Download from the pink box above.
NEW FEATURES
- Added several help buttons throughout that launch how-to guides on the Synthesia website.
- Note labels have been improved: they smoothly scale again and now show with much greater contrast than ever before.
- Enabled seven more songs in demo mode: one in each category.
- Added "Song Paused" label while song is paused. If the song was paused while also stopped at a note in melody practice, it could be confusing or frustrating when attempting to play the next note didn't resume the song.
- Added "Toggle Loop" shortcut (default: /) to enable or disable the current loop. Instead of removing it completely, now you can just turn it off for a while.
- Added "Custom" option to the zoom menu: remembered between songs (and Free Play) automatically. This is useful when trying to align the keys on your physical keyboard with Synthesia's on-screen keyboard. Custom zoom also disables snapping to whole keys, so you can fine-tune your zoom level.
- Improved sharpness of falling note graphics when drawn very large.
- Unlock keys can now be used in Synthesia for Android. Traditionally they were only usable in the desktop versions.
- Song names now appear in the title bar of the window during play.
- Interface language choice is now saved for each user profile.
- The included set of songs are now packaged directly inside the Windows version of Synthesia, to match all our other supported platforms. This should make initial setup easier for users that prefer to download the stand-alone zip Synthesia releases.
- The included songs are now shown in the song list much more quickly.
- The Synthesia Configuration tool has been merged into Synthesia. Hold Shift while starting to open the configuration window.
- The metronome now continues to run during a loop delay.
- The readme can now be opened from Settings → Advanced → About & Legal.
- You are returned to the same screen used to load a song: if you clicked an entry in the Recent Songs list on the title screen, leaving that song will return you directly to the title screen. Launching a song directly via right-click shortcut or using a synthesia:/ URL will also return you directly to the title screen.
- Added an asterisk icon to the key and note label popup menu to indicate the recommended/default setting for each.
- Windows-only Graphics.ScaleOverride advanced option to force a particular DPI scale. Valid ranges are between 1.0 and 2.0.
- The old Gameplay.AutoShiftToBestOctave option has been promoted and can now be changed inside Synthesia. See: Settings → Gameplay → Keyboard Octave.
- The System.SoftwareKeyboardMapping advanced setting now supports Unicode virtual piano mappings.
- Output devices that are enabled but not used for anything are no longer shown on the title screen.
- The loop delay slider now snaps to beats.
- Folders are now scanned recursively by default.
- Synthesia no longer prevents loading MIDI type-2 files.
- Increased the contrast of song location highlight in sheet music display.
- Flattened out a few UI elements to follow the modern trend.
- A few improvements to menu navigation: Show Game Help (default: F1) will also exit the help screen, and Menu Back (default: Esc) will now close any open menus and exit any pause modes (loop, bookmark, finger hints, etc.) the first time, before attempting to exit play the second time.
- Key lights are now only shown for the entire duration of each note when you're in "Watch and Listen Only" mode. They behave the same as they once did in Synthesia 9 whenever you are playing.
- Notes at the very beginning of the song now play in subsequent loops.
- While previewing an individual part in a song with many parts, instruments were sometimes incorrect.
- In songs with many parts, instruments should be correct more often. Otherwise when a song has more parts than the 16 available MIDI channels, often the only solution to hearing the correct instrument is to mute some of the other parts.
- Song preview audio no longer hangs when you click the recycle/delete button.
- Added a workaround for a bug in the Windows 10 MIDI synth that prevents it from being opened within the first few seconds of application launch.
- The song list now correctly sorts numbers in song titles using natural order. For example, instead of songs being ordered like 1, 10, 100, 11, 2, they will show as 1, 2, 10, 11, 100 now.
- The icon shown for "Fiddle" is now actually a fiddle instead of the generic synth icon.
- Free play now shows notes from triple-sensor keyboards (where more Note On events arrive before all the Note Offs) correctly.
- Dramatically increased the speed of key spark effect calculations. Particles should now have a much smaller impact on frame rate.
- Songs can no longer be shown more than once in the song list, regardless of which combination of folders are being watched.
- Interacting with the falling notes (e.g., creating bookmarks, setting finger hints, adjusting loops) now tracks the mouse cursor correctly while paused during a loop delay.
- The sheet music resize bar now always extends to the right side of the screen.
- Synthesia now recovers gracefully from reading corrupt/locked settings.
- Walk Entire Loop Forward (default: >) and Walk Entire Loop Backward (default: <) now work when there isn't already a loop, in a song that contains a bookmark at the very beginning.
- The Windows version of Synthesia is now more responsive while running in the background when drawing using DirectX.
- Prevent crash while loading songs with extremely "wide" measures. (Or: Synthesia can now handle 82/4 time signatures.)
- Instruments can now be changed more reliably while previewing a part.
- Removed the button that launched a browser to view recital scores. Recitals are no longer tracked on the Synthesia website for technical reasons. (Look forward to an improved system coming in Synthesia 12.)
- OS X should no longer show "Folder Missing!" for the built-in song list.
- Microsoft broke their MIDI synth in Windows 10. Once disabled, it will never re-enable until you close and re-open Synthesia. If you make device changes (unplugging/replugging, changing settings, etc.) this bug will cause your Microsoft synth to stop. Just restart Synthesia.
- I'd love to hear from any Mac OS X 10.7 users that are still out there. All 0.4% of you. I've already heard a report that this crashes at startup for at least one 10.7 user (while I've seen it work on 10.6 and 10.10). Without going to eBay and buying an old Mac that still has 10.7 on it, there isn't a great way to test Apple's older OSes.
- Slowing the song down to 0% speed causes a crash.
- The new recursive-by-default folder scanning can (more readily) find the internal MIDI files inside Synthesia.app on Mac. This has always been possible, but now it's more likely.
- When trying to move files to Trash in the Mac version, all files are incorrectly detected as read-only.
For a "small feature-polish" release, this one certainly accumulated a lot of changes! The only real coherent theme in that list is tackling all those little inconveniences that have been bugging users for years. Lots more happened under the hood, too. Some major code quality strides that prepare Synthesia for better things. Hopefully everything feels pretty good.
This is feature complete. After a bit more wrap-up and testing (from you guys and on the tablet side of things), 10.2 will be ready to go out the door and the largest of the Few Small Projects will be complete. Combine that with my having found a bit of help for both the website and the guide work, and things are moving right along! You guys might actually see MusicXML support some day!