A new update is available for Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R. This time, a few improvements have been implemented to enhance the offline experience a bit, and some bugfixes for online play.

Last month, the Guilty Gear franchise and its creators Arc System Works have celebrated their 25th and 35th anniversaries respectively.
ASW has opened a special anniversary website[www.arcsystemworks.jp], where you can read messages from their staff and vote for your favorite ASW game[www.arcsystemworks.jp]. You can vote once per day, so I encourage each ASW fan to visit the website daily!

Please find the complete list of improvements and fixes below.

• A new "BUTTON SETTINGS" icon is now available at the bottom of the character select screen. Press it to open a minified version of the "BUTTON SETTINGS" menu.
  
• In this new minified "BUTTON SETTINGS" menu, you will also find a new entry named "BUTTON CHECK". Select this entry to access the "BUTTON CHECK" screen, which will help you verify your settings.
  
• In battle, pausing now behaves and looks similar to pausing in Guilty Gear Xrd or Guilty Gear Strive: you need to hold the key for a brief amount of time instead of just pressing it once, with a small gauge indicator at the bottom of the screen. This prevents accidental pauses.

In "DISPLAY & AUDIO SETTINGS" menu, you will find a new "AUDIO DEVICE" setting. With this setting, you can easily force the game to use your favorite audio device, or tune the behaviour for the default device from Windows sound settings. This setting is saved to the DisplaySettings.cfg file.

I recommend offline tournament organizers to select and save a favorite audio device for the tournament setup (for example, the TV's speakers). Doing so will prevent common tournament issues, such as an official console gamepad stealing the audio feed.

• Spectator Mode has 3 new filters : Ranked Random, Ranked Best Rank, Ranked Best Winstreak. Watch high-level ranked battles in realtime!
  
• During an online battle, illegal characters are now instantly defeated at the beginning of the round.
  
• Fixed a possible leaderboard crash.
  
• Fixed a super rare bug that caused the big Quick Match lobby to have incorrect filters and settings.

• On most hybrid-GPU systems, such as gaming laptops with Nvidia Optimus or AMD's equivalent, the default setting is now the dedicated high-performance GPU.
  
• Optimized the gamepad detection to use less computing ressources.
  
• Fixed a bug in the DirectInput gamepad detection logic that prevented players from replugging the same DirectInput gamepad in a different USB port.
  
• Fixed keyboard players being able to unbind the confirm button.

Reminder: most game settings, such as button settings, are only saved when you're going through the "Saving..." screen. If you want to make sure your settings are saved, go back to the title screen before closing the game.

Thank you for your support.

We have released a patch for the Steam version "GUILTY GEAR XX ACCENT CORE PLUS R" to resolve a vulnerability in the game system. Both the main branch and the legacy branch have been updated.

Please update your game to the latest version.

Fixes:
- Fix: In Winner Stays player rooms, removed the AFK skip countdown text to fix a major crash which affected players using the Japanese language setting.
- Fix: In Free For All player rooms, fixed incorrect printing for the 'Other challenges pending' notice when the language is set to Japanese.

Greetings, Guilty Gear fans!

Almost two years have passed since the beginning of our work on the GGPO rollback netcode update. We are very grateful for your warm reception on each update. Recently, we pushed our final update: a complete rewrite of the matchmaking, to fix unstabilities and bring new features to the online modes.

We would like to call upon you one final time, GGXXACPR fans. Steam Awards 2021 are almost over, but there's still time. We hope that you have enjoyed all these updates and that you feel they have improved your game experience. If you think our work on Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R is worthy of the "Labor Of Love" award, please tick that box up there!

Thank you, and see you online!




- Team French CaliBurst -

Heaven or Hell
Delay 0
Let's Rock!

This update finally brings Matchmaking V2 improvements to the stable branch.

• Player Rooms are now much more stable and resilient.
  
• New "Free For All" rotation type that allows multiple matches to take place simultaneously.
  
• Player Rooms using the new "Free For All" rotation can host up to 64 people.
  
• Player Rooms using the "Winner Stays On" rotation can now host up to 8 people (was 6 before).
  
