chartchotic

Write mode!! - now you can create charts in the same window you're viewing them from

Write Mode

• Draw Mode - Click to place notes, right-click to erase, shift-drag to paint repeating notes on the grid. Drag to create sustains. The note cursor shows exactly where your note will land.
• Edit Mode - Click to select notes or marquee drag to grab multiple. Move notes by dragging or nudge with the arrow keys. Double-click to create or delete notes.
• Write Toolbar - New sub-toolbar with step grid subdivisions, tuplet controls, snap toggle, and modifier selection (velocity, accent, ghost, tap, forced HOPO/strum, more to come!).
• Stamp - Available in either modes, hold and drag over a selection in DRAW or press while selecting notes in EDIT. Place patterns in one click.
• Bar Mode - Dedicated kick editing for drums or open notes for 5 fret. Non-bar gems dim so you can focus on just the bar lane. On drums shift drag to create alternating 2x kicks.
• MIDI flags like ENABLE_CHART_DYNAMICS and ENHANCED_OPENS are automatically added to charts as needed

Quality of Life

• Cmd+scroll to zoom note speed
• Alt+scroll to change grid size
• Help text in the bottom left on for most modes, and on hover over controls with shortcuts if available!

Bug Fixes

• Shift+scroll now scrolls faster than normal instead of slower
• Instrument and difficulty menus draw on a panel instead of over the highway

Shortcuts

Write-mode keys sit in the left-hand block so your right hand stays on the mouse.

Key	Action
W	Toggle write mode (works outside write mode)
Q	Switch Draw / Edit
E	Toggle snap
T	Toggle tuplet on/off (last used value)
Shift+T	Cycle tuplet 3 / 5 / 7
B	Toggle bar mode
C	Hold for stamp
[ ]	Grid step down / up
Delete / Backspace	Delete selection
Esc	Deselect all

Home row sets note type by position, so the same finger means the same slot on every instrument. Pressing an active slot returns that group to its default. Cymbal is its own group, so it toggles freely alongside ghost or accent.

Key	Drums	5-fret
A	Normal	Auto
S	Ghost	HOPO
D	Accent	Strum
F	Cymbal	Tap

Mouse	Draw	Edit
Left click	Place note, drag for sustain	Select
Left drag	—	Marquee
Alt+left drag	—	Move selection, axis locked
Shift+left drag	Paint	—
Right click / drag	Erase	—
Double-click	—	Create or delete note

Scroll	Action
Scroll	Seek 2 beats
Shift+scroll	Seek 8 beats
Alt+scroll	Change grid size
Cmd+scroll	Note speed

Bug Fixes

• REAPER no longer hangs when duplicating a track containing chartchotic
• Rendering engine improvements to prevent note drift
• Bar widths fit more cleanly within the highway
• Realigned cymbal modifier assets for ghosts/accents
• Scrolling on popup windows no longer moves the highways

Bug Fixes

• Fix instrument icon drifting off-center at small window sizes (#22)
• Fix instrument and difficulty selection not persisting across UI reloads (#23)
• Fix wrong-color note flash when switching between instruments
• Overlay menus and tooltips now inherit host DPI scaling (shouuuld fix #21)
• Update prompt no longer nags every time the plugin window is opened

Quality of Life

• Minimum window width reduced to 200px for tighter multi-instance layouts (#20)

Track Discovery Toggle

• New Track Discovery setting controls how the plugin decides what MIDI to render and as which instrument.
• On (default): Scans the project for tracks with standard names (PART GUITAR, PART DRUMS, etc.) and populates the instrument selector with what it finds. You choose which parts to view, one at a time or multiple at once.
• Off: Reads MIDI from whatever track the plugin is placed on. No name matching, no project scanning. You just tell it whether to render as a 5-lane guitar-style highway or a 4-lane drum-style highway.
• Use discovery off for custom MIDI, non-standard track names, or if detection is picking up the wrong tracks.

Track Status Bar

• Footer now shows the current track name and number so you always know what the plugin is reading from.

Bug Fixes

• Fix sync calibration offset jumping when playback crosses a tempo change

Quality of Life

• Tooltips on non-obvious controls (discovery toggle, calibration, latency, disco flip, HOPO threshold)
• HOPO threshold simplified to three levels: Tight (120), Default (170), Loose (240)

Easily the biggest release since 1.0. Multi-highway support turns Chartchotic into a full band view (or full difficulty if you prefer).

Multi-Highway

• Just place one instance of Chartchotic in your reaper project and it now automatically discovers all instruments and can display up to 4 at once! (or individually as you wish)
• REAPER tracks must use standard names to be detected: PART GUITAR, PART BASS, PART DRUMS, PART KEYS, PART RHYTHM, PART GUITAR COOP
• Click any instrument or difficulty icon to select it, shift click to toggle multiple at once, or "All" to show everything
• Live track detection. Add, remove, or rename REAPER tracks and the plugin highways update in real time

Bemani Mode

• As an alternative to perspective Harmonix-style scrolling, Bemani mode introduces flat vertical scrolling inspired by IIDX/SDVX/DDR. Toggle ビーマニ to switch view modes.
• Highway length scales with slot height. Taller slots show more notes and match the relative speed in perspective mode.

