RCade

A four-lane rhythm game built with C++ and raylib, featuring five original songs and an ongoing performance investigation.

RCade began as an independently developed university course project and continues as a personal engineering project. Players use A / S / D / F to hit notes as they approach the judgment line.

Gameplay

• Five original tracks with BPM-driven notes and randomly assigned lanes.
• Perfect, Good and Bad input judgments; unhit notes become Miss after their timing window expires.
• Intro, main menu, song selection, 3–2–1–GO, gameplay and score screen.
• Press Enter on the score screen to return to the main menu.

Song	BPM
LoveTheWorld	110
Courage Delivery	125
Re:verse	130
Fresh Afternoon	130
Ryuko (Hard)	180

Quick Start — Windows

The project has been rebuilt with MSYS2 MinGW64 GCC 14.2.0 and raylib 5.5. Install a compatible toolchain and raylib development libraries before building. Binaries and runtime DLLs are not tracked in Git.

From PowerShell in the project root:

.\build.ps1
.\Play.cmd

The script defaults to C:\msys64\mingw64. To use another compatible installation:

.\build.ps1 -Toolchain 'C:\path\to\mingw64'

The build creates build/music_game.exe and copies matching runtime DLLs into build/. Play.cmd starts that executable with the project root as its working directory so resources/ can be found.

On the author's local machine, the root-level music_game.exe has also been replaced with the updated build. Future builds update build/; use Play.cmd to run the latest compiled version.

What Has Been Verified

Item	Status
Default logging	Reduced to warnings and errors; --verbose restores detailed logging
Frame profiling	Optional in-memory collection with CSV export on normal exit
Build	Successfully rebuilt using the environment above
Statistics checks	Empty/single sample, percentile ordering and threshold boundaries passed
CLI validation	Invalid arguments rejected
Gameplay A/B comparison	Not completed; no measured improvement is claimed

The author play-tested the updated game on September 23, 2026 and reported noticeably smoother gameplay. This is qualitative feedback, not a controlled A/B measurement; the size and cause of the improvement remain unverified. Full regression and audio checks remain pending.

Compare Logging Modes

Run these launchers separately and play the same song under comparable conditions:

.\Profile-Quiet.cmd
.\Profile-Verbose.cmd

Each launcher saves a CSV under profiles/ after normal game exit, then displays the summary. Profiles are excluded from Git. For direct use from the project root:

.\build\music_game.exe --profile quiet.csv
.\build\music_game.exe --verbose --profile verbose.csv

The summary reports mean, p95, p99, maximum frame time, and counts above 25/50 ms. Samples cover active gameplay loop iterations, including EndDrawing() and frame pacing. They are not GPU completion timings or isolated CPU/GPU execution measurements. Countdown and fade-out iterations are excluded; multiple songs in one run share the same dataset.

See measurement procedure and limitations. The logging hypothesis has not yet been confirmed by an actual A/B experiment.

Project Layout

RCade/
├── include/                 # Interfaces, state, constants, FrameProfile.h
├── src/                     # Game, Block, Input, Audio, Render, SongDatabase, main
├── resources/               # Music, images, sound effects and video files (flat layout)
├── tests/frame_profile_test.cpp
├── docs/
│   ├── DESIGN.md
│   └── OPTIMIZATION.md
├── build.ps1
├── Play.cmd
├── Profile-Quiet.cmd
├── Profile-Verbose.cmd
├── ASSETS.md
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── readme.pdf               # Original course-project document
└── README.md

Technical design explains timing, input, audio and module responsibilities.

Known Limitations and Next Steps

• Notes use BPM and random lanes rather than authored beatmaps.
• The current input chain processes only one lane per frame.
• Song offset, note travel time and device latency still need clearer separation and calibration.
• Menu update and rendering responsibilities remain intertwined; resource cleanup needs further work.
• Pause, retry, configurable controls and richer results are planned.
• Portable release packaging and more reproducible performance experiments remain future work.

The original source baseline is preserved by the baseline-original tag. Subsequent changes are recorded in CHANGELOG.md.

Authorship and Assets

• Blank Tsai — original course-project programming and system implementation.
• VioletBK — the five original songs, composed and produced by the author.
• Image assets were generated with AI assistance.
• Post-course AI assistance has included code analysis, documentation, optimization planning and implementation. Changes and verification results are recorded in Git history and the changelog.

See ASSETS.md for source details and outstanding asset information. No open-source license is granted; third-party dependencies retain their own licenses.

All rights reserved for the author's original contributions.

Screenshots

Main Menu

The opening menu introduces the game's visual style.

Song Selection

Choose from five original songs with different BPM values.

Gameplay

Use A / S / D / F to hit approaching notes. The capture shows the score and timing feedback during play.