Friendship Melody - Shimmering Equinox 2024

[Azure Dawn 211]

9 hours ago, Rikifive said:

 After the event ends, the game will no longer be available. 

Only three daysto play?! Can I download it locally? :x

[Rikifive 24,208]

1 hour ago, Azure Dawn said:

Only three daysto play?! Can I download it locally? :x

Sorry, but at the moment, it is meant to be available only for the event. 

I'm not doing a good job (my real life kinda poo poo), but the idea was to keep creating different minigames for different events, and re-run some of them as needed, while also keeping them updated with new content depending on occasion - just like now, it's the second release of Friendship Melody.

It would keep things fresh and engage everyone to at least try them out, rather than having them stale over time. The majority of users here played the game only for the badge during this limited-time event - which is absolutely fine of course. If I just released the game as is, I suspect not many would play, which would discourage me from working further on it, and the game would simply die - speaking from my own experience. Besides, one doesn't have to search far, the topic already got quiet. It looks like the game in its current state already served its purpose.

Heh, I'm bribing everyone to play my games by giving badges, but at least for a moment, the game gets some interest, which means a lot to me. That said, I really appreciate your interest, it will encourage me to bring the game back in the future with new songs, and I hope we'll have some fun together again. 

[Azure Dawn 211]

I'm saying that mostly because I have little free time to play as is, I just like to 100% games :x but yes, it's understandable you'd want to keep it away. I look forward to your next projects, in that case!

[Florana 173]

11 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

Sorry, but at the moment, it is meant to be available only for the event. 

I'm not doing a good job (my real life kinda poo poo), but the idea was to keep creating different minigames for different events, and re-run some of them as needed, while also keeping them updated with new content depending on occasion - just like now, it's the second release of Friendship Melody.

It would keep things fresh and engage everyone to at least try them out, rather than having them stale over time. The majority of users here played the game only for the badge during this limited-time event - which is absolutely fine of course. If I just released the game as is, I suspect not many would play, which would discourage me from working further on it, and the game would simply die - speaking from my own experience. Besides, one doesn't have to search far, the topic already got quiet. It looks like the game in its current state already served its purpose.

Heh, I'm bribing everyone to play my games by giving badges, but at least for a moment, the game gets some interest, which means a lot to me. That said, I really appreciate your interest, it will encourage me to bring the game back in the future with new songs, and I hope we'll have some fun together again. 

I know I'm guilty of looking to obtain the badge, but if it means anything, I genuinely enjoy Friendship Melody. It reminds me of when I used to play those rhythm games -mainly Guitar Flash- back when I'd browse for free games online, and I hold those memories dearly. Even if there was no badge involved, it's sweet to think of friends hanging out and playing the songs. Some would playfully bet on the highest score, others give it a karaoke twist; creativity is what makes these events so great!
So please, never lose that passion for your projects, for there'll always be one member to have a better time thanks to it. 

[Rikifive 24,208]

4 hours ago, Azure Dawn said:

I'm saying that mostly because I have little free time to play as is, I just like to 100% games :x but yes, it's understandable you'd want to keep it away. I look forward to your next projects, in that case!

I see, I see, I can totally relate to this. I too, like to max out stuff in games, but there's never enough time.  But if I ever bring this game back, the existing songs will be available again, so maybe you'll get a chance to revisit these maps in the future. 

Thank you! There's so many things I'd like to create, but there's that problem with time... and energy. 

3 hours ago, Florana said:

I know I'm guilty of looking to obtain the badge, but if it means anything, I genuinely enjoy Friendship Melody. It reminds me of when I used to play those rhythm games -mainly Guitar Flash- back when I'd browse for free games online, and I hold those memories dearly. Even if there was no badge involved, it's sweet to think of friends hanging out and playing the songs. Some would playfully bet on the highest score, others give it a karaoke twist; creativity is what makes these events so great!
So please, never lose that passion for your projects, for there'll always be one member to have a better time thanks to it. 

Oh no no no, that's not what I meant, I'm not pointing fingers at anyone.  I didn't mean to make it sound like I'm complaining or something, I just tried to explain the reasoning behind this choice, as I was asked about this few times.

