0.7.2 Preview r826

Archived development update discussion from past versions
Archived development updates.
tommai78101
Posts: 766

Post by tommai78101 »

I like the improvements. :D
Hardware Information: Dell Alienware 15 R4, Intel Core i7-8750H @ 2.20GHz / 2.21 GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 2070 / Nvidia GTX 1060 dual-GPU, Roland FP-10, MIDI-OX + LoopMIDI combo.
maccer
Posts: 222

Post by maccer »

Nicholas wrote:Alright, how about this for the "nearest octave inside range" wording?
It looks fine to me! But since we forum regulars are some kind of "power users", it's hard for us to tell how a complete newbie would understand it.

About the ghost notes: maybe they could have some kind of small arrow that points left if the note is actually one octave lower. If it's two octaves lower, there could either be two arrows or one arrow and a number:
ghostNotes.png
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Songs learned using Synthesia:
CT: Wind Scene, The Trial | FF7: Prelude | SMB: Overworld, Underwater | Tetris: Theme A | Zelda: Lost Woods | Other: Für Elise
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cairnz
Posts: 182

Post by cairnz »

Nicholas, what kind of particle/effect system do you have in the background?

I was thinking you could use some effect to make higher notes just "brighter" (more rgb) and lower notes "darker". I just wish i was not totally relaxing in sofa now watching the World Cups, i would perhaps be tossing up some Photoshop mockups :)

The more we know about what you have to work with the easier it is for us to come up with ideas/alternatives for the features.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

maccer wrote:maybe they could have some kind of small arrow that points left if the note is actually one octave lower. If it's two octaves lower, there could either be two arrows or one arrow and a number
Something like that is a good idea. Especially to try and reconcile the sound difference you hear when you press some note that has been shifted like 3 octaves up and it plays at the original intended frequency.

The best I could do is piggy-back it off the existing labeling system. I wonder if that option starts to get a little esoteric though. It would only show up on the labels screen sometimes (keyboard range is known + mode is "shift notes into my range") which might make it a little more confusing. Alternatively, it might always be on the screen but have a handful of little notes nearby it that describe the conditions under which it actually does something.

What would a button like that even be called? "Show how far notes were shifted to make it into your keyboard's range"?

Hmm... I might hold off on that until some other time. ;)

If it really is simulating an "easy mode" of some sort, maybe it's just extra noise to see that information. I think the people that would want to see it are the same people that are going to go out and buy a full-size device.

And if it's cumbersome to describe, I'd sooner omit it and keep things easier to understand. I feel like I'm always walking the tightrope of trying to make Synthesia a powerful tool with lots of flexibility (for you guys) while still keeping it absolutely pick-up-able with no training (for brand new users).
cairnz wrote:I was thinking you could use some effect to make higher notes just "brighter" (more rgb) and lower notes "darker".
Something like that could work too. Alternatively, I could start varying the alpha to really make them "ghost" notes (though I'd have to do something with shadow. I don't have compositing in yet, so you'd see the shadow through the note. I could drop the shadow, I suppose.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

This time around I think I'm going to stick with keeping it as simple as possible. This is already starting to touch a lot of oldest parts of my code base again, like the scoring changes did. While the feature count is relatively low for 0.7.2, the potential risk for big bugs is higher than usual.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Hmm, "Zoom to my Keyboard" is going to look silly with the Rock Band 3 controller. ;)

(It's even worse with the software keyboard.)

The reason for the squished looking keys is because once you get to a very small number of keys, if you try to maintain the correct aspect ratio, the keys themselves end up taking half the screen (or more)!
rb3.png
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aria1121
Posts: 1505

Post by aria1121 »

Looks a bit silly on the image, but sounds good. ( You are right, you cant do much with Rock Band Ctrller 3!)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Alright, almost there. Lots and lots of refactoring in the ancient keyboard code to make all of this work. There will be bugs. Big ones. But, I just have the "wrap/fold into my range" mode to go.

