Archived news
2009-12-12 - 0.4.1 cancelled, Windows alpha available
We have rather large new features in the development version and because of this the next release will be 0.5.0 rather than 0.4.1. The hilights include a new menu and of course the dance game feature, which we just tested in two player mode with actual dance pads. No release date other than "soon" has been set.
Windows alpha build from a few days ago is available here. A release is coming later, once we manage to remove the rough edges, hopefully with the 0.5.0 Linux release. The OS X bundling effort has ceased for now and we really need more Mac developers to get the job done. Compiling the software is easy, but bundling has proven to be difficult.
2009-12-05 - The Slashd-- LifeHacker Effect
I was wondering why my network connection was lagging while playing TA Spring (a great open-source RTS game which you should also check out). The site stats revealed that LifeHacker had linked to us and even though I had never heard of that site before, it is apparently very popular, as seen in the statistic where you can see a huge peak even though the day isn't even over yet (picture taken at 15:00). :)
Someone also made a Youtube video of Performous 0.3.2 today. Unfortunately he doesn't have microphone connected to the game, apparently, so you can't see the pitch display and scoring parts at all :(
In other news, we have working Windows binaries (thanks to the hard work by Xaldyz) and it seems that we will be able to release these with the upcoming 0.4.1 release, even though some cleanup and an installer are required.
The OSX bundle doesn't look so good as apparently there are problems with bundling some of the libraries used. Compiling on MacPorts yourself is easy, so please consider that if you are a Mac user (there are instructions on the Hacking page).
2009-11-28 - Performous 0.4.0 released
A major new release that not only contains improvements to the singing game you all love but more importantly extends the game into a full-fledged band game. Since the pre-release at Assembly Summer 2009 demo party, a large amount of improvements have been done, improving both the gameplay and the graphics. It is not perfect yet, but this certainly is a good time to make a release. Changes since 0.3.2 include:
- Guitar, bass and drums
- Uses songs in Frets on Fire / FoFiX format
- All tracks (including vocals) are supported
- Autodetection of any connected Guitar Hero and Rock Band instruments
- Support for using a keyboard as guitar controller (FoF style)
- Better hammer-on/pull-off support than in other games
- Engine tries to figure out player's intention instead of picking the nearest chord
- Multiplayer for as many players as you have instruments for
- Full 3D note visualization
- Initial hiscore support (press End in song browser)
- Textual feedback for singers after each line
- Guessing background/cover images and videos by filenames (if not specified in song files)
- SVG graphics and fail samples from Frets on Fire (GPL for the win!)
- Major changes in the internals, including a completely new audio mixer
- Configuration system improvements, now properly supports system and user conf
- Always use desktop resolution for full screen mode (instead of mode switching)
- Many minor bugs fixed
- Build/install changes and cleanup
- Installs only minimal amount of cruft
- Increased version requirements for Boost, CMake, etc.
- Various small bugs fixed
Special thanks to all the new developers who participated in this release (see a list of contributors and their activity at Ohloh.net). Without you it would not be possible to develop the game at a rate greater than ever before :)
2009-11-16 - Testers needed
Since the last status update we have had active development and currently the codebase is starting to look suitable for a release. Since waiting more will not make things better, we have set the release date as the next weekend. Please help us test the development version (git master) and let us know if there are any problems, especially if there are any regressions from 0.3.2. The instrument feature is not very pretty, but the playability of it already seems better than that of Frets on Fire. There are a few known issues with the FoF format song parser when dealing with vocal tracks. It is likely that these will not get fixed in time for 0.4.0.
2009-10-28 - Status update
The development has been quiet during the last two months, but we have done various smaller fixes. The guitar support has been improved with pull-off support and new scoring. MIDI drum support is in the works. We decided not to release 0.4 yet, even though it would bring major new features, as the sound code has some regressions that may hurt users who don't even need the band game features. A release will be made once these issues have been fixed.
In other news, we have three new developers working on a dance game feature in a separate branch. If all goes well, that should be available in the 0.5 release in January or so.
The current band game graphics suck, so we are desperately looking for talented SVG graphicians. If you think you can work fluently in Inkscape or some other SVG software, and think you can help, please contact us (preferrably on IRC channel #performous on Freenode).
2009-08-23 - Git repository address changed
SF.net now supports multiple repositories and because of that the address has changed. Use git config remote.origin.url git://git.performous.org/gitroot/performous/performous to set the new URL in your existing repository.
2009-08-07 - Performous BAND at Assembly gamedev
In the past few weeks we have been working on band game features for Performous. They are developed in a private repository because we wanted to participate in the Assembly game development competition, where the new features were released under the special Performous BAND release that had the singing features disabled. While this code is still very experimental and quickly hacked together, we plan to improve it in the coming weeks and release Performous 0.4 with all the features combined (you can already find this in our git repo).
If you happen to be at Assembly, please come over to table F0 to try it out yourself! I can assure you that it does not have audio sync issues (we take care of these using three separate latency settings).
