20 10 2007
Frets on Fire 1.2.512 released
A fresh version of Frets on Fire is out. This time around we focused on general bugfixes, performance improvements and making the game run more smoothly, especially on older computers. Only a few new features were introduced, most notably the support for importing songs from Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.
If you used the Windows installer package of the previous version, please uninstall it before using this latest release.
Here’s a more complete changelog:
- Graphics performance improvements
- Effects optimization
- Font rendering optimization
- Miscellaneous bug fixes
- Added import support for Guitar Hero 80s
- Translation updates
- World Charts standing is now reported after each game
47 Comments so far
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I love the new font rendering! It looks better, brighter and uses less power. the stage sistem still looks bad, though…
i figure that until PNG files come as default, the game will never run withõut lags… The SVG are what degrades my performance so bad, that’s why I end up using the Lighweight Mod…
- Nice work, though… Took ya long enough…
Yay, I salute you guys!
Oh my god, you are calling THIS a performance upgrade?!? I never had any problems of this kind with the previous version - now in 1.2.512 the song loading time has increased dramatically, and for the first 10 seconds or so it’s lagging so much that it has to be considered as unplayable on my computer.
I have to go back to version 1.2.451, as those “performance improvments” made the performance disappear.
The problem (I guess) is using the PyOpenGL 3 as the graphic API. It seems to deliver bad performance when specifically renders the sustained notes effect. It is easy to make a mod to change the effect to nothing, something less heavy.
However, there ARE general performance fixes. i find the loading times better and the general menu navigation smoother and brighter (I can’t explain this!).
Playing with the lightwaeight mod seems to render enough speed to play… Just waiting for Rogue-F to port his mod, though…
crazy.neo,
The performance profile of PyOpenGL 3 was a big surprise for us: it was completely different from the prior version. However, at that point it only made sense to continue with the upgrade and optimize what we can. Overall, given the optimizations, the performance should be on par or better than with the previous version.
Anonymous,
If you have a multicore machine, try running the game in Windows 95/NT compatibility mode. PyGame or Python itself seems to have great difficulty performing at interactive rates on a multicore setup.
No, it’s a single core machine. 2.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, WinXP, so it’s not funky state-of-the-art, but also not a completely outdated PC - and like I said, Frets on Fire 1.2.451 ran absolutely fluently, while 1.2.512 does nothing you would like to call “run”, it’s more like crawling and stumbling ;).
Update your drivers… only thing I seem to think that may slow you down…
Also, yeah, i guess that pyOGL opens a lot of new doors, and the upgrade had to occur eventually…
Probably all the bugs will be covered by the comunity in time…
The new version works just fine for me, loading time were hugely reduced. I didn’t try the installer, but the .zip version works just right. The game crashes every now and then, but maybe it’s still the c++ error there was with 1.2.451 when using the default stage.
To bad we don’t have a library.zip anymore, and funny how the source compiling will create such a library.zip. Maybe I should just update the dependencies
raph,
The old library.zip is now FretsOnFire.exe on Windows. This is because we changed from py2exe to cx_Freeze. Just rename the fil eas FretsOnFire.zip and you should be able to see the contents. Modifying it should also be possible, but you should be careful not to corrupt the executable loader at the beginning of the file.
I Imported Guitar Hero Encore Song/80s, But I can’t find the song in the game regular directory. Can anyone help me.???
I have to say I’m rather disappointed in this version. It seems that none of the bugs that have been plaguing me have been fixed, and in addition my FPS seems to be worse in this new version.
Oh well, if you stop developing this game actively, I hope someone picks it up and keeps improving it, and that we don’t get ten different branches of FoF, each with different sets of features.
Is it a bad joke? The game previous version was much faster during game. I agree that menus and loading times are better, but the game itself is like 10–15 fps (playable, but choppy). And Czech translation we made with my friend about 2 months ago and posted to you isn’t included.
