chartchotic

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)