So, I'm a massive fan of music games. I'll shamefully admit that I was tragically addicted to Dance Dance Revolution about 10 years ago. Recently, it's Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

I quite like the band ensemble games, they're good party games, and great rhythm practise that's actually applicable to real instrument skills too.

The problem is though, that Neversoft and Harmonix completely fucked up the GH and RB franchises. Licensing problems, fragmented tracklists. It's annoying that all the songs you want to play are spread across literally 10 or so different games, and you need to constantly change disc's if you want to play the songs you like.

I've been meaning to kick off a guitar hero clone since GH2 came out. I started one years ago as a fork of my Guitar Hero song editor for PS2, and I added support for drums before GH4 or RB were conceived, but then when they announced those games they stole my thunder and it went into hibernation.

I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
code, in D).
Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
more fun to work in a small team.

It's an interesting union of skills; rendering, audio processing, super-low-latency synchronisation, mini and communications processing, animation, UI and presentation.

I have done all this stuff commercially, so I can act as a sort of project lead of people are interested, but haven't tried to write that sort of software before.

It also seems like a good excuse to kick off a fairly large scale and performance intensive D project, which I like to do from time to time.

On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:43:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
> So, I'm a massive fan of music games. I'll shamefully admit that I was
> tragically addicted to Dance Dance Revolution about 10 years ago. Recently,
> it's Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
>
> I quite like the band ensemble games, they're good party games, and great
> rhythm practise that's actually applicable to real instrument skills too.
>
> The problem is though, that Neversoft and Harmonix completely fucked up the
> GH and RB franchises. Licensing problems, fragmented tracklists. It's
> annoying that all the songs you want to play are spread across literally 10
> or so different games, and you need to constantly change disc's if you want
> to play the songs you like.
>
> I've been meaning to kick off a guitar hero clone since GH2 came out. I
> started one years ago as a fork of my Guitar Hero song editor for PS2, and
> I added support for drums before GH4 or RB were conceived, but then when
> they announced those games they stole my thunder and it went into
> hibernation.
>
> I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
> code, in D).
> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
> in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
> more fun to work in a small team.
>
> It's an interesting union of skills; rendering, audio processing,
> super-low-latency synchronisation, mini and communications processing,
> animation, UI and presentation.
>
> I have done all this stuff commercially, so I can act as a sort of project
> lead of people are interested, but haven't tried to write that sort of
> software before.
>
> It also seems like a good excuse to kick off a fairly large scale and
> performance intensive D project, which I like to do from time to time.

I would be happy to help with the gui side of thing just to get DOOGLE more inline with what is required from it. Assuming DOOGLE is ok for it.
It is designed to work on top of games so it is perfect for this type of thing I'm just worried of its state and being ready.

On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:43:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
> So, I'm a massive fan of music games. I'll shamefully admit that I was
> tragically addicted to Dance Dance Revolution about 10 years ago. Recently,
> it's Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

You're 6 years behind the curve =). My brother got Guitar hero 2 for Christmas one year and I was instantly hooked. Guitar Hero 3 still remains my most played game besides maybe Civilization IV.


> The problem is though, that Neversoft and Harmonix completely fucked up the
> GH and RB franchises. Licensing problems, fragmented tracklists. It's
> annoying that all the songs you want to play are spread across literally 10
> or so different games, and you need to constantly change disc's if you want
> to play the songs you like.

Did they ever... It's really Activision's fault for running Guitar Hero into the ground. I remember them releasing a statement around 2009 saying that they planned to release 6 new Guitar Hero games within that year alone. It was then that I knew it was over.

> I've been meaning to kick off a guitar hero clone since GH2 came out. I
> started one years ago as a fork of my Guitar Hero song editor for PS2, and
> I added support for drums before GH4 or RB were conceived, but then when
> they announced those games they stole my thunder and it went into
> hibernation.

Have you heard of Frets on Fire? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frets_on_Fire
I remember trying this out several years ago, though it didn't really have that smoothe Guitar Hero feel.

> I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
> code, in D).
> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
> in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
> more fun to work in a small team.

I wish I had the time.

On 12 December 2013 21:14, Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:43:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> So, I'm a massive fan of music games. I'll shamefully admit that I was
>> tragically addicted to Dance Dance Revolution about 10 years ago.
>> Recently,
>> it's Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
>>
>> I quite like the band ensemble games, they're good party games, and great rhythm practise that's actually applicable to real instrument skills too.
>>
>> The problem is though, that Neversoft and Harmonix completely fucked up
>> the
>> GH and RB franchises. Licensing problems, fragmented tracklists. It's
>> annoying that all the songs you want to play are spread across literally
>> 10
>> or so different games, and you need to constantly change disc's if you
>> want
>> to play the songs you like.
>>
>> I've been meaning to kick off a guitar hero clone since GH2 came out. I started one years ago as a fork of my Guitar Hero song editor for PS2, and I added support for drums before GH4 or RB were conceived, but then when they announced those games they stole my thunder and it went into hibernation.
>>
>> I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
>> code, in D).
>> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
>> in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
>> more fun to work in a small team.
>>
>> It's an interesting union of skills; rendering, audio processing, super-low-latency synchronisation, mini and communications processing, animation, UI and presentation.
>>
>> I have done all this stuff commercially, so I can act as a sort of project lead of people are interested, but haven't tried to write that sort of software before.
>>
>> It also seems like a good excuse to kick off a fairly large scale and performance intensive D project, which I like to do from time to time.
>>
>
> I would be happy to help with the gui side of thing just to get DOOGLE more inline with what is required from it. Assuming DOOGLE is ok for it. It is designed to work on top of games so it is perfect for this type of thing I'm just worried of its state and being ready.
>

