Synthesia 0.8.3

Archived development update discussion from past versions
Archived development updates.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Raymond wrote:What about choir arrangements?
You could use the hand assignment buttons to temporarily mark a left/right so you got that view. Changing it later wouldn't break anything (just modify your score so it reflected the new left/right hand tracks).

This is mostly made for songs with a well-defined left/right hand. For you, the advanced settings screen will continue to function the same way it always has. ;)

(Also, I just noticed I forgot to include an equivalent for the "show sheet music" check box in the mockup. I'll have to think about that. Maybe a sheet toggle during playback? On the toolbar?)
aria1121
Posts: 1505

Post by aria1121 »

I shopped it a little so it looks a bit easier to find the buttons, what do you think? (Click for full size)

Image
Lemo
Posts: 313

Post by Lemo »

That looks really neat :]
I liked the big numbers in the first mockup better though
How about smaller text instead?

Image

And what are those numbers all about anyway :roll: ?
Stuff & experiments for Synthesia: Gramp v0.2SkinboxFireSynthVideoWebradio
aria1121
Posts: 1505

Post by aria1121 »

Lemo wrote:That looks really neat :] I liked the big numbers in the first mockup better though. How about smaller text instead?
Image
I think it gets all weird if you change the colour and add random numbers in the button while it gets so sad if just put 3 x "Left Hand", "Right Hand" and "Both Hands". I like it how it sort of is in my shopped pic.
Lemo wrote:And what are those numbers all about anyway :roll: ?
Correct notes hit / Total notes
Lemo
Posts: 313

Post by Lemo »

Oh I just realized it was your post above, thought it was an alternate version from nicholas
Stuff & experiments for Synthesia: Gramp v0.2SkinboxFireSynthVideoWebradio
Seto
Posts: 39

Post by Seto »

aria1121 wrote:
Lemo wrote:That looks really neat :] I liked the big numbers in the first mockup better though. How about smaller text instead?
Image
I think it gets all weird if you change the colour and add random numbers in the button while it gets so sad if just put 3 x "Left Hand", "Right Hand" and "Both Hands". I like it how it sort of is in my shopped pic.
Lemo wrote:And what are those numbers all about anyway :roll: ?
Correct notes hit / Total notes
The color is about the performance. Green for high score. Yellow for middle score. Red for low score. I don't agree your change on the color.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Seto wrote:The color is about the performance. Green for high score. Yellow for middle score. Red for low score.
Yeah, I just went back and noticed I didn't really describe those numbers.

The idea is that you want to learn a song. And I want Synthesia to be a good motivator/indicator for how well you are doing. Ideally when you achieve a full 100 score for a song, that means you know it and can play both hands at full speed with few to zero mistakes. (We'll see how close we actually get to that. ;) )

So, if you play the left hand in melody practice and can do the entire thing with zero mistakes, you'll get the full 15 points for that button. Do it again for right and then both(!) and you'll already be up to 50. (15+15+20 for both the melody and rhythm lines is what I'm thinking at the moment.) Doing that "watch the song" thing gives you a freebie 5 points (and will also be triggered when you play any of the other modes anyway).

I didn't want to force online recital to be too large a component of your score (especially since it's just sort of a no-Undo version of rhythm practice), so for now I am pitching it as a sort of extra credit. For doing well and making few-mistakes (at full speed!) you can squeeze an extra 5 per hand and 10 for both out of your score. It will cap at 100 though.

Still, a good chunk of the hard part in reaching 100 will be in the rhythm practice section. To get full points you'll have to be at full speed the entire time and make very few mistakes. Doing that for both hands simultaneously is kind of intimidating. I'm considering widening the "Gameplay.NoteWindowUs" setting a little by default so this isn't so punishing. Right now Synthesia is pretty fickle about those timings.

Again, the goal is to turn all of the work you're doing on a song into something you can measure, to help keep you motivated. Just like Melody Practice normalizes every song to a score between 0 and 10000, this will effectively normalize ALL the modes combined into a 0 to 100 metric.

That little score will be shown in the song library and in the hierarchical view (that I haven't finished designing yet). In the hierarchical view, it's basically the only thing you'll see and the song list will be sorted by those points by default. (Your "best" songs will be at the top. Scrolling through them to get to the songs you're working on will give you a chance to be proud of all your hard work.)
Raymond
Posts: 528

Post by Raymond »

Nicholas wrote:You could use the hand assignment buttons to temporarily mark a left/right so you got that view. Changing it later wouldn't break anything (just modify your score so it reflected the new left/right hand tracks).
What about on some songs where I play two(or more) tracks on one hand? Am I suppose to change witch track the left hand is on each time I want to see it? It would be a little bit better If I could set more then One track to a hand.

Nicholas wrote:This is mostly made for songs with a well-defined left/right hand.
That's what I was afraid of..
Nicholas wrote:For you, the advanced settings screen will continue to function the same way it always has.
But I don't get the new features. (at least not in a use able way.)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Raymond wrote:But I don't get the new features. (at least not in a use able way.)
I try as hard as I can to make things work for everyone. I didn't want to add anything like this for the longest time for only two-track songs because that seemed too limiting. That was why adding the ability to "set" the hands for a many-track song was so exciting for me last release (even though I'm sure no one else knew what I was going on about :lol: ).

Still, while I try to design with flexibility, I'll never be able to make every feature work with every song. While I'm very proud that using the advanced settings screen lets you play literally 100% of MIDI files out there, the smarter and more helpful I make new features, the more constrained set of songs they're going to necessarily have to work against. If Synthesia can't make any assumptions about a many-track song, how would it ever be able to offer something other than the broken-out advanced screen?

