v2.3 ~ hardware offload?! Quick boot ?! Attract mode has evolved again?! ~
Version 2.3 is there with better compatibility and a couple nice new features.
Credits
Special thanks to gingerchris for bringing to my attention that lights were actually not working in attract mode.
As usual, thanks to all betatesters :)
Fixes
A lot of patches have been rewritten for stability~. Should be compatible with more versions of the game now.
Enhancements
< tachi>
popnhax now comes with the correct msvcr100.dll bundled, and libcurl is loaded dynamically when one of the tachi patch is enabled. This should allow you to just disable these patches and not have any compatibility issue with your OS in case you had trouble with v2.2
<enhanced_polling>
enhanced polling now supports my new "PopnIO v2" pcb, which implements the real io board protocol, but also additional features including hardware offload. It is automatically activated when popnio.dll is present in the contents folder and enhanced_polling is active.
This allows a very stable and very reactive enhanced polling even on bemanipc hardware with very little overhead.
Rather than using a separate thread ingame, the ioboard itself takes care of measuring how long each button has been pressed for, and the protocol features new ways to communicate with the io so that you can retrieve the immediate input state (whereas it seems like the real ioboard gives you a last known state, which can be up to 10ms in the past... insane).
<attract_ex>
when you have a hispeed_default_bpm set, attract_ex will use it as a target value for its multiplier, instead of using x4.0
New additions
<attract_lights>
Attract mode will have all lights working, including button lamps for the autoplayed notes!
Note: button light duration is pretty short for now, and long notes aren't handled properly, that will be fixed in a future release, along with yet other new attract-mode related stuff... far from being done yet x)
<attract_interactive>
You can now TAKEOVER the attract mode autoplay!! :)
Press any button other than red to enter interactive mode. You can now play the song yourself (including red button).
Note: If you stop pressing buttons for a while, autoplay will resume.
Note: If you don't use attract_full, attract mode timer stops during interactive mode, and resumes with autoplay.
<quick_boot>
Last but not least, you might have noticed the game takes a long time to boot (black screen before the self-test comes up), and that it is even longer when you have a lot of custom packs.
This patch reduces that black screen duration down to a couple seconds no matter your songlist total size.