Articles

  • Do you know why we stopped the car?

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    December 16 marks the two-year anniversary of the first public alpha release of Project OutFox; we would like to once again thank you for all the support and good vibes you have brought us as we work on this project. We have some big plans for OutFox in 2022, including new themes and touchscreen support, a new online system, and of course new modes and other modernizations!

    5.3 Alpha 4.11 is our Second Anniversary Edition release; it is mainly focused on bug fixes and performance improvements, but we've also slipped in a few little previews of things we're working on for a future release (hint: try pressing F1 when you're in the editor).

    There are a few important changes to note:

    • The names used for the executable and the directories for installation, save data, etc. have been changed from "StepMania"/StepMania 5.3" to "OutFox". This is part of the rebranding process that began on Alpha 4.9.8, and is needed to comply with the requirements for code signing and Microsoft SmartScreen verification. It also reduces the risk of conflicts with older versions of StepMania, so OutFox can be safely installed alongside StepMania 5.x without the risk of it overwriting or damaging profiles or stored scores..
      • Due to this change, you will need to move your profiles over to this new version. The old version will also need to be uninstalled manually; sorry about all of this, it is just for this update. On Windows, the uninstaller does not delete the Save folder, so you can specify your existing directory when installing Alpha 4.11.0 if you prefer.
    • The beat and popn game types have been renamed to be-mu and po-mu; this change does not affect the ability to load chart files with the old names, but you will have to rename the folders accordingly if you have noteskins for those game types.

    Download

    This is just a recap of the major, user-facing features and technical changes. You can read the full changelog on the Alpha 4.11.0 page on outfox.wiki.

    As always, be sure to report any bugs you encounter on either our issue tracker or Discord. Be sure to provide us with as much information as you can whenever you report an issue. We won't be able to fix bugs that aren't reported to us.

    Download Alpha 4.11.0

  • The winter is coming, have you heard the song yet?

    Heads up!

    Serenity Winter Update is currently open for chart and graphics submission, want to know if there's anything you can help with? Check out these:

    If there's anything here that you would like to help with, please read our Winter Update blogpost.

    Moru Personal Note (Tiny-Foxes Owner)

    As the year comes to an end, our member's life becomes busier with life stuff, OutFox Team has never been in such high production before, as a result, don't be surprised those last months have few updates besides members personal projects, for myself I can barely take care of what I could when this project started...I got a job sooner than I expected and I wasn't aware of the time I would then lose not doing things I want to do. However, next year will be a big year, both for Tiny-Foxes and Project OutFox, many kinds of stuff are in the works that even we can't believe is happening so let us know you're with us and share our hard work with your friends, they won't want to miss out on what is to come.

    Project Updates

    JudgeFonts-by-MattMayuga

    Added new Luminousity judgefont

    Tiny-Web

    Added Oct Monthly post.

    superuser-outfox

    Fix Konko module implementation.

    Aqui-Alpha-Noteskins

    November 2021 Update.

    TF_Wheels

    Added dummy masks to fix wierd behavour in modfiles.

    kitsu-template

    • Updated Kitsu Template version to 3.1.0
    • Made entire modfile environment local
    • Add proxywall node type
    • Add support for multiple player proxies
    • Add note type ActorCamera

    That's it for now, stay safe out there and be ready for the winter!

  • OutFox Serenity Volume I was our first-ever pack release, and we would like to thank everyone who took time to contribute or check it out! We are planning to formally launch the submissions process for Serenity Volume II in early-2022. But to help lead towarrds it, we're taking chart and graphics submissions for a Winter Update to Volume I that consists of three new songs:

    If you're not familiar with them, please be sure to read the Serenity submission guidelines.

    We've created a new Discord server specifically for Serenity development, In addition, we will now be using pull requests on a branch of Serenity's Git repository as our preferred method of submitting contributions, in order to keep things organized and make it easier for us to identify possible issues. If you're not used to GitHub, you can still send us chart files manually through the Discord server too.

    You can also submit new charts for existing songs in game types that don't have them yet. Submissions close on December 29, 2021, and we plan a final release in January 2022.


