Hello, interns!
As you may know, Rhythm Doctor allows you play through its Story Mode in 2-Player Co-Op. After selecting a level, use the left and right arrow keys to toggle between 1-Player and 2-Player before pressing "Start!"
With today's update, we've made improvements to 2-Player Co-Op across the board in Story Mode. Certain levels' gameplay have been tweaked to make them more fun for 2-Player, tutorials have been reworked to better include both players, and some dialogue will be changed when playing in 2-Player.
We're still hard at work on Act 6, the next chapter of Story Mode. We hope you enjoy these patches in the meantime!
Go grab a friend and see if they can survive Act 5 nightshifts with you.
You can view the full patch notes here.
A lot of this update is thanks to two new team members! We have GDColon working on Programming and Level Design (he handled a lot of the 2P level changes), and thefinals as a Summer Programming Intern! Couldn't have done it without them joining us.
Tweaked the design of the pause menu and reorganized some settings
Added a first-time setup menu when beginning the game
Added an option for “Detailed Discord Presence”
Allows you to customize if and when Discord displays level names on your activity status
Added an option for muting the game in the background
Added a sound glossary submenu that allows you to preview and learn about each game sound
Gameplay sounds in 2P mode are automatically panned left/right depending on player position (The strength of this can be adjusted in the new advanced audio settings submenu)
Fixed being able to click pause menu buttons with the mouse when inputs should be disabled
Fixed certain camera movements revealing off-screen hands
Fixed hold catching behavior for certain hits
Various sound adjustments across Story Mode
Various optimizations and performance improvements during gameplay, especially in levels with plenty of image assets and/or RDCode
This update tweaked, polished, and reworked the 2P variants for many story levels and their tutorials!
Most tutorial levels now alternate between Player 1 and 2
Many levels now contain a “Switch!” cue to announce player changes
Added new clap sounds for Player 2
Fixed certain tutorials (such as 5-X) looping endlessly in 2P mode, and CPU-controlled rows not working
Fixed several issues with hand positioning when playing with swapped sides
1-1: Offbeat section now alternates between P1 and P2
1-1N: Beats now alternate between both Samurai rows
1-2: New section in tutorial to teach switch cue, row switch timings adjusted
1-2N: 2P chart overhauled entirely
1-XN: Fixed P2 beat sound being too loud
2-1, 2-1N: Made the SVT beats funkier
2-3: Fixed mistake bubble not appearing for P2
3-1, 3-1N, 3-2, 3-2N: Adjusted row assignments and switches
3-3N: Added row switches throughout the level
5-2: 2P chart overhauled entirely
5-2N: Tutorial changed to be consistent with the special 2P gameplay
1-CNY, 1-BOO: Added 2P charts
Various bugfixes and visual improvements
Added Custom Shake event
Added Reorder Row and Reorder Sprite events
Added Blend Sprite event
Added speed and intensity control to Wavy Rows VFX preset
Added a button to test how the preview song loops
Changed keyboard shortcuts for many events to be cleaner and consistent across tabs
Moved location of the bookmark navigation buttons
Added Fisheye VFX preset
Added more hover tooltips to many events, especially Sound ones
Added 2P and alt characters to the character picker
Added indicators to collab and custom characters in the character picker
Added duration preview to Sprite and Room events
Added "Switch", "Watch", and "Listen" voice cues to Say Ready Get Set Go event
Added Shake Type option to Shake event
Added the ability to disable all color and opacity fields in Custom Flash, which causes them to automatically use the current flash color
Added a text effect picker to Show Dialogue event
Added "One or Two Players" option to Change Player Rows event
Added Player Two variants of all Clap Sounds.
Added speed and ease options to Text Explosion event
Added custom text input to Play Expression event
Added mistake count to the "No Event Selected" panel
Added navigational undo/redo keybinds (J and K) which scroll to previous locations without affecting history
Improvements made to scrubbing
Tweaked the order of the properties in Custom Flash and changed its opacity inputs to use a slider
Fixed Volume, Pitch, and Pan getting reset or overwritten in Sound tab events
Fixed dark colors on Show Comment
Fixed custom character animation speed so it correctly scales with visual speed
Fixed tags and conditionals not working correctly with Set Row X and certain sound events
Removed the colons after all editor property names for consistency
Added the ability to bulk-edit the tags for events
Added an option for tagged events to also be run normally
Added special [mimic] and [nomimic] tags which affect shadow row behaviour
Added several new mistake and judgement-related RDCode variables
Added support for “Not” and “IIf” (ternary operators) in RDCode expressions
Added “noPopHitstrips” and “noHitParticles” mods
Added negative indexing support for custom character loopStart value (e.g. loopStart of -2 means second-last frame)
Added negative relative bar support for Set Play Style event
Scrubbing past tagged events no longer triggers them (can be re-enabled with the “runTaggedEventsWhileScrubbing” legacy mod)
Improved showHitstripOnlyOnActiveBeats mod behavior
Okay! That was a lot to type.
Once again, we're hard at work on Act 6, so we're very thankful for your patience. We're happy with how the game is shaping up as we get closer to the 1.0. We'll have more info about that in the coming months.
Thanks for playing!
X/Twitter: @RhythmDrGame
Bluesky:
@rd.7thbe.at
Official Discord Server:
https://7thbe.at/discord/
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https://www.instagram.com/rhythm.doctor/