• Player Rooms no longer close when the owner leaves.
  
• You can choose between Accent Core and Accent Core +R when creating a room.
  
• Both AC and AC+R rooms appear in the search results.

• Quick Match is now a single room open to everybody, regardless of game version or ranked/unranked mode.
  
• Ranked players are allowed to match with unranked players. In this case, the match is ranked for both players. Players in Quick Match can disable ranked challenges in room Settings.
  
• AC and AC+R players are together in the new Quick Match. If you challenge someone, you will be playing their preferred version.

• Ping limit can be enabled for incoming challenges (Any/300/250/200/(ranked only)150). Opponents with ping above the selected value cannot challenge you.
  
• Added post-match menu with options such as Rematch, Back to Character Select, Back to Single Player and Back to Room. Rematch follows "best of three" rule, but if there are only 2 non-spectator players the room, rematch is unlimited. Post-match menu is disabled for Winner Stays rotation.
  
• Spectator Mode can now be set to automatically connect to battles with highest winrate, highest winstreak, or random. This feature is intended for streamers, tournament organizers, and people who just want to watch battles while eating their ramen.
  
• New Wait Mode allows waiting for a match inside any single player mode: Training, M.O.M., M.O.M. Gold, Classic Survival, Survival, Replay List, Last Replay. While in Wait Mode, selected Input Delay is applied.
  
• Selected character, color group, BGM and stage are retained.
  
• Opponents can be sorted by name, status, ping, win streak, or win ratio.
  
• Icon for currently selected character is displayed before player name.
  
• GGPO input delay can be set to AUTO. The game will automatically pick the recommended value.
  
• Current input delay is shown at the bottom of the screen during the VS interstitial.
  
• Matches can be spectated at any time now. Confirm button engages fast-forward. Cancel button stops the playback and returns to the room.
  
• Players can challenge you while spectating a match (can be disabled in room Settings)
  
• When FPS display is enabled, Rift and Rollback frames are displayed at the top of the screen during battle. Additionally, a performance warning ('!' sign) can be displayed if rollback processing takes much longer than expected, or if the game has to skip frames in order to reach the required 60 FPS. If you see the performance warning often, it indicates that your PC is underperforming or too slow.
  
• During the VS interstitial, connection type is displayed: DIRECT, or RELAY if the connection is going through a Steam relay server.
  
• Improved GGPO synchronization stability and overall netplay performance.
  
• New UI for Replay Select menu (old UI can be restored with -oldreplayui argument)

• Spectators can no longer connect while players are selecting their characters.
  
• Rotation types "Loser Stays" and "Random" are no longer available.
  
• Team VS is no longer available in Network mode.
  
• A new branch, named "Legacy", is now accessible in the "Betas" tab. You can access the old matchmaking with this branch, use it if you need to play Team VS in Network mode. Please note that the old and new matchmaking are not compatible: you will not be able to fight against players who are on the new matchmaking, Also, save data and replay incompatibilities may occur.

Full changelog is available in the previous announcements:
https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/348550/view/3105772592523126191
https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/348550/view/2993192114476445422

• During replay playback, don't draw PAUSE message below DISCONNECT or DESYNC messages.
  
• Fixed a rare desync
  
• Fixed: While spectating, or in Wait Mode Spectator Mode, or in Wait Mode Replay playback, declining a challenge would stop the playback.
  
• Updated the "GGPO UPDATE" credits.

• Fixed: In player rooms, after battle, your cursor would always go back to the first player in the list instead of trying to stay on the player that was selected before match.
  
• Final Steam Rich Presence translation update.

Hello GGXXACPR fans, this is Team French CaliBurst again. We are opening the publictest branch one last time to test the remaining fixes and improvements in the matchmaking implementation.

The test begins right now and will remain open until the implementation is considered stable. After that, it's going to replace the default implementation.

We will be waiting for your feedback here: https://steamproxy.com/app/348550/discussions/1/

Please follow this procedure to participate in this public test:
* Right click the game in your Steam library
* Click "Properties..."
* Go to "Betas" and select "publictest - GGPOupdatetest". If you don’t see the branch, please restart Steam and try again.
* Close the properties menu
* The game should automatically update. After the update has ended, you’re set to go!


