USCE 2026.10.0

[dgruss]

USCE 2026.10.0 incorporates USDX 2026.10.0 and the changes below.

Changes since the previous USCE release

Changes compared with USDX 2026.9.0

This release adds 24-player layouts, editor score breakdowns, shared synth and
beat-click timing, and expanded playlist controls. Windows can be resized and
themes adapt to the screen aspect ratio, including 16:9 and 21:9.

🚨 Breaking changes

• Avatars, themes and plugins are detected in home and application directories. On Linux, highscore plugins are no longer loaded from the installation directory. 365f9be, 167e14f

• Remove the obsolete basic editor and MIDI-import screens. The full song editor remains available. #68

• Use the built-in synthesizer for all MIDI previews. System and external MIDI output through PortMidi are no longer available. #78

• Allow medleys for any song with playable notes, including duets and relative songs. Explicit medley ranges still take priority; the legacy CALCMEDLEY=Off switch no longer excludes a song. #64

• Remove rap and medley badges from song selection; video and duet indicators remain. #65

📈 Enhancements

• Keep fonts, images and avatars in proportion across screen aspect ratios. #83
• Use generic player layouts across player selection, duet selection, singing and scoring, with selectable player counts up to 24. #70, #71, #72, #76, #77
• Show statistics in aligned detail tables, with adjustable row counts, time ranges, score-count filters, library coverage and activity summaries. Choose a Reduced or Full presentation in Options > Game. #82, #109
• Suggest recently used player and team names while typing, with shared name-entry behavior across solo, party and tournament screens. #108
• Accelerate note shifting while holding the editor keys. #49
• Improve built-in MIDI synthesis and unify editor beat and MIDI preview timing. #78
• Add a remaining-score bar showing the score still achievable, with rating-only, remaining-only and combined display modes. #62
• Add playlist search, sorting, reordering and controls for adding or removing the displayed songs. Refresh active playlists when their files change. #61, #46
• Start song previews through one scheduler for mouse, keyboard and playlist navigation, deferring video startup until selection and screen transitions settle. #58
• Draw fewer oscilloscope points to reduce rendering work, while keeping audio analysis and scoring unchanged. #31
• Keep preview music running consistently across player selection and results, and toggle fullscreen video previews with V. #55, #29
• Let K cycle through full vocals, a saved partial vocals volume and instrumental playback when a partial volume is configured. #37
• Show the perfect-score split between normal notes, golden notes and line bonuses in the editor, and add absolute pitch diagnostics in recording options. #44, #59
• Search by several characters while holding Alt, with improved navigation out of song folders. #40
• Improve chained theme and skin inheritance, including shared assets, themed sounds and category covers. #81, #52, #54
• All themes from the USCE Themes repository are included in the downloads. #20
• Duets save highscores. This can be disabled in Options > Advanced. 255e3bd, 6798291

🪲 Bug Fixes

• Keep avatars, frames and score bars aligned at high player counts, and handle ended audio when returning from highscores. #102

• Fix preview-volume handling when opening songs and results, restore missing English labels, and correct avatar scaling, player highlights and still-background fitting. #100

• Update cover and loading-screen branding while retaining the original artwork and photographs. #100

• Close the empty Tools-menu row left by MIDI import. #98

• Preserve non-ASCII song paths under non-UTF-8 locales, including Steam Deck Gaming Mode. #42

• Load fonts, themes, plugins and databases correctly from Unicode paths on Windows. #50

• Make mouse hit testing follow the visible stacking order of overlapping menu controls. #38

• Keep the editor's video-only playback free of synthesized note cues. #117

• Preserve a song file's existing line endings when saving it in the editor. #28

• Write caught exception reports and stack traces to Error.log before displaying the error dialog. The dialog still appears if logging fails. #105

• Save one screenshot per PrintScreen press on Windows, and correct the editor preview-start jump and shortcut help. #113, #114, #115, #33

• Fix editor mouse interactions between note playback, dragging, resizing, splitting and lyric editing. #60

• Advance fixed-order playlists after a completed song, select another entry in non-fixed playlists and retain the selection after cancellation. #32

• Fit editor save-error dialogs to their contents, with options to save anyway or jump to the timing error. #48

• Keep the version label short enough to fit themed screen footers. #24

• Fix crashes caused by an invalid song #VERSION. ac5dc3e

• Fix selection colours for colourized textures. 329f6aa

• Fix fullscreen glitches. 26ee41d

Other changes

• Log actual PortAudio latency and SDL buffer settings to help diagnose audio problems. #25

• Introduce USCE branding and a shorter, player-focused README. a2072d5, #21

• Integrate native Windows dependency builds into Autotools and correct runtime library packaging. #19

• Put song-file warnings and errors in SongError.log. #39

• Use English.ini as the translation template and remove outdated template maintenance scripts. #26

• Prefer bundled Windows dependencies during configuration and report incompatible Lua package metadata clearly. #93

• Use MSYS2's patch tool when building Windows dependencies. #23

• Retry transient disk-image eject failures when packaging macOS downloads. #71

• Detect missing external library functions during macOS builds. b4b7351

• Include upstream's macOS crash stacktraces, code signing, sdl2-compat support and temporary-file cleanup. 7201cb6, 7ec6762, 113a784, 4232255, 2d45701

• Update Italian and Icelandic translations. a75849e, 4ef5cd9, d88a070

• Remove obsolete Lazarus project files. a1c6c41

• Document Lua 5.5 support. 6dbb04b

• Use the USCE application bundle name on macOS. a2072d5

• Preserve upstream compiler-flag fixes for Windows and Intel Macs. 89c1429

Thanks to the UltraStar Deluxe contributors and everyone helping build USCE.

Known issue

An intermittent Windows audio crash has been reported when returning from Top 20 to song selection after playback ends. Audio error handling has been improved, but the crash is not confirmed resolved. #103

Full changes since USDX 2026.9.0.

Build information

Source revision: 5ffda45b4e7d10faaa21c3834c534cc330017de2.
Themes revision: 4f06930551631288d0702ba978bdd9a7647a6f0f.

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This discussion was created from the release USCE 2026.10.0.