PowerBeatsVR v1.1.0 Update Notes: VR Level Editor & Custom Song Support

Hey PowerBeatsVR players!

Great news: We’ve released the highly requested level editor and the custom song support. Now you can create beatmaps for your own music from the comfort of VR and see directly how the challenges are going to be.

Since this is an early version, some features we’d like to add are not yet available, among them simple in-game sharing. Right now, if you want to share, just send the files to your friends or share the beatmaps in the #community-maps channel of our Discord server. Please note that uploading songs for which you have no permission is not allowed there. Always respect the copyright of the individual song.

For more details about how to implement custom songs and use the VR level editor, head over to our blog post at https://www.powerbeatsvr.com/vr-fitness-game/level-editor-released/.

We are excited to see what you are going to create with the editor. We have pre-filled the custom song folder with some new songs (without beatmaps) and an official track (“Galaxies”) you can use as a template for creating your own challenges.

But there is even more. Besides having developed these two features, we also listened to your valuable feedback and made some changes, upgrades, and fixes in the following areas:

Gameplay:

• Added hit velocity to scoring on Beginner level
• Added “no wall” modifier
• Changed the glowing balls to “powerballs” which require twice as much hit speed as the “normal balls”
• Fixed a bug which led to showing even a score of 0 on some occasions
• Added previous best highscore to the statistics panel after each challenge

Songs:

• Added a new song with Beginner, Advanced, and Expert layouts: “The Planet” from Agenda 23

Performance:

• Improved performance of the orbs within the space environment
• Restricted the full destruction sound to playing only once within 0.1s
• Restricted the full destruction particle effect to playing only once within 0.1s
• Fixed the credit screen lag within the menu

Graphics:

• Increased the contrast within the Space environment
• Fixed the physically incorrect movement of the debris
• Made the impact ground shockwave more responsive
• Added some score animations on special events
• Fixed the switching of the trees to 2D billboards on lower quality settings
• Fixed the billboard rotation of the grass textures

Menu:

• Fixed the hard-to-use quality settings
• Added enabling/disabling bloom as an option
• Added music volume control
• Added SFX volume control
• Added switching between official and custom challenges
• Added the playspace size as text values
• Made the menu slightly bigger
• Separated credits from options
• Separated gameplay, video, and sound options
• Added some menu animations
• Rearranged the settings, credits, and highscore buttons
• Added saving to the visibility of the highscore panel

Sound:

• Reduced the default volume significantly
• Added a stop to the “fully charged” sound loop of the powerfist, the shield deploy sound and powerfist release sound after a song has been finished

As always, we hope you enjoy the update and would love to get your feedback. So join us on our Discord community server at http://Discord.gg/Powerbeatsvr.

And if you want to know what’s coming next, head over to our Development Roadmap on Trello: https://trello.com/b/2yNQWbbJ/powerbeatsvr-development-roadmap.

Until next time,
Team PowerBeatsVR