Changes from the previous test:
https://steamproxy.com/games/348550/announcements/detail/3105772592523126192

- (Ranked) Fixed: In Player Match > Quick Match, do not reset ranked result if it wasn't yet shown to the player.
- (Network) New Challenger column in Player Quick Match, which displays the opponent's name of players currently in battle, much like in Player Rooms.
- (Network) In Player Rooms and Player Quick Match, you will now warp to the end of the player list if you press up while positioned at the beginning, and vice-versa.
- (Translation) FInal translation update.
- (Credits) Updated credits

- (Ranked) New 150ms max ping filter exclusively for Ranked Mode's "Wait In Game".
- (Network) Fixed a very rare bug that made character select screen's music selection visuals appear during a match.
- (Network) Made Settings and Chat windows' animation faster.
- (Network) Disabled password for private rooms.
- (Network) Fixed player data not updating for spectators in some rare cases.
- (Network) Restored the ability to copy room invite via LT.
- (Replay) Fixed a visual bug caused by replays that had a player name ending with incomplete UTF8 in Replay Select UI.
- (Replay) For unfinished matches, display player names in grey.
- (Crash fix) Fix possible crash related to XAudio.
- (Translation) Updated all translations.
- (Performance test) Support linewrap for Japanese text in the performance test.


- (Network) Fix: disconnects or desyncs are no longer treated as a draw.
- (Network) On room search results, ping will no longer be polled and shown for the large Quick Match rooms.
- (Replay) Added winner side to replay metadata.
- (Replay) Fixed longer black screen loading time when accessing Replay Select menu since 11.11.2021 Replay Select UI update. Metadata loading for the new UI is now done in the background.

- (Network) Disabled ping filter in Winner Stays room. Hopefully fixes a rare case of matches not starting in Winner Stays.
- (Training) Fixed Reversal Action:
Use player's lenient input settings during recording and playback
Fix guard coming out instead of non-invincible reversal actions during blockstrings like Testament's 2S 2D
- (Replay) Extended replay metadata
- (Replay) New UI for Replay Select menu:
Uses metadata to show date, game, mode, characters, names and winner
Can now page jump with LB or RB
Old UI can be restored with -oldreplayui argument
- Prevent glitchy game state when accepting a room invite multiple times in a short period of time
- Fixed consecutive invites sometimes not working after the game was started via invite link
- Fixed black menu background after being disconnected or kicked from a room
- In Winner Stays rooms, 'spectate until your turn' notification is no longer shown when the player is alone
- (GGPO) Modification that allows what we call "small rift correction". It should fix rare cases when, for example, matches with 200ms ping feel like 260ms ping.

- (Network) Added a plus-minus sign (+/-) for ping display, to save a little space.
- (Network) Profile Display: Toggle between Player Match and Ranked Match results
- (Network) Fixed missing ping value in Wait Mode challenge modal
- (Network) Input delay setting: Disabled jumps in input delay setting
- (Network) Input delay setting: AUTO is now to the right and displays the recommended delay (behaves and looks similar to Ranked)
- (Network) Better alignment in Wait Mode challenge modal
- (Network) Fixed some button mappings breaking key features of Winner Stays rooms. As a result, it is no longer possible to bind Posreset or Pause commands to the Confirm or Cancel buttons.
- (Network) In Player Match > Create Room, the game will now use the current game version (AC or AC+R) as the default one in the "GAME VERSION" room creation setting.
- (Network) Fixed players with Spectator Mode enabled being able to challenge people, manually spectate people, or enter Wait Mode, which were incorrect behaviours.
- (Network) Performance optimizations
- (Performance Test) Wrapped success text in performance test
- (Steam) Fixed multiple bugs with Steam lobby invitations
- (General) Fixed missing spaces after translation update

