from Squirrel over what had happened with Alpha 4.9.9, see the Alpha 4.9.10 page on outfox.wiki.

  Download

  OutFox Serenity Volume I released!

  

  OutFox Serenity Volume I has been released! Formerly known during development as the OutFox Community Pack, it features music by Aspid Cat, Drazil, Jack5, Matduke, mmry, PizeroFox, Seo, and Sevish. Alongside 4-panel (dance) and 5-panel (pump) charts, some of its songs also have beat, popn, techno (8- and 9-panel), gddm, and gdgf, and gh charts.

  More information

  A lot of (out)fox to give

  Project Moondance was a legacy brand used by our team early on, often in parallel with "OutFox" and "Team Rizu" (the name we used to initially refer to our main dev team). As our project and community evolved, however, this nomenclature became confusing, and we began the process of phasing out the "Project Moondance" and "Team Rizu" names in favour of just "Project OutFox", because everyone called it just "OutFox" anyway.

  As of today, we are beginning to migrate our main website from projectmoon.dance to projectoutfox.com. Right now, it is a redirect, but it will become the main URL soon (the old domain will still redirect, though). The site will also be updated over the next few weeks to reflect the new direction of our project, so stay tuned for future details!