Performance

• Major architecture rework under the hood. Multi-highway rendering shares work across all visible highways instead of duplicating it, so 4 highways doesn't mean 4x the cost
• Resizing the window and changing perspective settings no longer freeze the UI
• Switching instruments or difficulties is now instant with no stutter or dropped frames

Bug Fixes

• Fix drum highway misalignment with lanes and bar notes
• Fix highway texture jumps at tempo changes
• Fix toolbar state persistence when moving the plugin between tracks

Quality of Life

• Viewport-based window resizing (no more auto-resize surprises)
• 0ms latency buffer option for the lowest-latency setups

IMPORTANT

• 1.2.0 is optimized for REAPER. All other DAWs are not actively supported at this time, but stay tuned for revamped alternate DAW support in future updates.

Window Resizing

• Highway length now adjusts window height automatically
• Boosted highway length to 500%, slider moved next to note speed in top bar
• Free resize mode (settings toggle) lets you stretch the window to any shape you want

Visual

• Higher resolution strikeline and note assets
• Guitar and drums now scale consistently at the same highway length setting
• Extended highways no longer clip at the top of the viewport
• Subtle perspective improvements for more consistent note placement
• Difficulty selector reversed - Expert on top

Disco Flips

• Pro Drums: automatic red<->yellow lane swap during disco flip sections
• Reads [mix 3 drums*d] text events from MIDI
• Visible start/end markers on the highway so you can see exactly where flips happen
• Toggle in View menu when pro drums cymbals are enabled

Other

• Proper Linux builds - VST3 and LV2 format!
• Skin override directory for building plugin with custom assets - see docs/SKINNING.md
• Fix texture tile loop causing infinite spin at narrow widths

This is the official 1.0 release of Chartchotic. This ground-up overhaul consists of a rewritten rendering engine, brand new UI, and comprehensive improvements to every visual asset.

Rendering

• New chart rendering engine runs significantly leaner with smoother frametimes, capped at 15/30/60fps or your native display refresh rate
• Improved 3D perspective with curved fretboard placements for notes and other glyphs

Assets

• All assets have been rerendered at a higher resolution from vector sources
• New ghost note, tap note, and accent overlays for drums and guitar
• New SP white variants for all assets and hit indicators

Highway

• Highways have textures now - use one of the bundled textures (courtesy of kanaizo), or add your own
• Adjustable highway length up to 300% longer than standard

Notes & Animations

• Adjustable sizes for note gems and kick/open bars
• Hit animations follow the highway curvature now
• Star Power kicks and opens flash white on hit

UI

• Renamed from Chart Preview to Chartchotic with a new logo
• Major UI overhaul - redesigned toolbar, cleaner layout, consistent scaling
• Revamped chart toggles - organized controls for hiding/showing modifiers, chart elements, and scene layers
• Double-click most number values to type directly
• Calibration now supports negative latency up to -200ms
• Note speed reworked to integers 2–20, matching CH/YARG conventions
• Update notifications when a new version has launched

Infrastructure

• CMake build system with automated CI/CD on all platforms
• macOS code signing and notarization with .pkg installer (no more Gatekeeper warnings)
• Windows installer via Inno Setup
• Pluginval validation on Windows builds

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Star Power animation color when starting playback mid-sustain
• Fixed modifier notes rendering invisible over orange lane
• Fixed playhead crash in standalone mode

• Fix modifier notes rendering as GEM::NONE over orange lane, blocking orange notes from rendering with modifiers

• Unique hit animations for open guitar notes
• REAPER: mouse scroll to move timeline forward/backward, shift for precision
• REAPER: automatic MIDI track detection, removed manual track selector UI
• REAPER: more efficient bulk-fetched MIDI data
• Fix green guitar notes positioned incorrectly
• Fix 0-tick and 1-tick notes failing to render (Moonscraper exports these)
• Fix hit animations not triggering when starting playback mid-sustain
• Fix Z-ordering for hit animations being cut off by notes
• Major refactor to MIDI processing, rendering pipeline, and REAPER API handling

• Major performance fixes for live updating while paused
• Fix star power not displaying at all (regression)

• Manual latency offset textbox (-2s to +2s)
• Throttle REAPER MIDI polling while paused (max 20Hz)

• Fix forced HOPOs not working on chords
• Fix gridlines breaking halfway through measures during playback
• Fix highway not updating when paused until cursor moves
• Replace track number buttons with text box (type any number or UP/DOWN to scroll)

• REAPER integration: reads MIDI directly from timeline instead of realtime buffers
  • Zero latency between cursor movement and note display
  • Timeline scrubbing while playback is stopped
  • Track selector from within the plugin
• Hit animations during playback (toggleable)
• Highway rendering switched to seconds-based (fixes time sig/BPM change glitches)
• Version number display in bottom left corner
• Fix HOPOs not working for chords

• Lanes enabled
• Adjusted glyph positioning

• Cross-platform CI builds (macOS universal binary, Windows, Linux)
• Installation improvements across all platforms

• Linux support
• Note sustains implemented
• General performance/stability improvements
• Fix certain notes never displaying
• Fix settings not persisting across session reloads
• Optimized build system (Windows bundles reduced from 32MB to ~2MB)

• User-selectable latency (250ms–1s)
• 60fps rendering (much smoother, more CPU efficient)
• Fix note render layering (kicks above hits, double notes on note-offs)
• Proper 3D perspective replacing previous fake-out scaling
• Meter grid lines with proper measure starts and time sig change support
• Tick-based positioning refactor

• Initial feature-complete drum charting experience
• Guitar and drum note rendering
• Basic settings (skill level, instrument, framerate)