Stage transition loading shouldn't require a black screen

[kindred spade]

Stage transitions shouldn't need a black screen. This feels like a step backward compared with the PSV/PSP entries, which had slick seamless transitions.

Stage transition loading shouldn't require a black screen

[clear fjord]

I agree, I came to post the same issue. the black screen stop my thinking and tracing of the blocks that i want to burst. seamless transition will enhance the immersive experience that the game is striving for.

[nimble owl]

I also agree. I also sent the feedback in their Google form. It severely breaks my immersion and I'm quite sad about it.

Looks like it's a similar engine as Tetris, so I'm unsure how feasible it is for them to make changes ...

[charred thunder]

i mean on one side it would feel more "lumines" because, as the original message said, they all had seamless transitions, and it might be possible to keep the gameplay while the stage is transitioning, but on the other side i think the gameplay during those few seconds would feel very awkward

[buoyant escarp]

every other lumines: 2d/video/simple 3d skins. easy to load, quick transitions

lumines arise: fully 3d scenes, hundreds or particles and effects and physics, there's no way you're making a smooth transition

[charred thunder]

to be fair, particles and physics is more of a cpu task, rather than a disk one

and there's ways around the loading, like having both stages loaded, and just swap them out in the transition point

or the game could lazy-load the next stage as you progress through the current one to avoid stutters

[fossil sphinx]

100%.

I'd rather lose most of the special effects and keep that smooth transition. I did back to back Lumines Remastered / arise playbacks, and what I enjoy most are those long states of flow where I'm so focused it's like the game plays itself. That's absolutely not possible in Arise with those breaks and incredibly, INCREDIBLY disappointing.

[stuck pasture]

agreeing

[loud falcon]

not trying to downplay the idea of smooth transitions but optimisation is a huge deal with Arise especially if it's aiming for Steam Deck hardware, and loading the assets for two stages simultaneously might up the requirements significantly by doubling the load at times. Not sure on the exact way it works but there's probably a reason it's being done this way

[charred thunder]

i haven't checked but i don't think it uses that much memory on a single stage

[nimble owl]

I can't imagine it's that difficult for optimizing the effects themselves though I could be wrong; I played it on Steam Deck on medium and it performed exceedingly well (though cranking it to high had some performance issues).

But since the release date has been announced, unsure how likely they'd be able to do that kind of modification by then without some relatively major changes.

Crossing my fingers that they already have something implemented or have it on the roadmap at all as Lumines is one of my favorite games ever and the seamless transitions/immersion is a big part of why.

[clever gazelle]

yeah on one hand Arise lacking a smooth transition feels extremely jarring

on the other, loading both stages at once will surely make low end devices with those terrible iGPUs of the past suffer. But those devices are slowly getting left behind (thank god)
Besides, they call for minimum specs way higher than those low specs anyways so it shouldn't be as bad as I make it out to be.

I mean I run hardware very close (but a bit better GPU) to the minimum requirements and it runs at medium very comfortably. Loading both stages on this hardware might cause stuttering while the transition happens, but I'll take the stutter over the jarring fade to black.

I believe the main issue with a transition like Remastered will be load times for sure. Unlike the 2d sprites and such, Arise is loading 3d assets which may take significantly longer. This matters because there are still those who run games off of mechanical drives, or an emmc... so the more loading each asset requires, the bigger the load times differences between storage hardware.

You can have instantaneous smooth transitions but you'll have to keep partially or most of the next stage loaded at all time, which paired with how much resource intensive activating burst mode is, can introduce lag and stutters even to minimum requirement hardware.
Or you can have the next stage load on stage clear, but have inconsistent smooth transition durations that depend on storage hardware...
Or perhaps you can have something in the middle where it starts loading the next stage as you get closer to the stage complete, but now you run the same risk of significant lag when you also activate burst towards the end.