Pitel,
The odd performance you’re seeing are most probably due to changes in PyOpenGL library over which we have no control. The Czech translation is included in the ZIP archive, but apparently I forgot to include it in the Win32 installer.
a,
Care to be a little more specific as to what bugs are “plaguing” you?
Thanks for the new version and continued good work on this amazing game. I just have a bit of a problem regarding GH Encore…
I tried to import the songs, and after about 10 hours it finished with all 30 songs reportedly imported… but I could not find them in my song list.
I found some frets on fire related files in my temp folder (Windows), .pcm extension, and I saw oggenc working on stage 8 of importing a couple of songs… I just seems as though the processed files aren’t being copied to the songs directory before being deleted.
Am I the only one?
LLamaboy,
Please send me the game log file from %APPDATA%\fretsonfire\fretsonfire.log. The importer should have created a library called Guitar Hero Encode which contains all the new songs.
Hmmm, now you’ve pointed me to that directory, I found the songs! Looks like they got saved there rather than in data/songs of the game folder. No big panic then. Thanks!
skyostil:
Well, the all the bugs that bother me are pretty much known and posted in the bug tracker on the SourceForge page (I’ve submitted a few of them). “Plaguing me” wasn’t the best way to put it since other people get them too, don’t know if the glitches bother them though. But here are most of them:
-game crashing randomly when loading a song
-releasing note right after it has started doesn’t stop it
-when playing a chord like #_#__ (that’s with frets 1 and 3) you can play it like ###__ and it will be accepted
-this is pretty rare but some tunes have chords with pick notes and HOPO notes, both types in one chord
-setting the sampling rate to some values changes the pitch of the sound
-when moving to a lower directory in the song browser I sometimes get a message about the song that was selected not being found
I can think of a few more but I haven’t checked if they’ve been fixed, but they’re probably in the BugTracker if you’re interested. I think the ones I listed are still new version. One bug that I think was fixed was the sliding notes, that’s of course good.
Well, I added the missing ones to the bug tracker.
I just found out that there’s new version of FoF, but for next 24 hours won’t be able to reach my PC to update to newest version and check it, so can someone tell me if songs can be read from %HOME/.fretsonfire (under Linux) yet? Or maybe there’s new feature that let’s you specify where to read songs from?
Regards,
Tao
Meh, the sliding notes bug wasn’t fixed after all.
I wanted to know, is the .png support (you know, when using placeholders .svg) removed for a specific reason or is it some kind of ‘bug’?
It is removed? No, the lightweight mod works…
crazy.neo, you obviously didn’t try to put a .png ingame
I just tried it, and i seems raph is right. Either we are doing something wrong, or the system simply crashes/was changed
The broken png loading on windows was not intentional and will be fixed. Thanks for the report.
I am stuck getting any thing running on 10.4.10 OS X G5 and Intel mini. I left messages in sourceforge forums.
You can send email to ask me for help trying to compile.
I have never done MAC OS X but have done some makefile runs on Linux. Or send me email addresses of the MAC OS X developers.
Also just got Wii Guitar Hero III.
I would help get WiiRemote to work with Frets On Fire.
Conceptually it could work.
This Version Is Like A Downgrade, Lot Of Bug..
Great Game!
I was cleaning my files on my computer and tried some games before deleting… I have had this game installed 2 many times to even remember how many times iv totaly deleted this very fast.
Either i played on my laptop and the game was unplayable, or i was using my old standing PC and could not fint out how this game worked anyway…
But hallalua!! I found out how great this game relly are… I have had alot of joy with the 3 tracks
Great work!
Hi !
I’ll add my feedback here
I’m running the linux with latest xorg 7.3 and the free radeon driver for ATI cards. Previous version did work just fine on my computer. With this last update, the menus are veeeery slow (let’s say… 5 FPS). However, once I’ve managed to launch a song (5 FPS is not very confortable with all the menu transition effects). The game works fine.
If I can help you to fix this regression just email me !
PS: Congrats for this wonderflul game !
