Major update & downtime of December 3rd, 2020
#1
Hello everyone, it's been a while since I've been able to make a write up about all sorts of new stuff coming your way.
SpriteClub has been in a bit of an odd place for the longest time. I enjoy the site a lot, even if my free time in recent months has been pretty dreadful. Over the years, I haven't really done a good job at maintaining it however, for various reasons. However, I've finally gotten around to addressing that issue, and changing the setup to be ready for the future.

These updates come in the form of a long downtime however, and this thread is here to detail the various changes that come with it.

First off, I finally got around to another feature that I've been wanting for over a year, which is custom modes. These are small modes that occur after exhibitions, before matchmaking (not during debuts). These modes use an alternate set of rules to determine their matches, which will hopefully create a new and fun experience for everyone. More information on that can be found in this thread: https://forums.spriteclub.tv/showthread.php?tid=201

Secondly, with this update I've added two new commands, namely one that tells you the upcoming custom mode, and one to tell you the upcoming tournament. Since the number of commands has gotten rather large with these additions, I have now outlined all of them in this thread: https://forums.spriteclub.tv/showthread.php?tid=200

Thirdly, clips and VODs will return! However, copyright strikes are still a major issue on Twitch right now. Since I cannot control the sounds used by characters on the stream, I unfortunately do not have a choice right now but to remove both the live music, as well as the in-game audio from clips/VODs. Instead, clips/VODs will use an entirely separate soundtrack, the live stream will continue to be unaffected. I'll continue to evaluate the options in the future to determine if/when it is safe to include in-game audio.

Finally, a list of other changes:
- Fixed the balance not updating at the start/end of tournaments
- Fixed character match counts sometimes not being saved for the right type
- Fixed promotion/demotion matches not always having 3 rounds when 1st Division characters are involved
- Fixed the next mode stated by bot announcements/commands not always being correct.
- Bets will now always stay open at least 30 seconds, even if Mugen closes earlier for whatever reason
- Crash detection has been improved. In general, crashes should be determined within 3 seconds.
- Intros/outros that last longer than 45/90 seconds respectively will now be skipped. If this threshold is reached, subsequent intros/outros will be skipped after 5 seconds (both, regardless of which one triggered it). If for some reason they're not yet skipped 15 seconds later, the match is regarded as a crash.
- Rounds in which the timer, during a single round, has moved by less than 30 seconds over the course of 3 minutes, will be skipped.
- Tournament finals are now allowed to go on for 14 minutes, as opposed to the standard 10 minutes of regular matches.
- Free mode now selects its matchup/turns size at pure random, instead of using regular probabilities.
- Tightened the rating deviation allowed when selecting characters for particularly high/low rated matches. Overall, this should slightly increase the number of very high/low rated matches, and decrease the average rating gap between characters in those matches.

...in addition to a lot of behind the scenes work! For the curious, I've greatly changed the runner so that I have greater control over its configuration without having to restart it (no, I still cannot influence actual characters selected outside of NEW characters), greatly optimised its performance to free up more CPU for the stream, and added functionality that'll allow it to report things to me via Discord, so that errors/problematic characters can be better identified and addressed. All in all, a huge portion of code was altered/added.

I hope that everyone will enjoy these updates, and have fun with the new game modes. As you'll have noticed, most of the changes for now are aimed at the Mugen runner. Now that I've taken that through a development phase, I want to focus more on the website in the coming months. Stay tuned for more!
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