With the decade closing and Quaver approaching closer to release, we feel it's time to start showing off what's coming to the game upon its release in 2020. Many of you have questions about the game and how far we are into its development, and we'll give an answer to some of them in this post.

Currently we are in the process of redesigning and polishing the entire game. This includes giving the game client a completely new and fresh UI, as well as creating an entirely new website.

All of your feedback and feature requests over the past year are now being incorporated into the game, and we're very happy with the results thus far.

2020. Early 2020. We currently do not have a set in stone date, but judging from how far along we are with development, the game should be good to release within the first half of the year!

Hype! ːsteamhappyː

The Quaver game client is open source on GitHub. We're always looking for more people to contribute code to the game to speed up the process, so if this sounds like something you're interested in, feel free to jump in anytime!

There's a ton of new and exciting stuff coming to Quaver in 2020 including a brand new UI, shiny new features, and performance improvements!

Currently we're in the midst of taking apart the entire client and giving it a new look. If you've previously given us feedback over the past year, your ideas have most likely made (or will make) it into the game!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4IDo3Q7ot4
What's new in song select?

• Playlists - A long-awaited feature - In the new UI, you're able to create and manage groups of all of your favorite maps. It's not limited to just this though. You're also able to export your playlists to a zip file or even upload your playlists online from directly in-game to share with other players!
  
  
• Rate & Friend Leaderboards - We've added two new leaderboards to the game. You'll be able to view scores that were played on a given playback speed as well as scores that only your friends have submitted!
  
  
• Custom Map Banners - Many of you have asked for a way to make custom banners for your maps in the game. You'll be able to do so.
  
  
• Over 15 different sorting options - We've added sorting options for everything ranging from difficulty, average notes per second, to even long note percentage. If you can think of it, it's most likely there!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Brc1qApyZFA
What exactly are these features?

• Spectator - Wanting to watch other players live? We've added the ability to spectate others in the game.
  
  
• Theater Mode - With this feature, you'll be able to load up to 4 replays, and watch them simultaneously.
  
  
• Co-op Gameplay - Have a buddy next to you that can't wait their turn? We've added a co-op mode where two players can play on one screen at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmPz2n-5xJE
What does it come with?

• Resizable Chat - Whether you want to cover your screen with the chat or make it a tiny portion, you'll be able to resize the chat to your heart's desire.
  
  
• Twitch Song Requests - You'll be able to connect your Twitch to your Quaver account, and receive song requests from viewers directly in-game.
  
  
• Online User & Friends List - See who else is online, and manage your friends list.
  
  
• Active Song Downloads - Songs that are currently downloading will have its own tab and be displayed.
  
  
• Missed Notifications - Went AFK for a bit? No worries. Any important notifications that you missed such as chat messages, game invites, or even errors will be displayed for you to view and interact with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7R8iDkUF7nU
What's new?

Other than a complete redesign, not much has changed from the old multiplayer. However, there are a few notable new features to highlight:

• Uploading Unsubmitted Maps - If you have donator features (more on this in the future), you'll be able to temporarily upload unsubmitted maps for the multiplayer lobby to download.
  
  
• Map Leaderboard View - You'll now be able to view the leaderboard of the selected multiplayer map at any time while waiting for the match to start.
  
  
• Chat Display - We've added an on-screen chat to multiplayer along with message history. This means if you leave the game and rejoin, you'll be able to view the past 20 messages that were sent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf9Q3yXI6hE
Major improvements to the replay viewer have been made. We've added a set of playback controls for you to use while watching replays. With this, you'll be able to seek to any time in the replay, and change the playback speed.

We're now in a place where we can greatly expand upon the replay viewer, so if you have any ideas, be sure to let us know!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8r9dSISljI
What's included?

• Listening Parties - You and up to 15 other players will be able to simultaneously listen to tracks. This serves as an alternative way to connect with other players, and to share your favorite tracks.
  
  
• Playlists - Any playlists that you've made in song select will also be available in the music player.

And finally, we've finally integrated the Steam Workshop into the game. With this, you'll be able to upload and share your custom Quaver skins for others to download without ever leaving the game.

Sharing skins has always been very popular within the rhythm game community, and we're excited that we've made the process extremely easy to do within Quaver!

