Articles

  • A new season comes for OutFox Serenity Volume 3, we're going from Spring to Summer

    Trailer

    BGAs shown on the video are not part of OutFox Serenity


    New Songs

    CHEER


    Eradication of Light


    Frenzied Serenity


    Serenity Volume 3 Spreadsheet

    The volume 3 spreadsheet has been updated with the new songs, comment on what you want to work on so others are aware!

    Serenity Page

    The serenity page has been updated to make it easier for new people to know the guidelines and how to submit their content.

    There will be a section for each type of content submission, you'll be sent to a new page showing the guidelines of that specific content telling the user to first register and then join our Discord to submit Charts and/or Graphics, music submission will have an additional link with a form made to submit music only.

    The user register form has been updated not to have music-specific fields.

    "Content" pages have been moved to OutFox Wiki where you can see the History, User Profiles, and Volume Resumes of OutFox Serenity.

    We plan to create a new page that will allow users to download simfile templates without joining our Discord Server.

    Join the Community!

    Give feedback, share your content, discuss and talk with the community not only of Serenity but Project OutFox as a whole, join our Discord Server with over 2200 members!

  • A new year for serenity starts now, get ready because the development cycle is going to be very different this time!

    Trailer


    New Songs

    Run 4 Cover


    What Year Is This


    PLANETES


    Serenity Volume 3 Spreadsheet

    With a new volume a new spreadsheet is created for you to make others aware of the content you plan to work on, we have also added a new "Introduction" page where you can learn about OutFox features to use in your charts!

    Schedule

    As you may or may not know, Volume 3 will have 4 seasons, each with 3 new songs with an interval of 3 months between the start of each, you're always allowed to submit content to any volume no matter the time!

    Mission Date (DD/MM)
    Season 1 Start 01/03/2023
    Season 2 Start 01/06/2023
    Season 3 Start 01/09/2023
    Season 4 Start 01/12/2023

    Contributing

    Contributions for OutFox Serenity are now hosted on the Project OutFox Discord Server once you join you'll be able to see an "OutFox Serenity" category which you can use to get information, updates, submit content, see our commits and talk with the team.

    1. Click here to join. (or copy the invite code: cN4TjgQdcA)
    2. Scroll down to the "OutFox Serenity" category, check the "serenity-space" channel, and look for the pinned post named "Submission Guidelines & FAQ", there you'll get up-to-date with the information required about serenity and how to contribute.
    3. If you want to contribute with graphics, check the spreadsheet graphics section to see if their block spaces aren't aware taken, if not then comment on it and warn our team on the discord server!
    4. If you want to contribute with songs, check the Music Guidelines and then use our online form. Be sure to include the license of your music and stems if you have any.
    5. If you want to contribute with charts, check the "Submission Guidelines & FAQ" discord channel we had talked about, it includes in-depth explanation about chart submission.
  • OutFox Serenity

    Heya!

    We're happy to announce that OutFox Serenity Volume 2 Winter Update just released, the second winter update since volume 1, we thank every single contributor for making the project go this far and this big.

    With the launch of this volume, OutFox Serenity will have a total of 560 charts available to play, go ahead and check the OutFox Serenity Page for more info!

    A place to remember

    With OutFox Serenity always growing, so is the number of artists for charts, graphics, and songs, OutFox Serenity was always about the contribution to the community and making your name.

    Because of that, we have started working on something where people will be able to view information about all submissions you and others have made, when possible, we will also include your socials so more people can follow your work elsewhere.

    We're not ready to share more details than that as the project just recently began, but rest assured that your contributions will be documented.

    What now

    As some of you might know, OutFox Serenity Volume 3 has already been in the works for quite some time given how it will have a different development period compared to how we have done it in the past, we're also very close to its reveal it is just a few days away.

    With this announcement, a new category should be available, on OutFox Discord Server, for OutFox Serenity, with a better way to submit content, discuss rates/chart creation, and how find our spreadsheets. We have also updated our outfox serenity guidelines page with new rules and an easier way to register yourself/submit music.

    Keep your attention on any of our socials so you don't lose the Volume 3 announcement!


    Tiny-Foxes

    Ready to see what updates our members have worked on? Let's see them!

    New Projects

    Peters-Noteskins (Tiny-Foxes Fork)

    This is a fork of MegaSphere/Pete-Lawrence's StepMania noteskins repository. The focus of this fork is to focus on adding Project OutFox-optimized versions of its StepMania 5.x noteskins, namely by:

    • Adjusting their code to adhere to its developers' best practices for Lua code style (i.e. removing use of cmd blocks, replacing semicolons with commas, etc.)
    • Adjusting their code to support Project OutFox's Lua timing system (namely, recognizing judgements beyond W1, as well as using a different method to color the note explosion sprite in order to support judgement colors defined by themes)
    • Adding sprites for OutFox-specific notes such as lift holds and mine holds.

