• Added Trading Cards to the game! (and smileys/backgrounds/badges)
  
• The Workshop is now public and visible even if you don't own the game.

Game changes

• Added new border decorations for the ground on Running and Flying mode. The reasoning behind this was that the grass was a very high density repeating pattern, scrolling very quickly accross the screen, and it may have an effect on the "motion blur" feeling that some players are experiencing. The new borders are much more streamlined and should feel more easy on the eyes.
  
• Added a "zoom-in" feature, you can now select "120%" as zoom value in the General options menu.
  
• Slightly shifted light orbs' position towards the ground in Jogging and Running sections, so that it's easier to focus on both orbs and obstacles at the same time.
  
• The game will now detect streaks of very low FPS (<30FPS) and suggest at the end of the track to the player to disable Anti-Aliasing or Post-Processing to alievate performances issues.
  
• Added new character skins "Uniform" and "Prototype" (a copy of my "Classic Melody" Workshop item)

Interface changes

• Added "Favorite Folders" to the bottom of the main folders list. This menu choice automatically extracts and lists all the different folders from your "Favorite" tagged files, allowing easy access to your common music folders.
  
• Added help tooltips to most options items.

Misc changes

• New on-disk track caching format, which now stores obstacles and track intensity data directly (and for each difficulty density type) instead of the music audio profile, reducing the size of cache files by a factor of 10. This change greatly speeds up track loading from cache, especially for very long tracks, and solves very rare cases where the cached version had different obstacles than the first "live" analysis, due to floating point rounding issues. All previously cached music files will now need to be re-analysed again.
  
• Fixed a potential crash scenario related to manually modified Workshop mods folder names

Linux

• Updated libbass to 2.4.11, which has improved compatibility with recent PulseAudio versions. Hopefully this should fix the audio garbling issues encountered by some users.

Mod Studio (Windows)

• Fixed the Hair Editor's treeview size when using Windows magnified text size above 100%.

• Added Trading Cards to the game! (and smileys/backgrounds/badges)
  
• The Workshop is now public and visible even if you don't own the game.

Game changes

• Added new border decorations for the ground on Running and Flying mode. The reasoning behind this was that the grass was a very high density repeating pattern, scrolling very quickly accross the screen, and it may have an effect on the "motion blur" feeling that some players are experiencing. The new borders are much more streamlined and should feel more easy on the eyes.
  
• Added a "zoom-in" feature, you can now select "120%" as zoom value in the General options menu.
  
• Slightly shifted light orbs' position towards the ground in Jogging and Running sections, so that it's easier to focus on both orbs and obstacles at the same time.
  
• The game will now detect streaks of very low FPS (<30FPS) and suggest at the end of the track to the player to disable Anti-Aliasing or Post-Processing to alievate performances issues.
  
• Added new character skins "Uniform" and "Prototype" (a copy of my "Classic Melody" Workshop item)

Interface changes

• Added "Favorite Folders" to the bottom of the main folders list. This menu choice automatically extracts and lists all the different folders from your "Favorite" tagged files, allowing easy access to your common music folders.
  
• Added help tooltips to most options items.

Misc changes

• New on-disk track caching format, which now stores obstacles and track intensity data directly (and for each difficulty density type) instead of the music audio profile, reducing the size of cache files by a factor of 10. This change greatly speeds up track loading from cache, especially for very long tracks, and solves very rare cases where the cached version had different obstacles than the first "live" analysis, due to floating point rounding issues. All previously cached music files will now need to be re-analysed again.
  
• Fixed a potential crash scenario related to manually modified Workshop mods folder names

Linux

• Updated libbass to 2.4.11, which has improved compatibility with recent PulseAudio versions. Hopefully this should fix the audio garbling issues encountered by some users.

Mod Studio (Windows)

• Fixed the Hair Editor's treeview size when using Windows magnified text size above 100%.