I have another bug report (already present in previous version). If I modify something in the settings, the game crashes when trying to ‘apply’ the new settings. Then I have to launch it again (and the settings are modified). Here’s the console output when launching the game and trying to change a setting :
$ fretsonfire
there is no soundcard
there is no soundcard
libGL warning: 3D driver claims to not support visual 0×67
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:866:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:866:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:866:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:866:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/skyostil/src/cx_Freeze-3.0.3/initscripts/Console.py”, line 27, in ?
File “src/FretsOnFire.py”, line 68, in ?
File “src/GameEngine.py”, line 149, in __init__
File “src/Audio.py”, line 49, in open
pygame.error: No available audio device
I have no problem with sound in the game
Great job on the score uploading system… It’s way better than before
Fonts are also nicer to read.
Else there are still some bugs like :
-when you use “replay” on certain tracks, the music will seem like it’s played twice at the same time
-pictures of the stars or tapes during loading are messed if you go back to the desktop
-some tracks make the game crash and must be reloaded to work
-perfomance issues (not really a bug, but the game is slower than before)
Great job still.
Hi,
Just tested the new version, and it’s great, but I find the same bug that kept me from playaing any version from 1.1.324 I think.
For example I have a song from the Contra theme (if you don’t know it I can upload it to a ftp, just mail me about it) that I just played. When I have a fast succession of notes (say fret 4 then 5 then 4 gain), there is the hopo thing on the notes, meaning that I can hopo them. If I do fine. But if I don’t (and I am used not to), then I keep missing notes, even tho in the earlier versions I didn’t. Toggling hopo off doesn’t help.
Let me know if I can help you solve that in any way.
David.
Update:
I just put svg rendering in low, and now the game is more smooth, and the problem is kinda gone. I say kinda because it still present, just to a lesser extent. I think I’m experiencing this because the game is not totally smooth.
Sorry to hear you have no control over it.
Maybe the game mechanics should be desynchronised from the rendering, so the lag would be only on the screen, not the game itself.
Just wanted to let you know that this update fixed my half hour loading times!
Thanks a ton for this awesome game!
The songs from the Guitar Hero III imported aren’t uploading to the worldcharts, why?
I uploaded 7/64 songs from GH2 before giving up and aborting. Are those 7 songs stored on my computer, or deleted? I cant find them
lachlan,
You should be able to find the songs by clicking Start | Run and typing in %APPDATA%\fretsonfire\songs.
ANYBODY….
I’m having a problem…
an error box syas that
cx_freeze python error in main script
and the images from the K7 are not apearing…
plz help me
I have a little thing to ask. Do you think there will be a WORKING version for mac os users ? I tried to install the game on three different MACs and it never worked…
I tried older versions of the game, I tried on OSX 10.3.9 and 10.4. But always the same black screen with an error and I’m forced to quit.
Please, I like this game very much and I’m sure I’m not the only one with this problem.
P.S.: By the way, I’ve installed it on a friend’s computer who uses Windows and I play when I see him. Exellent work for all of you who made this game !
A better working Mac version might come along with the next release, but I can’t really promise anything yet at this point. Help from seasoned Mac developers would be appreciated.
OK, so i went and dwonloaded this frets on fire thing here, never heard of it before, i just cant afford guitar hero. so i downloaded the new one, and kept getting this message titled “Python Error in Main Script”. so i decided to try uninstalling it, and then reinstalling it, but after i uninstalled it i couldnt figure out how to reinstall it. Can anyone please help me!
thanks!
I have 2 things to say. Firstly, Bobert, I know how you feel. I got the same error. Just reinstall it by launching the install file again. Anyway, it was coming up with the Python Error thing, so I tried reinstalling, but didn’t work. Which brings me to this question, where can I download new version to see if it works?
Will the in-game song editor ever get more functionality like a bpm to fret syncronizer?
All the 3rd-party editors seem to miss the mark for me.
when i tried to import gh songs it said enter the path where the dvd is mounted HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ben96,
In Windows, the path where DVD is mounted is simply the drive letter of the DVD drive. You can find this from aside the DVD drive icon in My Computer. It is usually D: but check anyway to make sure.