v0.7 has finally released!

This is the biggest and best update yet, fixing a lot of previously existing problems while still adding plenty of new stuff to go along with it. The time it takes to release major updates from now on will probably take longer than usual (especially if I take a break like I did before back in v0.4 and Christmas) but only because I want to be able to release v1.0 and be satisfied with the result. Hopefully, it doesn't take too long to get to v1.0, but I'm fine with taking as much time as needed. There is still a lot for me to work on, but I've had plenty of fun throughout the entire process and don't plan on stopping anytime soon!

Following this update jOeSU shall be considered out of alpha and onward into beta!

New stuff:

• Story Mode! Please be aware that this is in very early stages of development, but I'd still love for everyone to mess around in it. So please excuse my abysmal storytelling skills along with the sometimes sweet sound of silence due to me not being able to afford voice acting. The story is told in chapters, each with 5 songs inside. The last song in a chapter is a boss, you don't regenerate health, and with each boss comes a brand new attack that changes up gameplay. As of v0.7 you start with chapters 1 & 2. Let's take a look at chapter 2's attack! Your enemy wields a giant hammer, just before impact it will display a note, when hit all the notes will change into the type it displayed prior.

When pressing "PLAY" in the main menu, instead of going straight to the song select menu, you can either choose to browse all songs, or play any of your unlocked chapters. Chapter 2 currently has no cutscenes but again - this is alpha, so expect some things to be unfinished.

• Optimised the holy heck out of gameplay - mainly the way notes are handled. Aside from other note optimisations stated in Changes,  this one is VERY noticeable especially if you run lower-end hardware. I went from getting an average of 440fps to an incredible 2,000fps. Why isn't this in Changes like all other optimizations? Because a 500% increase in FPS is no joke.
  
• Becoming a jOeSU supporter is now a thing! Originally I planned to never accept donations and have always disabled that option, but I thought now that I've sunk almost a year into this project, why not? Unlocking supporter perks is my way of saying thank you - the process is as simple as pressing one button in-game. You can read more about it here. I don't want to drown this game in a paywall,  and I'm not going to. This is only optional, I wouldn't want someone to spend money on this game and NOT receive anything. Any money raised will go straight into development (voice acting for example).
• The pause menu has been completely revamped and now has the added options of quitting a song or restarting! Not only does pressing Escape on your keyboard enter this menu, but also the back button located in the top left.

• The levelling UI has been changed. Before this simply had to bits of text saying your level, then your EXP. Now you have a progress bar displaying your EXP progress and a badge! For every 2 levels that you gain your badge will become more detailed.

If you are a supporter, you get a heart instead of a circle <3

• The tutorial is here, with voice acting and all! This is something that probably shouldn't have taken this long to finally make, but a welcome edition. It is found at the very beginning of the song select menu, next to the easy songs.

• Voice acting is now sprinkled slightly throughout jOeSU. In the future, I will probably expand on this.
• We have loads of new songs! These include:

1.  Main Theme from Zelda Breath of the Wild
2.  Main Theme from Super Mario Bros (stated below)
3.  Opening Theme from Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
4.  World Bowser from Super Mario 3D World
5.  Jump Up, Super Star! from Super Mario Odyssey
6.  Shibe by Moppi (replacing Hell 3)
7.  Left Bank Two by The Novletones
8.  Level 1 from Silver Surfer
9. Man on the Moon by Zella Day
10. Cherry Blossom Shower from Okami
11. My Name Is Mud by Primus
12. Miserlou by Dick Dale

• Replaced the song Ringside with Super Mario Bros' main theme! Ringside was nice but slow and boring. Now that there is an actual tutorial I think having an easy and recognizable song is a better fit. Plus it has a cooler background. :)
• The default background for songs has been updated from its outdated and ugly form.
• The setting "Note Assist" has been swapped for "Graphics"! There are currently three settings: low (I), medium (II) and high (III).  Low settings disables as many special effects as possible including backgrounds. Medium will enable particles, surfaces and other minor effects. High will enable backgrounds along with every visual effect available.

• If you are playing a song and aren't focused on the game (like alt-tabbing out of the window) it will automatically pause the game.
• There is now a bar at the bottom of the song select menu which visually guides you on where you are in the menu. Later on you will be able to drag this bar around to move to a song, but currently, you can't because of maths. :)
• The songs "Finale" and "Alien Days" are now accessible by supporters, there is still some time left until these songs can be properly added into the game as they are not yet finished so I thought why not give the VIPs early access.
• New sound effects have been added for hitting and holding notes. I tried this before but it never sounded right, I hope these are okay!
• No matter what the background is, notes will be drawn only if they are in the range of the board. (this used to be exclusive to the default background only)

• Added lots of new loading screen text.
• Integrated a feedback system into the main menu, click on the bug icon in the top right to send your input to the jOeSU email.

• Added an animation that plays when you try to access a locked song.
• Added markers in the results screen to show you how close you were to a certain rank.
• Newly unlocked/unbeaten songboxes now glow.
• Added a new menu particle for jOeSU's anniversary! (March 14th)
• Joanna will slide into the screen everytime your combo reaches a new 100th number.
• The Level Editor now seamlessly overlaps your mouse when you hit the edge of the screen. I have always found myself scrolling to the end of my screen, letting go of Mouse2, moving my mouse to the start of the screen, and start scrolling again. Now there is no hassle, just keep on moving that mouse until you inevitably reach as far as your arm can take you.
• A unique sound effect now plays when you get an SS rank in a song.
• You can now hover your cursor over a mode and get a description of what it does.

