The latest versions of Konga Beat, Konga Launcher, and GCNTools are now live! Here's a rundown of what's available starting today and what's ahead:

Out Now

Konga Beat 1.0.2 - Windows (Download) [Patch Notes]

The most notable addition to this release is the ability to easily play your work-in-progress track in the game without needing to move files around manually. Simply open Konga Launcher and press "Play Now" in Konga Beat.

If this is the first time you're playing the song that session, or you have changed the song you're working on, Konga Beat will need to export the song's audio as a DSP before telling Konga Launcher to load the song and start playing.

However, the good news is that every time you play the song during that session, it won't need to generate a new DSP audio file, so launches are pretty fast!

In addition to this feature, some UI changes have been made, including a measure counter at the start of each measure:

Because Konga Beat is built in Unity, it may unnecessarily attempt to monopolize your hardware's horsepower to maximize its performance. For folks experiencing any issues related to that, I have introduced the option for a frame rate cap in the settings:

Konga Launcher 0.9.1 - Windows, Mac, Linux (Download) [Patch Notes]

Like Konga Beat, the most significant addition is cross-app integration: letting Konga Beat users send their songs to the game through Konga Launcher faster for testing. There are also minor visual changes, including visual feedback in the settings menu that communicates whether a game and emulator have been successfully loaded. Additionally, playlists save changes more often, and new tooltips provide additional context for some UI elements.

GCNTools 1.0.1 - Windows, Mac, Linux (Source) [Patch Notes]

I wanted to take advantage of the fact that GCNTools is already open source and solicit feedback from folks in the code review channel of C#'s community Discord. Over the past week, I have gotten a lot of great notes on how to make GCNTools even better and translated them into this most recent update. There aren't any dramatically new features in 1.0.1, but I'm excited to see how this project takes shape.

Coming Soon

Quality of Life Improvements for Konga Beat

My primary focus with Konga Beat right now is improving the user experience. Based on the feedback I've received over the past couple of months, the changes I have in mind include the option to insert an offset at the start of a song and the ability to display all 1P tracks at once, among others. I am actively working on these features, but I do not have a specific timeline yet for the next update.

Konga Launcher 1.0 (Eventually)

As my previous posts mentioned, Konga Launcher 1.0 was expected to be released in January or February. Unfortunately, work and class have taken up a disproportionate amount of my time over the past few months, so I was not able to meet that goal. I'm still planning to release 1.0 and make it available as an open-source project this year, but it will take longer than initially planned.

That said, Konga Launcher will still receive regular updates until then that improve functionality, platform compatibility, and presentational polish. I expect the next update to drop in March.

In Summary

Updated versions of Konga Beat, Konga Launcher, and GCNTools are now available. The primary feature rolling out during this update wave is the ability to load your Konga Beat project directly into the game through Konga Launcher. More updates are coming over the coming months, but they may take longer than expected due to other obligations.

Have a great weekend!