No option to adjust audio sync?

[SunStealer]

I just downloaded the game and currently I have to shoot well behind the beat of the music in order to be in time with the "visual" cue and for the gun to actually fire (even on "loose" settings for rhythm). Is there no way to calibrate and adjust so the visual cues are in sync with the music? Like with other rhythm games, like guitar hero, DDR, etc. This is making it nigh unplayable for me, so I'm hoping there is some kind of way to adjust this.

[SunStealer]

It is also worth noting that even if I set it to "auto-rhythm," all the shooting and actions performed are not with the audio because of how out-of-sync it is.

[Cucurrucucú Paloma]

I second the motion of adding a calibration or sync latency offset. There's just enough latency for it to feel off to my musician brain, feels consistently like I have to click ahead of a beat.

[Modus Pwnens]

How on earth are we still releasing rhythm games in 2020 without a way to adjust audio sync?

[Coskii]

Even with the timing set to lenient, I often find my old TV (main monitor) has a bit more latency than that allows for, trying to play on normal was almost unbearable, and I would imagine with strict it would be frustrating to even attempt a run.

[Ryusho Yosei]

This actually made me refund the game, no audio sync settings for t he game and it is supposed to be heavily rhythm based? sorry that's a no go from this rhythm game lover who took piano for 7 years, even if I somehow got lucky enough I was properly in sync, the fact it has no way to fix it, considering to musically trained even a tiny bit off can be infuriating.

[GAIN.GG | Cyber_Spoonman]

Yea..just grabbed this for the lunar sale and very disappointed. Visuals are behind the beat, nothing lines up. have played rhythm games and drums all my life and haven't seen this issue this bad in a very long time now..

[Saxxon]

I picked up this game and absolutely love the concept. I'm an avid rhythm gamer myself. That said, lacking the option to adjust audio judgement is SORELY missed. This is not the era of CRTs, you have to count on and account for latency in order to keep the rhythm.

[Sempron]

Still no audio sync function... I'm playing on a Laptop, so with Headphones it's OK, but with bluetooth speakers it's unplayable. They're behind half a beat...

[Jeshu]

Hi dev here. Apologies to anybody having issues with audio delay. Unfortunately the option of calibrating audio in a rhythm first person shooter is actually technically impossible to do.

How games like guitar hero get away with this is because the note's path is always predetermined. In other words, the game always knows where the note is going to be at any point in the future, so if the calibration test in guitar hero tells the game your TV is 30ms behind in latency, the game handicaps your input by 30ms, because it already knows where the note would be 30ms in the future. This is why notes visually go below the line in guitar hero, because it doesn't actually know if you are going to press the input on the beat ( Example pic: https://ibb.co/r0BXPkW )

In a first person shooter this isn't possible as the positions cannot be pre-determined, because they haven't happened yet. The game doesn't know and can't predict what you are going to do in the future. The only way to solve this problem is to literally have a time machine!

I would advise to not play this game with bluetooth speakers/headphones, as there is a considerable amount of delay with most wireless solutions.

Sorry i could not be of more help for anyone dealing with this frustrating issue.

[»RuwudBoy]

Originally posted by JoshSullivan:

Hi dev here. Apologies to anybody having issues with audio delay. Unfortunately the option of calibrating audio in a rhythm first person shooter is actually technically impossible to do.

Thank you for the great explanation. I personally find the timing quite lenient and think it works well given the type of game it is. I have far more issues adjusting the sync in things like DJMax and Muse Dash to compensate for how strict those can be compared to BPM where I never felt it was anything major.

You could try to reduce the amount of programs/equalizers your audio is running through (cut out VoiceMeeter, for example.) I had a setup using an external soundcard paired with VoiceMeeter that in the end would give roughly 70ms delay on a 5ms monitor. Nowadays I am using an internal card and run the audio directly through it and cut out VM to get about 10ms total. Hope that helps.

For reference I play a fair amount of rhythm games on PC and a lot at the arcade for over 15 years.

[respwn]

@JoshSullivan I understand that you can't predict what will happen in a game like this, but as long as im not dreaming about unicorns right now, you could fix the game state after the delay is up and all the information is there, even if you cant retroperspectively fix the video/audio feed that was already on the way.

1) so basically if you have 50ms delay you do things as usual, the user didnt click on the note (because he will click 50ms later), no click-hit animation played, no shot fired, no damage done

2) the user clicks, we're already 50ms late after the beat. the input registers and can now be handled.

3) the game has a 50ms delay configured, so the game goes back in the time line (there needs to be 50ms of gamestate changes cached within the game) and checks if it was on time 50ms ago. if it was, a shot animation is played, the enemy that was in line of sight 50ms ago gets damage. everything gets corrected, enemies that went on living in the 50ms video feed in the future, pop out of existence 50ms later and so on.

4) of course the player will see all of this happening 50ms in the future and its not perfectly canon, but that is the price. the visuals are partly off by 50ms now and wont show exactly what happened (because what is shown in response of the user and what happened in the game state is not the same thing now), which could cause slight aiming problems (aim assist helps), but the rhythm is on point now.

Its in a way very similar to how multiplayer fps shooter over the network work, which have similar problems with network latency. if its just 50ms it could also very hard to notice that things are off anyway, not much needs to be corrected retrospectively.

the problem with the click not registering correctly on the beat and visual indicator is, that its way harder to hold a beat on time with the music WHILE adding 50ms all the time in your brain. but its way easier to adapt to enemies living 50ms longer than they should.

arent you doing something similar with the "loose" setting already? that loose window "just" needs to be shifted by the delay.

i did a similar thing once in a hackathon at work, I might be sleep deprived right now, but Im pretty content that there is a way. it has its own downsides, but I think they are less problematic than the current situation

[Schrodinger's Lolcat]

Originally posted by JoshSullivan:

Hi dev here. Apologies to anybody having issues with audio delay. Unfortunately the option of calibrating audio in a rhythm first person shooter is actually technically impossible to do.

How games like guitar hero get away with this is because the note's path is always predetermined. In other words, the game always knows where the note is going to be at any point in the future, so if the calibration test in guitar hero tells the game your TV is 30ms behind in latency, the game handicaps your input by 30ms, because it already knows where the note would be 30ms in the future. This is why notes visually go below the line in guitar hero, because it doesn't actually know if you are going to press the input on the beat ( Example pic: https://ibb.co/r0BXPkW )

In a first person shooter this isn't possible as the positions cannot be pre-determined, because they haven't happened yet. The game doesn't know and can't predict what you are going to do in the future. The only way to solve this problem is to literally have a time machine!

I would advise to not play this game with bluetooth speakers/headphones, as there is a considerable amount of delay with most wireless solutions.

Sorry i could not be of more help for anyone dealing with this frustrating issue.

Might I suggest not releasing a game in which the central mechanic is a technical impossibity? Just refunded this thing after looking into this issue, getting this answer, and playing on wired head phones.