    OpenSMOpp

    OpenSMO but updated...TO GO EVEN FURTHER BEYOND! ~ Jous

    OutFox-Translation-Helper

    Translation Helper for Project OutFox

    This program compares a source and target language file, to check for missing keys.

    ComboNumbers-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.

    Project Updates

    Virtua-Steps

    RyutoSetsujin-Customizations

    TF_Wheels

    smtheme-soundwaves-community

    Aozora-Alpha-Noteskins

    kitsu-template

    superuser-outfox

    NEW Theme colors! You can now choose between several (about 25 at the moment?) different color schemes! Highly requested by the community.

    NEW Background brightness! Allows you to dim the image in the background.

    NEW Theme provided judgments and toasties! I included a few to make the theme more theme-like.

    NEW Judgment animation toggles! You can turn on or off animations on judgments if you find them distracting.

    Fixed anomalies in Player Options when using only Player 2

    Fixed course mode breaking in song wheel (still unstable in gameplay, work in progress)

    Added higher-quality grade indicators in the evaluation screen

    Various stability and bug fixes

    JudgeFonts-by-MattMayuga

    That's it for now, see you next time!

  • Common splash.png

    Happy Halloween! We've got a new release for you!

    Project OutFox 0.4.18.x marks the beginning of the "long-term stable" (LTS) phase for the 0.4.x branch, meaning that we now consider this branch of Project OutFox to be stable, and no longer require the "Alpha" branding. All future feature development will target the alpha 0.5.x branch (also branded as "Alpha V"), but we will continue to support the 0.4.x branch with bug fixes and performance improvements until December 2023.

    We will continue our monthly release schedule for 0.4.x until December 2022, after which it will move to a quarterly release schedule. This means there will be four more updates in 2023, with the last scheduled to be 0.4.24 in December 2023.

    Alongside the switch to LTS status, there's also a few major new features in 0.4.18:

    New mode: bongo!

    modes-4.18.png

    198139520-361eac38-1c33-4b57-ba05-bb8cf4ce1098.jpg

    bongo is Project OutFox's 18th game type, based on a console game first released in 2003. It has gameplay similar to taiko mode, except using a pair of bongos instead of a taiko drum, also incorporating a microphone input for clap notes.

    This mode supports the same chart formats we use for taiko, so existing TJA and OSU charts can automatically be parsed and converted to bongo charts as well. Just keep in mind that existing charts may not have been authored with this gameplay style in mind, and some holds and effects do break sync, but we will be fixing these issues in time as part of our ongoing work on `taiko. It will also receive a dedicated theme in a later release.

    We have designed this mode in collaboration with OpenTaiko, so that charts made using the new TJA letter types in the charting format will be cross-compatible moving forward.

    32-bit ARM legacy build

    199224894-f5efaa10-db00-4745-8e0d-ac24e7076e2a.jpg

    We have added a 32-bit ARM legacy Linux build, which is designed for 32-bit boards manufactured around the 2010s (2010-2016), often with a Tegra chip, with the ARM Cortex-based processors of the time. As with our other legacy builds, it is compiled using an older glibc from the Ubuntu 14.04 era. The photo above is from community member Chriswak, showing the game running on a Jetson TK1, a Nvidia Tegra development board.

    The extreme minimum requirement is a Linux distro with a glibc version of 2.19-2.21. To confirm your CXXABI and GLIBCXX versions, run the following commands;

    strings /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6 | grep GLIBCXX
    strings /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnueabihf/libstdc++.so.6 | grep CXXABI

    If your list does not show GLIBCXX_3.4.22 and CXXABI_1.3.11, you will need to update your system to GCC 7.0 (which is still supported even on these old distros) with the following commands (add sudo or run under a root shell);

    apt-get update -y 
    apt-get install software-properties-common -y 
    add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test -y 
    apt-get update -y 
    apt-get install gcc-7 g++-7 -y 
    update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/gcc gcc /usr/bin/gcc-7 60 --slave /usr/bin/g++ g++ /usr/bin/g++-7 
    update-alternatives --config gcc

    New PandaLog system

    This month we also added a new logging system which will greatly help with any debugging needs that you have. There are now separate main, theme, crashlogs now, and these have varying levels of detail, depending on need. If you happen to have a crash or need to debug a theme or Lua script, this is now much easier to do.

    You can adjust the detail of the logs by setting the LogLevel preference in Save/Preferences.ini to a number between 1 and 5, with 0 giving full detail, and 5 giving the least detail.

    As we no longer follow the SM logging system, we have added a dummy info.txt to maintain compatibility with GrooveStats Launcher.