Nopony should feel guilty even if they came here only for the badge - that's completely understandable. Some may not be fans of rhythm games, some may not be fans of Equestria Girls, some may not be into gaming in general - there are many reasons to not be eager to play it, and it's nothing to feel bad about. Thanks to it being time-limited, and with rewards, many were willing to at least give it a single try, which means a lot to me. 

Perhaps I didn't word it well, but I just wanted to say, that because this is a time-limited event, I get to "see" how users play, and have a chance to interact with them, even if it's just exchanging a single reply in this topic.  It's not just a game being there and users playing on their own; It's a nice occasion for me, and hopefully the others, to have a little chat while playing it. Like you said - friends hanging out, playing the songs and enjoying the time together.

To be honest I'm not sure ~ I'd love to leave this game permanently available, but I somewhat worry, that if I'd just leave it be there, only few would be willing to play it, and even less would talk about it. That's how it was with my previous games at least, so I'm trying something else.  Perhaps in the future, at some point, I'll make it permanently available (and perhaps release a map editor, so users can make their own songs), but for now I'm enjoying the moments I get to spend with the users here.

Either way, thank you very much for your kind words, your input means a lot to me ♥️

[Lawyer Slip 2,634]

Here's my scores.

You still count for the thing if you do it on Easy mode right?

[Rikifive 24,208]

2 hours ago, Lawyer Slip said:

Here's my scores.

You still count for the thing if you do it on Easy mode right?

Yup, yup! Thanks for playing!

[Lawyer Slip 2,634]

Moments ago, Rikifive said:

Yup, yup! Thanks for playing!

Thank you! It was fun to play!

[Rikifive 24,208]

Of course, let me join as well.  

I did 100% multiple times, but I was too busy to record videos, so I guess it's better late than never.  

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

[Finding_Marty 825]

36 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

Of course, let me join as well.  

I did 100% multiple times, but I was too busy to record videos, so I guess it's better late than never.  

 

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

You bow to no one 

[Blue Clad One 33]

Just like in Genshin Impact (I noticed the similar visual design), I rushed to practice all these, because I know it's a limited event. :]

 

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised at the difficulty. Despite the notes being kinda generous when it comes to perfect hits (I understand why, there's no latency calibration tool, it needs to be that way), the creative mapping made them nice and difficult to full combo.

 

And I definitely "needed" to full combo these. Welcome to the Show is great, and Shine Like Rainbows is literally my favorite song.

 

Anyway, hi Rikifive! I just found this forum because I saw your Youtube video. You had the best 8-bit music in the fandom (that I found, I guess I could have missed someone).

[Lunaholic 921]

Fun! Once again tried my best

Spoiler

 

[Rikifive 24,208]

10 hours ago, Blue Clad One said:

Just like in Genshin Impact (I noticed the similar visual design), I rushed to practice all these, because I know it's a limited event. :]

 

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised at the difficulty. Despite the notes being kinda generous when it comes to perfect hits (I understand why, there's no latency calibration tool, it needs to be that way), the creative mapping made them nice and difficult to full combo.

 

And I definitely "needed" to full combo these. Welcome to the Show is great, and Shine Like Rainbows is literally my favorite song.

 

Anyway, hi Rikifive! I just found this forum because I saw your Youtube video. You had the best 8-bit music in the fandom (that I found, I guess I could have missed someone).

Woo hello fellow Genshin player!  Decent scores! Clearly somepony knows the drill.  

Actually, I opted to make it a bit more generous by design. I kept playing it over and over again with different settings until I came with one, that is not too punishing, nor too easy, or at least I think so. If anything, I was more worried about potential low framerate making it hard to hit the notes perfectly. It's a browser game after all, there are many of these and they all behave differently, not to mention all the different devices it can be played on. I somewhat wanted to play it safe.  

