Synthesia - Piano for Everyone

Copyright 2011 Nicholas Piegdon

Visit http://www.synthesiagame.com/ for more information.
The Synthesia Learning Pack is included in the game and doesn't require a
separate download. Click the Learning Pack button on the menu to try it out.
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Synthesia has primarily been created by Nicholas Piegdon.
The following people have also contributed:
- David Scott: Instrument icons on the Track Selection screen
- tommai78101 from the forums: top-of-keyboard percussion icons
- Electrode from the forums: Movable Do and improved English note labels
- L. Peter Deutsch: MD5 algorithm implementation
- Dave Ray: STRING/WSTRING macro
- NeHe Productions: OpenGL base code
- Christian Auby: input octave shifting code
- Luis Anton: early version of the MIDI input code
- Daniel Lawrence: the name Synthesia
- Many others with ideas in email and in the Synthesia Talk forums
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Synthesia uses the FreeImage image library. See freeimage.sourceforge.net for
details. FreeImage is used under the FIPL, version 1.0.
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The user interface icons are licensed from the Fugue and Diagona Icon sets
under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license:
Copyright (c) Yusuke Kamiyamane. All rights reserved.
http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/
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The music in the "G Major Music" folder comes from Gilbert DeBenedetti's
G Major Music Theory website. Find more at www.gmajormusictheory.org
All of the pieces were split into two-track MIDI files by Choul, Rickeeey,
and TieDyeGuy from the Synthesia Talk forums.
Quantization was then performed by TieDyeGuy and further cleanup by Nicholas.
Additional minor fixes by DamienBlack and GoPlus.
Finger hints were added from the original PDF sheet music at G Major Music by
Pianotehead, TieDyeGuy, Zaeleus, DC64, and Nicholas.

Finger hints for Chorale Setting in F Major, composed by J. S. Bach were

provided by jimhenry from the Synthesia Talk forums.
Keyboard Setup screen preview music is Fugue in G Minor KV 154/385k, composed
by W. A. Mozart, courtesy of the Mutopia Project. www.mutopiaproject.org
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Change Log
"(LP)" denotes features available in the Learning Pack

Version 0.8.1 - 06/2011

-----------------------
NEW: (LP) Edit note finger hints by clicking and dragging from notes to fingers
in the new Finger Editing pause mode (shortcut 'N').
NEW: (LP) All 100+ songs included with Synthesia now include finger hints.
NEW: (LP) "Strict" melody practice. On by default. Stops the song whenever
bad notes are played.
NEW: Simple track settings. When a song only has two tracks (excluding
percussion) an easier to use screen will display instead of the usual
track settings screen. This can be disabled via the options screen.
NEW: Got confirmation that the LK-220 and LK-270 lights work the same as the
LK-230. Added them to the compatibility list on the setup screen.
NEW: Added "Metronome.Channel" advanced setting to override metronome output
channel in case your device doesn't have a percussion kit. This setting
is zero-based. So channel 10 is called 9. Just subtract one.
NEW: Added "Gameplay.LoopMaxErrors" advanced option that will restart a loop
in melody practice mode after a certain number of errors have accrued.
CHG: Changed "Avg Speed" stat shown in melody practice to "Actual Speed". The
average value of the speed control didn't really communicate anything
interesting because the song stops and waits for you. Instead the actual
speed tells you what the song would have (on average) had to be playing
at in rhythm mode to have taken the same amount of time, including the
times the song was stopped waiting for user input.
CHG: Default note labels are finger hint numbers. And label selections keep
between playing demo / non-demo songs, even without a Learning Pack key.
CHG: Searching in the song library is better. Order doesn't matter anymore
and you can start a word with a dash to exclude songs with that word.
CHG: The "concurrent chords" option is now enabled by default. With the
various settings for handling notes outside your keyboard's range, it
makes more sense to be on than off.
CHG: Split a few gameplay options off into a melody practice-specific section
in order to clean up the wording a little.
CHG: Got rid of the weird "sometimes on top" window behavior in Windows. Now
the window will always behave like any other window.
CHG: Increased the 50ms extra loop rollback (from 0.8.0) to 100ms.
CHG: Online recital rows in scores.xml now have a "recital" attribute to set
them apart from rhythm practice scores.
FIX: Notes starting within an extra loop rollback amount of time from the end
of a loop should no longer "catch" in melody practice.
FIX: Accidentals in the sheet display will now be assigned per-octave.
FIX: Don't show loops from practice in falling note area during recital.
FIX: Crash message is now appended to the end of the log when errors occur.
FIX: Handle the case where (some version of) Trebuchet MS is available but not
the "Regular" version in Windows.
FIX: The currently visible keyboard range will now follow the active range
in "Zoom to my keyboard" mode after an octave shift (via Z or X).
FIX: Dates are now shown in your local time zone instead of GMT on Windows.
FIX: MIDI files containing no notes cause lots of problems. Don't allow them.
FIX: A couple time signature problems have been corrected in "The Ants Go
Marching" and "Mexican Hat Dance". An extra note has been removed from
"Toccata and Fugue in D minor" and "Sonatina Piccolina". Thanks go to
DamienBlack from the forums for the fixes!
FIX: The on-screen "praise" text for a note (Good, Great, Barely, etc.) should
 no longer cause frame-rate stutters on older computers after the first
time they're displayed.
FIX: The SysEx ignore option was being ignored for MIDI files loaded from the
command-line, dragged in, or started via right-click desktop shortcuts.
FIX: SysEx messages are now always sent before any other events at the same
timestamp. Sometimes resets were nondeterministically going through
after things like program change messages at the beginning of a song.
FIX: Don't count MIDI channel 16 as a percussion channel.
FIX: Ironed out some of the selection quirkiness in the song library.
FIX: A couple of key signature problems have been corrected in "The Ants Go
Marching" and "Evening Falls". Thanks go to GoPlus from the forums!
FIX: The F10 key no longer inadvertently prevents drawing in Windows.
FIX: The metronome now correctly triples the number of beats during compound
time signatures when running at double-speed. (Now a misleading name).
FIX: When showing the software keyboard mapping labels on notes or the
keyboard, they will no longer show incorrectly when shifted all the way
off the keyboard on the low side.
FIX: Tooltips will no longer sometimes show in a bad position during the first
frame they're visible.
FIX: Window is now centered correctly in DirectX mode running windowed.

