PC Guitar Hero game?

**SomeKindOfRobot** · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Posts: 14 Location: Los Angeles

I just wanted to float out the idea of some energy being put into a PC version of Guitar Hero, a la Dance With Intensity being done for DDR. I've seen adapters for PS2 controllers to be plugged into PCs, so I know that the guitar could work...

...the major obstacle that I run into when thinking through this is the song itself, and the seperation of the lead guitar track with the rest of the song. This could be a major pain if you want to make your own levels. Other than this problem, I think it's definitely possible.

Just wanted to test the waters on this kind of idea. I've seen Maximus's work on step files and the other PC programs submitted, so all this could definitely be thrown together into one fully functioning game. I think it would be great to be able to try some really crazy guitar solos....

....Eruption, anyone?

.robot
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**JCirri** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 4576

A project has already begun where you can insert your GH disc and the songs will play in a simulated environment. The creator of this is now working on a practice mode where it would accept input from the SG controller connection via a PS2->PC adaptor and you would be able to play along at variable speeds, or loop certain sections of songs to practice them.

http://home.rochester.rr.com/gendreau/vgsplayer/
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**SomeKindOfRobot** · Joined: 17 Apr 2006 Posts: 14 Location: Los Angeles

Yeah, I saw that, but it didn't look like there was any capability of writing your own songfiles and creating custom levels, or using it apart from the GH disk.
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**MaximusDM** · Posted: Mon Apr 17, 2006 11:42 pm Post subject:

Dan, the creator of the VGSPlayer had sent me a private message reguarding a simulator after he viewed my stepfile, I sent him one back but I didn't get a response. Not sure if he didn't get it or he just hasn't logged onto ScoreHero to view it. Nice that someone actually noticed my topic because no one even posted on it. -_-
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**ImaCarrot** · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 2687

I'd be interested for sure, I'm not a programmer though and that's what we would really need. Anyone here good at C++? That's the language that Stepmania uses, and it would make sense to just adapt that engine to our needs rather than create one from scratch.

I can do 3d and 2d art that's suitable for pc games, and I just started playing around with the step creator thing in stepmania.

Actually recreating Guitar Hero as close as possible wouldn't be a good idea cause we would most definately get a cease and desist from RedOctance. If we create a guitar playing game that happens to have the same type of score system and other mechanics without actually using any of their resources, that's a different story. So basically, we can make Guitar Hero just as long as we don't use anything that RedOctane and it's partners have copyrighted.

Anyone else interested?

**dgendreau** · Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 19

Hi all. After I finish VGSPlayer, I would like to work on a separate custom song player. It will be a lot of work though. We will need a song editor as well as an xml tab file format. I have begun designs but nothing is finalized yet.

Initially, just muting the whole song is a passable alternative to the 2 track option. However, splitting a song into separate parts may not be as impossible as you may think. I have played around with a bunch of songs in soundforge and you can do a lot with filtering, compression and sigma/delta transformation. Similar to the way surround sound can send specific sounds to specific speakers in a home theater, it is possible to split a song out into many parts based on frequency and stereo image. Its not perfect, and it would require human input to edit them, but with the right software tools, separating the guitar part from many songs for the most part is possible.

If anyone is interested in collaborating on a project like this over the summer, please email me: gendreau(at)rochester(dot)rr(dot)com

We will need people to work on skins, songs and to help code and test it. I would like to use the StepMania codebase as a starting point and build a new game engine from there.

My main reservation is that I am opposed to porting any Guitar Hero content over to the PC. That would harm RedOctane's relationship with their artists and I for one want to see them make many more sequels. I would rather see people make tabs for other rock songs or share original songs of their own creation.

It is possible to share tabs legally if we can come up with a way to link the tab files with the CD the song came from. Maybe something like the way the CDDB identifies CDs?

-Dan G.

**ImaCarrot** · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 2687

Hey Dan, seems like you read my mind with the project you want to work on Mr. Green

I have some sound editing experience, enough to know that seperating the guitar track is hard.

**dgendreau** · Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 19

Hi ImaCarrot1,

Re: sound splitting

I agree that there are no magic bullets. I'm oversimplifying to keep it short, but what I am suggesting is something more along the lines of manually identifying the frequency range of the guitar part and gating just that part. Since we are going to be entering the actual rhythm of the notes into the editor, we could even gate the individual notes. I think that will be good enough for some songs.

I hope that we can come up with something that works reasonably well, but little short of the original multitracks will sound perfect.

Re: songs

I can even see a few independent artists being interested in releasing their music in this format for free. I wouldnt want to distribute commercial content with this program, but as long as people can make their own song packs like StepMania does, there should be plenty of songs available.

Eh, Metallica are a bunch of obsolete dinosaurs.

If they dont want people obsessing over every note of their music, thats fine with me. I can even put a check in it that doesnt allow any song with metallica in the title to be played.

-Dan G.

**ImaCarrot** · Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 2687

**JCirri** · Joined: 04 Feb 2006 Posts: 4576

Sounds like a great idea. Depending how similar to GH you'd want to make it, I have figured out the details of how the scoring system works (from experimenting in the game, not from any content on the GH disk) and as you know, have already done extensive programming on score calculations.

So if you want to keep the scoring in the simulator similar to the game with multipliers, star power and such, I'd be willing to redesign stepmania's scoring system (assuming this is possible) to reflect the game's system.
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**TheShineNSB** · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 121

**trofl** · Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1297 Location: Ames, IA

I've fiddled with the guitar controller using my USB adapter, and one thing I've noticed is that the whammy bar must have something different going on with it than a regular controller because it will not register as any button or axis (in Windows or Linux). It might be a constraint of my adapter (EMS USB2), but that might be something to look into before going too far with this. Perhaps I should ask if anyone else is having similar issues with their adapters? Tilting the guitar does register, however... I think as either R3 or R2.

**MaximusDM** · Posted: Wed Apr 26, 2006 7:27 am Post subject:

The whammy bar should register as the left analog stick. I have a USB adapter as well, but I haven't seen a simulator that incorperates the whammy bar as of yet.
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**dgendreau** · Joined: 12 Apr 2006 Posts: 19

I'm not familiar with the EMS USB2, but I have seen a few usb adapters that map the left analog stick to the same axis as the D-Pad. This is bad because that means the whammy bar and the strum-up do the same thing.

I use the "Super Dual Box Pro" from MayPro. You have to download the latest driver from their website and in the control panel, set the D-Pad to function as individual buttons instead of a directional axis.

Maybe the EMS has something similar? You might need a newer driver.

-Dan G.

**trofl** · Joined: 26 Apr 2006 Posts: 1297 Location: Ames, IA

Hmm, don't mean to hijack this thread into a technical support one, but I do have the latest driver, and my adapter has seperate axes defined for the analog sticks. It works just fine with a regular PS2 controller or dance pad. But no matter how fast or how slow or how insane I go with the whammy bar, it doesn't want to register. I might just send the company an email seeing if there's anyway that they might be able to develop a new driver to fix this... it appears that they have pretty good support from what I can see on their site.

Thanks for the help though!