Major Changes

• Added a mod editor/studio. You can now very easilly create your own skins, hairstyles and color themes and edit them all in real-time (Windows only).
  
• Added "slow-mo" jumps in running sections, for very specific occurences where the music's energy drastically drops during a few seconds. Those jumps can be identified on the song preview graph by a blue vertical dashed line (note that they are quite rare and mostly found in electro music)
  
• Added new hairstyles: "Long Twin Tails", "Short" and "Braided Ponytail"
  
• Added new skin: "White Dress"
  
• Added new color scheme: "Dark"

Modding Changes

• You can access the new Mod Editor in the game's installation folder, under the name "ModStudio.exe". I will soon write a tutorial on how to use this tool, but it should be quite simple to grasp the basics if you're already familiar with Melody's Escape custom content creation. The main advantages are real time color editing and texture reloading.
  
• Added a "belt" skin element for the character skin (empty on the default skin). This element is drawn above the legs and is tied to the position of the "pelvis" element. You can use it for instance to draw a skirt above the legs
  
• Hairlocks are now drawn above the static sprite of a haircut.

Minor Changes

• Added some noise/dithering to the sky's background gradient, so that the gradient horizontal lines are less noticeable and to get a slightly more gritty visual result.
  
• Removed the background gradient in menus screen as it resulted in visible horizontal lines with some color schemes.
  
• The flying mode's backgrounds were slightly offset so that they don't intersect visually with the orbs anymore, for better visibility.
  
• Hair movement now flow more naturally for all animations where Melody rolls (especially with very long hairstyles where it was too stiff before)
  
• Flying mode is now slightly faster and running mode is now slightly slower
  
• Multiple changes to the default color palette
  
• Fixed folders with a dot "." character in their name being shown as playlists in the music selection menu
  
• Fixed scrolling the music list with LB/RB shoulder button (or PgUp/PgDown keys) being able to overflow if the list was small.
  
• Removed the "disable dynamic hair simulation" performance option as its cost was quite minimal compared to its high visual quality impact.
  
• Fixed fullscreen mode issues when restarting the game on Linux
  
• The Mac port is now using universal binaries, which should fix Workshop Skin loading issue that prevented some players from running the game after subscribing to a skin.

Major Changes

• Added a mod editor/studio. You can now very easilly create your own skins, hairstyles and color themes and edit them all in real-time (Windows only).
  
• Added "slow-mo" jumps in running sections, for very specific occurences where the music's energy drastically drops during a few seconds. Those jumps can be identified on the song preview graph by a blue vertical dashed line (note that they are quite rare and mostly found in electro music)
  
• Added new hairstyles: "Long Twin Tails", "Short" and "Braided Ponytail"
  
• Added new skin: "White Dress"
  
• Added new color scheme: "Dark"

Modding Changes

• You can access the new Mod Editor in the game's installation folder, under the name "ModStudio.exe". I will soon write a tutorial on how to use this tool, but it should be quite simple to grasp the basics if you're already familiar with Melody's Escape custom content creation. The main advantages are real time color editing and texture reloading.
  
• Added a "belt" skin element for the character skin (empty on the default skin). This element is drawn above the legs and is tied to the position of the "pelvis" element. You can use it for instance to draw a skirt above the legs
  
• Hairlocks are now drawn above the static sprite of a haircut.

Minor Changes

• Added some noise/dithering to the sky's background gradient, so that the gradient horizontal lines are less noticeable and to get a slightly more gritty visual result.
  
• Removed the background gradient in menus screen as it resulted in visible horizontal lines with some color schemes.
  
• The flying mode's backgrounds were slightly offset so that they don't intersect visually with the orbs anymore, for better visibility.
  
• Hair movement now flow more naturally for all animations where Melody rolls (especially with very long hairstyles where it was too stiff before)
  
• Flying mode is now slightly faster and running mode is now slightly slower
  
• Multiple changes to the default color palette
  
• Fixed folders with a dot "." character in their name being shown as playlists in the music selection menu
  
• Fixed scrolling the music list with LB/RB shoulder button (or PgUp/PgDown keys) being able to overflow if the list was small.
  
