What are the "must-know"s of the editor?

Afterbeat Editor
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Last time I used this editor was 4 years ago on a beginner level (was still figuring out how to use it iirc) that is considered lost media now, and now I pretty much forgot everything and zlucky’s tutorial is considered outdated I think, and mountain’s doesn’t go into detail as much as I initially thought and as of typing this catix only released part 1 of the tutorial series.. which is 5 months old

To be frank, I’m not that interested in making levels and instead just want to do pretty (maybe looping) visuals and record them and put them in as background videos for my step mania/Etterna charts

I don’t see a better animation tool than Project Arrhythmia’s level editor if I’m being honest, other tools like Adobe Animate or blender or industry tools in general are just not fit for this (they look very complicated and very bloated)

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It’s a bit tough to explain without visuals, but I’ll try to break it down as best I can:

  • Along the bottom of the level preview are some numbered buttons along with a similar one that should say “E/C”. The numbered buttons are just different timelines purely for space to organize objects and have no actual bearing on what the level looks like. The E/C stands for events/checkpoints, that is where you can add effect keyframes such as shake, bloom, vignette, etc. as well as checkpoints to your level.
  • Shift click + dragging up or down an object you have selected will move what bin it is in on the timeline.
  • The undo button is still sort of broken so refrain from using it if possible, just spam saves all the time. If you forget, you can load an autosave by renaming one of the autosave files to replace the level file.
  • You can easily scroll number values with your scroll wheel + control. This will increment the value by 1 unit. You can additionally hold shift along with control to increment by .1 unit instead.

I’m probably forgetting some things but these are what I can remember off the top of my head. A lot of stuff in Zlucky’s tutorials do still apply to the editor, so that will still help somewhat. Hope any of this helps!

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When copying and pasting keyframes from Object A to Object B, after copying keyframes from Object A, make sure to select any keyframe in Object B first, then hit Paste otherwise it’s not going to do what you want it to do.

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Being able to multi edit and lock objects I use that constantly.

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Multi edit and lock objects? First time I’ve heard about this

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Multi edit lets you change a lot of stuff for a group of selected objects at once. If you select multiple objects the object edit panel changes automatically to let you multi edit stuff.

Locking objects just “locks” them in place on the timeline so you can’t accidentally move them. You press Ctrl+L and it locks/unlocks all selected objects.

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You could still check out zlucky’s tutorials! It’s true that they’re outdated, but even though a lot has changed, the concepts still apply and a lot of the buttons are even in the same places.

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