As you can see, there's a lot in store for Quaver next year, and we're getting closer and closer to release. We still have a few more screens to finish such as the results screen, map downloading screen, and the editor.

With the small team we have, we're making a ton of progress, and I'm very excited to let you get your hands on the new client on release next year.

Thank you for all your support during the past two years of development, and here's to another year to come!

Happy holidays!
- Swan 💙

An update to Quaver has just been released which introduces our newest feature: Customizable Judgement Timing Windows.

In the song select modifier menu, you can now find a new option where you can create presets for your own judgement timing windows.

This will effectively enable you to make the game as easy or hard as you choose, allowing for 100% customizability.

The game comes with 8 built-in presets that you can use including the following from easiest to hardest:

• Peaceful
  
• Lenient
  
• Chill
  
• Standard* (Default)
  
• Strict
  
• Tough
  
• Extreme
  
• Impossible

While using custom judgement windows, the game will use your replay and internally convert your score, accuracy, and performance rating as if it were using the Standard* windows.

When scores are submitted to global rankings, they will submit as the converted versions so that all leaderboard scores are normalized and easy to compare as they always have been.

You are able to see the accuracy of both your custom preset and Standard* windows in the results screen after playing.

Keep in mind that if you pass on an easier judgement window preset, but the score fails on Standard*, it will submit as failed at the point of failure on the Standard* windows.

• Added mean & standard deviation values to the results screen.
  
• Added buttons to fix local and global offset in the results screen after playing.
  
• Global offset is now unaffected by audio playback rate.
  
• You can now change local offset by 1 millisecond by holding CTRL while adjusting it during gameplay.
  
• Added the ability to copy a timestamp with no objects selected in the editor.
  
• Fixed the game crashing when copying hitobjects in the editor on Linux.

Quaver is now officially in the polishing phase! Over the past month, we've been working super hard on getting ready for the Steam open beta.

As some of you already know, Quaver is getting a completely new UI which will make the game look and feel more modern, polished, and smooth. We've taken all of your feedback into account, and we're super excited to share our progress with you in the upcoming weeks.

We've also been working developing a new map modding system which should be out soon.

Stay tuned.

---

Thanks for reading! 💙

After receiving a ton of feedback from you guys, we believe it's time to start tweaking and balancing some of the game mechanics of Quaver. According to your feedback, one of the main concerns with Quaver was with the way accuracy was calculated - particularly because of its harshness and extreme focus on Marvelous to Perfect ratio. On Tuesday, we released an update which makes it slightly more lenient.

All of your existing scores have been recalculated to this new system, and almost everyone has benefited from it. You may have gained or lost ranks and first place scores as a result of this change.



In order to understand the change, it's important for you to understand the overall goals that we want to achieve when calculating accuracy in this game.

We want to discourage spamming & not playing the game properly
Achieving high scores for not playing the game correctly is something that we want to avoid. If you're consistently achieving poor judgements, your accuracy should reflect that.

We want to encourage and reward players for achieving a higher ratio of Marvelous judgements as opposed to Perfects
Achieving consistent Marvelous judgements is significantly harder than Perfects when it comes to the timing windows. We acknowledge this and want to reward this in accuracy calculations without being too harsh.

We want accuracy to reflect a play's overall performance well
This one is pretty simple. If you perform extremely well on a score, your accuracy should be extremely high and vice versa.

Achieving 99%+ scores should be difficult and rewarding for the player
Given that 100% is only achievable by gaining all marvelous judgements, 99% should be difficult to achieve as well and focused more heavily on ratio past a certain point.



For this update, we've changed the way judgements are weighted when calculating accuracy.



In the picture above, you can see the differences between the two systems - namely the Perfect judgement weighting changing from 96% to 98.25%, and the Great judgement weighting changing from 50% to 65%. This ultimately makes the game slightly easier than before.

After spending a long time tweaking values, we've settled on testing this approach. While the system is still not perfect, it seems to align more with the goals we have for this game when it comes to our scoring system, and we believe it's a great start.

Keep in mind that this update only changes accuracy. The performance rating algorithm has not been modified, so naturally the rating of your scores have also increased.

From what we've heard so far, this tweak seems to make the game head more in the right direction, and we believe the same.

Give the new system a try, and let us know why and how you believe things should be tweaked further.

