0.3.2 is out - Major update!
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
What’s new:
- New song-scheme! This will fullfil the promise i made - to play any song
- Sync problems solved!
- New SmartSync frontend
- New song creation/editing UI
- A simple guitar tuner (to be improved)
- Replay functionality (shortcut key ‘r’)
- 3 seconds delay before a song starts
- A blind attempt to fix the Vista x64 bug (I still dont have an x64 system)
Solving the Sync-problem, once and for all
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
Its 2.25 at night and im proud to say that i think we have a solution for the sync problems we have all been facing.
Earlier today i sat to try to sync various versions of Led Zeppelins classic ‘Stairway to Heaven’. The song has serveral tempo changes and is 8 mins long, so I thought if tabs of this song can be synced, anything can.
It turned out it could not. The reason is that the none of the 11 GuitarPro tabs i found were anywhere near accurate enough! Dispair not - here comes the grand idea:
I made a new visualization which should let you sync almost anything. It will look much like the premature score sheet visualization and it will work like this:
The song will play, and your syncing task is to tab along with ’space’ on all measure-beginnings (like familiar tabbing music games where you tab to the rythm). The visualization will then record the tabs and magically align the notes to your tabbing. Next time you load that song, it should be in sync.
Beautiful?
The hard part was already implemented today! It has caused major changes - among other things, the song file format (.LBS) has changed to a binary file.
After this i want to see some songs, guys!
0.3.1 and SDK release!
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
0.3.1 is a bugfix release - there are some good news:
- In previous versions there have ofren been too many notes! this is fixed.
- Song sync parameters should be saved correctly in game mode (sync once per song)
- Discrete mode works again (I had a blast with ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in discrete mode)
- New logging functionality (should help future bugfixing)
- Minor bug fixes.
The SDK empowers anyone to develop new kinds of music games! You will need Visual Studio 2008 or Visual C# Express Edition and XNA Game Studio 3.0 to get started developing. Full souce code for all visualizations is included.
Milestones
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
I made a very rough development plan. I havent estimated time-wise but there are plenty of things to get excited about - to list a few:
- Creation of custom song challenges/setlists.
- Karaoke, Piano and Drums.
- Score simplifier.
- Battling!
- VST effects.
- Music Videos backgrounds/screens in game mode
Surely these think will not happen over night, but technically they should be within reach.
LittleBigStar 0.3 beta is out!
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
A new release is comming soon. Focus has been on the new 3D visualizations and the SDK that enables anyone to write more. Much code has been rewritten in order to make this as smooth as possible and many bugs have been fixed.
Whats new:
- Beautiful new 3D visualizations (thanks to Cinco and Creaper!).
- Creation and editing of songs is easier.
- Game mode saves synchronizing parameters (sync once for each song!)
- More bug fixes.
- SDK 0.3 comming within few days!
- Multiplayer visualizations can be set up individually (use F1 to F4 to set focus)
- New keyboard commands: ‘f’ and ’p' (nothing exciting, you’ll see what they do)
LBS getting hot!
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
A very talented modeller, Cinco, has joined the development of LBS and a couple of nights of creative discussions and modeling hints at a bright and colorful future for the project.
Stalled… this weekend and the next
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
I’m at a business trip in Denver though this weekend and the next and I will not have much time for coding. Here is what im up to:
- Automatic Score Simplifier
- Voice Recognition
- Karaoke visualization
- I’m slowly starting to ponder at VST hosting
Meanwhile I’m waiting for some game developer(s) and artist(s) will join me and create nicer frontends and 3D models.
Improving chord recognition by dampening strings
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
I have notived that note/chord recognition works much better when played with a plectrum then with my fingers. This is due to the sharper attack a plectrum produces.
I also notice that dampening strings have a very positive effect on chord recognition. This is theoretically sound, as the problem of chord recognition is mainly due to ‘interference’ between the different notes. With dampened strings, any note will have a shorter sustain and thus interfere less with subsequent notes.
It is also possible I can tune a note recognition algorithm to work better with dampened guitar than the current implementation. Then perhaps it could be possible to build some artificial sustain effect into the software to compensate for the dampening.
So how here is a challenge for all of you - how do we make a good dampener device for our guitars? Preferably it should sit near the bridge in order to dampen all notes. This is my first attempt:
Don’t get me wrong - there are other ways to improve the current implementation - but something that works quite like a sock may turn out to be a real winner.
Anyone can play guitar…
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
I’d like LBS to be for everyone - not least for guitar beginniers like myself. However, there has been some concern that a guitar game like LBS will be too hard to play - after all it comprises playing a game AND playing guitar at the same time. My own experiments with LBS support this claim, but I do not believe that the sheer difficulty is a showstopper.
The first approach for lowering the bar was a ‘discrete’ play mode (as opposed to ‘real time’ play). This mode simply stops and waits at every note (waiting for you to play it). It is not yet working 100% but I have found it quite useful and refreshing.
Another approach is to slow down songs. Slowing down notes is easy but slowing down audio is challenging due to the inverse of the (much beloved) ‘chipmunking’ phenomenon. The good news of today is that I made a new plugin for LBS and it works quite well! The implementation use the superb SoundTouch library.
A first 0.2 release is expected by the end of this weekend which will also feature basic support for Midi instruments!
FrontEnd SDK available!
Posted by Ole | Filed under Development, News
This weekend I finished working on a new SDK which empowers anyone to create frontends for LBS. So, if you are interested in creating XNA games that involves music and/or music instruments let me know (post below or in the forum).
