A Few Small Projects

Archived development update discussion from past versions
Archived development updates.
Chompy
Posts: 182

Post by Chompy »

Practicing an easy song's melody in the built-in songs Easiest group is good. Most people are right handed and have difficulties with left-handed piano practice.

Showing next-note-helper-dots is good, but why not put in a glow that pulsates repeatedly, slowly, going into white and then into it's original colour you chose? The label is left unaffected because it's black text, like you described.

And when you get to the practice mode that starts with Rhythm, the keys that the notes are going to hit are changed to a much brighter/darker version of the colouring of the keyboard to indicate a note is coming down and you have to get your hands ready and coordinated.

In Online Song Recital, the same thing happens, but to enhance fun, whenever you miss a note or make a mistake you get a medium "no" symbol on the gameplay screen temporarily, and a sound effect, that makes a short hockey buzzer sound. If you get no points in the box for Melody Practice, Rhythm Practice, Online Song Recital, a long hockey buzzer sound effect plays.
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

Off the top of my head there was a loop enable/disable so you could leave a loop in place but practice the whole piece. There was also an idea for an "push-to-start" loop where the loop starts when you press a key. There may be a few other things. Do you want me to check?
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Ah ha! Yes, loop enabled/disable. That's going into 10.2, too.

Now that I've got my list in front of me, I can confirm those are all the loop-related items. (I remember talking about pause-on-loop and I have a note about a special "any key" shortcut binding to tackle that case, but I wasn't planning those for 10.2).
Korados
Posts: 64

Post by Korados »

I'm glad you still have the Midis! Unfortunately, I still can't get Synthesia to play them correctly. The more instruments a Midi has, the more likely it is that Synthesia switches them around or don't respond to manual program changes.

I just remembered one thing. What's about the enhanced note stretch and crouch feature I suggested? Are you still working on this?
It would be nice if Synthesia would show how much you "zoomed" into the notes.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Korados wrote:Unfortunately, I still can't get Synthesia to play them correctly.
You will soon, in 10.2 :D
Korados wrote:What's about the enhanced note stretch and crouch feature I suggested? Are you still working on this?
Was that from an email? I couldn't find "stretch" mentioned in any of your forum posts. I might need a reminder. Sorry!
Chompy
Posts: 182

Post by Chompy »

There should be a learning optimisation (change), that includes learning for disabled, learning for right-handed people (these have difficulty playing the piano with left handedness as shown below). It doesn't mean you have to repurchase a new unlock key, it just means adding extra support for disabled, elderly, and right-handed people + left handed people. :idea:
Screen shot 2015-05-13 at 2.21.38 PM.png

I get less on the score when I play left handed. I only got 1 out of 10 score.

Making the learning process less difficult (beginners), can be a good start.

Also, making the notes slow down much much more slowly before you hit the key will definitely help. :)
Korados
Posts: 64

Post by Korados »

Nicholas wrote:Was that from an email? I couldn't find "stretch" mentioned in any of your forum posts. I might need a reminder. Sorry!
Yes, I suggested it in an e-mail but it was two years ago. Back then I suggested that it would be nice to have a feature which shows how much the notes are stretched or compromised if
you change their size with Page Up/Down. I suggested it like this:

Fully Streched (+15-+20 or so)
+14
+13
etc...
No Resizeing (0)
etc...
-13
-14
Fully compromised (-15--20 or so)

You then answered that you might add this feature to the zoom menu at some point. I can send you the e-mails, if you'd like to have a look at them.
Such a feature would be very convenient for Midis which are either too slow or too fast.

But I also have another question: Will you add more color themes to Synthesia? Is it still possible to create your own themes with the colors.xml?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Ah ha! I remember this now. Just about a week ago someone else asked for a "reset stretch back to default" button, too. This is still something I'd like to see at some point. Not enough time to fit it into 10.2, unfortunately.

Color themes can still be edited via colors.xml. In the 10 release, it became even easier, too. Building off an existing theme can be done by changing a single number now. For example the "Tangerine" theme is based on the default, just with the Hue rotated to orange instead of blue. This post still has all the info. Change the "baseHue" value for Tangerine in colors.xml (near the bottom) and just about everything will change automatically.

More customized changes are possible in there, too.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Not huge news, but: work on 10.2 continues at a furious pace. Last month broke into the top-10 best months ever for Synthesia development time spent.

On top of the handful of small features, there are dozens and dozens of smaller fixes and tiny improvements. Even more, as Synthesia approaches its 10 year anniversary, my stance on technical debt and the long-term health of the code base is getting a little stricter. As I've had to touch weird, old systems (from a time when Synthesia had many fewer moving parts), I've spent the extra couple hours to also make them less weird. This is one of those things that feels slow now but actually speeds future development. The good news is things are in a very good (and improving) place as far as code quality goes. It's getting harder to find weird, old systems tucked in there these days.