Thanks for reading!

Achievement Hunters & Completionists - Your time has arrived! We've just released version 0.16.0 of Quaver, which brings to you our new achievement system. We've introduced over 30 achievements to unlock ranging from a variety of difficulties!


With these achievements, the goal was to give players something worth striving for in addition to their every day goals, so we've added achievements of a variety of types. These include achievements for performance rating, combo, total score, rank, first place scores, and so much more!

For now, these achievements only apply to ranked maps. Some achievements such as the combo ones may be unachievable for the time being while we are scarce on the amount of ranked maps, however they will be with time.

Don't worry! To unlock all of your previous achievements, all you have to do is log into the game, and submit one score on any ranked map. The game will automatically spam you with achievements that you've already unlocked! ːsteamhappyː


This is normal! While the game isn't fully released, Steam won't allow you to view this. However, if you want to see a list of achievements you have unlocked and still have left, you can check it out on your profile page!

Yes, and yes! Over time, we will be adding a bunch of new achievements to the game including ones for multiplayer. If you want to request any achievements for us to add to the game, tweet us @QuaverGame!


A few bug fixes and improvements to the game have also been implemented.

• Maps will now display their correct ranked status upon importing them into the game.
  
• Added better keybind support for keyboards with non-US layouts.
  
• Fixed stage-hit-position-overlay not being positioned properly in skins.
  
• The "quaver.sh" file for Linux users has had its line endings changed to LF.
  
• In-game notifications now support longer messages.

While a small update, we hope you enjoy going for these achievements! This was one of the quick things on the to-do list that we've decided to get done while we begin to work on bigger features such as Spectator and our Map Modding System. As promised, we're going to release smaller updates more frequently, and this is the first release of many.

As with the new default skins, these achievement icons were designed by Janko. Make sure to tell him that he did a great job!

Good luck Achievement Hunters! 💙
- Swan

Hey, everyone! Over the course of the past few months, many of you have reached out to us with questions on how to join our Ranking Supervisor Team.

If you're unfamiliar with who the Ranking Supervisors are and what they do, they're the people responsible for approving user-submitted maps to be officially ranked. They are also in charge of directly helping improve both the map ranking process and criteria by having in-depth discussions with other team members and the community.

A ton of you have asked us how to join, and now's your chance! If you're an active and experienced mapper for either game mode with skills in reviewing maps, feel free to apply!

We've opened up applications that you can fill out to let us know that you're interested in joining which you can find at:
https://quavergame.com/supervisors

In order to join our team, you must meet the following requirements:

• You must currently be a Steam alpha tester
  
• You must be experienced in map creation
  
• You must be skillful in identifying issues in maps
  
• You are familiar with our current Ranking Process
  
• You are familiar with our current Ranking Criteria

The application should only take around 10-15 minutes to complete and asks you questions about your past experience and quizzes you slightly on our ranking process/criteria. Furthermore, it also asks what supervisor actions you would perform in certain scenarios - all of which should let us know if you're a good fit.

We're looking forward to seeing new faces in our team! 💙
- Swan

Hey, all! The time has finally arrived! After 3 months since our last 0.14.1 update and 6 months since the first alpha registrations, we're proud to announce that the new multiplayer update (0.15.0) has been released, and round 2 alpha registrations are now live!



Alpha Registration Status: Closed

Registrations for the Quaver alpha are now live! To join, head over to https://alpha.quavergame.com, and follow the on-screen instructions. You will be prompted to login with your Steam and Discord accounts to authenticate who you are and to register for the alpha.

This time around, we're giving 1,000 Steam keys, so make sure you are following the requirements listed below, and register quickly!

Please note that in order to join alpha and receive a key, you must meet the following requirements:

• You must be a member of our Official Discord Server.
  
• You must not already be an alpha tester.
  
• You must be at least 13 years of age.

NOTE: After signing up, you will be placed on a wait list to be accepted. Once accepted, you will receive a private Discord message with your Steam key and more information to get started.

We're very excited to see new faces in the world of Quaver, and we hope you are excited as well!



We've just released version 0.15.0 of Quaver which brings to you our new multiplayer mode!

In multiplayer, you can create custom lobbies and play with up to 16 players in online battles which includes three game modes such as:

• Free-For-All - The player with the highest performance rating at the end of the match wins.
  
