CH Leaderboards PTB 2 release!
The second Public Test Build for Clone Hero Leaderboards is here! This version introduces (tentative!) changes to the clean bonus (formerly called “ghost bonus”), lots of fixes to the game, the leaderboards website, and the servers, and a whole lot of UI polish. Let’s get into it!
The new stuff
This PTB focuses on lots of game, server, and leaderboard fixes that are too long to list here (see the changelog in the PTB download announcement on the Discord for the full list). As for the big ticket items, we have:
New tentative clean bonus
We have taken into account a lot of the feedback given to us after the first PTB release to design a new and improved version of the formerly named ghost bonus, now clean bonus. Thank you all for your feedback!
The clean bonus reuses the previous PTB’s ghost meter but with 3 segments instead of 4, and is now a much smaller, more systematic bonus that gets awarded for each note you hit. The value of the bonus depends on which segment of the ghost meter is currently filled, with the top segment giving 2 points per note, the middle segment 1, and the bottom segment 0. The bonus is not affected by your multiplier nor the star power multiplier bonus, and is only given when on a 4x multiplier, or if you haven’t missed a note yet. As before, ghost inputs (extraneous inputs that aren’t required to play the notes you’re being given to play) deplete the ghost meter, and hitting HOPOs and tap notes (not strum notes!) replenish it.
This new approach fixes a problem the previous approach had, where you could enable the All Taps or All HOPOs modifiers on some charts to get massive scores that you could not reach without them. It also caps out the overall number of points that playing cleanly can afford to “number of notes in the chart * 2”. This is more in line with the number of points that very good star power activations would net you on average.
As per usual, this is a tentative change and we want your feedack! We invite everyone to engage in civil and open-minded discussion over in the PTB discussion channel of the Discord.
Ability to delete scores
Since the ghost bonus in the previous PTB has made possible scores that one can no longer beat, we thought it appropriate to add an option to delete scores. Hit the Select button (Star Power button) over any song in your song list and navigate to the Delete Score submenu.
Sort by Perfect Full Combo in song list
You can now sort your songs by whether or not you have a Perfect Full Combo on them, which as a reminder is a Full Combo of a song where your ghost meter has remained in the top segment for the entire duration of the run. In other words, a very clean run!
Squeeze detection and end-of-song screen stats
The game now keeps track of any star power squeeze you perform, which is an advanced technique where you wait until the very last fraction of a second to activate star power, so that you can then hit the very last note of the activation early while star power is still active. The game now detects and keeps track of both frontend and backend squeezes, and shows you how many notes have been squeezed, and for how many points.
Big menu UI polish
The various menus’ UI have seen lots of polish! This includes but is not limited to:
- double res versions of the base UI textures
- more cohesive in-game song leaderboards view and widget
- better blurring against the background
- lots of fixes of things that weren’t quite right in the previous PTB
Improved server stability
The leaderboards servers’ capacity has been increased to meet the demand of players. This should help alleviate the known problem where a lot of scores fail to submit to the leaderboards.
Bugfixes, memory leaks fixes, lagspikes (tentative..?) fixes
Finally, lots of outstanding problems have been caught and fixed. Specifically, the previous PTB’s problem with lagspikes and stutters has a few tentative fixes.
How to report issues
Thanks to our infrastructure, for leaderboard issues like desyncs, you don’t have to do anything to report them! We get all the information we need from the replays that are generated during a run.
If you find any additional issues with the rest of the game or servers, please report those in the PTB channel in our Discord server. We will be monitoring this channel and hope to fix anything we find as soon as possible.
Guitar Leaderboards only
This PTB still only includes leaderboards for guitar charts. Desyncs were not the focus of this PTB’s development, which is why drums and gamepad mode still do not have leaderboards support. They are now the focus of the next PTB.
Regions
This PTB still only has 2 regions available, US and EU, but their capacity have been greatly increased to meet the demand from players. This will help greatly with getting runs to actually submit successfully, which is something the previous PTB struggled to do.
Website
As per every PTB release, we are wiping the leaderboards of any submitted scores. This is because we keep experimenting with different formats for the data we handle, and these are not interchangeable. Please keep in mind that any score you set will not stay there for long! Accounts created have been kept for now, so you will not have to re-create an account every time.
How to join the PTB
The only way to join the PTB is thorugh our Discord server, which you can find here. Once in, navigate to the Public Test Build channels, where you will find the dedicated channels for PTB announcements, downloads and discussion.
Final word
That’s it for this release announcement. The next PTB will focus on rounding up the last desyncs for guitar charts. There will in all likelihood be more PTBs after this, and we are still actively working on the leaderboards website. Thank you to all players for your continued interest in the game, and see you in the next one!