[Release] UltraStar Deluxe 1.3 Beta is out now!

The developers of UltraStar Deluxe and all the many contributors from various forks finally released a new version of the game last weekend. We marked it as a beta version because it still contains a bunch of minor known bugs, but in our opinion it is already much more stable than any other version of USDX out there.
The stable version should be released within the next year or so.
So, feel free to download UltraStar Deluxe 1.3-beta from https://github.com/UltraStar-Deluxe/USDX/releases and enjoy singing your favorite songs!

Summary of changes:

• 6 player support on one or split over two screens
  
• jukebox mode
  
• battle of the bands party tournament mode
  
• webcam support
  
• support for almost any video or audio file format
  
• the game now runs on windows xp up to windows 10, OS X up to el capitain and many linux distributions
  
• duet singing of songs
  
• many new keyboard shortcuts
  
• greatly improved song editor
  
• improved overall speed and lowered memory requirements - you can now easily play the game with 5000 songs * loaded on a system with 1 GB of ram
  
• smart search feature for song selection
  
• switched from SDL1.2 to SDL2, updated many other dependent libraries
  
• better Unicode support for multilingual characters in lyrics
  
• less bugs and improved overall stability
  
• lots more
  

Please report new issues/problems/suggestions at https://github.com/UltraStar-Deluxe/USDX/issues

For a list of keyboard shortcuts / controls, see https://github.com/UltraStar-Deluxe/USDX/blob/master/README.md#4-controls

Instructions on how to build&run the game on linux based systems can be found at https://github.com/UltraStar-Deluxe/USDX/blob/master/README.md#5-build-and-run . If you know how to build packages for various distributions, please contact and help us!

Thanks for this release

I've already tested it a little bit (with Chinese songs).

I like some new feature, but did the font text changed in some part ?
The video preview in 4:3 (or 1:1) seems bigger but less good.
It would be better to have the possibility of having the preview in 16:9.
Also, going from a song to another seems slower (or is it me ?)

For the rest, I like the idea of each player choosing his difficulty.
The mic/singing sensitivity seems to have improved.
(you need to be more accurate in your singing skill than on previous version)
Jukebox to change the colors of lyrics is fun.

I've still lots to discover it seems

WingXero wrote:but did the font text changed in some part ?

Please describe what exactly you are referring to. The lyrics text should be more clear and easier to read. Also, the game now runs by default with the actual screen resolution instead of running at 720p at best.

WingXero wrote:The video preview in 4:3 (or 1:1) seems bigger but less good.

in older versions the cover/video preview was stretched and looked bad for example on a 16:9 screen. It now automagically adjusts the hight of the preview part and crops the video accordingly. Please provide screenshots of less good resolution. For my test cases the resolution of the cover images is a lot better with the new dynamic image loading approch.

WingXero wrote:Also, going from a song to another seems slower (or is it me ?)

Frames per second might be lower depending on your hardware but overall scrolling should be faster (comparable by how long you have to wait to scroll for example 500 songs)
The lower fps is caused because the game now doesn't load all cover images into system memory any more (which was horribly slow, wasted lots of system memory and caused the game to crash after playing for an hour or so), but instead it only loads a cover image when it is about to actually be shown on screen. This change also lowered the system memory usage so that now you can have for example 10.000 songs in the game and still have low memory usage.

WingXero wrote:The mic/singing sensitivity seems to have improved.

Yes, the pitch detection has been improved quite a lot and now you can also set the sensitivity (Threshold and Mic boost) in the record settings to better filter loud nearby speakers and other noise.

Could you try how long starting the game now takes when having many songs in the folders and compare it to old usdx? (please try twice - usdx "remembers" song files which it already saw before and doesn't calculate certain stuff again)

basisbit wrote:

WingXero wrote:but did the font text changed in some part ?

Please describe what exactly you are referring to. The lyrics text should be more clear and easier to read. Also, the game now runs by default with the actual screen resolution instead of running at 720p at best.

No, not the lyrics font, but some other font. But I thinks the font did not change it's due to the 720p issue.
(But personally, is it now with new version or worldparty, both are on 1080p)

basisbit wrote:

WingXero wrote:The video preview in 4:3 (or 1:1) seems bigger but less good.

in older versions the cover/video preview was stretched and looked bad for example on a 16:9 screen. It now automagically adjusts the hight of the preview part and crops the video accordingly. Please provide screenshots of less good resolution. For my test cases the resolution of the cover images is a lot better with the new dynamic image loading approch.

Okay, it's just seeing differently annoy me at the moment, but I'll get used to it.
But, crop the video I don't really like it ^^
Cause all the video I personally use (when song making) are in 16:9, so all the video are crop.
Would prefer a 16:9 window preview, then 4:3
(I prefer a 4:3 to be crop to fit 16:9 then the other way around)

But it's just my taste ^^ Don't take it at heart.
Maybe something to create in the next version of Ultrastar
(a new feature allowing to chose the "window video preview" format ^^)

basisbit wrote:

WingXero wrote:Also, going from a song to another seems slower (or is it me ?)

Frames per second might be lower depending on your hardware but overall scrolling should be faster (comparable by how long you have to wait to scroll for example 500 songs)
The lower fps is caused because the game now doesn't load all cover images into system memory any more (which was horribly slow, wasted lots of system memory and caused the game to crash after playing for an hour or so), but instead it only loads a cover image when it is about to actually be shown on screen. This change also lowered the system memory usage so that now you can have for example 10.000 songs in the game and still have low memory usage.

Scrolling lots of song goes faster, but when going slowly (one song at a time) it seems a little slower.
Well, nothing important ^^

As for my hardware, I've got quite a computer (self build computer).
That's maybe why I had no problem with having lot's of song and still UWorldparty to work fine.
(Even if all cover where loaded on the system).

basisbit wrote:Could you try how long starting the game now takes when having many songs in the folders and compare it to old usdx? (please try twice - usdx "remembers" song files which it already saw before and doesn't calculate certain stuff again)

There's not much change for me, they open up at the same speed more or less (maybe 1sec faster for new version)
I should try maybe on my laptop on battery mode (less powerful). And see if there's lot's of change.

But both open faster if they were opened before (the second time goes 3x faster)

very good new !!
i try that soon
thank you

if open with lot of songs are faster, it's a good new

Second beta version is released now. Get it at https://github.com/UltraStar-Deluxe/USDX/releases/tag/v1.3.5-beta and have fun!

a small status update:
Some developer who left the project in 2012 has stopped renewing the ultrastardeluxe.org domain name, so a shitty domain grabber got that website.
Anyways, we just moved to https://usdx.eu and also recreated the website from scratch.
We moved our developer chat form quakenet to freenode, so you can now reach us at #usdx@freenode.
Additionally, the current development version now supports all current ffmpeg versions up to 3.2 and thus it is now much easier to run the game on macOS, linux or a raspberry pi 3.