I did plan to add a calibration tool, but first I wanted to see if it will be needed at all. Thing is, that for me it just worked as is. I even tried playing on phone with my somewhat cheap true wireless earphones, that have around half a second of latency before I get to hear what happened on screen, thus it's weird to play games like this. However, various apps do account that latency, and for example, watching videos on YouTube is perfectly synchronized. Because this is a game, and a rhythm one at that, I fully expected it to be unplayable with that setup, but to my surprise, it was perfectly synchronized just like that. I made the timing in this game to be directly based on actual audio position, so I assume, that (at least some) browsers have built in measures to synchronize audio like this, and "it just works."

Generally, I was unable to experience the problem, so I was thinking, that perhaps it won't be needed at all. Please, if anyone experiences audio latency, do tell me, and I'll add the function I initially planned to add. That said, did you encounter such problem?  

Awesome! Shine Like Rainbows is one of my favorites too, that was the first song I decided to make a cover of.

Aww that's an honor to me  Thank you very much, and I hope you'll have a good time here!

Thank you for playing!

 

4 hours ago, Lunaholic said:

Fun! Once again tried my best

  Hide contents

 

Woooo very nice!! 

Thank you for playing!  

Edited October 27, 2024 by Rikifive

[Blue Clad One 33]

2 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

Actually, I opted to make it a bit more generous by design.

Oh! That makes sense, too. And yeah, I was also kinda surprised how well it performed while being a browser game.

 

(Also, when I was practicing for an hour or two, I started getting worse framerate, but crucially, it didn't actually affect the game registering my keyboard timings. So definitely good on you for that. The only thing it affected was the choppy visuals, which was fine for me, since I knew the songs by heart and just needed general note instruction reminders by then.

Now, though, I wish I had thought of the idea that it might not have been my laptop overheating, and might have been a potential "game runs too long and holds onto too much data" problem. So I didn't actually test if it was fixed by:

1. Resetting the levels instead of going back to the menu over and over.

2. Just a need for a complete game refresh.

3. Just cooling down my potentially overheated laptop.

I was a bit tired, and wasn't in my normal "find potential bugs and test them" mode last night.)

 

I don't think there's too much of an actual issue, though. I wouldn't worry about it. Especially since it worked so well even at bad framerates.

[Rikifive 24,208]

1 hour ago, Blue Clad One said:

Oh! That makes sense, too. And yeah, I was also kinda surprised how well it performed while being a browser game.

 

(Also, when I was practicing for an hour or two, I started getting worse framerate, but crucially, it didn't actually affect the game registering my keyboard timings. So definitely good on you for that. The only thing it affected was the choppy visuals, which was fine for me, since I knew the songs by heart and just needed general note instruction reminders by then.

Now, though, I wish I had thought of the idea that it might not have been my laptop overheating, and might have been a potential "game runs too long and holds onto too much data" problem. So I didn't actually test if it was fixed by:

1. Resetting the levels instead of going back to the menu over and over.

2. Just a need for a complete game refresh.

3. Just cooling down my potentially overheated laptop.

I was a bit tired, and wasn't in my normal "find potential bugs and test them" mode last night.)

 

I don't think there's too much of an actual issue, though. I wouldn't worry about it. Especially since it worked so well even at bad framerates.

That's the tricky part. JavaScript has garbage collector, that automatically removes unused stuff, that is no longer actively referenced. It's debatable whether this is good or not, because it makes debugging kind of a pain, as it's harder to detect if something is piling up. Personally I'd prefer to be responsible for that. Still, I didn't want to rely on it exclusively, and I "tried" to clean stuff manually when no longer needed, although from what I've been looking online, there's no actual "delete" function, I can only clean & remove refences from stuff that is no longer needed and let garbage collector (hopefully) do the thing. I tried spamming the menus, constantly hitting play & back to menu hundreds of times, each time swapping songs, spamming through settings, and there wasn't anything odd happening, nor anything obvious popping out in dev tools.

Buuuuuuuut you never know, I'd love to know if it's a recurring issue. Perhaps something might be going on there after all.

Either way, thanks for feedback! ❤

[Luna the Great of all the Russias 2,987]

I could not quite reach 90%.

[Rikifive 24,208]

19 minutes ago, Luna the Great of all the Russias said:

I could not quite reach 90%.

It's still a decent score regardless!

Just remember to submit Shine Like Rainbows as well to get the badge.