• Removed the "disable dynamic hair simulation" performance option as its cost was quite minimal compared to its high visual quality impact.
  
• Fixed fullscreen mode issues when restarting the game on Linux
  
• The Mac port is now using universal binaries, which should fix Workshop Skin loading issue that prevented some players from running the game after subscribing to a skin.

Melody's Escape is now available on Linux and Mac, as a native port using FNA/Mono.

Everything should be functional, except for a few issues with fullscreen mode that will be fixed in the next patch, and "drag'n'drop" which isn't working yet.

If you encounter any issues on those platforms, please don't hesitate to post them in the Linux and Mac support thread.
If the mouse isn't responding correctly after switching to fullscreen, you can use the keyboard to navigate the menus.

Melody's Escape is now available on Linux and Mac, as a native port using FNA/Mono.

Everything should be functional, except for a few issues with fullscreen mode that will be fixed in the next patch, and "drag'n'drop" which isn't working yet.

If you encounter any issues on those platforms, please don't hesitate to post them in the Linux and Mac support thread.
If the mouse isn't responding correctly after switching to fullscreen, you can use the keyboard to navigate the menus.

Disabling AA (in the "Performances" options menu) greatly improves performances on low-end machines (especially on Intel HD GPU laptops), at the cost of jagged edges on long obstacles (please note that this change requires a restart of the game).
If you were previously struggling to run Melody's Escape at 60FPS, you might wanna try to disable anti-aliasing and re-enable backgroud visualizations and/or post-processing (to medium) for the eye-candy effects, as without the antialiasing it might now run smoothly at 60fps!

This option will default to OFF on integrated GPUs. However, the GPU's type can only be detected by the game after that the setting has already been applied, so the first time that you run the game after this update, if the option was auto-set to "OFF" you still need to restart the game for it to take effect!

Effect preview:

• Added a sound menu option to disable the audio preview when selecting a music.
  
• Tons of behind-the-scenes changes to the engine to prepare for the Mac and Linux port of the game (coming soon! :) )
  
  
  Update 0.7.3.1 Fixed BASS addons for additional formats not being loaded by the music engine
  Update 0.7.3.2 Fixed custom skins not being loaded when restarting the game

Disabling AA (in the "Performances" options menu) greatly improves performances on low-end machines (especially on Intel HD GPU laptops), at the cost of jagged edges on long obstacles (please note that this change requires a restart of the game).
If you were previously struggling to run Melody's Escape at 60FPS, you might wanna try to disable anti-aliasing and re-enable backgroud visualizations and/or post-processing (to medium) for the eye-candy effects, as without the antialiasing it might now run smoothly at 60fps!

This option will default to OFF on integrated GPUs. However, the GPU's type can only be detected by the game after that the setting has already been applied, so the first time that you run the game after this update, if the option was auto-set to "OFF" you still need to restart the game for it to take effect!

Effect preview:

• Added a sound menu option to disable the audio preview when selecting a music.
  
• Tons of behind-the-scenes changes to the engine to prepare for the Mac and Linux port of the game (coming soon! :) )
  
  
  Update 0.7.3.1 Fixed BASS addons for additional formats not being loaded by the music engine
  Update 0.7.3.2 Fixed custom skins not being loaded when restarting the game

• Added "Playlist Mode", to play multiple songs in a row (albums, folders, playlists, favorite/recent files, etc.). When you have multiple songs displayed in the Music Selection menu, simply select "play all files" ("P" hotkey on keyboard and "X" button on controllers)
  If you want more controls over the played tracks and their order, you can use your favorite music player to create a .M3U playlist and then access that playlist from the Music Selection menu.
  
• Added an option in the Pause menu to skip to the next song in the list.
  