All the custom keyboard size stuff is done.

"Auto-play outside my range" is up and running.

And I decided on a solution to the too-many-scoreboards problem that we were going to hit by introducing all these new modes: "auto-play outside my range" is totally cosmetic. It will play the notes for you. It won't stop the song for them in Practice Mode. But, it's still counted like a missed note. It will still break combos. You will never be able to get as high a score as someone with a device that is large enough to reach all the notes. That is unfortunate, but that's how it goes. Get a bigger controller or get better at octave shifting on the fly. ;)

I haven't solved the problem for fold-into-my-range yet. That still seems like a super easy mode that shouldn't get mixed in with the other scores.

The only reason I'm even interested in still doing it is probably because of the RB3 controller. Without something like that, you'd only have "auto-play outside my range" which -- given a sufficiently small controller -- becomes a pretty boring game. You're waiting half the time to hit the notes once they finally come back your way again. hehe. Maybe it gets its own scoreboard based on the number of keys your controller has (on top of the other usual settings that make distinct scoreboards: the YouPlay and Practice/Rhythm dimensions)?

Anyhoo, other highlights (that I'll most likely mention again when this next dev preview goes up):

- The "auto detect the best octave shift at the start of the song" code received a nice upgrade. It was necessary for non-software keyboard sized things, but it also makes it pick smarter octave shifts overall. I already found a couple examples where it picked something that still left one or two notes just outside your range while the new version was able to solve it so none fell outside.

- It's kind of neat. Using "Zoom to my Keyboard", when you octave shift, the keys don't change at all... the notes shift an octave!
tommai78101
Posts: 766

Post by tommai78101 »

Is it possible to map Z and X to Left Arrow Key and Right Arrow Keys respectively? If there's a track with notes mostly hitting WSAD or nearby, and the ZX keys were underneath it, I think the player is very prone to getting a combo breaker.

It'll be like a simple DJ platform, using your left hand to press keys and using the right hand to change the octaves.

If Left and Right Arrow Keys were used, can we map them to some other keys where the right hand wouldn't go underneath the left, or vice versa for the left-handed?
Hardware Information: Dell Alienware 15 R4, Intel Core i7-8750H @ 2.20GHz / 2.21 GHz, 16GB RAM, Nvidia RTX 2070 / Nvidia GTX 1060 dual-GPU, Roland FP-10, MIDI-OX + LoopMIDI combo.
Kasper
Posts: 149

Post by Kasper »

I'm finally in Groningen to test the looping.
It's a huge improvement for practicing a song :)
But, I would like to make multiple loops. using <> buttons to go from one to another.
That would go a lot quicker, so I can just concentrate on music for half an hour, without clicking too much.

Making loops with sheet music, or falling notes screen would be easier than with the timeline. Because I'm know just guessing and hoping I'm looping the stuff I want.
English was my worst subject on school, so my language could be a bit awkward sometimes...
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

tommai78101 wrote:... it'll be like a simple DJ platform, using your left hand to press keys and using the right hand to change the octaves.
I still want to imagine the software keyboard is the exceptional case and that most people are using a "real" device. I suppose 25-key device users are almost the same as software keyboard people (except Z/X aren't as close by!), but I'm designing for the game to help with piano-like instruments.

Also, left/right is already mapped to Fast Forward and Rewind. :D
Kasper wrote:I'm finally in Groningen to test the looping.
Thanks for the feedback. Impressively, I'd heard almost none up until this point. And here you guys made that looping stuff sound super-critical a few months back. ;)

Multiple loops is definitely something I'm thinking about. I wanted to keep it simple in the first pass. With a pair of "next section"/"previous section" key presses, it'll make a lot more sense. Right now it's kind of tricky to get out of a loop. You have to fast-forward which means you're skipping stuff. A "next section" button would take you right to the start of the next, uh, section.
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