- (General) Restored Arc System Works' logo on bootup, which was unintentionally disabled in November 2020.
- (General) Added translations (made by the GGXXACPR community) for the new strings of Matchmaking V2, for the following languages: Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean. Please note that translation is still a work in progress.
- (Network) "Kick" function from stable branch has been restored. In custom rooms, Profile Display now has Remove option available to room creators.
- (Network) Pause menu with Command List has been restored.
- (Network) The game's icon in the taskbar now lights up when you are challenged in Free For All, or when it's your turn in Winner Stays.
- (Network) In Wait Mode, inputs are now ignored for a short time after Challenge Modal appears. This will prevent accidental Accept/Decline while you're pressing buttons in singleplayer.
- (Network) In Winner Stays rooms, Wait Mode is no longer interrupted when all the other players are spectators.
- (Network) In Winner Stays rooms, added a notification after player is forced to exit Wait Mode when it's their turn to play.
- (Network) Fixed rift correction sometimes overshooting at the beginning of the match.
- (Network) Wait Mode: disabled MOM/Survival achievements for EX/GG/SP characters.
- (Network) MOM/Survival score is now preserved after interruption.
- (Network) On post-match menu, icons to signify both sides' selection are now drawn (P1 and P2).
- (Network) Some optimizations for underperforming PCs.
- (Performance Test) The amount of frame draws that had to be skipped is now shown at the result screen.
- (Ranked) Show an explanation message when a repeated ranked challenge cannot be sent.
- (Ranked) Wait Mode: when Rank Filter is enabled, auto-matcher no longer picks opponents with lower ranks that give negative EXP even when result is 2-1 in your favor.
- (Steam Integration) Fixed missing player names in Steam's 'View Game Info' modal.
- (Stability) Fixed many issues with the opening movie playback.
- (Stability) Fixed a possible game freeze after returning from Alt+Tab in fullscreen mode.
- (Stability) Fixed some crashes.


- New feature: when FPS is enabled, a performance warning ('!' sign) can be drawn near RIFT/ROLL indicators. Performance warning is issued if rollback processing takes much longer than expected, or if the game has to skip drawing frames in order to keep 60 frames being equal to 1 second. If you see the performance warning often, it indicates that your PC is underperforming or too slow.
- Fixed a couple of crashes.
- EX mode is correctly disabled for Kliff & Justice.
- Previous character select data is reset after leaving Network menu.
- Fixed connectivity problems at the beginning of matches. As a result, challenge can only be sent if the opponent has ping information ready.
- Desync is now correctly treated as a disconnect and post-match menu with rematch is not presented.
- Fixed ranked menu breaking when an invite is accepted.
- Fixed immediate accept or decline in wait mode if a button is held before challenge modal appears.
- Some minor performance improvements.

- Fixed: Autospectate disables itself
- Relabeled 'Autospectate Mode' as 'Spectator-only Mode'
- Fix AC ABA keygrab framedata
- When explicitly sending a challenge, remove the opponent from decline list
- Stop trying to rematch if an opponent is not in a state that allows it
- Fix possible crash when determining winner side after a match
- Preserve side and game version after choosing Character Select in post-match menu
- Adjusted the conditions that allow to skip battle intro: frame advantage (RIFT) must be <= 10f for 30f (was: for 1f)
- Fixed: In Winner Stays, a player would not stop spectating when it was their turn to play.
- Fixed: Input guide is displayed incorrectly when language is set to Japanese
- Don't restore previously selected Kliff or Justice if they're disabled in current game mode
- Fixed some typos
- Prevented a possible spin-lock during rematch
- Fix crashes when player is unexpectedly kicked out of the room by Steam

- Fixed connection issues when one side is experiencing high packet loss

- Fixed player data corruption that happens when the last rank is reached

- Fixed poor performance for matches that are initiated during Wait Mode
- Fixed possible crash when the opponent disconnects from room right after rematch
- To players experiencing frequent disconnects (with messages CONNECTING-SYNCHRONIZING-DISCONNECTED): connection settings have been modified, please check if this fixes your issue.

New changes compared to previous test:

• Players no longer have to select their character upon entering the room, character selection screen appears as normal. Selected character, color group, BGM and stage are retained. Note: spectators can no longer connect while players are still selecting their characters.
  
