I just built Piano Odyssey and tried it out with a virtual midi keyboard (for now :) ). Thats a similar interface to what we're looking at on the keyboard side.
I'll give my full breakdown for you, and anyone else that this could interest, along with why I intend to start (another) music simulator. Background: All the open source music simulators i'm aware of, either focus on one instrument and how to present information to that instrument, such as Piano Odyssey or Synthesia, which fulfill their role for piano. Or Are game interface focused like Digiband, and do not support real interfaces: Keyboards, ( Guitar/bass as in 4-6 strings and 24 frets), or real music (aside from drums). Interface:Perhaps i'm a little selfish being a guitar player with a midi interface on my guitar (roland gk series) but Its all just music, so if i want to see scrolling sheet music, or piano keys, or guitar tablature, it shouldn't matter. I'm aware of midi violin's and am pretty sure there are other midi interfaced intruments out there. SuperSEQ will be designed in a way that once an instrument interface is added, it will turn up as a display mode. That is what SuperSEQ is focusing on, a transparent interface to as much content as can be. Content:Standard midi files are all over the net. This is where portsmf comes into play. A large part of learning music is practice, so when someone may want to try something new, they can spend a minute online, find some new midi files to import, pick the channels to assign to each player ( keyboard display mode for ch1, guitar display mode for ch2, drum display mode for ch9) and play away. Granted, all files will not work for input for all intrument types, but for example, any single note melody will translate 1 to 1 for guitar, and drum tracks should be able to be extracted from channel 9 in most midi files, one of my focus at first will be the guitar logic display side of it. The other views: Keyboard, drums, and standard sheet music are pretty straight forward scrolling with time. Interaction ( after 1 and 2 are stable): For anyone thats spent hours playing Space Invaders, Pacman, and Duck Hunt, It isn't difficult to see how something very simple, can also be very entertaining. Alongside showing music to play, to have music that can be played with. Think of the star spangled banner generating an obsticle course to fly a plane through, and the only way to get through is correctly playing the song, or have a nightmare of zombies attacking to flight of the bumblebee . . . at full speed. Sitting down to a game (at least to younger audiences) is often less intimidating then sitting down to a "Lesson", and defeating a level, can be more motivating then practicing the same thing over and over. Alternatively, take the approach of getting home from a long days work and wanting to relax. I personally like to play music to relax, but often may not want to work through something new to play (Being especially bad at sight reading standard music) but would like to have more variety. Learning should be challenging, entertaining, and accessable. Once the information is in, no matter what controller is being used, any game can be played, or training done. I'm currently working on the backend functions (learning portsmf/portmidi), and cleaning up my joystick->midi code (which supports gamepads note events, analog axis -> note events, and ddr pads ->note events). I also plan on writing a wiimote->midi interface similar to what the wiinstrument had for (primarilly) drum input, with ir tracker zone support (initial support shows 2 zones should be easily be able to be defined with a standard sensor bar. I'm focusing on the backend now as the target for the game engine is crystalspace/blender, and i'm waiting for some of the new features from the apricot project to work their way into the main trees. Well that ended up being alot longer then I was planning on, its now turned into the new main page for superseq.sourceforge.net. for anyone interested I hope to have my joystick->midi code in svn soon, as soon as I finish cleaning up some code it'll be in subversion on there. On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Steven Hunt wrote: > Hi, > I've been lurking on the list for a little while, and this is somewhat > relevant to my project so I thought I'd pipe up. > > My project is a game called Piano Odyssey (sourceforge: > http://sourceforge.net/projects/pianoherogl ), which is more guitar > hero -like than Nathanael's plan. It's specifically targeted at MIDI > pianos, and at people who are not already pianists. It distinguishes > itself from the guitar hero franchise in two ways: > 1. Since the instrument is a piano, the hand position can change > 2. When the player starts doing really well the screen rotates by 90 > degrees so that the notes go from falling down to falling sideways. > This latter state is the same as reading sheet music but with > non-traditional symbols (and the notes are flying right instead of > left). > > It distinguishes itself from other MIDI piano games (e.g. Synthesia, > www.synthesiagame.com ) by providing levels of difficulty for every > song (like guitar hero), though I should note that on the hardest > difficulty level every note on the sheet music is played. This leads > to the project's main disadvantage: that it can't work with any random > MIDI file. Songs have to be created by hand with the included song > editor. > > I'd also like to point out that the game only uses portmidi, not > portsmf. Perhaps in the future I use it to do some sort of automatic > conversion from a MIDI file to the four levels of difficulty I need, > but that's not really on the radar for me yet. > > Anyway good luck with your project, it sounds like it will be awesome. > My advice is to make sure to distinguish your project from the other > major players out there, and pick a name that won't get you into any > legal trouble ;) I say this because an early version of Synthesia is > on sourceforge under the name Piano Hero; when the dev decided to > pursue commercialization he got a C&D letter from Activision. I chose > my original name (Piano Hero GL) before learning that bit of trivia, > which is why I'm now stuck with a sourceforge page called pianoherogl, > yet my game is now Piano Odyssey! > > > Steven Hunt > > On Sat, Jun 28, 2008 at 9:45 AM, Nathanael Anderson > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I've been in contact with a dev of portsmf, and he reccomended I post > > information on what i'm working on to this list. > > > > portsmf sounds like exactly what i've been looking for. I plan on > starting > > with a technical demo in sdl that will scroll the notes by that are seen > on > > a staff, such that they could easily be played along with. I was hoping > to > > find someone to explain the associated data structures, and how I should > be > > working with them. As the code i'm making will also be gpl'd and my final > > project won't be sdl based, i'd gladly give the code to portsmf should it > > get to what you'd consider a useful state. > > > > In case this is of interest to you, or friends of yours. I've been > throwing > > around the idea of a guitar hero style game, except for real instruments. > > I've played guitar for 9 years, and have a rolad gk series guitar (midi > > interface), along with have written a joystick->midi userspace program, > that > > I usually use with hydrogen for drum input. I'm waiting for the apricot > > project (blender and crystalspace3d) to finish its Integration project, > and > > plan on using that as the visual engine for the game, but I want to get > the > > backend basic functions working before then in sdl. I'm also planning to > > play around with the clam audio libraries. > > > > Thanks again for the response, If your ever on irc.freenode.org i'm > usually > > around in #linuxice, #clam, and #cmusphinx. > > > > Nathanael > > _______________________________________________ > > media_api mailing list > > media_api@create.ucsb.edu > > http://lists.create.ucsb.edu/mailman/listinfo/media_api > > > > >
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