Performous

Announcements

2010-08-21 - Status update

Good news everyone, cross-compiling binaries from Linux for Windows is pretty much ready for prime-time. You can check for yourself by downloading a testing installer from the wiki. It would be nice if you could tell us how it works for you. The Mac bundle presented previously is broken, but luckily there has been OSX development work done and we have a new one at the usual place. All in all, it seems every platform is now in quite good shape.

We've now switched to using the new audio code and things seem to work rather well. Also the branch that moves controller configuration to an xml file has been merged. Although it is not yet perfect, it presents users a way to create own mappings and autodetections even though there is not yet a graphical UI for that.

The new joining menu is also now part of main codebase, but didn't arrive in time to be included in the provided testing builds. Anyway, if no significant issues rise in overall testing, perhaps we might start looking into making that long overdue 0.6 release...

2010-07-31 - Status update

We have progressed to the point where the new audio engine is pretty much on par with the previous one feature-wise. For merging, it would seem we only need some testing and tweaks to the time code calculation. Due to a bug with pause in the current audio system, the joining menu branch might require the new audio code before taken into use. Some visual clean-up is also in order. In addition, there has been initial work to move the controller mappings out of the executable, to make it much easier to add new ones.

On packaging side, stump created a script that can easily cross-compile the dependencies and Performous itself for Windows from Debian/Ubuntu. It even produces a working installer. Sadly, the resulting build is very unstable, sometimes allowing singing or dancing, but mostly just crashing when entering the song. This seems somewhat consistent with the earlier expirements when compiling in a native mingw32 environment. So, if you have experience with stabilizing gcc builds for Windows, feel free to pitch in!

Luckily, Mac OSX side appears brighter - we now have a fresh testing build at the wiki. There are some rough edges that need filing, e.g. some textures disappear in fullscreen mode, but it is certainly usable and ends the era where our last OSX binaries date back to 0.5.0.

2010-07-16 - Status update

The reason why the next 0.6 release isn't out yet is because of lacking Windows and OSX packaging. However, we haven't been sitting still - there has been significant development in various feature branches. One of them, SVG caching that greatly speeds up screen transitions is already merged to the main code.

Another branch represents the next generation of our audio engine. It gets rid of the complicated plug-in system and relies on a single cross-platform backend: PortAudio. The new code brings many improvements and makes future development easier. The system is already usable - configuration implementation is the only significant thing left to do before taking it into use.

Third exciting new thing is a nearly ready instrument joining menu that allows more intuitive and more expandable per player gaming experience configuration (see development picture below). The same generic menu structure will later be used to implement better configuration screen, among other things.

We also have the first free Jonathan Coulton full band song (with separate audio for all instruments!). You can try it here (note that a recent git version is required due to a bug in midi lyrics parsing).

Although the release time is unknown, Ubuntu users can rejoice as we now have a Launchpad PPA (see details at our wiki), from where cutting edge builds of Performous can be easily installed and tested. PPA builds also include somewhat expermental midi drums and webcam background features. We have also been looking into the possibility to cross-compile Performous for Windows on Linux host. That would not only make releasing much easier, but would also allow automated nightly Windows builds.

2010-04-20 - Status update

Many fixes have been made on the code lately (SingStar ripper enhancements, left-handed support, new highscore, Windows fixes and other bugfixes). We now think that the current code is ready for a release really soon. You can help us to make sure there isn't any regression in the current git version by testing it, or for Windows users by testing the latest nightly build.

We are also proud to announce that Performous has been featured in the HotPicks section of Linux Format, which is the best-selling Linux title in the UK. You can find the article in English here (©Future Publishing).

Two new videos are also available on YouTube. There is one screencast from cousteau available here and one video from Tronic:

2010-02-04 - Status update

Currently we have no easy solution to the Windows audio sync issues that still cause some jerkiness and it appears that most of the audio code will have to be rewritten to really fix the issue properly. Because of this the next release will be delayed further and it is likely to be numbered 0.6 instead of another 0.5 bugfix version as there has been significant work done on improving the graphics and there also are many usability fixes. Part of the problem is that people find implementing new features more interesting than fixing complex bugs, something that I gather to be a very common problem with open-source projects where all the developers are volunteers.

2010-01-16 - 0.5.1 released

This is a source-only bugfix release, most notably fixing issues with Windows version and adding more instrument mappings. List of changes is below and the packages can be found from the download page.

The next version (0.5.2) will be released once we sort out the remaining issues (estimated a few days) and it will also include binaries.

2010-01-13 - 0.5.0 released

This is the first release to include Windows and Mac binaries as well. A lot of work has been done by Xaldyz, Zar, Stump and others to make this possible. Meanwhile a large number of improvements and new features have been added, including of course the all new dance simulator developed during December by Aave, JNikkola and Kemppi, out of whom Aave has already become a core developer, already boosting about 200 commits. Another new developer who has been very active in this release is Peque who created the new main menu and gave some face lift for the default theme, among other things. The new features include:

Head over to the download page to get the new version. Because of the very large number of new features and due to porting to two new platforms we expect the release to be buggy. Please let us know if you find any problems. We'll try to release 0.5.1 soon with possible fixes and more new features. The Windows version is known to have various issues but we need all of them reported so that 0.5.1 can be made better (surprisingly we severely lack Windows testers).