The game autodetects any connected Guitar Hero and Rock Band instruments, plus you can use a regular keyboard as a guitar. No configuration required. You can have as many players as you have instruments connected. Drums and other tracks of the FoF format songs (e.g. Guitar Hero or Rock Band rips) can be played.
2009-07-28 - Performous 0.3.2 released
This is a bugfix release that brings no new features. This is likely to be the last release of the 0.3 series. Changes include:
- Workaround for FFMPEG bug that was making it crash on i386
- The Singstar ripping tools now use ss_ prefix in their names
- The performous.sh wrapper (used for non-standard installation path) now passes parameters properly
- GStreamer and PortAudio drivers disabled in our binary packages (let us know if you need them)
- A bunch of other things
2009-07-14 - Status update
We are currently preparing a bugfix release 0.3.2 that will bring no new features but that fixes various issues of 0.3.1. In order to do this properly, please let us know if there were any issues in 0.3.1 that you'd like to have fixed. Additionally, it would be nice if you also helped testing the git branch 0.3, aiming for this release. Use command git branch 0.3 origin/0.3 && git checkout 0.3 in your cloned repository to switch to the 0.3 branch (git checkout master will switch back to the master branch).
On the master branch we have implemented preliminary support for the Frets on Fire / FoFiX song format. Performous can currently extract the notes from the songs and if the song has lyrics (e.g. Rock Band rips), you can sing it the Performous way. We have 3d rendering of guitar neck working, but gameplay is still missing. Further, there is a simple C++ clone of Frets on Fire, called Silky Strings, in our repository and build system. Building it is not enabled by default, so you will have to use ccmake to enable it. This game is used as the basis for our implementation.
Finally, a little request. Do you like Performous? You can register as a Performous user on our Ohloh page and add a pin to the map as we'd love to see where Performous is being used! For more information, see http://www.ohloh.net/projects/performous.
2009-07-06 - Performous 0.3.1 released
Eight months after the 0.3.0 release, the Performous team is proud to announce the release of the 0.3.1 version. Whereas it is only a minor revision number, it updates lots of things (over 350 commits).
Special thanks go to all contributors (Tronic, Yoda, knittl, zarn, Jack_MD ...).
New features:
- Up to four player multiplayer game with many mics from many sound cards
- Totally new XML-based configuration system
- Reworked song list exporter (based on XML+XSLT)
- Brand new eye-candy song browser (reflections, animations, ...)
- Many requested features (karaoke mode, performance mode, ...)
- Better in-game configuration (audio round-trip, video delay, ...)
- Lots of build fixes (who says ffmpeg?)
- Tons of bugfixes (ffmpeg once again?)
- Many many other things (see git changelog)
Future work:
- Finishing the Windows build (we're working a *LOT* on it)
- Reworking the in-game configuration
- Adding drum/guitar/dance support
- Adding in-game Singstar DVD support
- Many many other things (see docs/TODO.txt)
2009-07-05 - New song packages released
The old packages have been repackaged with no changes to the song as "libre" and "restricted" parts depending on how the songs are licensed. Additionally, wonderful collections of Jonathan Coulton and Shearer songs are now included as separate downloads. Thanks for the original packages go to the Ultrastar Deluxe project, as usual. Fetch the new packages from the separate songs page that has now been added as they don't fit very well on download page.
2009-06-25 - We now use Git
The Subversion repository of the SourceForge project ultrastar-ng has been terminated and is now archived read-only. The latest code can be found in the brand new Git repository, tediously converted from the SVN by knittl. The repository URL and other information is available on the developer page. In this move, all the developers of the old project have been moved to the new project, performous, and the old project will quietly shut down.
2009-06-18 - Status update
It's been quiet for a while, so I figured it's a time to post an update. In the past seven months we have fixed a bunch of bugs, added a completely new configuration system, added many features that people have requested, reworked the song list exporter, created a completely new song browser with shiny graphics and crossfades, added experimental Rock Band drumset support and documented the source code. There will not be any big new (band game) features in 0.3.1 but after the release we can freely start breaking things again and that allows much faster development. One quite important thing that we might do is switching SDL to Clanlib 2.0. This needs testing, but it is likely that Clanlib has better full screen mode handling than SDL, and it certainly integrates better with C++.
As a sidenote, we are still looking for new team members with skills in C++, vector graphics (SVG), XML and/or websites. Join our IRC channel #performous at Freenode for more information. Oh, and please kick Tronic on the butt if Performous does not have guitar support by the end of July.
2008-12-01 - Ultrastar-songs repacked for Debian
The Debian packages have been recreated because the original ones (ultrastar-songs-2 and ultrastar-songs-restricted-2) had major issues. Please upgrade to the new versions if you installed the old versions from our website. Apologies for the inconvinience.