Version 0.8.0 - 11/2010

-----------------------
NEW: Profiles. Create from the title screen. Names are shown on scoreboards.
NEW: Online Recital: plays song straight through at constant 100% speed (no
fast-forward or rewind, either). Scores posted online!
NEW: Keyboard zoom settings, key/note labels, and sheet progression mode have
been moved to the play screen and can now be changed during the song.
NEW: Buttons to look at scoreboards before playing. This replaces the old
"Highest score for this configuration" on the track settings screen.
NEW: If no tracks set to "Played by You", continue button skips right to play.
NEW: The program window can now be minimized when running in windowed mode.
NEW: Advanced config option (Gameplay.ShowFloatingText) to hide both the combo
counter and praise text that shows on top of the falling notes.
CHG: Mode renames: practice is melody practice. rhythm is rhythm practice.
CHG: Play screen toolbar buttons are now more compact.
CHG: Made track setting screen tooltips a little less verbose.
CHG: New logo.
CHG: Now that extra practice time is shown next to the current time (in green)
it makes more sense for the current time to always show the absolute
song position instead of the position + extra practice time.
FIX: Removed a few lingering "You Play" references in favor of "Played by You".
FIX: User-played notes will no longer hang endlessly when playing two tracks
with the same note at the same time.
FIX: Loops will now jump back 50ms further than the beginning of the loop to
avoid skipping notes starting right at the loop boundary.
FIX: Using certain combinations of key/note labels could produce incorrect
or distorted labels on one or both.
FIX: DirectX viewport was off by one pixel.
FIX: A few rare zoom/track setting combos would make the keyboard disappear.

Version 0.7.5 - 10/2010

-----------------------
NEW: In-game clock shows system time (just under the quit button).
NEW: Mac version of SynthesiaConfig tool. Supports default full-screen, custom
full-screen, and changing manual settings. Windowed mode will come later.
NEW: The scoreboard a performance is mapped to now has nothing to do with the
MIDI file the notes came from. You should be able to edit background
tracks or make other MIDI changes. So long as those changes don't impact
the timing, number, or pitch of "You Play" notes, your score should
continue to show up on the same scoreboard it always has. NOTE: This
change has caused a FULL SCOREBOARD WIPE from previous versions!
NEW: Added missed note count to the bottom of the screen stats in rhythm mode.
CHG: Song library list now uses a "paged" style (like an Internet search)
instead of a list with scrollbar. It can now handle libraries of a much
greater size now without slowing down.
CHG: Setup Tracks screen is now laid out differently and has more options.
CHG: Rhythm scoring changes in "held points" and timing accuracy.
See: http://www.synthesiagame.com/wiki/index.php?title=Scoring
CHG: Practice scoring no longer takes into account speed at all.
CHG: Included music has now been quantized and cleaned up for scoreboard play.
Errors in several songs were corrected.
CHG: Loop timer will no longer start in practice mode until you hit a note.
CHG: The bank-select fix option now affects all platforms (not just Vista
and OS X). Some keyboards were also affected by the problem, so this lets
them take advantage of the fix, even on something like Windows XP. It
should also be able to filter bank select messages out more efficiently.
CHG: Mac version now behaves a little differently with respect to the dock and
system menu. Including support for custom full-screen modes has prevented
both from being available while running on the primary display. When
windowed support is added, the "windowed & maximized" setting will over-
come this limitation.
cHG: Updated the main program icon for Synthesia and the config tool.
FIX: Pedal input events are now sent out on all You Play channels instead of
just the most recently matched You Play channel.
FIX: In rare cases, certain MIDI songs wouldn't load with the "Use a unique
channel for each track" option introduced in 0.7.4.
FIX: Hide software keyboard key/note labels when "You Play" no tracks.
FIX: Very long note blocks would incorrectly appear in specific, rare cases.
FIX: Folder names with periods now display correctly in the song library.
FIX: Try to catch another class of "Error document empty" problems.