In terms of being able to mark multiple left or right hands, there are some technical limitations I was trying to avoid (brute-force discovery of the config hash vs. server-side database changes to store a more robust hand specification) and also to keep the interface as simple as possible for users.

This is one of those times where I just have to say I'm sorry and that hopefully you'll still be able to take advantage of the new stuff here-and-there with the occasional distinctly left/right hand song you come across. (Out of curiosity, what do you do with one of those songs once you learn it? What does it mean to you to "perform" it? Which tracks do you pick then? Learning a jumble of parts that can't all be played at the same time doesn't seem like it would be as rewarding to me.)
Lemo
Posts: 313

Post by Lemo »

Nicholas wrote:this will effectively normalize ALL the modes combined into a 0 to 100 metric
So do you plan do double the scores for users without the learning pack maybe?
Coz it looks like they'll cap at 50 otherwise
Stuff & experiments for Synthesia: Gramp v0.2SkinboxFireSynthVideoWebradio
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

No way, melody practice is super important. ;)

(The non-Learning Pack cap will be 75 points: 5 free points for watching/participating, 15+15+20 for the rhythm row, and 5+5+10 for the sort of extra-credit recital row. Of course, these are still all early numbers and subject to change.)

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little excited that the prospect of motivating players to learn a song using all the tools built into Synthesia also happens to coincide nicely with motivating them to purchase a Learning Pack key. :D

A little more seriously though, from a design perspective, I just assume users already have it. There is enough cool stuff in there at this point that trying to accommodate free and unlocked users is almost like developing two different pieces of software. This "learning-motivation goals" thing feels decidedly inside the umbrella of what the Learning Pack itself represents, so I'm not especially torn over it.

The only reason I'm not making it Learning Pack-exclusive is because it would be a lot more work to maintain both versions of the interface. :lol:
TonE
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

Also users who want to play and enjoy more-then-two-tracks-midis with some nice statistics, can try a future version of arcade-mode, where also one column will display the YouPlay-track-number, which will be one of 16 possible channel numbers. :lol:

This means from your statistics, you can always see which tracks you played in the past and what your score was, for which loop segment. Best would be in such scenarios, really selecting only a single-midi-channel as YouPlay track, so there will not be any overlaps pitchwise. Normally you would want to play the lead melody or some chords or the cool bassline, in fewer cases maybe some parts of the drums, like the kick-snare and closed-hihat combination. Or kick+snare+crash-cymbal. Or kick+snare+another-drum-of-choice, mainly limiting yourself only to three important drum sounds, to make it simple and fun, also to emphasize the timing-performance aspect, rather than hitting the right drums.
vicentefer31
Posts: 899

Post by vicentefer31 »

Looks great... but what about the others uncompleted or interrupted features?:
a) Repeat/Looping improvement is needed in Practice Song Rhythm
b) Sheet Music

Btw the mock-up is perfect :lol:
Picasso: I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
Raymond
Posts: 528

Post by Raymond »

Ya I understand where you're coming from.
Nicholas wrote:Out of curiosity, what do you do with one of those songs once you learn it? What does it mean to you to "perform" it? Which tracks do you pick then? Learning a jumble of parts that can't all be played at the same time doesn't seem like it would be as rewarding to me.
Most of them the different tracks are just different instruments. So they can all be played together. If you really wanted, you could convert the tracks I play down to one(or two) track(s). But it just sounds better with different instruments.
So it's not much different then the gmajor songs. It's just that I play different instruments thru out the song.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Neat, that was easier than I thought it would be. I was able to make it look nicer than I thought I was going to be able to, too. Graph component finished! (Everything below is all totally randomized data for testing. It's not actually connected to anything yet. This was even screen-capped from the title screen, to give you an idea how big of a test harness it was. :D )

You might want to right-click -> "View Image" to see the whole thing.
graph1.png
graph1.png (74.35 KiB) Viewed 18394 times
When you click on one of the items in the key (the word "Both" in this case), it will highlight just that series (until you click someplace else).
graph2.png
graph2.png (53.76 KiB) Viewed 18394 times
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DC64
Posts: 830

Post by DC64 »

Wow this is really cool.
Could it be possible to compare scores to other songs graded with the graph?
"And now for something completely different."
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

I hadn't been planning on it yet, but the graph component is plenty generic enough to handle all sorts of neat tasks. Definitely something I can add later. And that's an idea I like. Melody practice scores could be compared quite easily.

Since I missed the holidays, I've already switched gears to more of a "let's get it done right, no matter how long it takes" mode versus rushing it out the door as quickly as possible and having to cut lots of corners. That's why something like a graph is even in at all. There is no way I would have been able to do that on the other schedule. (Despite it being something I've wanted for years and years.)
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Oh yeah, there are some animated bits that make it even cooler. :D

(Don't mind me. I'm kind of a crazy graphics guy so I love this stuff. I'm sure I'll stop talking about it soon. ;) )

TonE
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

Looks great, if we would have also always a smaller real-time version of this somewhere on the side, e.g. under the loop scores, just as an idea. Showing error notes, holding time ... you know the values which are copied into the clipboard.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

TonE wrote:Looks great, if we would have also always a smaller real-time version of this somewhere on the side, e.g. under the loop scores, just as an idea. Showing error notes, holding time ... you know the values which are copied into the clipboard.
That's not a bad idea. And now that 80% of the work is done (I'd have to make some adjustments to miniaturize it and allow adding data in real-time efficiently) it will be easier to convince me. ;)
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