  
• Teams - Two teams. One winner. The team with the highest average performance rating will win the match.
  
  
• Battle Royale - As the match goes on, the player with the lowest performance rating gets eliminated from the game. The last player standing wins.

This multiplayer was also built to support competitive-oriented and casual play out of the box!

Included it has features such as:

• Over 20+ Customization Filters and Chat Commands - Add filters for selecting maps such as the difficulty range, allowed game modes, maximum song length, long note percentage, and so much more!
  
  
• Automatic Win Count Tracking - When a player or team wins, the server will automatically keep a record of how many wins they have. There is also the option to manually set win counts. This is especially useful in competitive environments.
  
  
• Built-in Referee System - Ever wanted someone to manage tournament matches but don't want them to get in the way of the scoreboards? You can designate a player to be the referee of the game to do just that!
  
  
• Real-time Score Tracking - On our website, you can view the scores of multiplayer matches in real-time as they happen.
  
  
• Previous Match History - Similarly to real-time score tracking, you can also view the results of previous multiplayer matches on our website.
  
  
• Two Health Systems - We offer either a classic health regeneration system upon death where you have to reach 100% health in order to revive yourself, or a life-based system where if you die, you lose a life.
  
  
• Free Mod & Free Rate - When activating free mod, a player can use any modifier that does not change the speed of the map or converts long notes. With free rate, players in the game can use any speed they choose.
  
  
• Built-in Team Chat - When playing with teams, you have access to a special #multiplayer-team chat channel to communicate with your teammates.
  
  
• Auto Host Rotation - You have the ability to turn on auto host rotation where after each match ends, the server will automatically choose the next player to be the host of the game to select a new map.
  
  
• Multiplayer Wins Leaderboard & Profile Stats - We've also implemented a new fun leaderboard that displays how many wins players have in multiplayer. Furthermore, your multiplayer win-loss record is now displayed on your profile.

We put a ton of effort into this multiplayer update and are still looking forward to expanding upon it further. Make sure you give lots of feedback, and request new features you would like to see!



With this update, we've also introduced 4 brand new default skins into the game including an arrow skin, two bar skins, and a circle skin.

These skins work for both the 4 Keys and 7 Keys game modes and are more suited to the theme of the game.

The legacy skins have since been removed from the game.

These skins were created by our beloved graphic designer and ranking supervisor, Janko. Be sure to thank him, and tell him he did an awesome job!



We've also made some improvements to our UI. Overall, it follows more towards the design we will end up implementing in the UI overhaul.

The theme leans more toward the darker side and aims to visually create more breathing room for elements on the screen.

You should also notice that navigating the menus is much faster and optimized than before.



On our website, you can now find a handy new page titled "Map Pools." With this feature, you can now create your own playlists of maps and share them with the world!

You can use this feature to create a list of your favorite maps, a collection of hard maps you want to pass, or even use them as a way to share maps to be used in tournaments.

At the moment, you can currently create up to 10 map pools, and fill them with up to 100 maps. We will of course have more options in the future to create and add more!

Although bare-bones, we're planning on expanding on this feature immensely, so please let us know what features you would like to see out of this and how we can expand upon it.



As with all updates, we love to improve the game by adding more quality of life improvements and bug fixes.

Additions & Improvements

• Added a DeadNoteColor skin configuration property to customize the color of missed long notes.
  
• Added a number display that shows the player's current performance rating in the top-left of the screen.
  
• Added a setting to toggle smooth accuracy number display changes.
  
• The numpad +/- now works for rate changes in song select.
  
• Added a chat badge and color for game contributors.
  
• Added an option in song select to delete maps.
  
• Added an option in song select to select a random map.
  
• Added Discord Rich Presence for the map downloading screen.
  
• Added a ComboPosX skin configuration property.
  
• Added keysound and sound effect support.
  
• Added options in the settings menu to fix sound effect latency on Linux machines.
  
• Changed the blur intensity on the song select screen.
  
• Added the difficulty range to maps in the download screen.
  
• Removed the alpha warning screen.
  
• Added the ability to instantly exit replay watching on pause.
  
• Added a playercard in the main menu.
  
• The game now uses the Steam overlay browser by default to open web pages.
  