2008-11-03 - Performous 0.3.0 released
Oh yes, it is exactly one year since the 0.2.0 release and we are releasing again. But speaking on anniversaries, the project founder Vincent Le Ligeour aka Yoda turns 29 years today, too :).
Just to give some idea of how hard we have worked since the last release, there have been over seven hundred SVN commits since 0.2.1, which is more than in all earlier versions combined (490 commits).
New features:
- Multiplayer with Singstar mics or any other stereo input
- Dramatically improved performance, runs fine on very slow machines now
- Fully OpenGL-based (some kind of 3D acceleration is now mandatory, but even Intel works fine)
- Heavily pimped graphics in singing screen
- Automatically zooming notelines in singing screen
- Real widescreen support (adaptive layout instead of stretching or cropping)
- Song folders are now scanned recursively, in the background without blocking the UI
- Ingame and preview volume may be controlled
- Audio roundtrip latency and audio/video sync controls added
- New score window (still no highscores)
- New menu theme song
- Separate game engine thread, so that slow graphics rendering should no longer affect pitch detection
- Our own audio library libda, supporting ALSA, Pulseaudio, JACK and others
- FFMPEG-based video and audio decoding (together with libda replaces Xine and GStreamer)
- CMake-based build (Autotools are gone for good)
- + too many others to list them all here
Big thanks to everyone who has put effort into this release. This includes yoda, tronic, tobnob, jack_md, zarrn, dex7 and knittl, not to forget all those who helped testing the game on different platforms or who provided the media files that we use (full credits in Authors.txt, inside the package).
Head over to the download page to get the new version! If you are not in a hurry, please notice that we are expecting to release 0.3.1 shortly after, as there probably are some issues in 0.3.0 due to it having major changes on every sector.
2008-10-29 - UltraStar Next Generation is now known as Performous
We have now moved to a new location because SF.net terminated its shell service. SVN and file downloads will stay at SF.net, at least for now. As you may have noticed, the URL has changed to performous.org, along with the website design. This reflects the project's new name, which will be used in the 0.3 release.
The name change was a result of several reasons, the most important of which is that USNG was written from scratch in C++ and is not a fork of the UltraStar games created with Delphi. We also aim to extend the concept to general band or party games, combining features of Frets on Fire, Stepmania and others, possibly during the coming year.
In the past two months we have improved performance on low-end hardware, further improved the graphics, implemented real widescreen support for everything and done plenty of other stuff. We are quite close to a release, but there remain a few things to be worked out before that, and we also want to have it tested well before a release (you can help with that - head to the developers page for more information).
2008-09-08 - We are not dead
Quite the opposite, actually. There is a large number of new features in SVN, waiting to be released. Just last week we got scrolling notes, new bling-bling note graphics + hilight effects, multiplayer and various other things. Oh, and the game also runs much faster than previously, but we are still optimizing it (especially text rendering). The next release, 0.3, should be out quite soon, but meanwhile you can have a look at the screenshot page for the latest development. Or if you can't wait, check out the developer page to find out how to get it installed NOW.
2008-04-27 - New song package released
Version 2 of ultrastar-songs contains five songs, three of which are new, including On The Run by Joshua Morin, Space Invaders by Pornophonique and Free Software Song by Thor. Get it from the download page.
2007-11-05 - UltraStar-NG 0.2.1 released
No major changes, just bugfixes.
2007-11-03 - UltraStar-NG 0.2.0 released
The major changes in this release are the UTF-8 for lyrics, the new audio capture backends (portaudio v18 and v19, gstreamer), lyrics text files are less pedantic, filtering/searching feature in song list, configuration and score screens, large code rewrite, bug fixes and memory handling enhancements.
2007-07-06 - UltraStar-NG in Gentoo portage tree
UltraStar-NG 0.1.4 has been added to the official Gentoo portage tree. emerge ultrastar-ng will install the game. Thanks Alfredo.
2007-05-19 - UltraStar-NG 0.1.4 released
The major changes in this release are a difficulty level, a to-start cursor, audio pause/seek, a practice screen, and in-game full-screen support. The lyrics parsing and screen API was rewritten. A man page, desktop, and pixmap files were added. The latest unscaled graphics were fixed along with bugs and memory leaks.
2007-03-18 - UltraStar-NG 0.1.3 released
The lima is now the default theme. An OpenGL graphic layout, song preview, and fullscreen support have been added. The latest SDL_gfxPrimitives dependencies have been removed. There are some bugfixes.
2007-02-15 - UltraStar-NG 0.1.2 released
Theming features were completed and a lima theme was added. Many command line parameters were added, including width, height, theme selection, and capture disabling. Bugs were fixed.
2007-02-01 - UltraStar-NG 0.1.1 released
Full support of game scale (resolution given at compile time), modular video support, removal of SDL ttf dependency (used cairo and librsvg instead), bugfixes.
2007-01-21 - UltraStar-NG 0.1.0 released
This is the first installable version
2006-10-13 - UltraStar-NG sourceforge project created
A long long time ago...