Version 0.7.4 - 09/2010

-----------------------
NEW: (LP) Movable 'Do Re Mi' key and note labels.
NEW: (LP) English note label spellings will now be based on the song's current
key signature instead of always showing sharps. This includes the use of
double flats (bb) and double sharps (x). E.g., In Gb Major, an A is Bbb.
NEW: Added support for lighted keyboards. Notably, shows upcoming notes in
practice mode. Otherwise, mirrors behavior of spark effect.
NEW: Windowed mode and ability to use a video mode that isn't your desktop's
current video mode. Use the new configuration tool start menu shortcut.
NEW: Added --bookmark-count command line argument.
NEW: Advanced option to disable MIDI device "hard resets".
NEW: Stats are shown for the previous few loops on top of current/best.
NEW: Button to enter loop editing mode to make it more discoverable.
NEW: Loop score is now shown in rhythm mode (similar to practice loop stats).
NEW: Fine-tune loop by dragging boundaries in play area.
NEW: Tooltip showing song time/measure when navigating the timeline.
CHG: Loops will now snap to the current song position during creation.
CHG: Loops are much more visible in the song timeline.
CHG: Holding notes will now generate 5x the points. (250/sec vs. 50/sec)
CHG: Key and note labels are now larger and easier to read.
CHG: All settings are now stored in either "shell:appdata\Synthesia" in Windows
 or "~/Library/Application Support/Synthesia" in OS X. Data is no longer
stored in the Windows registry or Mac plists.
CHG: Pop-up loop statistics are now reset when the song speed is changed.
CHG: A few more default track modes are now available on the options screen.
CHG: Fixed-do "Sol" now appears as "So".
CHG: Removed --windowed option in favor of new configuration settings.
CHG: Removed renderer option from in-game options. Now in configuration tool.
FIX: Uninstaller wasn't cleaning up Start Menu shortcuts on Vista or Win7.
FIX: Multiple spaces in any of the game's XML files were being condensed into
one space when read back in. This could cause any variety of things to
go wrong depending on the file name or MIDI device that had more than one
space in its name.
FIX: Output device resets should be faster and more robust against crashes.
FIX: Loops that start at the beginning of the song should no longer skip notes.
FIX: Filtering the song library should no longer cause sorted items in the list
that are the same (as far as the currently sorted column is concerned) to
jump around the list relative to one another. (Sorting is now "stable".)
FIX: Non-rounded-to-10% speeds are now remembered correctly when loading a song.
FIX: MIDI input no longer builds up on screens where it's not consumed only to
create a burst of sound after switching to a screen where it is.
FIX: In rare cases, instrument changes would affect other tracks.
FIX: Learning Pack unlock keys should now be able to be pasted from any program
on the OS X side... including the ones I broke during the last fix. :)

Version 0.7.3a - 08/2010

------------------------
FIX: Fixed a hang in the song library involving page up/down.

Version 0.7.3 - 08/2010

-----------------------
NEW: Metronome. Control it with the "Metronome Settings" button during play.
NEW: Change a track's instrument by clicking it on the track settings screen.
NEW: Added a filter box to the song library. Type words to narrow results.
NEW: (LP) Use the '<' and '>' keys to create automatic loops between bookmarks.
NEW: (LP) Added --loop-start and --loop-end command line parameters.
NEW: Periodic check for new versions shown on the title screen if found.
NEW: Synthesia will attempt to distribute tracks using the same MIDI channel to
separate channels where possible. This allows track instrument changing to
work in certain cases. Can be disabled via an Advanced option.
NEW: While using the --copy-score command in practice mode, each loop will write
a comma-separated list of extra milliseconds and extra notes.
CHG: The clipboard output while using the --copy-score command in practice mode
is now a comma-separated list with score, extra milliseconds, extra notes,
and overall percentage of time notes were held vs. total holdable time.
CHG: Track previews now loop continuously.
CHG: Removed the 10 music samples from Game Music Themes.
CHG: Replaced the two Learning Pack demo songs from the Game Music Themes set by
two songs from the G Major Music Theory set of songs.
CHG: Updated many items on the options screen to use a simple checkbox.
CHG: Score now updates faster while holding a note in rhythm mode.
CHG: Measure lines in the falling note display are now a baseline feature that
no longer requires the Learning Pack.
CHG: Support for any resolution 800x600 or lower is now deprecated. It will
continue to run, but the experience won't be optimal.
FIX: Made the "Zoom to my Keyboard" button appear for software keyboard users
that have never set up the size of an actual MIDI device.
FIX: The last measure line at the end of a song should now be more accurate.
FIX: Flush the output queue before resetting output device on OS X.
FIX: Note names shown on the keyboard setup screen now show the correct octave.
FIX: Learning Pack unlock keys should now be able to be pasted from any program
on the OS X side.
FIX: Attempting to load a song that has a time signature with a 1 (whole-note)
in the denominator will no longer cause a crash.
OPT: Increased speed of drawing measure lines in the falling note view.
OPT: Increased speed of drawing effects, keys, and notes.

