Final Fight AE CPS2 Second Alpha Is Live! Beta Date Announced!
The title may come as a shock, but it's true, the second alpha has been delivered to our alpha testers and we are awaiting some spicy playthroughs!
The spots for alpha testers filled up very quickly once they were announced to our patrons. The first alpha test, which was not announced publicly, went as expected. There were numerous bugs, unfinished features, and we fell a bit short of the eeprom/service menu support we intended to have ready. In spite of these shortcomings, it helped us identify numerous bugs which have since been fixed, so it went as well as one could hope.
For this second alpha we have implemented numerous enhancements, fixed most of the bugs from the first, and have the game in a nearly complete state.
One of the large enhancements from this round of development was real polyphony for sound effects. In the previous alpha, sound effects were assigned individual channels and so each sound would only play on that one channel. This results in sound effects cutting each other off as they have to reuse the channel they are assigned to. This can be heard during chaotic fights where many sound effects are cutting each other off trying to keep up with the action. The new way allows for up to six simultaneous sound effects to be played by queuing sound effects in a round robin across audio channels. Coupled with stereo calculations for the sound effects this has a profound effect. Now when you perform a special attack in the middle of a group of enemies, it produces a wonderful barrage of noises that surround the player. While polyphony by itself greatly enhances the audio, there is still not a great amount of variation in the original sound effects. But with QSound we are not constrained to playing audio back at only a single rate as we were with the CPS1. Creating additional "variation" data and walking through the variations we can play back each hit sound effect at a different play back rate. The result is fantastic, so please listen to the attached video with headphones or on a high quality stereo to appreciate the new sound engine.
Another big improvement over the previous alpha is the inclusion of stereo panning for every song in the game! Our brilliant audio engineer Griefspammer painstakingly pored over every song, adding stereo separation that makes the songs absolutely pop! He even went so far as to modify the music software slightly to improve the usability while doing this work, which we found quite impressive indeed. Please listen to the following music sample, again with a good stereo setup, it has been isolated so you can focus on the amazing improvement stereo panning has added to the tracks.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/874006255583232040/917247394771529809/Basement_Pan_Mix.mp3
One big feature that was intended for FFAE from the beginning was a series of software dip enhancements to the base gameplay. The CPS1 build of FFAE was a labor of love that we sunk a massive amount of time into, but after 10 months of grueling development, we were forced to call it. This release however is all about improvements, and as a result we have added the following features via the service menu:
* CONFIGURABLE FRIENDLY FIRE
* LOCK CHARACTERS TO PLAYER POSITION
* DISABLE/ENABLE SPAWN DAMAGE
* DISABLE/ENABLE INFINITE COMBOS
* DISABLE/ENABLE HIT START TO PAUSE
* CONFIGURABLE ENEMY HEALTH IN THREE PLAYER, NORMAL/1.25x/1.5x
At least one of these (friendly fire configurability) has been requested MANY times by fans of FFAE. These options change the game in very interesting ways! All of your selections are stored in EEPROM when leaving the service menu, so eventually when you encounter FFAE CPS2 in the wild you won't know what exactly you'll be playing! This is just the beginning for these features as there are several more in the works. Every copy of FFAE CPS2 is personalized, play the game the way you want to!
We are within sight of the end of development, and as a result it is time to announce the beta date. February 1st, 2022 the beta will be released, this will also be the cut off date for the enemy/boss tiers. If you wish to get your name or someone else's in the game you will need to be signed up for that tier on or before January 31st and be billed for at least the month of February. Those that have been long term subscribers to either of these tiers will be taken care of on an individual basis, and emails will be sent out to all such patrons with the name survey in February. The FINAL release containing the patron names will be some time shortly after we complete the survey.
For now we are working to fix bugs, implement the remaining features and prepare a wonderful beta for everyone to enjoy. There will be one more short alpha before the release of the beta to verify that everything will go smoothly for the beta, after that we'll be doing post-release maintenance and preparing for a final public release some time in Q2 of 2022. Thanks for playing!
Final Fight AE CPS2 Stereo Music And Sound Effect Polyphony (YouTube)