It would be a good test for any UI framework. Hooking it up to
project-specific input api, and producing project specific outputs (in the
way of rendering backend).
The biggest challenge for any UI system though, is tooling. You can't be
expected to lay out rich and natural UI's by typing magic numbers in text
files... are there's open-source tools you use for construction and layout?

On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 12:17:22 UTC, Manu wrote:
> On 12 December 2013 21:14, Rikki Cattermole <alphaglosined@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:43:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
>>
>>> So, I'm a massive fan of music games. I'll shamefully admit that I was
>>> tragically addicted to Dance Dance Revolution about 10 years ago.
>>> Recently,
>>> it's Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
>>>
>>> I quite like the band ensemble games, they're good party games, and great
>>> rhythm practise that's actually applicable to real instrument skills too.
>>>
>>> The problem is though, that Neversoft and Harmonix completely fucked up
>>> the
>>> GH and RB franchises. Licensing problems, fragmented tracklists. It's
>>> annoying that all the songs you want to play are spread across literally
>>> 10
>>> or so different games, and you need to constantly change disc's if you
>>> want
>>> to play the songs you like.
>>>
>>> I've been meaning to kick off a guitar hero clone since GH2 came out. I
>>> started one years ago as a fork of my Guitar Hero song editor for PS2, and
>>> I added support for drums before GH4 or RB were conceived, but then when
>>> they announced those games they stole my thunder and it went into
>>> hibernation.
>>>
>>> I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
>>> code, in D).
>>> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
>>> in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
>>> more fun to work in a small team.
>>>
>>> It's an interesting union of skills; rendering, audio processing,
>>> super-low-latency synchronisation, mini and communications processing,
>>> animation, UI and presentation.
>>>
>>> I have done all this stuff commercially, so I can act as a sort of project
>>> lead of people are interested, but haven't tried to write that sort of
>>> software before.
>>>
>>> It also seems like a good excuse to kick off a fairly large scale and
>>> performance intensive D project, which I like to do from time to time.
>>>
>>
>> I would be happy to help with the gui side of thing just to get DOOGLE
>> more inline with what is required from it. Assuming DOOGLE is ok for it.
>> It is designed to work on top of games so it is perfect for this type of
>> thing I'm just worried of its state and being ready.
>>
>
> It would be a good test for any UI framework. Hooking it up to
> project-specific input api, and producing project specific outputs (in the
> way of rendering backend).
> The biggest challenge for any UI system though, is tooling. You can't be
> expected to lay out rich and natural UI's by typing magic numbers in text
> files... are there's open-source tools you use for construction and layout?

Currently its all hard coded. At some point I want to build a WYSIWYG editor for it. However there is a lot of infrastructure that would go into that unfortunately so not really short term goal.
Its unfortunately really does need I need to do x for reason y please provide it type of thing. You can only do so much theoretical planning of the library without getting bored.

On 12/12/2013 7:43 PM, Manu wrote:
> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be
> interested in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more
> motivating, and much more fun to work in a small team.
>
> It's an interesting union of skills; rendering, audio processing,
> super-low-latency synchronisation, mini and communications processing,
> animation, UI and presentation.
>
> I have done all this stuff commercially, so I can act as a sort of
> project lead of people are interested, but haven't tried to write that
> sort of software before.
>
> It also seems like a good excuse to kick off a fairly large scale and
> performance intensive D project, which I like to do from time to time.

I've never played any of those guitar games, but I do play guitar. And this project sounds intriguing. Time management is always a problem for me, but I could be motivated to put a few hours a week into something like this in the New Year.

On 12 December 2013 21:37, Meta <jared771@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:43:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> So, I'm a massive fan of music games. I'll shamefully admit that I was
>> tragically addicted to Dance Dance Revolution about 10 years ago.
>> Recently,
>> it's Guitar Hero and Rock Band.
>>
>
> You're 6 years behind the curve =). My brother got Guitar hero 2 for Christmas one year and I was instantly hooked. Guitar Hero 3 still remains my most played game besides maybe Civilization IV.


I wouldn't say I'm 6 years behind... I just haven't gotten over it yet. I'm
like that.
I still break out my Amiga from time to time when I feel nostalgic (I was
stuck on that wagon waaaaay too long aswell).