Version 0.7.2 - 06/2010

-----------------------
NEW: (LP) Loop/repeat sections. Right-click-drag the timeline to create one.
In practice mode, extra statistics are shown while inside loops.
NEW: Use the 0 through 9 keys to quickly jump between bookmarks.
NEW: Set your keyboard size and mode from the Keyboard Setup screen. This lets
you choose from a few different ways to handle notes outside your range.
NEW: The "Zoom to my Keyboard" mode is now available after setting the size of
your keyboard and choosing an appropriate mode from the same screen.
CHG: Holding notes longer now increases your score! This also works with the
sustain pedal. Impact to practice mode scoring is discussed here:
https://www.synthesiagame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1821&p=10949#p10949
CHG: Improved the auto-offset detection code used to find the best octave to
start the song at with keyboards smaller than 88 keys.
CHG: The maximum score multiplier has been reduced from 5.0x to 2.5x.
CHG: The pre-multiplier points earned for a note are now a flat value instead
of being based on how accurately timed the note was played.
CHG: Show a notice below the Practice Mode button if no You Play tracks picked.
CHG: Made the checkbox graphic a little nicer to match the new radio button.
CHG: Updated a few "Back" buttons to say "Go Back".
CHG: If a song was selected from the Learning Pack demo songs, the menu system
will route back there instead of the Song Library when backing out.
FIX: Some devices were still causing a crash due to device resets coming too
quickly on the song library screen while scrolling with the keyboard. Now
the library is more responsive while simultaneously inserting a longer
pause between device resets.
FIX: Ctrl+left click is now correctly treated as a right-click in OS X.
FIX: The black key above the last available software keyboard note will no
longer appear to also be available.
FIX: Device resets could cause certain devices to report an error.
FIX: "You Play, Muted" tracks are now considered for "Zoom to 'You Play'".
FIX: Rewinding a song no longer corrupts your average speed statistic.
FIX: Added an option to discard notes that never end in MIDI files. Enable
this if you see a key that is stuck pressed down with sparks forever.
FIX: The ancient QuickTime bug now has a work-around! If your MIDI songs go
silent after some time while using the built-in QuickTime synth on the Mac
turn the new "Discard Pedal Events while using QuickTime synth" option
in the advanced section of the options menu.
FIX: The last played song will no longer scroll off the screen due to changes
in the song library list (notably just after entering the library).
FIX: Corrected one-frame label flickering between changes in keyboard setup.
FIX: Don't crash when text is pasted into the LP screen with non-ASCII in it.
FIX: Labels with rapidly changing text (e.g., keyboard setup input preview)
will no longer incorrectly disappear until the next change.