• Winner Stays rotation is back. Previous default rotation type that allowed everyone to play at the same time is called Free for All. Winner Stays rooms can now host up to 8 players, Free for All - up to 64. There are no plans to return Loser Stays and Random rotations.
  
• Upon receiving a challenge in Free for All rotation, opponent's battle data is shown with options to accept or decline the challenge.
  
• Wait Mode: MOM and Survival continue with same opponent and HP after returning from a match
  
• Added post-match menu with options such as Rematch, Back to Character Select, Back to Single Player and Back to Room. Rematch follows "best of three" rule, but if there are only 2 non-spectator players the room, rematch is unlimited. Post-match menu is disabled for Winner Stays rotation.
  
• Autospectate Mode has been added. When Autospectate Mode is enabled, the game will start spectating battles automatically without any input. You can set it to spectate battles with highest winrate, or highest winstreak, or just random. This feature is intended for streamers, tournament organisers, and people who just want to watch battles while eating their ramen.
  
• Player Room UI has been changed a bit, it can now show up to 8 people in the main window.
  
• You can now hide the Viewers count.
  
• Ranked Match has been enabled. All of the netcode and matchmaking improvements that were made so far are now available in Ranked Mode. Ranked Mode uses the Player Match -> Quick Match room, so now ranked players are not completely separated. When an unranked player challenges a ranked player or vice versa, the match becomes ranked. Players in Quick Match can disable ranked challenges in Settings.

• (GGPO) Fixed possible incorrect character afterimage during highjumps or Dust combos.
  
• (GGPO) Fixed BGM sometimes incorrectly fading when the opponent has low HP.
  
• (GGPO) Rollback state is now ~50% smaller. This should improve netplay performance for most users, when compared to current stable build.
  
• (GGPO) Improved rift correction accuracy for connections with high jitter
  
• (GGPO) Battle intro skip is disabled while rift correction is still in progress
  
• (GGPO) During the VS interstitial, connection type is displayed: DIRECT, or RELAY if the connection is going through a Steam relay server.
  
• (Training mode) Fixed Guard: First, Limited behaving incorrectly, and all Guard types not detecting some projectiles.
  
• (Misc) Fixed borderless window not covering the taskbar after slightly dragging it, which is a normal behaviour in Windows when a borderless app is not exactly covering the whole screen. Now borderless window snaps to the top-left edge of the screen while dragging.
  
• (Misc) Dont horizontally stretch sidebars on ultrawide displays.

Room with Winner Stays rotation:
Settings menu inside a room:
Challenge modal (inside room):
Challenge modal (while waiting in game):
Post-match menu:
Ranked match invitation:
"Wait in Game" menu in Ranked mode:

Fixes and improvements:
* (Netplay) Fixed rare desync when Force Breaks such as Baiken's Baku are used.
* (Netplay) Fixed rare desync when players skip intro animations at a specific frame.
* (Netplay) Fixed blackbeat indicator displaying incorrect or duplicate number of hits.
* (Netplay) Fixed an issue which prevented GGPO from establishing connection in some rare cases.
* (Network Mode) Matchmaking menu is no longer cropped on ultrawide monitors.
* (Network Mode) Training mode submenus (Extra Menu etc) are now correctly closed when going back to player room.
* (Performance) XInput polling performance improved. This may fix inconsistent framerate for some players.
* (Stability) Game no longer crashes when viewing global Survival rankings.
* (Training Mode) Reversal Action now also activates on clash.
* (Training Mode) Reversal: Attack correctly activates if there's a one frame gap before next hit and Dummy has guard enabled.
* (Training Mode) Reversal: Memory now plays correctly even if the memory slot was recorded using Record Player function (instead of Record Enemy).
* (Training Mode) Reversal: Memory and State: Memory now work correctly for Dummy vs Dummy and Dummy vs CPU.

* Improved performance (FPS stability, less rollbacks) when playing in rooms with many players.

Restart your Steam client to make sure you receive the update.
This update is for "publictest" beta only.
See the following announcement for more information on the ongoing public test: https://steamproxy.com/steamstore/news/app/348550/view/3105772592523126191

Please follow this procedure to participate in this public test:
* Right click the game in your Steam library
* Click "Properties..."
* Go to "Betas" and select "publictest - GGPOupdatetest". Please note that the branch will be only visible when the public testing starts (Friday May 7th 2021 00:00). If testing has started and you still don’t see the branch, please restart Steam and try again.
* Close the properties menu
* The game should automatically update. After the update has ended, you’re set to go!

