Linux Port of Code

[jenetik]

Any chance there will be a linux port of this code available?  If this code was available for linux and open source, you'd have more developers available and would blow away the Guitar Rising clone that's going to be available next year...

[asciaN]

Damn right!
Give a linux user an interesting problem like LBS and he'll die of hunger from working to much to eat... Sure way to jumpstart development.
Although Ole will have to make this decision.

Guitar Rising Clone? As far as I know, THIS is the Guitar Rising clone..

[Ole]

Guys,

I have been thinking about this many times since i began this work. I generally sympathise with open source efforts, but im scared of going into that domain for various reasons. I was working very hard to get where we are now and I'm affraid of 'theft' - in particular from the upcomming closed commercial titles.

After the success of thte first GuitarHero titles, everyone playing games and guitar had to be wondering: "Why can't I play something like GH on my real axe?". As most Wii titles and things like RockBand entered the living room and became cool (as opposed to nerdy) there is a rather big hole in the market for 'playing games with music instruments' or 'playing music while gaming'. Obviously the companies behind at least two commercial titles - guitar rising and guitar wizard - have spotted this. They have their business plans but it seems that they have problems elsewhere and I don't want to help them solving these in an open domain (I assume they would not contribute to an open source effort).

I know an OS initiative would be good news for all of you waiting for having fun rocking. Right now, the only way i can support you is by devoting all my free time to this project and open up parts that are not vulnarable to theft - meaning the front end - in a SDK soon to be released. I can offer a platform to let anybody make games on top of it, open or closed, whether it be GH-like or GuitarLemmings. Once LBS will be an established and a known platform and the upcomming commercial titles has show what they are capabable of, I would feel much better opening up the backend.

[asciaN]

Thanks for your thoughts on the issue, Ole.

I for one agree wholeheartedly with you. LBS will be the first title with this specific capabilities and thus is very vulnerable to hijacking. I wouldn't want to see that happen to something I've spent the better part of a year on.  I feel sad that you, as a developer, feel that open source isn't the right thing to do based on the fear of other software companies stealing your code.  But I do see your point. Sometime in the distant future, hey?

[mweiner]

Ole,

As a non-IT oriented guy I'd just love to see the product work in a more integrated way.  How about just allowing the selection of a GP file and then launching.  There just seems to be a lot of steps to get the game to play.

[Ole]

How about just allowing the selection of a GP file and then launching.  There just seems to be a lot of steps to get the game to play.

Thanks for the suggestion. I wrote that comment down on my task list.

[jenetik]

Well, I booted Windows and tried to play this game...  So far I have nothing but negative things to say about it.  I'm disappointed that I needed to download the .NET framework, XNA Framework, and it doesn't even load because it comes with no demo songs to play, not to mention it won't load an mp3 or text file for a tab.  Then it complained about not having a pixel/vertex shader 1.1 for 3D...  Sorry you won't go open source, because this is a total joke so far... Working hard to develop this and won't make it open source for linux users to use?  Plan on going nowhere with this project, maybe you can prove me wrong.  Microsoft sucks and you won't get anyone to use this software when it doesn't even work out of the box, which is what Microsoft users always want.  Please take my criticism and release a package for Windows that works with 1 click or give up and open-source it for linux.

[Ole]

Take it easy, jenetik - there are perfectly good reasons explaining your frustrations.

First, XNA was the easy choice for a quick start. I love the linux philosophy but what matters is that the windows target is a lot bigger than linux. There is a also a rather large pool of XNA indie game programmers (where at least a big handful have had LBS idea independently, but never got to an implementation), and so i am making a platform for them first. There may be non-XNA frontends for this project - which should get around the shader 1.1 requirement.

As for mp3 - mp3 is (regretably) an Intellectual Property of Fraunhofer and any implementation violate serveral patents. I cannot pay Fraunhofer the license cost and i cannot take a risk that they wont care. However, soon it will be possible to use your own audio decoders/processors (and more parts of the code will be opened for that to happen)

As for Tab-text files - if you intend to play along audio files, tab-text is just not good enough. Why dont you just look ultimate-guitar.com for the corrosponging (higher quality) GuitarPro? I thourght Tab-text is out-dated, but i may be wrong?

I cannot bundle songs because i cannot pay the license cost. I believe that the vast majority of users will want to play their own music library, and its possible! It sounds like you may want to wait for Guitar Rising - you'll have a just few songs which should work with a few clicks. LBS will be much easier to get started with once we (this community) have made some progress in tracking good accurate score files. If somebody want to share thousands of accurate songs on the bay (audio and score carefully set up to be in sync and an external mp3 decoder), there is nothing i can do about that, but my work will continue to be on the legal side.

For the open source discussion i refer to the previous post.

Again, relax and enjoy - I'm just a nice guy spending my free time on a nice project, not really hoping to make anything out of it except knowledge and a mark in my CV.

[Creaper]

Glad you replied to him before I did. I had to seriously bite my tongue when I read that post....
You handled it much better than I would have been able too..


Didn't the guy did notice that LBS is in BETA release? No software when first created works first click, there are always bugs and things to work out. That's why almost every single game created has it's release date pushed back. I'm actually surprised this is the first software he has ran into that required installing .NET.
If he really uses a *NIX system he should be used to headaches and nothing working perfectly when installing it..

[asciaN]

Creaper your thoughts echo mine exactly, but with a lot less swearing

[nejinx]

well, there's a few rare cases out there where people believe 'BETA' refers to 'better' software

[Adam]

well, there's a few rare cases out there where people believe 'BETA' refers to 'better' software

I don't think that's very rare.

Also, a text file for a tab? almost impossible, all tabs are different since they are made by different people

[goesto11]

Hi,

I only just discovered LittleBigStar and would love to try it out, but can't because I run Linux exclusively on my machines. Having discovered this thread I find what I think are some misconceptions which I'd like to address.

I have been thinking about this many times since i began this work. I generally sympathise with open source efforts, but im scared of going into that domain for various reasons. I was working very hard to get where we are now and I'm affraid of 'theft' - in particular from the upcomming closed commercial titles.
<snip>
 They have their business plans but it seems that they have problems elsewhere and I don't want to help them solving these in an open domain (I assume they would not contribute to an open source effort).

Ole, I'm not entirely sure, but I get the impression that you do not know much about how OS licenses work (if I'm wrong in this I apologise profusely, I'm not trying to condescend to you here, just trying to clear up a possible knowledge gap). When open-sourcing code you can (for example) put it under the GNU General Public License (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl). This would mean that anybody using your code or creating derivatives of it needs to himself put that code under the GPL (i.e. open-source it). So it would be impossible for any commercial venture to simply steal your code and use it for themselves (unless they then turn their product into an open-source application).

Does this help with the problem as you see it? Putting code out this way is in fact (IMO) a stronger protection against commercial competitors ripping off your work (I can elaborate on this point but don't want to bore you).

There are of course perfectly valid reasons why you may not want to open-source LittleBigStar, but fear of code theft should not be among them. I also think that the project could benefit immensely from open-sourcing, and (being egoistic for a moment) it's probably the best chance of it being ported to Linux so that I can play it  .

[nejinx]

Hmm... it would be hard to put a finger on someone stealing DSP code for example though.  The note seperation and recognition wouldn't be easy to code unless it's part of the XNA lib or something.

[Ole]

goesto11, im familiar with GNU licenses   I use a few exellent LGPL libs (fluidsynth, soundtouch) in LBS.

I really havent made a deliberate descision about the future of LBS, and i dont want to open source before having done that. Sorry to keep you waiting