Synthesia 0.8.2

Post by **Nicholas** » 10-04-11 5:34 pm

Yeah, there is a button right on the play screen to change a few different properties of the metronome. You can make it quieter or you can turn it off altogether.

Post by **Nicholas** » 10-06-11 1:50 am

Tiny update: moving right along. I might miss the totally-randomly estimated roadmap date for 0.8.2 by a day or two, but it's almost there.

Also: controlling a song's speed with a MIDI controller knob is super fun.

Post by **Nicholas** » 10-06-11 7:32 pm

Here we go. This is what I was talking about:

Pitch-bend isn't very practical as a speed controller. Modulation wheel would probably be better. I had just finished testing the center dead-zone on my pitch-bend control, so that was how it happened to be set up. Though, the cool part is you can map whatever you want to whatever you want now. It's a lot of fun.

Anyway, you can use most of the things I had planned. I did skip over MMC and MIDI Realtime messages this time around, though you can definitely still use CC events, program change, pitch wheel, and even notes. Things that count as "axes" include mouse wheel (relative), CC events (absolute), and pitch-wheel (absolute). There are only the two axis controls I showed in the video so far. In the future, "Song Volume" might be another good one (and that Keystation 49e even has a slider for that too).

Non-access inputs are anything you can use the keyboard for now (plus a few new ones). And those can be mapped to whatever: extra mouse buttons (middle click or "forward"/"back"), any keyboard key, and any of the MIDI inputs I mentioned before.

And with all of that, you can throw in the Ctrl key to make it a separate binding, too.

DC64 · Post by **DC64** » 10-06-11 8:35 pm

Looks fun. Definitely an improvement for the keyboard.

Post by **Nicholas** » 10-07-11 3:41 am

I just added a (more intuitive) way to navigate the song with an axis. It's worth describing what I meant above by "absolute" and "relative" axes first though:

Absolute axis: A knob, slider, or wheel on a MIDI controller that has a preset range it can generate values for.
Relative axis: An unbounded input that can keep going in the same direction forever, like a mouse wheel.

Controlling the song's position directly makes the most sense with a relative axis. And you can already do that today when the song is paused. That will be on the key-binding screen listed as "Absolute Song Position" and will be mapped to the mouse wheel by default.

That didn't work as well for absolute axes though. It's cute in the video and fun to mess around with, but not especially useful. So, I just added a new way to navigate around that will be called "Song Position Jog" on the key-binding screen.

When a knob, slider, or wheel is centered the song will proceed as normal. As it's lowered or raised, it will begin (slowly at first, faster as you move it) to either rewind the song or fast-forward the song. This is ideal for a pitch-bend wheel because it re-homes itself to center when you release it. So, I think I'm going to send 0.8.2 out the door with Position Jog bound to the pitch-bend wheel by default.

Also, while I'm here: because I finally have a reliable way to detect whether Ctrl is held (I guess we'll see how reliable when all of you get your hands on it

), Ctrl+Mouse Wheel now changes the song speed by default. Just threw it in there because I can.

Post by **Nicholas** » 10-07-11 6:22 am

I'm passing on any sort of graphical key binding interface for the software keyboard this time around. Makes me a little nervous though because the helper graphic that shows the (default) software keyboard bindings is going away. And making the key labels default to software keyboard bindings seems like a terrible idea.

Maybe I'll keep a smaller, trimmed-down version of the helper graphic with just the software keyboard part (not even the octave shifting or anything else because you can learn about those on the new key bindings screen), and only show it if you're using the software keyboard. Yeah... I think I'll do that.

While the software keyboard isn't that useful for serious players, it's the only input method for most casual downloaders. That initial experience probably helps them make the decision of whether they want to get a MIDI keyboard. So the discoverability of the bindings is important.

TonE · Post by **TonE** » 10-20-11 2:34 pm

stefdave wrote:"sudden death mode" let's say you have a gauge on the left and everytime you make mistakes it falls, everytime you do good it climbs... until the sudden death (game over) ... mmmh sounds good (and challenging) off course there will be the need of a ratio per mistakes and bonus.

There is no bonus but you can try: Gameplay.LoopMaxErrors for the "sudden death, game over" feature.

vicentefer31 · Post by **vicentefer31** » 10-22-11 4:28 pm

TonE wrote:
stefdave wrote:"sudden death mode" let's say you have a gauge on the left and everytime you make mistakes it falls, everytime you do good it climbs... until the sudden death (game over) ... mmmh sounds good (and challenging) off course there will be the need of a ratio per mistakes and bonus.
There is no bonus but you can try: Gameplay.LoopMaxErrors for the "sudden death, game over" feature.

Gameplay.LoopMaxErrors only works in "Practice Song Melody". I use a lot of this and it would be great if it could also works in "Practice Song Rhythm"
Nicholas, could you add it?

Post by **Nicholas** » 10-28-11 1:42 am

vicentefer31 wrote:Gameplay.LoopMaxErrors only works in "Practice Song Melody". I use a lot of this and it would be great if it could also works in "Practice Song Rhythm"
Nicholas, could you add it?

Sure. Just added it. The display is the same and doesn't show the error count, but it will reset the loop after that many mistakes. That was the quickest path.

It'll show up in the next dev preview.

vicentefer31 · Post by **vicentefer31** » 10-29-11 4:22 pm

Thanks