[Florana 173]

Hey @Rikifive, you know how you teased me about getting only one 100%? Well... It worked, but not for the song you were expecting, mweh heh heh heh! As a little thank-you for the event, I've decided to play my favourite one out of the three. I understand it had to be cut short for balancing, but I hope longer ones will be available in the future! 

Edited October 27, 2024 by Florana
Grammar.

[Rikifive 24,208]

@Florana Woooooo epic!  You know, at this point you gotta do them all 100%!  Only one song left!  I can even extend the event by one week if you want!

With these games, long songs tend to be somewhat disliked ~ failing at the last note would deal more emotional damage, and each attempt would take more time in general.  Also, I think the map would get rather repetitive anyway. I figured making them shorter will be more appealing, but let me know if you beg to differ!  Also how much I cut depends on the song itself, if it has lots of variety I have more to work with, unlike trying to make unique patterns for fragments, that essentially sound the same.

But I'm open to suggestions, so I'll keep it in mind, just as I take notes of desired songs mentioned here by users. 👀

[Florana 173]

44 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

With these games, long songs tend to be somewhat disliked ~ failing at the last note would deal more emotional damage, and each attempt would take more time in general.  Also, I think the map would get rather repetitive anyway. I figured making them shorter will be more appealing, but let me know if you beg to differ!  Also how much I cut depends on the song itself, if it has lots of variety I have more to work with, unlike trying to make unique patterns for fragments, that essentially sound the same.

I politely beg to differ, for I don't think every player is out to 100% every track available. Many simply wish to experience them in an interactive way; and there are long songs that are just too good to ignore! nudge nudge 

50 minutes ago, Rikifive said:

@Florana Woooooo epic!  You know, at this point you gotta do them all 100%!  Only one song left!  I can even extend the event by one week if you want!

My, extending the deadline just for me? Awww, you. But that won't be necessary, as you can see below, hehehe. Although, it's not something I'd want to repeat too often. The princesses would not approve of unhealthy competitive behaviour. 

[Denim&Venöm 19,219]

I put my guitar hero skills to the test!

 

How many points did we receive? 

 

(To be fair, I'm more of a Controller than Keyboard/Mouse type of gamer)

[Rikifive 24,208]

7 minutes ago, Florana said:

I politely beg to differ, for I don't think every player is out to 100% every track available. Many simply wish to experience them in an interactive way; and there are long songs that are just too good to ignore! nudge nudge 

I see, I'll keep that in mind. I'm sure there are songs I probably wouldn't cut.  

19 minutes ago, Florana said:

My, extending the deadline just for me? Awww, you. But that won't be necessary, as you can see below, hehehe. Although, it's not something I'd want to repeat too often. The princesses would not approve of unhealthy competitive behaviour. 

WOOOOO CONGRATULATIONS THEN!

Not I can't bully you into playing more!  JK

Thank you!  

11 minutes ago, Denim&Venöm said:

How many points did we receive? 

 

(To be fair, I'm more of a Controller than Keyboard/Mouse type of gamer)

All of them!

I have adding controller support in plans, so maybe in the future.  

Thank you for playing!

[Rikifive 24,208]

I apologize for potential confusion and inconsistence overall, but due to various reasons, personal and not, I'll leave the event and the game be for another week (and one extra hour, because DST ended in my area).

 

ORGANIZING INCREASED TO 100
Level Progress <||||||||||||              > 21

 

Those who discovered the game late (partially because I promoted it on my YT late), please enjoy the game without being rushed.

Those who didn't get the badge yet - and there are some ponies who didn't submit both songs yet - I'd like to kindly remind you to complete your submissions if you want the badge. I don't want to leave anyone behind! 

 

Thank you for your support everyone! ❤

[Miss Price 125]

I really loved it!!!!
I even made an account so I could play a little more!!

[Rikifive 24,208]

2 minutes ago, Miss Price said:

I really loved it!!!!
I even made an account so I could play a little more!!

That's fantastic! Thank you! I'm glad you had fun! ❤

Welcome to the herd then! I hope you'll have a good time here!

Thank you so much for coming!