    Don't forget, music submissions for Serenity are always open, even if a new pack is not currently in development; we're constantly revisiting and reviewing the submission backlog as new submissions come in.

  • It's spooky out there, and yet you're here for the news, stay safe out there, now time to read!

    New Projects

    superuser-outfox (Created/Hosted by Sudospective)

    Superuser is the 4° theme hosted on OutFox but the first one isn't a fork or "community edition", it was created with a lot of effort and love from Sudospective.

    kitsu-template-libraries (Created/Hosted by Sudospective)

    Here you will find a list of approved libraries for the Kitsu Template, separated by version number.

    ComboNumbers-by-MattMayuga (Created by MattMayuga)

    This repo hosts the data files for combo number graphics made by MattMayuga, with some of them here to accompany the respective judgefonts.

    SM5-Arduino-Lighting (Created/Hosted by 48productions)

    Use an Arduino to get game-controlled lights in StepMania 5/Project Outfox!

    Project Updates

    JudgeFonts-by-MattMayuga

    New judgefont: Side Stars

    Tiny-Web

    Update Sudospective profile

    Add ComboNumbers-by-MattMayuga and superuser

    kitsu-template

    StepMania-Archive (Fork updates only)

    Started initial translation code.

    OutFox-ja, OutFox-zh-CN, OutFox-Translations, OutfoxPTBR, Outfox-fr

    Updated to reflect new OutFox lines.

    New Members

    48productions which joined to share the SM5-Arduino-Lighting project!

    DysKoneko joined to learn and help with OutFox translations

    With those updates, Tiny-Foxes now hosts 47 open source projects, with the help of 34 members, I can't thank the community enough for making all those projects, and thank you for supporting us, that's it for now!

  • Believe it or not, di bus can't swim!

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    Project OutFox Alpha 4.10.0 has been released! This build has a collection of various bug fixes, as well as technical improvements to multiple game types!

    Game improvements

    beat/BMS

    In beat, we have made several improvements to the BMS parser:

    We have adjusted the way the game reads BMS difficulties. As a lot of the charts are seen as the same difficulty we would end up losing a lot of the information in them, and half of the charts would be missing and unplayable. We are in the process of improving this further for the new BMS theme for Alpha V, so it will be better in time.

    The BMS parser also now supports the Land Mine channel for the first time! In previous versions there was a blanket math overflow, which meant that a lot of the channels were not being identified correctly, and thus flagging for extended channels was not being used. Mine damage based on the channel value will be added next alpha.

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    Captured using Alpha V BMS theme in development.

    We have also improved its handling of Long Notes; we did not seem to parse these correctly due to the flag sometimes being applied in the wrong manner, which meant some of the holds were not being applied in charts.

    We have also restored #RANDOM support again this alpha, as it was still using a legacy codepath we did not clear up in 4.9.10, apologies for that! This alpha allows for the #RANDOM n where n is 1 onwards.

    This alpha also includes several behavioural changes in the way the files are parsed, allowing for the correct Base to be used in reading channels, and allowing us to enable the missing hidden sounds as well as the missing channels that were inaccessible before.

    po-mu/PMS

    Im po-mu, the PMS parser has been similarly updated to improve its handling of difficulties. We have been able to adjust the channels used for po-mu to support Land Mines for the first time as well, and this also includes BME based po-mu files are properly supported as well in this alpha. Though without locale emulation, they will not load in native Windows 10 at this time. A fix for this is coming soon.

    gddm

    gddm has had an internal reworking due to recommendations from members of the DTXMania community (thanks APPROVED!), to ensure that we do a few things a little bit more to how players expect.

    One of the important features is the ability to change the lane setting from 10 to 9 lane, or 9 to 10 lane, depending on the e-drum kit you have. We were already able to read and support multiple lanes in older alpha builds depending on the ‘dominant’ right hand lane, but now if the game does not spot it as the style you wish, you can change this in the options menu.

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    Real mode is 10 lane, and New mode is 9 lane; this gives you the flexibility to play the game how you wish moving forwards with the new theme and makes things less awkward if you do not have a 10-piece e-drum kit.