Version 0.7.1 - 05/2010

-----------------------
NEW: Song Bookmarks. Click "Edit Bookmarks" button and then click in the left
margin of the falling notes. Use the buttons to navigate.
NEW: You can now click the on-screen keyboard to play notes that may be outside
the range of your input device. This is fun on a touch-screen.
NEW: Added speed and song position controls to playing screen.
NEW: Song timeline is now clickable to navigate song.
NEW: The sustain pedal can now be used while playing. It will hold notes
"open" in the falling note display longer.
NEW: Added helpful tooltip messages while hovering over certain UI elements.
NEW: Added "HKCU/Software/Synthesia/FPS Limit" string key. Set to an integer
to prevent the game from rendering more than that number of frames per
second. This is especially good at reducing CPU usage.
NEW: You can now mouse-wheel scroll through the song while it's paused.
NEW: Option to import "markers" stored in MIDI files as song bookmarks.
NEW: Unknown crashes in Windows now produce a mini-dump on the desktop.
NEW: Option under 'Advanced' (in OS X only) to ignore leading NULL bytes in
device input. This may improve compatibility with certain MIDI adapters.
NEW: Installer option to add a "Send To" right-click item to "Synthesia Music"
CHG: Synthesia is now built against the Feb-2010 version of DirectX.
CHG: The options screen will now fill any available screen height.
CHG: (LP) Sheet music notes will now be placed on the "correct" staff much
more often based on the rest of the notes in that track.
CHG: (LP) In practice mode, "Played Automatically" that start at the same time
as a "You Play" note will no longer sound until you hit your notes first.
CHG: Instead of single-letter searching in the Song Library, you can now
continue typing to search for complete song names.
CHG: Page-up and page-down can now be used to page through the Song Library.
CHG: In the Song Library pressing enter just after a new song is selected (and
still loading) will jump to the next screen when loading is complete.
CHG: "Fixed Do Note Names" are now referred to as "'Do Re Mi' Note Names".
CHG: You can now start songs (first time only) by playing any note.
only) by pressing any note on your keyboard in addition to space bar.
CHG: Improved the "X songs found" visual cue on the Add Watched Folder screen.
CHG: Updated 3 more of the songs in the Harder folder to have split left and
right hand parts. (Thanks again Choul, Rickeeey, and TieDyeGuy!)
FIX: Added a short delay between successive song previews on the Song Library
screen. Previewing too quickly sent device resets faster than some
devices were able to handle.
FIX: Corrected some drawing artifacts that occurred with ATI cards in DirectX.
FIX: Scores above 1M will no longer show in scientific notation.
FIX: All non-note events in You Play tracks are now passed through to the
output device. (Before only program change messages were.)
FIX: Right-click "View in Synthesia" association now sets percussion tracks to
"Played But Hidden" instead of "Played Automatically".
FIX: The song length was being calculated incorrectly in some rare cases. This
led to the game stopping before the final notes were finished sounding.
FIX: Attempt to overcome errors while loading bad events in MIDI files.
FIX: Show text even when 'Trebuchet MS' font isn't installed (under Windows).
FIX: Selections in lists will now always appear fully on-screen.
FIX: Adding a CD or USB drive as a watched folder will no longer cause a crash
when there is no CD in the drive or the USB device is removed.
FIX: Number of special folders/drives shown on the Add Watched Folder screen is
now limited to the first nine found.
FIX: Stopped text and texture flicker at the first frame of every screen.
FIX: Prevent multiple instances from running concurrently.
FIX: The entire keyboard is now shown (without shading) when no tracks are set
to 'You Play' regardless of selected input device.
FIX: Always show Practice Mode button, even if no tracks are set to "You Play"
mode. That way the rhythm/practice setting doesn't reset on you.
FIX: Clicks from tablet/pen devices are now handled correctly again.
Version 0.7.0 - 09/2009
-----------------------
NEW: (LP) The sheet music view now contains rests.
NEW: (LP) Practice mode scoring.
NEW: (LP) Added option to toggle "concurrent chord notes" in practice mode.
NEW: (LP) Added option to toggle the "next note" markers in practice mode.
NEW: (LP) Added option to display English note names in rainbow colors.
NEW: (LP) Added option to toggle constant-speed song scrolling by adding
extra space between notes.
NEW: (LP) Added measure numbers to falling-note-display measure lines.
NEW: (LP) Add a string key named "HKCU/Software/Synthesia/Fixed Do Note Names"
and set its value to a set of 12 names all separated by exactly one
space to override the default Anglo-Saxon Solfege names. For reference
the default is: "Do Di Re Ri Mi Fa Fi Sol Si La Li Ti". Currently, this
will not work with non-ASCII values.
NEW: Built-in "Song Library" with "Watched Folder" list, auto-preview, and
rating/difficult controls. The old "File Open" boxes have been removed.
NEW: Instrument icons on the track selection screen.
NEW: Synthesia can now read and make use of additional metadata provided by
.synthesia metadata files. There is a free editor. See the open-source
project at: http://code.google.com/p/synthesia-metadata-gui/
NEW: Added 26 new songs, updated 109 to split the left and right tracks.
(Thanks Choul, Rickeeey, and TieDyeGuy from the forums!)
NEW: New graphics littering the interface.
NEW: While using a Learning Pack demo song various animated cues will appear
on certain screens, highlighting Learning Pack features.
NEW: Keyboard setup screen with fun preview areas.
NEW: Percussion icons if a percussion track is set to "You Play". Can also
be set to always-on from the options screen.
NEW: Windows command-line options. Type "Synthesia.exe --help" to see them.
NEW: Windowed mode (Win32 OpenGL only) via command-line.
NEW: Press F5 during gameplay to toggle hiding all notes and sheet music.
NEW: Hold the tab key to adjust the speed by 1% at a time instead of 10%.
NEW: Number of note "errors" is now shown during play.
NEW: Added quit button to gameplay screen so you can interact mouse-only.
NEW: Huge overhaul in the font rendering portion of both graphics back-ends,
as well as some new much-needed flexibility in texture loading.
NEW: Added "Note Window Length" and "Note Window Length After First" settings
to fiddle with the input window that controls which notes are considered
part of the same "concurrent chord notes" or not. The values are in
microseconds. The defaults are 165000 and 95000.
CHG: (LP) Note labels have been moved to the "head" of notes and had their
readability improved by adding a contrasting background.
CHG: (LP) The performance of Key/Note labels has been improved dramatically.
CHG: (LP) Note labels should no longer appear "jumpy".
CHG: (LP) Added two new Learning Pack demo songs.
CHG: Title screen update.
CHG: Improved the beginning-of-gameplay keyboard shortcut graphic.
CHG: Input is no longer muted on score screen, play settings screen, or while
the game is paused.
CHG: The score screen has been significantly revamped.
CHG: The size of the sheet music display is now saved between songs.
CHG: Duplicate scores on the scoreboard will now be ranked the same. So, the
following scores would be ranked #1, #1, #2: 200 200 195.
CHG: Removed startup "device list open test", obsoleting the need for the
"Skip Device Open Test" registry setting.
CHG: Don't show empty slots on the scoreboard.
CHG: Allow MIDI Type-0 files containing more than one track. They're surely
 non-conforming, but we may still be able to load it.
CHG: The log file now includes date/time for every entry.
CHG: Made the title screen device input preview box always-on.
CHG: Added a silly particle burst effect when Learning Pack key is pasted.
FIX: (LP) In rare cases, spacing in the sheet music display may have been
incorrect so a note would sound before/after the cursor was directly
hovering over it. All notes are now placed in the correct position.
FIX: Very short filenames no longer cause a crash.
FIX: Mac device input drivers that sometimes report more than one event at the
same timestamp will now be handled correctly.
FIX: Crash after opening 255 songs fixed.
FIX: Channels that are re-used later in a song with a different instrument now
no longer prematurely send the later-used instrument change message.
FIX: Unicode characters in names shown on the Learning Pack display correctly.
FIX: Made the file association option in the installer work in Windows Vista.
FIX: Don't crash if the track settings or saved scores become corrupt.
FIX: Switching input devices after playing a song using the software keyboard
will no longer cause the software keyboard's octave shift to be applied
to the new input device.
FIX: Attempt to prevent screensaver and monitor power-off events in Windows.
FIX: If the DirectX renderer has trouble, causing the game not to start, switch
to the OpenGL renderer for the next run.
FIX: Note blocks for multiple Note-Ons for the same note on the same channel
are now displayed correctly.
FIX: MIDI Meta events that arrive from input devices will no longer cause
a program crash. They are still reported in the extended (F7) log output.
FIX: Added option to relax output device reset (so it doesn't perform a full
device close/re-open). Set the following string key to a value of "1":
"HKCU\Software\Synthesia\Disallow Hard Device Reset".
FIX: Cleaned up a really old bug that caused new, never-opened songs to inherit
the track settings from the previously-opened song (vs. getting assigned a
default set of track settings).

