Posted By: Error014
Guitar Hero 3 - 12/17/07 21:08
This is a thread to discuss the newest entry in the "Guitar Hero" series, which will soon be hijacked by people who - probably completely correct - say that "Rock Band" is better in each and every way, to which I say: "Well, too bad that all I have is a Wii and I live in Europe so there".
Or, possibly, people will laugh at me, because nobody here plays rhythm games, because we are all to busy playing "Crysis" and ... wait, I don't know the name of a different shooter.
My thoughts on GH3 can easily be summarized as follows: ARGH. Don't worry, I'm going to explain this. See, I'm new to the whole plastic-guitar thing. I enjoyed Elite Beat Agents (weird track list and all), and with all the positive buzz, I bought GH3! Soon I was standing there holding an undersized plastic guitar and wondering how in the hell I might look even dumber. Turns out, activating "Star Power" would do the trick, because for some reason, sometimes it registers perfectly, but sometimes I have to hold it in so crazy positions that I can't help but miss a few notes because it would be too awkward to play them. I guess I'm doing something wrong.
While I was playing through Easy, I thought that this game was actually pretty easy. I didn't fail a single song and always managed four or five star ratings on my first try. Then, I switched to Medium and Oh my God a fourth finger? After some time practicing how to press buttons on an undersized plastic guitar, I managed to go through that. Confident in my abilities - and naive as I am - I went to "Hard" difficulty.
Yeah, right. What the hell? Five buttons? How am I supposed to do that? I only have four fingers up there (I can't use the thumb, in case there are any questions). Lots and lots of practice later, I can make my way through many songs, but in the last tier, I only managed "Cliffs of Dover" and I don't see any possible way to ever, ever make it through one of the other songs (I haven't even tried one of them yet). How insane are those songs? My hands are tired after twenty seconds and I'm screaming in pain aifter fourty, only to fail right then and the game lets me know that I managed "37%". How could they have such a jump in the difficulty? Thats not fair. Don't get me wrong, I like challenge, but I want the easy kind of challenge thats doable and that doesn't require a miracle.
Has anyone seen the Zero Punctation review on this? It's right on the money, at least for me (who hasn't played any of the prior games, so ignore those)
So, ahem, that were my thoughts on the game. It may also qualify as some kind of criticism of the game, so we can discuss it!
Oh, and if anyone wants to beat me and humiliate me completely online, be my guest, but I only have the Wii version. Thank you, and good night.
I wish they would create a guitar game to plug in your real guitar and strum along with chords or finger picking. By the time you beat the game you've build up a repertoire of songs you can play as opposed to blue button, red button, whammy, green button, yellow button, blue....
MIDI guitars are too expensive though. However, you can get cheap electrical guitars for less than the price of some guitar hero controllers. I wish I had more time to try out implementing this.
A question for you physicists & musicians :
What is the waveform of a guitar chord like ? For a single note I could use FFT to find the nearest sine frequency but what if multiple strings are plucked ? Is it additive and you would have to find the six dominant frequencies ?
Posted By: PHeMoX
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/17/07 23:32
I think there's no cheap way of doing what you want, but it's already possible to play along your favorite songs with a real guitar through software. You could buy a Line6 GuitarPort and jam along with songs through software that comes with it...
it's nothing quite like a Guitarhero game though, but then again playing real songs is hardly pressing 4 buttons.
(
http://bx.line6.com/guitarport/tracks.html )
Quote:
But maybe a little too hard for most non-guitar players.
Definitely... but I'm sure GuitarHero was never meant for real guitar players so much anyways,
Cheers
Posted By: William
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/17/07 23:39
I don't know much about the waveforms and the such, but I do a ton of work with producing programs, and mostly anything is possible in reading a live recording. With today's environment of using software for many things(compressors, equalization, and even preamps) it would make plugging a real guitar into your t.v much easier. The only problem you'd face is getting everyone a small soundcard that converts your analog to digital for use in your game.
I always wanted to make a game like this, but instead of just guitar, allow any instrument, since you'd be plugging in 1/4th analog anyways. You could have a mic, piano, and guitar. Drum sets work with either mic, or if their electronic, straight analog. Wouldn't it be great to jam with real instruments online? There is tons of musicians out there that actually know an instrument pretty good but don't get the chance to play with others for many reasons.
Posted By: PHeMoX
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/18/07 00:08
GuitarPort from Line6 ís more or less exactly this piece of hardware you need to convert the signal to something digital .
The software that comes with it does the rest, no need for a real extra soundcard actually, even an old PC will do fine...
With GuitarPort you can also choose to subscribe to an online network (7$/mnth) and do collaborations with people all across the world, get lessons from people in other countries and so on, but even without access to the online network you can just playback MP3s and so on to jam along with, together with having the ability to do a lot of other things (like record your music).
It's pretty cool.
Posted By: William
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/18/07 00:30
Yeah, but it would need to work on your tv thru a console, and it'd need to be more than the guitar. A large amount of musicians don't really know how to use computers, so it'd have to be simple. You'd also need features like band leader boards, a community around the bands in-game, ect. to really appeal to a large audience.
