A few suggestions

[Tjoeb123]

Hello guys! I just bought KB yesterday, and I love it! However, I noticed that there are a few things I feel could be better, so I have a few suggestions for future updates and such:

1. Make this text box more friendly with the PS Vita so I can type in it easier and faster.
2. Cross Save. I don't wanna have to play through Lee's story again to unlock everything on the console.
3. Display song metadata instead of raw filenames, which can be confusing sometimes.
4. Add M4A/AAC audio support. My CMA Music folder is set to my iTunes folder, and everything in my iTunes library is in that folder. That said, there are a few songs I bought from the iTunes Store that I'd like to use in KB without having to convert them and have duplicate copies.
5. Allow us to manually place the face buttons when we want them in the song. This can be done by listening to the song, and pressing the buttons to the beat in the same way playing the prerecorded songs. (for instance, holding the Square button to indicate the 2 enemies aura'd together) Do you understand what I'm talking about?

[Solitude]

Hello guys! I just bought KB yesterday, and I love it! However, I noticed that there are a few things I feel could be better, so I have a few suggestions for future updates and such:

1. Make this text box more friendly with the PS Vita so I can type in it easier and faster.
2. Cross Save. I don't wanna have to play through Lee's story again to unlock everything on the console.
3. Display song metadata instead of raw filenames, which can be confusing sometimes.
4. Add M4A/AAC audio support. My CMA Music folder is set to my iTunes folder, and everything in my iTunes library is in that folder. That said, there are a few songs I bought from the iTunes Store that I'd like to use in KB without having to convert them and have duplicate copies.
5. Allow us to manually place the face buttons when we want them in the song. This can be done by listening to the song, and pressing the buttons to the beat in the same way playing the prerecorded songs. (for instance, holding the Square button to indicate the 2 enemies aura'd together) Do you understand what I'm talking about?

For 1 and 3 I think we are limited by Sony's interface (using their built in keyboards and music library api), plus everyone has file names but not everyone has metadata
4 I believe we're limited by licenses provides by Sony (we might have to pay extra for additional codecs, whereas mp3 came for free as part of SDK)
2 is definitely a good suggestion; ps3 version was kinda last minute so cross-features weren't implemented
5 is a big project, even though it sounds simple - though I would certainly like to do more with track customization.

I agree that all of these would improve the game, though!

[Tjoeb123]

Problems with some MP3s

Well, I fail to see why it would be hard to implement Cross-Save for the main game (not the custom tracks of course, as my Vita library doesn't necessarily match my PS3 library). I also noticed that the trophies are separate for each platform.....maybe enable retroactive trophies? (assuming you implement cross-save)

Anyways, I also wanted to bring up an issue I seem to have encountered - some of the MP3s in my (Vita) library, usually in the same album(s), won't show up in the custom tracklist, yet others in those same albums do. For example, songs A, B, and C are in X album, all in MP3s and (hopefully) in 441000Hz sample rate, but only song B shows up and not the others. Actually, that reminds me - does the bitrate (192, 256, 320 Kbps, VBR/CBR, etc) matter as well?

Either way, KickBeat is an awesome game, and I love how you guys are inviting us to post on the forums (on loading screens, link on Vita version's LiveArea, etc) and hopefully taking in our feedback for future patches and such!

[Solitude]

Oh, I don't think the Cross Save thing was an issue of difficulty. It's just that when you've got a hard deadline fast approaching, you want to avoid adding anything that has to be tested and could potentially introduce new bugs. It's a good idea and we'll look at implementing it - That is the 1 of the 5 that I think is most likely to be possible. I didn't mean to imply that we wouldn't be doing it - just explaining why it was not already there.

No sure what the deal is on the songs that are not showing up, but it's very likely to be a codec issue since an album is likely to all be encoded the same way. I'd have to ask the engineers. Any constant bitrate should definitely be fine - I've used 128K-320K. Have not checked VBR. M4A (AAC and ALAC) won't work. Can you post the encoding info for a non-working file?

[Tjoeb123]

Sure, I'll provide some samples for you. This is all as reported from each song's properties window in iTunes:

Song name: Over the clouds -BURST mix-
Album Name: GODS EATER BURST Original Soundtrack
Bit Rate: 320Kbps CBR
Sample Rate: 44100 kHz
Encoded with: LAME3.98
Has artwork: YES
Works in KickBeat: YES

Song name: sincerely
Album name: Ryuusei no Bifrost
Bit Rate: 320Kpbs CBR (All songs in the same album as this song used to be VBR bitrates. All but one did NOT work in KickBeat, but when I converted them to 320Kbps CBR using Adobe Audition, they all worked)
Sample Rate: 44100 kHz
Encoded with: Fraunhofer (the encoder Adobe Audition CC uses for MP3s)
Has artwork: YES
Works in KickBeat: YES

Song name: Rebellion
Album name: BlazBlue Calamity Trigger OST
Bit Rate: 320 Kbps CBR
Sample Rate: 44100 kHz
Encoded with: Fraunhofer (All other songs in the album had an unknown encoder, and some of these songs worked in KickBeat.)
Has artwork: YES
Works in KickBeat: NO

I manually recorded the following song using Adobe Audition CC, using a direct audio feed from the PS Vita while the game was running.

Song name: Gift ~I'll Follow You~
Album name: Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time
Bit Rate: 320 Kbps CBR
Sample Rate: 44100 kHz
Encoded with: Fraunhofer
Has artwork: NO
Works in KickBeat: NO (UPDATE: When I first made this post, this song did not show up in the custom tracks, but when I was playing yesterday, it suddenly did, possibly indicating a bug where the game does not correctly load a list of all MP3s in my library.)

The point of me providing encoding information about all of those songs is that some of the songs in my iTunes and Vita libraries use very similar (if not the same) settings, are MP3s, but for whatever reason doesn't show up for use in KickBeat.

Please note that these test were done using the PS Vita version of the game. If anyone reading this has the PS3 version of the game (I do but don't feel like playing Lee's story all over again) and is encountering this issue, I recommend posting in here and list the song(s) you're trying to use in the game, and their bitrate settings/information. That way, hopefully Zen can get to working on a patch to fix it.

[Solitude]

Can you send me the non-working files? neil AT zenstudios DOT com.