Today, we would like to proudly announce the upcoming release of our newest version, TrotMania IV6, in honor of our ongoing sixth anniversary year!.We’ve been putting a ton of effort into this release, so I hope you all enjoy playing it as much as we did making it.
Our next generation user interface has been polished and upgraded. Background display effects make operating your game smoother.
Fittingly, we are celebrating this milestone with a grand total of six, all-new songs. As we mentioned earlier, this is a singular release that will be nearly “final” off the bat, so you won’t have to fumble with patches. We also have additional content (including nonstop courses, an additional song, and Versus 99 mode) that will be exclusive to our exciting new “6th Anniversary Model”. We will provide details of these at a later date..
Stay tuned later today for more information about IV6!
Update
Unfortunately, due to some unforeseen issues (and the fact that we don’t have enough gold to make all the 6th Anniversary Models — gold is expensive, you know! Plus, you could barely see the screen with all the glare), the release of TrotMania IV6 has been delayed indefinitely. However, we know you wanted something out of this, so we released a “permanent beta” of it!
There are easier ways to get tickets for BlipCon Prime in New Oreins — Amareica’s biggest celebration of video gaming and indie music — than mashing the refresh button and waiting in virtual line like everypony else. However, you have to earn it.
Blast Furnace recently pulled off an upset win at a semi-major Hooves of Fury V tournament, and was subsequently invited by the game’s publisher to an amateur invitational at BlipCon to promote Ultra Hooves of Fury V Arcade Edition. She received a pair of Deluxe passes, and already knew exactly who she was going to take with her.
On the other hoof, Train Spot and Wave Rider’s new electronic music act The Third Rail was beginning to gain a following, and their first-time panel submission, “Electronic Music At the Turn of the Century Is Objectively Better Than That Junk Everyone Is Putting Out Now” (or “E-mat-oh-ceeob-jay-pon” for short) was deemed worthy enough to make the final event program (along with a live performance for good measure).
However, both camps soon noticed that a rather popular, regional holiday known as the Spring Renaissance would be reaching its peak right before BlipCon. It’s a peculiar event, where local social groups known as Guilds — named after various deities — hold various parades and masquerade balls in an effort to wrap up Winter. One article noted that while some still play this celebration straight, much of it has always been tongue-in-cheek, and that wild parties and LARPing “battles” between guilds were also common.
It just so happened that both Blast Furnace and Obscurus Noctis had encounters with members of guilds that also attend the Gathering of Embers (and that Eight Track had never told Obscurus’s crew about his previous aspirations to be a jazz performer before becoming a DJ instead, and still knew how to play the sax). However, these guilds also happened to be intense rivals!
Perhaps their existing connections would be enough to get them a little deeper into the mayhem than the average tourist…
Guild Goals
I guess we can wish everypony a happy Renaissance Day, then!
TrotMania the Fifth is gradually inching closer to completion: we still have other songs being worked on, I’ve been getting back to work on the user experience, and we still have some rather important and prominent roles available for musicians who think they can challenge themselves to become our next great challenger.
Unlike previous editions, we are trying to handle the release of Shrive a little differently. Rather than the long-term drip-feed of patches and content we’ve done in the past, our main plan is to have more of a singular, final release off the bat. However, don’t rule out any major post-release events too: I evaluated your reception to Trials of the Embers, and I promise that if we do such a thing again within Shrive’s release cycle, it will definitely be balanced better for sure.
In addition, I don’t think that I have brought this up on the TrotMania blog yet, but I have personally been involved in a major collaboration with prominent members of the StepMania community as a whole to, essentially, build a new version of SM (initially dubbed version 5.3) that will include major internal improvements that have been long-overdue, as well as some other new features and enhancements that will more than likely be used within TrotMania in the future. For more information on these efforts, there is a development blog located at projectmoon.dance.
Let’s get back on-topic
Now that we got that out of the way, the parade of previews for Shrive’s soundtrack isn’t over just yet!
In addition, given that I’ve admittedly not posted on the site in a while, I thought I’d also share a few of the chart and song preview videos RIME has made, so you’ll have a taste of what’s to come.
In addition, we’re once again open to art submissions for inclusion in the theme! We’re not formally doing the “contest” this time around, but if you’d like to contribute results screen backgrounds or OC vector art (if you want an idea of the artistic standards needed, see the details from the TM IV equivalent – either of your OC or one of our existing mascots). Our theme for TM V is basicallyCarnival. Although our visual motif and setting is based primarily on Mardi Gras, the lore of our version has a larger focus on medieval motifs and imagery, so you don’t nessecarily have to stick to one city’s interpretation of the holiday as influence!
Also, we have a few very special opportunities available if you’re a composer. In both cases, inquire on our Discord channels for more information!