• The game now brings the player to the download screen if they do not have any maps when clicking on single player or multiplayer.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a crash when failing to login to the server.
  
• Fixed Discord Rich Presence clearing on score submission.
  
• Fixed issues with number display scaling and positioning.
  
• Fixed the AccuracyDisplayPosY skin config property not working.
  
• Fixed the grade display aspect ratio.
  
• Fixed the keys per second display not updating immediately on key presses.
  
• Fixed the ColumnLightingOffsetY property not working properly.
  
• Fixed a crash during editor play testing.
  
• Fixed replays not exporting properly.
  
• Fixed the game crashing on stacked notes with autoplay.
  
• Fixed replays and autoplay not having the correct score when lagging.

As always, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading the patch notes for this update!

We're very excited to see tons of new faces in the Quaver alpha tester program, and we're even more excited to hang out in multiplayer with all of you!

Now that a lot of the bigger features are out of the way, you can expect updates to happen on a more frequent basis. We're planning on doing very great things with this game, so we hope you guys will stick around for the ride!

Happy keyboard smashing! 💙
- Swan

Hey friends! After over 6 months since our initial Steam alpha tester program launched, we're finally opening it back up again to 1,000 new players! In other news, with the next update we'll also be releasing Quaver's brand new multiplayer mode. In this blog post, you can check out when the next alpha registrations and update will be, as well as get a sneak peek on what's to come in the next update!



During the first round of Steam alpha testing, we wanted to give an exclusive group of around 400 people an opportunity to experience the online features Quaver had to offer at the time. During this period, it allowed us to manage a small amount of individuals to help test and give 1-on-1 feedback on the game and to have helpful discussions as to how we can improve it further. This proved to be extremely useful, as we now have a solid and established game after pumping out many updates and receiving feedback on a small and focused scale. We're now excited to announce that we will be opening up registrations once again to welcome a ton of new testers!


If you were around for the first alpha registrations, you'd know that we opened them up at a random time back in December. This time around, we're announcing all of the details beforehand, so everyone has a chance to get in.

• When? - Saturday, June 29th, 2019 @ 12:00pm EST (4:00PM UTC)
  
  
• How? - We will post an announcement on Discord and Twitter with the link when it opens, so be sure to follow us and join the server if you haven't already!
  
  
• Any Requirements? - In order to be accepted into the Steam alpha, you must be a member of our Discord server. If you are not already a member of the Discord, it would be optimal to join beforehand to not potentially miss out on signing up before registrations close. We use Discord heavily as a way of communicating with testers 1-on-1, so we're making it a strict requirement this time around.
  
  
• How Many Steam Keys? - 1,000

Thank you for participating in the first round of alpha testing! Whether you've played the entire way through or tried the game out for a few minutes, we definitely appreciate you giving it a chance! All 400 of you got to see the game in a very early state and had an exclusive opportunity to give feedback on it. Because of you, Quaver has gotten much better and stable, and we're going to continue on this path going forward. To say thanks, we'll be rewarding you all with a special badge on your profile pages within the next couple weeks that you can show off!



If you haven't heard on Twitter or on our Discord server, we've been working extremely hard on developing Quaver's multiplayer. It will be released on the same day and time as the alpha registrations open. One of our main goals with Quaver is to provide an online experience that is both featureful to players and expandable development wise. Because of this, we've decided to take a lot of time for making sure that multiplayer is just that, and it is finally in a place where we are happy and comfortable releasing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sakgd_5sxIc
As already teased on Twitter, we have three game modes with this multiplayer including Free-For-All, Teams, and Battle Royale.

We also made sure to go the extra mile to make sure multiplayer is extremely customizable and built for tournaments & competitive play with over 20 filtering options and commands to use to setup your game. Some other notable features include automatic win count tracking, a built-in referee system, the ability to track match scores in real-time and view past scores on our website, and so much more! However, we won't spoil all of it, so you'll have to wait until the release!

For the past few months we've put in a ton of work to bring this update, and we're very excited to welcome new testers. We have a lot of huge things planned going forward such as more frequent updates, tournaments, and more ways you can directly get involved in contributing to the game. As always, thanks for reading, and we hope you're just as excited as we are for this too!

See you there! 💙
- Swan