Version 0.6.5 - 09/2008

-----------------------
NEW: (LP) Note Labels option on the Play Settings screen.
NEW: (LP) Resize sheet music display with F3 or by dragging border with mouse.
NEW: (LP) Name of the current song key displayed down in status area.
NEW: 120+ new songs from gmajormusictheory.org included in the release.
NEW: Added a marker to the "middle C" keyboard key.
NEW: Mouse auto-fade after a few seconds of no movement.
NEW: Pause/Resume button in the bottom right corner of the gameplay screen.
NEW: Enhanced the keyboard display with a red strip of felt.
CHG: Changed the appearance of various windows and buttons a little.
CHG: Pushed MIDI output to a separate thread, which should improve performance.
CHG: Game startup should be a little faster when loading large songs.
CHG: Toggle "Full Debug Output" with F7. If you're running into a repeatable
problem, it may be useful to run the game with full debug output on before
sending me the log from the run containing the problem.
FIX: Notes from "You Play" tracks should always appear above other notes.
FIX: Practice mode "next note" markers no longer appear at staggered times
when more than one note exists at the same time.
FIX: Practice mode "next note" markers are now always removed properly when
rewinding at low speeds.
FIX: Controller, after-touch, and pitch bend events are no longer sent to
the output device for "You Play" tracks.
FIX: Notes can no longer be skipped in practice mode at high speeds.
FIX: The "next note" marker is now shown for all notes that can be hit while
waiting for user input, not just notes directly on the line.
FIX: Track selection boxes can not longer run off the bottom of the screen.
FIX: Sheet music button on track selection screen is much easier to see now.
FIX: Practice mode can no longer be selected when no tracks have been set
to "You Play" mode. A helpful message is indicated instead.