    This alpha has also worked a bit more on the latency issues plaguing some users, we have tweaked the keysound flow a lot this build, so please give it a try and let us know if this has improved gameplay for this mode.

    This build also has had work on the Channel 02/BL support to remove the old BMS era restriction. This means any measure change/time signature change is now respected, and thanks to APPROVED to making this chart which was a literal BPM Change/Time Signature Change Spam Chart we were able to effectively fix this for good. This change is also reflected in the gdgf mode as well as the GDA parser.

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    gdgf

    Before this alpha, all the game was able to use on this mode was Autogen-based charts, or charts made with the default SSC format. Thanks to Squirrel and Jousway, the parser has been finally fixed and implemented to allow 3-fret and 5-fret guitar and bass charts to finally load natively in-engine.

    gdgf is based on a row system. Our internal mechanism is column based, and has been for some time, so ensuring this methodology is carried over was important. We still have a lot to do before simulation is better here, so please bear with us. We do NOT support the holds that were introduced in DTXMania AL yet; these will be done at a later date.

    This mode also now supports full up, down, and forward wailing controls, as requested by members of the community. To map this you will need to ensure your controller has the options to allow for wailing, as many newer guitar controllers have special ‘button’ modes for wailing. We will add new controller pages to the wiki to help players set up their games in due course.

    StepMania_Fy7dNg8Cjx.png

    Guitar chart loaded from a DTX file. Captured using Alpha V gddm/gdgf theme in development.

    This mode also has the 6-fret custom mode that we promised back in the spring, as we know a lot of folks wanted 6-fret availability in OutFox. We have chosen cyan as the sixth fret to follow the colour scheme from the original.

    Due to these changes, we have changed the styles and noteskins used for gdgf, so existing charts and noteskins will have to be updated. We will be releasing a patch for our Serenity pack later this month.

    Thank you all for your patience while we worked on this, it was a slog to try to transpose the system to something our game recognises!

    We have also begun a project to develop a BMS-like BGF based parser for this mode, which will include all 6 frets. Squirrel will be adding the information for this on the wiki for discussion; feedback is more than welcome!

    gh

    We have continued to work on the internal mechanics on this mode, so do forgive us while we fix things!

    We have added a new Backplates directory to the Appearance folder (thanks Jous!), which can be used for scrolling textures applied to the notefield. In gh backplates are used for the note highway, but they can be enabled at the theme level in other game types as well.

    StepMania_TgivJsQzh6.jpg

    There is also new noteskin support within the engine, while the measure lines and textures now behave as expected. Thanks to those of you that requested these features. The internal notefield and scrolling system has seen some updates as well as we move towards Alpha V.

    dance

    The RNG system was given a revamp, the stageseed generation was also fixed, as well there is also better audio parsing. Thanks for all the reports of the odd edge cases with some of the odd ‘stuttering’ bits and pieces you sent in; this was due to an undesirable response in the sampler expecting a calculation from the ‘old’ resampler path that didn'’'t exist on the new resampler, so we tweaked it to stop this.

    There have been other engine adjustments too; we discovered a few other weird bugs in how the buffer works due to the new keysound code for BMS and po-mu, and this has resolved a bug for dance modes.

    techno

    We fixed the methodolody of the lifebars and the odd crashes with the styles and different play styles available to this mode. There were a lot of edge case crashes which we have fixed for now. In regards to styles, we WILL be fixing the ability to play different styles per player. It’s disabled for now to just prevent arcade cab crashes.

    Platform support

    macOS

    In addition to being signed and notarized, as of Alpha 4.9.10 our builds for macOS are now also a universal binary.

    Download

    This is just a recap of the major, user-facing features and technucal changes. You can read the full changelog on the Alpha 4.10.0 page on outfox.wiki.

    As always, be sure to report any bugs you encounter on either our issue tracker or Discord. Be sure to provide us with as much information as you can whenever you report an issue. We won't be able to fix bugs that aren't reported to us.

    Download Alpha 4.10.0