In lieu of a release date, I can report that the list of notes/investigations/bugs/to-do/features I keep for each release is now only 70 lines long for Synthesia 10.2. This is a terrible metric, but it's one that is readily available! :lol: That list grows a little here-and-there, but for the most part it shrinks. A couple weeks ago it was around 108 lines. Although progress tends to come in bursts, as tasks are often broken down into several lines and get erased all at once when they're all finished. Still, over the next few weeks as 10.2 starts to get closer, now I'll be able to refer to that number. Mind you, not all lines are created equal. One might take five minutes to fix something tiny. Another might take a week to overhaul a major system. Still, at least it's something you can watch to verify progress is being made. ;)
qwertyo76
Posts: 22

Post by qwertyo76 »

Nicholas wrote:Ah ha! I remember this now. Just about a week ago someone else asked for a "reset stretch back to default" button, too. This is still something I'd like to see at some point. Not enough time to fit it into 10.2, unfortunately.
Ummm.... Don't we have this already? Home. Or End. I don't know, I mash both of them so I wouldn't have remember which it was. One of the two, though.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Hmm, not that I can remember. I just checked an ancient version to see if it used to exist, but I couldn't find it there either.

(While I'm here: the 10.2 task list is down to 57 lines.) :D
qwertyo76
Posts: 22

Post by qwertyo76 »

Oh I see now. It's in the settings, but the default is "none". I set mine to Home because it's right net to page up and page down.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Wow, yeah. Sheesh, and I even looked at that menu too. Totally skipped over it. You are correct! Reset Falling Note Scale under Shortcuts. Nice.
Korados wrote:Back then I suggested that it would be nice to have a feature which shows how much the notes are stretched or compromised if you change their size with Page Up/Down...
Now I see the distinction. You want a way to see the current stretch amount, not necessarily just reset it to default.
Chompy
Posts: 182

Post by Chompy »

Why not display the sheet music in a completely unique way - vertical and it appears to "roll" by scrolling vertically downwards as an option? This way, it would look like pianola roll sheet music in modern form, and you can switch it back to horizontal scrolling sheet music. 8-)

You can also keep the musical notes as they are, but an inverted sheet music (automatically does it for you at night), means that the sheet background colour goes black, and the black musical notes go white and scrolls and rolls the same would be good. The colour inversion is again reversed when daytime comes, therefore, helping with eyestrain. :!:

The rolling sheet music must not have a "page flip", it must roll smoothly, without a page flip in the negative vertical direction. :!:

You can add this to Synthesia 10.2 if you would like to.
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

Would it be a quick fix to have the metronome run between loops when there is a delay? It is jarring to start without a count-in.

There may also be an issue of accompaniment notes that are right at the start of a loop not playing. Maybe accompaniment needs to start a fraction of a beat before the loop when there is a delay between loops?
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Zac wrote:The rolling sheet music ... must roll smoothly
For the same reason truly smooth flowing sheet music isn't possible, there would have to be some concessions made in the Klavarskribo view as well.
jimhenry wrote:Would it be a quick fix to have the metronome run between loops when there is a delay? It is jarring to start without a count-in.
I caught and fixed this last week when I was adding beat-based loop delays. :D Once everything was beat-aligned, the metronome not working during delays stood out even worse.
jimhenry wrote:There may also be an issue of accompaniment notes that are right at the start of a loop not playing.
For built-in songs or third-party? Do you know if they're properly quantized or recorded live?
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jimhenry
Posts: 1899

Post by jimhenry »

Nicholas wrote:For built-in songs or third-party? Do you know if they're properly quantized or recorded live?
Third-party (me) properly quantized (created in Musescore2)

I've sent you the file. The loop is right at the start of the song which likely is a factor.
Jim Henry
Author of the Miditzer, a free virtual theatre pipe organ
http://www.Miditzer.org/
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Thanks for sending that along. I can confirm the bug in both the official and latest development builds. I can also confirm the song looks perfectly normal. (Just tried it with a built-in song and it happened there too.)

I'll get that fixed for the first 10.2 preview.
Korados
Posts: 64

Post by Korados »

Hey Nicholas, I hope everything is fine with you. Can you vaguely say when you are going to release the first 10.2 preview? I'm very excited for it! Recently, I tried to see if there are any other
bugs in 10.1 but fortunately, I only experience the two long-time issues by now. The instrument change bug and the Coolsoft infinite note bug. Regarding the second one, I once asked in the
forum of Coolsoft for help but nobody ever replied. Did I tell you that already?
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

Korados wrote:Can you vaguely say when you are going to release the first 10.2 preview? I'm very excited for it!
It is getting closer all the time! :lol:

I'm afraid my "number of lines on my task list" has quickly fallen apart as a metric. The last two big items on the list just got broken down into about a dozen lines each now that it's time to start working on them, so we went from 57 lines on June-9 back up to 82 lines today. That said, each of those lines represents much less work. (Again, it's not a great metric.)

Maybe this will help:
  • 4 tiny features still to add.
  • 1.5 large features remaining.
  • 5 bugs to investigate/fix.
  • 3 adminstrative/project/website things to double-check before the preview goes up.
The first preview is also going to be 10.2 feature-complete. There will only be additional previews to fix bugs you guys find.
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