Version 0.6.4 - 06/2008

-----------------------
NEW: (LP) Sheet music display with scrolling and page-flip progression modes.
NEW: (LP) Practice mode that waits for you to hit the right notes.
NEW: (LP) Measure lines in falling note display. (Toggle with F4.)
NEW: (LP) Learning Pack key entry screen (off the main menu) with four "demo"
songs that temporarily unlock all the new features.
NEW: Added "Play Settings" screen to handle the growing set of song options.
NEW: Added option to lock keyboard height to conserve screen space for notes.
CHG: Game continues to play in the background if alt-tabbed or minimized.
CHG: Added the old "Notes played" statistic to the playing screen (from 0.4.0).
CHG: Made "Play all user input" the default behavior.
CHG: Changed the vertical-guide layout for falling notes.
CHG: Added option to disable auto-"System MIDI volume" adjust in Windows.
FIX: Bounded max size of praise/combo text.
FIX: Removed un-openable MIDI input/output devices from device lists. (However,
this requires a quick "open" test on each device at startup. Some devices
can take a very long time (>30s) to open. So, the open test can be turned
off via the "HKCU\Software\Synthesia\Skip Device Open Test" string key set
to a value of "1".
FIX: Don't crash while FF'ing an event heavy song with certain output devices.
FIX: Caps-lock no longer affects octave shifting keys.
FIX: Windows installer now includes DirectX redistributable, so no more missing
DLL errors. Stand-alone zip users should run directx_redist/DXSETUP.exe.

Version 0.6.3 - 01/2008

-----------------------
NEW: Keyboard zoom options (on the Track Selection screen).
NEW: Options screen:
- Play all user input / Play only correct user input.
- Default track mode: Played Automatically / Played But Hidden.
- Play notes using velocity from the: song / user input.
- Toggle sparks for performance.
- Toggle ignore SysEx messages.
- Toggle bank select fix.
- Toggle renderer backend in Windows.
NEW: DirectX rendering backend.
NEW: Better looking white keys.
NEW: Highest score for current settings shown on track selection screen.
NEW: Software mouse cursor.
NEW: Copy error text to clipboard before exiting.
NEW: Added an easter egg somewhere. Try and find it!
NEW: Added log. Found in "Application Data\Synthesia\log.txt"
CHG: Note scoring is now additionally based on timing accuracy.
CHG: Split all remaining "Various" tracks into single-instrument tracks.
FIX: Sometimes first note of "You Play" track would use wrong instrument.
FIX: Caps-lock no longer affects the software keyboard.
FIX: Windows crash from attempting to send output to a MIDI device too fast.
FIX: Made MIDI output reset stronger in Windows, to avoid locked-"on" notes.
FIX: Events using running status after a meta event weren't loaded correctly.

Version 0.6.2a - 09/2007

------------------------
NEW: Files with .kar extensions are now supported.
NEW: "You Play, Muted" track mode.
CHG: Renamed "stray notes" to "extra notes" and made them break the combo.
FIX: Only reset the MIDI output device after playing something through it.
(In some cases, a reset takes upwards of one second. This reduces
how often that time hit occurs.)
FIX: Program change and channel pressure events are now sent correctly when
using an external output device on the Mac.

Version 0.6.2 - 08/2007

-----------------------
NEW: High score list per-song, per-track-configuration.
NEW: Tracks that use more than one MIDI channel are now split into one-track-
per-channel. This makes almost every format-0 and even some format-1
songs MUCH more playable.
NEW: Fast-forward and Rewind. Press the left/right arrows to jog the song.
NEW: Software Keyboard. Tries to guess the best starting octave to shift to
based on the average location of all notes in "You Play" tracks.
NEW: Sparkle effect while holding down keys correctly
NEW: Track settings are remembered across game sessions
NEW: "Visible Only" track mode.
NEW: Mac version fades between the game and the desktop on start and quit.
NEW: Fade transition between screens.
NEW: You can override the window size with registry/plist string settings
named "Window Width" and "Window Height". Use whatever number you want
in either string setting.
CHG: Gameplay starts out paused so you can get your bearings on input.
CHG: The software license Synthesia is released under has changed. It is no
longer the open-source MIT license, but rather a proprietary closed-
source license. No worries, the game is still free.
CHG: New keyboard mapping: view stretch is PgUp/PgDn, Speed is Up/Down.
CHG: Track selection screen is now sorted left-to-right by average note pitch.
CHG: Remember view stretch between multiple tries of the same song.
CHG: Remember octave offset between multiple tries of the same song.
CHG: Possible track modes are based on whether input and output devices have
been selected. e.g. "You Play" won't be available when input is disabled.
CHG: The falling note display runs much smoother (especially at low speeds).
FIX: SysEx MIDI messages in songs are now sent to output devices.
FIX: File Open dialog no longer pops under the game window in Windows Vista.
FIX: Bank Select events sometimes cause tracks not to play in Vista and Mac.
Now on those platforms, bank select messages have been disabled. If this
causes problems, set a "Disallow Bank Select Fix" string in the registry
or plist to anything other than "0" to stop the special behavior.
FIX: Pausing the game while holding keys down caused sound (in "You Play"
tracks) and key images to "stick" after resuming gameplay.
FIX: Removed (poorly written, first-attempt at) multi-monitor OpenGL code to
fix a crash for many users.