Changes:

• Redesigned the loading screen, it felt pretty boring before.
• Remade a couple of songs to better match their intended difficulty, these include: It Hates Me So Much; Chibi-Maruko Chan; Orb of Dreamers; Hyper Zone 2.
• At last, the song editor finally saves sliders correctly. In the past, these wouldn't save at the length you set, but now are accurate. Now all that's left is polishing the song editor... *cough* v0.8 *cough*
  
• Scrolling with your mouse in the song editor now matches the speed in which you move your mouse. You can still hold shift to double the speed!
• Controller input has been re-enabled! The reason I removed controller input before was because harder songs became impossible with certain double notes, triple and onward - to try and fix this you can simultaneously use the D-Pad along with the regular buttons. Playing with a controller is a completely different playstyle, maybe somebody will enjoy it. I don't recommend playing with a controller at all, but people wanted it back, so enjoy (or try to)! Maybe I'm just too familiar with WASD controls?
• When testing a song in the level editor, holding shift now speeds it up way more, and when holding control it will be slowed down more than before.
• I'm feeling generous today, so you now start with 100 coins instead of 0. <3
• Optimised the main menu screen, previously it drew the same certain things multiple times to the screen which caused lag on bad hardware.
• Updated the default custom song background.
• Updated the animation that plays when you purchase a song.
• Redesigned the particle effects for hitting a note, it looks completely different now, and becomes flashier the better your accuracy!
• Removed the song "Moster Mosh" from Cel Damage.
• Remade "Hyper Zone 2" from Kirby's Dreamland 3.
• Optimised the custom songboxes for better performance.
• Edited and improved the progress bar code.
• Songboxes now show a more readable track length. Let's say a song is 1 minute and 30 seconds; previously it would be displayed as "1.50 minutes" (so mathematically 1 and a half minutes). Now instead it will say "1:30 minutes".
• Updated the coin icon.
• Fixed up some more slider length problems in a couple of songs which had outdated logic. (Against an Armed Boss, Chibi-Robo!)
• You now have a whole 2 more pixels to get perfect accuracy on notes! Wow!!!
  
• Adjusted the score needed for each rank, before if I did badly in a song it was unheard of to even get a C rank, instead it would always be a B. This has been fixed.
• If a song is less than a minute long, instead of saying 0.X minutes, it will now say how many seconds it is instead.
• The text displaying your combo is now outlined as previously it could clash with certain backgrounds and be hard to read.
• Updated the picture for Through the Fire and Flames.
• Sliders now only disappear once they are fully off of the screen instead of disappearing the same way notes do.
• Sliders now have a revamped accuracy system, before it was very clunky and imprecise.
• Remade the logic for how songboxes are spawned. This used to be pretty messy but is now more optimized and efficient.
• In the song results screen, the animation of your score rising has been improved.
• Changed the colours of the mode select.
• Changed the file format of song data files.
• Added a slight dropshadow to the accuracy text, in some cases it was quite hard to see what the text said when certain backgrounds clashed with the colours, now they are much easier to see.
• Changed the sound effect for exiting the game.
• Loading the game is now faster and more efficient.
• Updated some sloppy drawing code regarding text in the alert system.
• From now on, when using developer mode your save data will not be updated, this lets me make better use of developer mode while keeping it usable for the few that might mess around with it.
• Optimised saving data when beating a song. This was pretty messy due to it being 9-month-old code!
• Songboxes weren't fading into a song when pressing enter unlike clicking on them, this has been changed to its intended function.
• Custom song images are now shaped like a record the same as regular songs.
• Remade the back button sprite.
• Moved and changed the alignment of the "X missed! :(" text when ending a song, previously it would clip through the UI, looking a bit strange.
• Pro mode used to slow down the speed a bit if you missed a note so it wouldn't get too fast, but I found that whenever I missed a note it was just annoying instead of making my life easier, this has been changed and now you really do have to be a pro to beat a song in that mode!
• Optimised lots of note/key/slider code for very slightly better performance.
• Changed the score neede for rank S and SS. I found SS was too easy on some occasions, SS is for an almost 100% perfect run so it's now a little harder to get that rank.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed an oversight where the game sometimes crashed due to surfaces being initialized in a wacky order. Sorry!
• Fixed a bug which allowed you to hit notes while paused.
• The fabled "grading bug" has FINALLY been defeated. This would cause the results screen to display the wrong grade, and was a persistently annoying thing to deal with: Being shown you got an S rank, only to be met with an A, etc.
• Drastically decreased the load time of the song select menu, before (for me at least) the game would freeze for a second before entering, now it's instant!
• Fixed an oversight which allowed transparent custom backgrounds to allow users to enter the "void" in a custom song.
• Fixed an oversight which allowed players to spam a songbox causing interesting results.
• Fixed a problem which caused pressing enter to play an unfinished song, whoops.
• Fixed the Discord status showing wrong times for songs. Also made Discord progress stop if the game is paused.
• Fixed a problem where particles in the song select menu would overlap some GUI elements.
• Going into the song editor with an incomplete/empty custom song folder no longer crashes the game.
• Fixed out of place sound effects playing when pressing "continue" after beating a song.
• Fixed a bug where if a single note was very close to a slider, it caused them both to trigger at once.
• Fixed note accuracy (bad, good, perfect etc) not following notes when they have their positions moved.
• Fixed certain events changing the audio levels without respect of your current sound settings.
• Corrected some drawing code in sliders which caused them to slightly clip into themselves.
• Fixed a bug where songbox animations would play if you were at the end of the list but still tried to move to the next.

Other additions:

• Added Razer Chroma support. If any of you have an epic gamer keyboard which supports Chroma: you can enjoy jOeSU even more with a profile change that highlights important keys in their appropriate colours.
• Updated the Discord status icons again.