    New FFMPEG system

    This release also sees some changes to the FFMPEG builds used in OutFox. We had discovered there is a memory leak bug in the upstream code; while it doesn't really affect many of the video players out there generally, the code we use to acquire and display video data is based on the functions that are bugged in newer versions, so folks using banners or video backgrounds would end up with crashing and freezes due to this.

    We have reverted back to a much older 'bug free' build of 4.x for the time being until it is fixed upstream. If you get any quirks or errors on videos, do let us know; we tried a lot of different formats and videos commonly used, but we didn't cover everything!

    Linux joystick preference

    This build adds a support option for those folks on some builds which have had evdev issues with the newer kernels (5.1 and newer) making pads not show up.

    By default OutFox uses the event system, as this is recommended by distros like Ubuntu and Debian but with recent updates these can miss seeing pads and controllers.

    The new preference UseLinuxJS (Use Linux JoyStick) sets /js* by default, so folks can access the controllers correctly. If you want the older behaviour, take a moment to set this to 0 in your preference.ini file in the /save folder. We will keep an eye on this for now, and if you get access denied errors, ensure your user is in the input group using a terminal:

    sudo usermod -a -G input USERNAME

    where USERNAME is your current user (type whoami) to see what this is in a terminal. Let us know if you have any issues, and pop into the Discord server if you need any help!

    pump hold fixes

    This month we have been working with the players and developers of the Infinitesimal theme for pump with fixing the hold situation in the simulation of this mode. With a lot of revisions and testing, we can happily report that the holds are operating properly now, and we are grateful to those that gave their time helping us perfect it!

    Always on Top mode

    We have added a new AlwaysOnTop preference, as some streamers have reported that their capture methods have issues with the game unless it is always on top. This preference.

    Thanks to Zui and SHRMP0 on the Project OutFox Discord for making the suggestion known to us, and for our streamer friends for enjoying the game on different platforms.

    New AllowRotation Preference

    This preference was backported from alpha 0.5 as some of our users have requested support for rotational options. This preference is off by default, and allows rotation for portrait screens where the resolution/display is rotated, mainly for vertical orientations

    StepLastSeconds changes

    For songs which have multiple chart files in the folder, like pump, be-mu, po-mu, kbx via .osu, etc, there is a slight bug in the way the game sends the 'length' data to the theme/engine that counts stages at the moment. This is a long upstream bug and we are working on a fix in Alpha V, and will backport it when it is ready.

    The issue is, if some charts are different lengths, they will show correctly in screen game-play, but only display the LONGEST length in the music wheel, or 'ScreenSelectMusic' as it's known internally. Fixing this bug will also benefit other modes so it is something we want to work on.

    Updated Windows installer

    Last but not least, we've also given the Windows installer an update. We did some internal changes to how we generate and localize it, and gave it a fresh coat of paint. A Brazilian Portuguese localization has also been added.

    msedge_4JVLqVr3ux.png

    Downloads

    This is just a recap of the major, user-facing features and technical changes in this release. You can read the full changelog on the 0.4.18 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 0.4.18.1

  • Get ready, the time for winter update has come with gifts for serenity, time to check the next songs out!

    Songs

    Halcyon

    Summer Overload

    Relaxation Piece of Conclusion

    Serenity Volume 2 Winter Update Status Spreadsheet

    As usual, you can make others aware of what you're working on by using our spreadsheets, leave a comment and our team will write it down when possible:

    Schedule

    Mission Date (DD/MM)
    Open Submissions 18/10/2022
    Testing Weeks 18/01/2023
    Testing Weeks End 31/01/2023

    Contributing

    Here are the ways you can contribute to this volume:

    Join our Discord Server

    We have a Serenity-focused discord server where you can interact with the serenity team and other members of the community who are also contributing.

    1. Click here to join. (or copy the invite code: mNcFU67mK7)
    2. After reading the rules channel, grab simfile templates inside the #simfile-templates channel, those will help with your development as they already have any required metadata such as bpm changes/author info/keysounds..etc. (It is important to note that you're not allowed to change the main chart header if you want to apply bpm changes/attack it should only take place in your chart)
    3. Submit your chart using the #chart-submission channel.

    If you want to contribute with graphics, use the #graphic-submissions channel, and make sure to read our graphics guidelines here.

    It's important to note that OutFox Serenity Volume 2 will be the last time we use the serenity exclusive discord server to accept submissions/tell where people should go, after submissions are closed we will switch back to the main Project OutFox Server.

    Open a Pull Request to our OutFox Serenity Repository

    If you know how to use Github, you can open a pull request to our repository, click here to open.

    Make sure you're targeting the right branch when making a pull request.

    Take your time and have fun making part of OutFox Serenity!