Posted By: ISG
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/18/07 01:42
If you could make a guitar (similar to guitar hero's) but with strings. Detecting when a string is 'strung' can be considered a button - and it could interact similar to a real guitar. I think many guitarists would venture towards this type of game...who knows.
Any helpers?
Posted By: Joozey
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/18/07 02:00
Posted By: William
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/18/07 08:31
That cable would probably do the trick. But you would have to go from there, and I don't know a ton of programming outside of 3dgs as what to do with the USB. Maybe one day, with more time, can learn.
Well both the cable and GuitarPort seem to just be ADCs with a USB interface at the end- you might as well use the Mic/LineIn on your soundcard (at reduced quality depending on what sound card you have).
Writing software that detects a single string vibrating is doable- it's what any digital tuning device does.
Posted By: Doug
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/18/07 19:16
Error014: You are not alone.
As far as getting a real guitar to work with Guitar Hero, I would probably use
one of these and have the player try to match the pitch and length of the notes. Not perfect, but its similar to what they use for those singing games.
Or you can just go the other way,
turn your Guitar Hero controller into a real instrument.
Posted By: Error014
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/18/07 19:56
While we`re on the subject of music games, one of those days - sadly a day far, far in the future given the
impossible technical barriers - I'd need to create a musical game. Oh man, its so sad, I know perfectly well that its technically incredible difficult if not impossible to make, but I still get thousands of ideas for it.
I'm probably going to try it anyway soon, only to fail. Meh.
Your "real"-guitar-hero-concept sounds intriguing and I'd definately want to try it. Thats the perfect way for me to learn guitar... again (because, yes, I did have lessons back in the day)... using a gameinterface and all that, it may proove much more motivating. You'd start with maybe simply playing certain accords or segments in a song, and then add more and more until you play the complete song.
@Doug: You have the game and share that love/hate-relationship? Or do you just know people and secretly laugh at them and their masochistic tendencies (because, lets face it, isnt that what music games are all about?)? If you have the game, I'd love to try a co-op-song
... Is it actually possible to play with the Wii-version against (or with) someone with a different version? Otherwise, I suppose one could only compare scores :|
Posted By: Doug
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/20/07 00:52
Error014: I have the game. I love it but..honestly..I suck at it.
I own the XBox360 version of GH-2, and I hoping to buy RockBand after XMas (again, for the XBox360).
Just in case anybody is interested (I don't play as much as I would like).
Posted By: DeKO_Mania
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/20/07 06:31
Rather than using a "real" guitar to play a game, I feel like they should just work more on making the Guitar Hero expierence more realistic. Perhaps, by adding more buttons, or adding more than one button per frett, so as to allow for more complex controlls.
I am personally not a huge guitar player. I own one, took a quarterlong class, but dont consider myself any good at it. However, I was able to graduate to extream mode on GH3 after only a few hours... Not trying to brag, but I think the game would benefit from a more challenging take on the same gameplay. GH is more about memorizing rhythms than it is playing guitar, which is fine for what it is (I love the game, and as said before, owning a Wii excludes me from the Rockband-wagon). However, think of the possibilities if they were to place 2 buttons per frett... the combinations are endless.
Also, I wonder if I am the only person on the planet who thinks they should add a freeplay mode on Guitar Hero. I understand the limitations of such a mode with the current guitar controllers, but if they were to create a more complex take on todays gameplay, imagine writing, playing, recording, and sharing your Guitar Hero songs online with anyone who wants to download it. Seems like it would be an easy enough feat to pull off (guitar hero is online anyways). Creating the "map", or whatever you want to call it that is used to display the notes to hit would be as easy as playing while the game runs at a certian tempo. Also, it seems that it would be easy enough to implement both beginner and advanced modes of this idea. Beginner uses set tempos, and has a smaller available note list, while advanced has full control of tempo, has full access to all the notes, and can go back and tweak the placement of notes. All the while, you can have guitar hero play it back to you (kinda like guitar pro, for those who have used it) to see how it sounds on playback. Seems like a small army would find a home in creating their own music on the game and then posting it up for everyone to see.
Anyways, just some of my thoughs.
Posted By: Doug
Re: Guitar Hero 3 - 12/20/07 20:44
I'm no expert guitar player, but I've played guitar. The Guitar Hero controller is slightly better than "air-guitar" at simulating the real thing but almost nothing like a real one.
Guitars (even electric ones) are not digital. Using strings to create music is very different then hitting the right button. By adding more buttons to the controller, you would be recreating the
Keytar (yes, I'm a child of the 80's, I know the word Keytar
).
Quote:
Also, I wonder if I am the only person on the planet who thinks they should add a freeplay mode on Guitar Hero.
No, the original developers (Harmonix) wanted to add a freeplay mode. They just couldn't find any results they were 100% happy with.
As far as creating your own songs, check out "Frets on Fire".