I was on to Guitar Hero from day one. I imported it from the US shortly
after launch, so I had it 6 months before everyone else in Australia (we
always get stuff a year late!).
During GH1, 2, 3 (world tour), there was a big custom-song community, with
loads of torrents of the bootleg PS2 game, re-fitted with custom songs
floating around on the internets.
I was involved in the birth of the GH custom song movement, initially
reverse engineering the PS2 song formats so I could import the songs off
the PS2 disc's into my custom engine (I wanted to play on other platforms
initially).
Others got involved, people started working on tools. My GH engine
transformed into an editor which was the go-to tool for creating custom
guitar hero songs, and I even heard word that some preferred it to the
in-house tools at Harmonix and Neversoft, apparently they had staff who
preferred to use my editor at work ;)
I met with some of the guys at GDC and asked them where my credit was at
the end of the game... and maybe a cheque would be nice (that game was
worth billions!). They become uncomfortable ;)

 The problem is though, that Neversoft and Harmonix completely fucked up the
>> GH and RB franchises. Licensing problems, fragmented tracklists. It's
>> annoying that all the songs you want to play are spread across literally
>> 10
>> or so different games, and you need to constantly change disc's if you
>> want
>> to play the songs you like.
>>
>
> Did they ever... It's really Activision's fault for running Guitar Hero into the ground. I remember them releasing a statement around 2009 saying that they planned to release 6 new Guitar Hero games within that year alone. It was then that I knew it was over.


Indeed. So the first goal of my resurrected project, is to collate the entire back-catalog into one unified experience.

I was involved in a similar project called StepMania back when, which
solved the same problem with Dance Dance Revolution. Guitar Hero/Rock Band
needs the same treatment.
It also needs a proper editor and a webstore allowing any indy musicians to
create songs and sell them for a dollar each. Nothing gets you into a bands
songs more than physically playing them over and over again with friends.


 I've been meaning to kick off a guitar hero clone since GH2 came out. I
>> started one years ago as a fork of my Guitar Hero song editor for PS2, and I added support for drums before GH4 or RB were conceived, but then when they announced those games they stole my thunder and it went into hibernation.
>>
>
> Have you heard of Frets on Fire? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Frets_on_Fire
> I remember trying this out several years ago, though it didn't really have
> that smoothe Guitar Hero feel.


Yes, it's fucking terrible. It's also written in Java, which might partly
explain the first bit...
Fortunately, I'm a professional, and I'm certain I can accurately reproduce
the feel of the proper games. My editor already does. It just needs to be
fleshed out with lots of presentation work.
I also expect it to run on my consoles. Obviously console ports are
important! :)


 I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
>> code, in D).
>> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
>> in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
>> more fun to work in a small team.
>>
>
> I wish I had the time.
>

I don't really have time either, but some things just have to be done! :)

On 12 December 2013 22:35, Mike Parker <aldacron@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/12/2013 7:43 PM, Manu wrote:
>
>> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much more fun to work in a small team.
>>
>> It's an interesting union of skills; rendering, audio processing, super-low-latency synchronisation, mini and communications processing, animation, UI and presentation.
>>
>> I have done all this stuff commercially, so I can act as a sort of project lead of people are interested, but haven't tried to write that sort of software before.
>>
>> It also seems like a good excuse to kick off a fairly large scale and performance intensive D project, which I like to do from time to time.
>>
>
> I've never played any of those guitar games, but I do play guitar. And this project sounds intriguing. Time management is always a problem for me, but I could be motivated to put a few hours a week into something like this in the New Year.
>

Yeah, it's a problem for me too. That's the main reason I post for interest from others. If there's team involvement, I feel a greater sense of enthusiasm and responsibility, and it becomes a lot harder to ignore :) What's your key skillset?

Mmm, I'm a guitar player too, and have decent rhythm, but never really
played drums. Guitar Hero/Rock Band alone took me from not being able to
play drums, to being able to physically play drums reasonably well.
I knew I reached a milestone when I was playing Neil Peart songs without
trouble! :P
Actually, these games are much better for drums than guitar, since the
drums on hardest difficulty is an accurate representation of the recording
artist's skills, whereas the little plastic guitars are only good for
hand-eye coordination and rhythmic skill.

On 12/12/2013 9:50 PM, Manu wrote:

> What's your key skillset?

I've been making dinky little 2D games for years. So I've got what's required for that much down pretty well (simple AI, networking, 2D graphics, basic audio). I've also dabbled with 3D, I've never done anything complex there beyond simple terrain rendering, though.

On Thursday, 12 December 2013 at 10:43:24 UTC, Manu wrote:
> I'm very keen to resurrect the project (well, start a new one, with clean
> code, in D).
> Are there any music game nerds hanging around here who would be interested
> in joining a side project like this? It's a lot more motivating, and much
> more fun to work in a small team.

I absolutely agree, small teams keep you motivated and discussing ideas makes the work so much faster.
I can tell you I am interested. I have been thinking about music-based games for quite a long time, and even took part of the team that produced a music-based game in a Videogame Design and Programming class in University. Unfortunately the group leader was... well... a bad leader in my opinion, and the tool used was Unity.

This said, if you plan on starting your code from scratch, you might actually want to do something different from Guitar Hero. EG: Have you ever played Synaesthete? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp0Gasls0Sg

I find it both amazing and ADDICTING AS HELL, every time I listen to the songs I feel like playing it over and over and over again.