Hello GGXXACPR fans, we will soon open the public test branch again to test new changes. We have rewritten Player Rooms in an attempt to fix their stability issues.

The test will start on Friday May 7th 2021 00:00, and remain open until Sunday May 9th 23:59 (CEST).
There will be more rounds of testing after this one, at later dates.

All these changes are still work-in-progress, the UI is not complete yet and some features are missing at the moment.
Please give us feedback regarding the stability of the new rooms and their new UI in the public test reporting forum: https://steamproxy.com/app/348550/discussions/1/

*Please note that Ranked Match has been disabled for this test. Also, some features are not available: Team VS mode, persistent win/loss stats, chat messages, kicking, spectator-only mode, and rotation.

The new features available for testing are listed below:

• Player Quick Match is now a single room open to everybody.
  
• You can challenge anyone in the room, or wait for someone to challenge you.
  
• AC and AC+R players are together in the new Player Quick Match. If you challenge someone, you will be playing their preferred version.

• Player Rooms can host up to 64 people.
  
• Player Rooms do not close when the owner leaves.
  
• You can choose between Accent Core and Accent Core +R before creating the room. (Not final. Please tell us if you think this is an improvement or not.)
  
• Both AC and AC+R rooms now appear in the search results.

• You can select a maximum ping for your opponents (Any/300/250/200). Opponents with a ping above the value you selected cannot challenge you.
  
• You can sort your opponents by name, status, ping, win streak, or win ratio
  
• Characters, favorite stage and favorite bgm are now selected before entering a room. You can see everyone’s character in the room. If random stage was selected, it'll be different each match. (Not final)
  
• You can now set your GGPO input delay to AUTO. The game will automatically pick the most recommended value calculated with the opponent’s ping.
  
• Your delay is shown at the bottom of the screen during the VS interstitial.
  
• You can spectate anyone at any time now. You can fast-forward during spectating by pressing the confirm button. You can stop spectating with the cancel button.
  
• If you allow it, players can challenge you while you are spectating a match.
  
• You can now play some singleplayer modes while waiting for a match: Training, M.O.M., M.O.M. Gold, Classic Survival, Survival, Replay List, Last Replay.
  
• The new Player Quick Match and Player Rooms both use a new matchmaking code. We hope that these changes will make Player Rooms reach a satisfying level of stability. Please give us your feedback on the public test reporting forum.
  
• Rift and Rollback frames are displayed at the top of the screen during battle.

• Close network training mode submenus when it's time to go back to the Player Room
  
• Don't allow opening multiple extra menus at the same time

• If the dummy was hit by player's memory playback, reversal memory was played on the player side, not the dummy's side
  
• Automatic playback via State: Memory wasn't working correctly for Dummy vs Dummy or CPU vs Dummy
  
• Reversal action is now executed on clash

• XInput polling performance improved by polling disconnected controllers less often. This probably affects a lot of players who use XBox controllers or Steam controller support.
  
• Optimized controller hotplugging with XInput devices, should fix this issue: https://steamproxy.com/app/348550/discussions/1/3175575850978574319/
  
• Rollback support for blackbeat indicator (Fixes blackbeat indicator displaying incorrect value after rollback).
  
• Fix crash during global Survival score display in Network Rankings
  
• Fix desync due to 25% super state not being reset between matches
  
• Fixed possible desync when battle intro animations are skipped.
  
• Improved GGPO synchronization stability.

Please follow this procedure to participate in this public test:
* Right click the game in your Steam library
* Click "Properties..."
* Go to "Betas" and select "publictest - GGPOupdatetest". Please note that the branch will be only visible when the public testing starts (Friday May 7th 2021 00:00). If testing has started and you still don’t see the branch, please restart Steam and try again.
* Close the properties menu
* The game should automatically update. After the update has ended, you’re set to go!