• "Autoplay" songs in Playlist Mode now start automatically after loading, allowing you to select multiple songs and have them all play without any required input (great for playing music in the background and enjoying the game as a visualizer!)
  
• "Autoplay" songs don't show the end stats screen anymore.
  
• Added support for multiple files drag'n'drop (to be played in Playlist Mode).
  
• In Playlist Mode, files that cannot be played due to an error (file format, deleted file, etc.) will be automatically skipped instead of showing the error screen.

• Complete overhaul of the Overload difficulty. I wanted to have a much bigger density of orbs in Overload and I wasn't happy with the artificial difficulty of simply requiring difficult inputs constantly for solid obstacles.
  Now the Overload tracks will have twice as much orbs and less solid obstacles (especially noticeable in "Tempo" sync mode), and require Direction/Color Tandem inputs instead of "Mix" (The Direction/Color Mix is still available in the Custom difficulty settings for those looking for an extra challenge).
  Please let me know what you think about this new Overload mode in this discussion thread!
  
• The input window in Intense mode is now a bit wider.
  
• The orb density in Energy Peak mode for Medium Difficulty is now lower
  
• Slightly increased the speed of flying sections again
  
• The setting "Double Low Tempos" now only affect tempo values below 91 BPM instead of 101 BPM.
  
• Added an option (in the "General" menu) to disable the usage of a distinct "Direction" purple color for solid obstacles in Intense mode (a cosmetic change only, you still need to use the correct arrow input).

• Removed the "tempo confidence" percentage from the Track Loading Screen, as it was too confusing and not linear; a lot of players assumed that 50% meant that only half of the song would be on sync when instead it would mean a near perfect sync.
  
• You can now press the "backspace" key (or "back" gamepad button) during a track and at the end stats screen to replay the song.

• Added "Playlist Mode", to play multiple songs in a row (albums, folders, playlists, favorite/recent files, etc.). When you have multiple songs displayed in the Music Selection menu, simply select "play all files" ("P" hotkey on keyboard and "X" button on controllers)
  If you want more controls over the played tracks and their order, you can use your favorite music player to create a .M3U playlist and then access that playlist from the Music Selection menu.
  
• Added an option in the Pause menu to skip to the next song in the list.
  
• "Autoplay" songs in Playlist Mode now start automatically after loading, allowing you to select multiple songs and have them all play without any required input (great for playing music in the background and enjoying the game as a visualizer!)
  
• "Autoplay" songs don't show the end stats screen anymore.
  
• Added support for multiple files drag'n'drop (to be played in Playlist Mode).
  
• In Playlist Mode, files that cannot be played due to an error (file format, deleted file, etc.) will be automatically skipped instead of showing the error screen.

• Complete overhaul of the Overload difficulty. I wanted to have a much bigger density of orbs in Overload and I wasn't happy with the artificial difficulty of simply requiring difficult inputs constantly for solid obstacles.
  Now the Overload tracks will have twice as much orbs and less solid obstacles (especially noticeable in "Tempo" sync mode), and require Direction/Color Tandem inputs instead of "Mix" (The Direction/Color Mix is still available in the Custom difficulty settings for those looking for an extra challenge).
  Please let me know what you think about this new Overload mode in this discussion thread!
  
• The input window in Intense mode is now a bit wider.
  
• The orb density in Energy Peak mode for Medium Difficulty is now lower
  
• Slightly increased the speed of flying sections again
  
• The setting "Double Low Tempos" now only affect tempo values below 91 BPM instead of 101 BPM.
  
• Added an option (in the "General" menu) to disable the usage of a distinct "Direction" purple color for solid obstacles in Intense mode (a cosmetic change only, you still need to use the correct arrow input).

• Removed the "tempo confidence" percentage from the Track Loading Screen, as it was too confusing and not linear; a lot of players assumed that 50% meant that only half of the song would be on sync when instead it would mean a near perfect sync.
  
• You can now press the "backspace" key (or "back" gamepad button) during a track and at the end stats screen to replay the song.