Bimonthly Townhall Report: BeatShift

1. Executive Summary

The last two months were the Cytus mini-game months for BeatShift. The team took Cytus from concept to a complete 3D TV-framed play area with perspective skew, a reciprocating scan line, working BeatUp mechanics, and Hold notes. In parallel we shipped a production-grade Chart Editor + Clone Hero converter, hardened the FMOD audio pipeline, and began the Phase 2 visual remaster — a full PBR rebuild of the 3D background and a hit-VFX overhaul — while removing the legacy Fever feature to simplify scoring.

2. Cytus Mini-Game — the centerpiece

• 3D TV Frame: Confined Cytus to a centered play-area box on its own 3D background, built a CytusFrameTV prefab with a CytusBoxConfig, added adjustable tilt and a real 3D perspective skew (cytusPitch/cytusYaw), and made the frame refit live per-frame.
• Scan Line & Notes: A reciprocating (back-and-forth) scan line, clamped bar fractions, per-bar note scoping, notes that grow 0→full to their hit time, and a note-size knob (noteScale).
• BeatUp & Hold Notes: Auto-firing BeatUp toggle (an uncaught BeatUp is a penalty), plus Hold notes (PoC) with a static body line consumed along the scan line and sweep-direction staggering.
• State Toggle: Normal↔Cytus toggle replacing the old upbeat swap, with a shortened state-switch frenzy.

3. Chart Editor & Charting Pipeline

• Editor: Song/difficulty picker, per-song BPM auto-detect (Ctrl+B modal), beat numbers, snap toolbar, snap-scaled grid, metronome, multi-select + group drag, dual-region editing, duo notes, and a clickable minimap scrubber.
• BeatUp branching: Branching rules, a Finish note type for BeatUp completion, and single-MIDI Cytus alignment.
• Clone Hero converter: Import Clone Hero charts with difficulty filtering and BeatUp note conversion.

4. Audio & Content

• Secure FMOD: Official songs migrated to secure FMOD banks (Desktop + Mobile) with multi-platform optimization; built-in Unity audio disabled.
• SongLoader: Lazy loading + preload to prevent song-start lag and UI freeze, separated playback/memory states, and eliminated timeline judder.
• 3 new songs (July): Mega Punch, Ding Ding Ding, and Starlyze — each with MIDI charts, art, and baked FMOD banks.
• Song-select UX: Looping previews with fade, per-song tabname images, and difficulty-star config.

5. Visual Remaster & VFX (Phase 2 begins)

• 3D Background (July): Full PBR remaster — Building_1–Building_6 and Road_Highway with base color, height, metallic, AO, normal, and roughness maps, plus new building prefabs.
• HUD & Fonts: New Futura Bold fonts and a new HUD sprite set (HpBar, Pause, value/frame art); a new ComboBar component.
• Hit VFX Overhaul: Rebuilt the Hit.prefab, added a RandomParticlePlayer, a new BackSplash sprite set, and Retro TV 3D models for the Cytus frame.
• Fever removed: Cut the Fever feature entirely — scoring is now purely Combo × BeatUp.

6. Core Gameplay & Note Types

• Note vocabulary complete: Tap, Hold, BeatUp, Duo (timestamp-matched), Drag, and Swipe, with a unified "any tap" input system and an early-Miss window.
• Juice: BeatUp tap-frenzy + DragNote reward flow with board freeze, snake notes, and a juice/feedback refactor.

7. CI/CD & Platform

• Fastlane: iOS + Android configuration, env-sourced build/release stages, and streamlined TestFlight build-number retrieval.
• iOS: Updated code-signing settings/xcargs, added CloudKit entitlements, and an xcodebuild formatter.
• Jenkins: Hardened code-signing/verification stages and increased the Git clone timeout.

8. API / Backend (BeatShift API)

• Registration: Both default songs granted on player registration so new accounts start with the expected song set.