I too know little about 3D game optimizing, but I can tell that they've put effort into it. So here's hoping they find a way to keep the optimization to the maximum while finding a satisfying way to do smooth transitions

[grim wolf]

Were the smooth transitions to happen, in the case of the second stage to the third one in the demo, do you think it's kind of feasible to just swiftly fade out the previous stage's assets and fade in the next one's without breaking the immersion?

Besides, this is Monstars NOT Resonair we're speaking of, they pretty much come from TE:C (despite the engine being Unity NOT UE4/5 for Arise), it'd be a challenging concept to bring forward the smooth transitions with this

[clever gazelle]

I'd be fine with the fade in/out of assets, if the play field didn't also disappear

What if the play field "fade out" was just the assets, and while the assets are being swapped, the field positions are represented by simple lines and shapes so it doesn't feel like being kicked out of a stage

[grim wolf]

On another note, there may be breaks between stages as well in Arise if you're coming from TE:C

Think of it as areas with each getting its own score and rank aside from the total

[clever gazelle]

it was fine in TE:C, since there was no lingering completed lines. The moment you pass the line completion mark, you're done, you can't place no more.

but in lumines, you're constantly completing squares well in advanced, and the stage only completes after the sweeper collects those squares, so having the transition just stop you while you're still placing blocks is incredibly jarring

[fossil sphinx]

Yeah it's very jarring, and makes the game not-Lumines to me. If I had gotten the demo and played first I probably wouldn't have preordered. I doubt Sony would let me cancel because they're quite draconian with all that.

And I know it seems like I'm exaggerating but to me it's like having an ad run in the middle of a conversation when watching a show. Any focus I had is just disrupted.

Sure the graphics are sexy and ooh and aah, and I'm very happy to be able to control a lot of the more disruptive (to me) effects like zoom and wiggle but this?

If there were an 'oldschool' option that has a smooth transition at the cost of flattening everything out, removing 90% of the special effects, or whatever else is needed, that's a reasonable tradeoff to me.

Realistically with 2.5 months of dev time and console certification, I'm incredibly doubtful they'd be able to make a dent.

Just really disappointed.

[clever gazelle]

yeah the transition just completely kills it

[fossil sphinx]

Luckily the pre order refund is allowed through Sony.

I'll continue to follow this in hopes it gets fixed though. The music is solid (hoping for a mix of chill tracks and backgrounds too) and the visuals are cool, just a touch distracting even turned down (the chameleons are a bit extreme)

[coarse rivet]

i agree with stage transitions being a neat feature but holy exagerration batman

[rain hill]

Hopping in to agree. As someone who's played every Lumines game since the OG on release date, this is a large part of the Lumines experience for me. Its not a complete dealbreaker for me (thank you for making a new Lumines!!!), but I really want seamless stage transitions somehow.

[kind crow]

The lack of "transitions" makes this game not Lumines enough? I know previous Lumines games had it, but the transitions are the last thing I think of when it comes to the Lumines series. The comparison of the transition to an ad break is extremely exaggerated

I think the transitions in this game fit the vibe more compared to Electronic Symphony's extremely smooth transition

[fossil sphinx]

You misunderstand me. The fact that there's a pause between skin changes that interrupts the flow is what breaks it from being Lumines.

Compare to Lumines Remastered - there's a perfectly seamless change from one skin to the next as the challenge line crosses the screen. In Lumines Arise, the action stops, the board disappears for about five seconds, and the action restarts.

In Lumines Remastered I can be in a state of flow for several skins, racking up combos, and just in a great state. In Lumines Arise, just when I start going, there's a sudden stop, and a pause....then back to the action.

It's incredibly jarring. I can't get in a state of enjoyment or flow. It's like I'm absolutely absorbed and then someone butts in and breaks my concentration.

For me, Lumines has been about getting into that state of flow as the scene changes, the music changes, the challenge bar speeds up and slows down, the dynamic rhythm that I start to match.

