CH Leaderboards November 2025 Devlog
Welcome to the November 2025 devlog! Devlogs are concise, to-the-point posts about the general work that has been going on with Clone Hero. Here is a surface-level overview of what has been done since last month.
The gist of it
The main area of improvement has been game and server validation desync fixes, which is a problem that happens when the game’s side of score calculation and the leaderboards server’s side disagree. As a reminder, when in leaderboards mode, Clone Hero will communicate with a server to run validation on submitted runs as a form of cheat detection, to make sure players only submit legitimate runs. We are currently investigating situations where the game and the validation process disagree on what score the player achieved, how many ghost inputs, etc.
Last month, we’ve got the team to try an internal build of the game to catch gameplay-related bugs, and this would happen very often. As soon as your chart had a fast-ish solo in it, there was a high chance you would get a desync. Fixing all of these made up the bulk of the work, as there were some seriously difficult ones to diagnose and fix. Some purpose-built tools were made to debug this, so future versions of the game should be pretty well-equipped to catch these before they make it to release. Guitar should now be mostly desync-free, with some more checks needed for gamepad mode and drums.
Additionally, various things have been added or fixed, including but not limited to:
- button hints are now showing before you open/select a profile in the main menu. This should help new players know what to do when reaching the main menu, as this has been a common point of confusion when starting out
- “players online” count when in leaderboards mode
- improvements to the ghost-meter showing lightning like the Star Power meter, and visual feedback when it’s enabled
- work started on a Perfect FC indicator and graphic, similar to the gold ring for FC runs. Mockup pending!
- fixed a rare bug where a song could go on forever and never end, with the highway scrolling forever
- lots of work has gone into the leaderboards website itself, with browsable community submissions and individual player submissions, score tallies, FC/PFC/fail detection, and lots more
Generally speaking, a lot of bugs from the previous PTB were also fixed alongside the validation desync work. The exact list will come in the changelog of the PTB itself.
Up next
Chart hashes rework
On the topic of last month’s remaining work, the chart hashes work has been completed, and now needs to be validated, which is the next area of focus now that validation desyncs are mostly fixed.
Perfect FCs and the ghost meter
The first few bits of testing show promise in the initial gameplay ideas of the ghost meter and Perfect FCs. Some graphics are being mocked up, and values are being fiddled with using input from players of all skill levels to make sure everyone can have fun with the new mode. Work continues, more to come!
Few more validation desyncs left to solve
Out of the 199 desync files tracked from the internal test builds, only 10 are still unsolved, which is not zero, but is getting there. None of the remaining desyncs affect score, so the team has been focusing on ironing out gameplay and UI things.
Final word
A lot of work went into a few very important items, so that’s it for this month. Thank you to all players for your continued interest in the game, and see you in the next devlog!