Version 0.6.1 - 05/2007

-----------------------
NEW: On the Mac, output to external devices is now available.
NEW: On the Mac, you can now drag a MIDI file to the application on the Dock or
in Finder or right click a MIDI file and choosing "Open With..." to open.
NEW: In Windows, added a low-tech solution to choose between different monitors
connected to the SAME video card (doesn't work in multi-video-card
situations.) (Set the string key HKCU\Software\Synthesia\Monitor to "0"
for primary monitory, "1" for secondary, etc.)
CHG: Mac OpenGL display now has v-sync enabled.
CHG: Mac game window is now much less obtrusive. Other windows are allowed to
be on top and the Dock and Application bar can both be made visible by
hovering the mouse over there positions for a second or so. The game
window also no longer must be hidden during file selection or error boxes.
FIX: In Windows, MIDI SysEx messages in input are no longer flagged as errors.
FIX: On the Mac, fixed MIDI that used RPN / NRPN controller events (e.g. to
set pitch bend) so they're now handled correctly.
FIX: On the Mac, output devices are now reset much harder than before, so
output device internal state that may be set by one song isn't carried
over to another.
FIX: On the Mac, there was a potential problem with some input devices that
might send bursts of events all at once. Previously, only the first
event in the incoming list of events was recognized. Now, any number of
incoming events will be recognized correctly.
FIX: Picked a font for the Mac version to use that is actually a default
system font. (Apparently "Palatino" only ships with iLife now.)
FIX: On the Mac, fixed a problem where the (modal!) file open dialog could
be hidden underneath the game window, leaving you not choice but to force-
quit the program.
FIX: Disabled OpenGL depth testing to fix a problem where text would sometimes
not appear above other controls (TrackBox, SongBox, etc.) in Windows.
FIX: Score state now displays correctly at low resolutions (like 800x600).
FIX: Title bar no longer pops when changing speed at the beginning of gameplay.
FIX: Text centering and placement on the Mac is now properly implemented.
FIX: MIDI files with non-all-lowercase file extensions can now be selected
in the File Open dialog box.

Version 0.6.0 - 04/2007

-----------------------
NEW: Mac Version!
NEW: All new note and keyboard graphics!
NEW: All new menu graphics.
NEW: Right-click association option in installer.
CHG: Renamed and rebranded the project to "Synthesia"
CHG: Switched from base 2D OS drawing to 3D accelerated OpenGL drawing.
CHG: Moved status display to the bottom of the screen during play.
CHG: Made default music folder less imposing. Now the game will only default
to the directory the very first run. Afterwards, it will remember the
last file you attempted to play (like it used to).
CHG: Improved exception handling.
FIX: Don't crash if "Synthesia Music" folder doesn't exist.
FIX: No more crash sometimes when app regains focus on the title screen.

Version 0.5.1 - 02/2007

-----------------------
NEW: Your notes are played (in the correct instrument for the track)
NEW: Tooltips on all menu controls and settings.
NEW: 10 Sample songs from Game Music Themes.
NEW: "Stray Notes" metric on stats screen
NEW: "Average Speed" metric on stats screen
NEW: Box around MIDI input test on title screen
NEW: Combo counter and much improved stats display during play.
CHG: Improved Klavarskribo staff notation.
CHG: Match input to closest unplayed note's opportunity window center instead
of matching against the first available unplayed note.
CHG: Swapped blue and yellow in the track color order, making blue the new
"first" color.
CHG: ReasonableSynthVolume object replaces MidiCommOut::SetReasonableSynthVol
and now works for all mixers in the system instead of only the first.
CHG: Darkened the border for a few different colors to increase the contrast
between sharp/flat notes in a series.
CHG: Default to new "Piano Hero Music" folder at startup. (User configurable
in the future.)
FIX: Disabled MIDI input while game is paused to prevent cheating.
FIX: Made MidiCommOut::Reset() actually reset everything by fully closing and
reopening the device. midiOutReset() apparently only turns off the keys
and pedals on each track. It *doesn't* reset patches or volume.
FIX: Reworked MIDI engine to correct a sync/lag issue in songs that started
with a considerable delay before the first note.
FIX: Notes don't draw on top of keys anymore.
FIX: MIDI track default color order is now consistent for all files.
FIX: Two tracks with identical notes would cause the "second" track's note to
not appear. This normally would not matter, as they overlap completely,
but when hiding the first track, the second note would not show.

Version 0.5.0 - 01/2007

-----------------------
NEW: Klavarskribo staff notation (thanks to Troy Ramos for the suggestion!)
NEW: MIDI input instrument selection (early version by Luis Anton)
NEW: MIDI input with note matching and scoring (early version by Luis Anton)
NEW: Note hit/miss effects
NEW: If muted, temporarily unmute the selected MIDI device during gameplay
NEW: Level progress bar along top of game play screen
NEW: In-game open file dialog
NEW: Song finish screen with score, rating, and statistics

Version 0.4.0 - 10/2006

-----------------------
NEW: Initial Release