It's impossible for me to get that in Arise with the pause between every skin.

[turbid plank]

+1 I hope the full game will have seamless stage transitions.

[rain hill]

1000% agree

Its probably a function of having way more complicated 3D visual effects a la Tetris Effect. I can see how it would be hard to transition those quickly and it seems like they might even be loading in that transition period.

The visual effects are beautiful and having them is ... nice, but I'd take the seamless stage transitions any day of the week. I can't really look or focus on the stage visuals while I'm playing, but I can feel the gaps in gameplay and it ruins the flow state that you get into with games like Rez and earlier Lumines.

[hexed oasis]

Here’s another agree from me. transition with breaks and stage set with results (if this one also goes on full game) make this more like Lumines Effect than new Lumines to me.

[old hornet]

it is just really easy to keep playing Lumines and lose track of time (I think the Arise Demo Guide video says something like that being the point in Arise too) when it seamlessly goes into each other - I spent like an hour, probably more, zoned into Lumines Remastered on the Switch last night. but i figure there's a broader appeal/accessibility if playing the game doesn't require a continuous multi-hour play session to play through the main Journey, just committing to a Tetris Effect style chunk of 3. and I think this definitely evokes Tetris Effect's structure, probably helping to draw in people who liked Tetris Effect and had never tried Lumines. but it would at least be cool to have seamlessness between those three. I figure it's kind of very late in development to make a big design/engineering change like that though. and I don't hate having a couple of seconds of downtime between the stages

[old hornet]

and I think it's just.. both (a new Lumines game and Lumines Effect). it's a new Lumines game with the Tetris Effect aesthetics. Lumines's core is surely the puzzle game rather than one presentation aspect

[coarse rivet]

As much as I like this idea the OP made it sound like its a simple task lmao, when this could be one of the hardest changes to implement entirely

although I would like to see it as well, just because it would look cooler

[umbral island]

I also don’t like it. It is objectively a step back in the series

[loud falcon]

If I could draw your attention to this from the Q&A? 😛

(sorry for the awful crop but I'm cozy in bed following up on Q&A so you get my awful phone edited compression hacks

[fossil sphinx]

I'm incredibly grateful that the devs are talking about it and not dodging the issue.

I'll absolutely take a look at how things pan out at and after release. It doesn't sound like it'll necessarily be what I'm looking for but thems the breaks sometimes.

[loud falcon]

yeah, it might not be exactly what the older games did but who knows, maybe having dedicated transitions that are designed to flow rather than just having a crossfade might even turn out cooler than the older games (even with the slight gameplay pause) haha, until we actually have an example of one it's just hoping for the best

[fossil sphinx]

Agreed 👍

[vague spade]

Joined the discord to see if there was any chatter about this after playing the demo. Will be interesting to see how it looks in the full-game because I agree the demo transitions are pretty jarring.

[jagged kraken]

if that survival mode has level transitions that are "somewhat seamless" then i think people will be happy

[rain viper]

Unpopular opinion: I actually welcome the breaks between scene changes. Playing old Lumines games I felt like I just couldn’t catch a break and the game was rushing me along.

[loud falcon]

this is something the team has heard as well yeah, was raised near the end of that interview clip

[humble sinew]

agreed, yeah

it's d be nice for seamless transitions but the black screen is a nice moment to catch your breath before the game resumes

[loud falcon]

We now have samples of what the custom transitions look like 😄

[humble sinew]

????????????? holy shit that's so cool

[eager scarab]

god the astronauts waving are so adorable

[humble sinew]

yeah!!

[old hornet]

oooh :)

[marsh violet]

i second the request for seamless stage transitions, or maybe at least the oiption for them

[loud falcon]

Are the curated transitions not enough? I don't think 100% seamless is possible since stages are entire 3d environments this time rather than 2d assets so quickly loading and unloading them from memory has the potential to cause optimisation headaches

[digital mantle]

I think so