Input calibration

Synthesia is a living project. You can help by sharing your ideas.
Search the forum before posting your idea. :D

No explicit, hateful, or hurtful language. Nothing illegal.
Post Reply
Peej
Posts: 16

Post by Peej »

Well, since my first suggestion of sheet-music-view has already been covered... ;)

The first time I actually played the game with a MIDI keyboard (as opposed to pretending to play along on my desktop :D ), I noticed I always felt like the scoring mechanism was slightly behind what I was hearing: that is, I had to play notes a fraction of a second late for them to count correctly. Could be due to the sound card processing, the MIDI processing, (or maybe I just like to play ahead of the music :lol: ), but I know that DDR has the ability to push the overall timings slightly back or forward to account for the fact that the sound and scoring may be out of sync due to hardware setup.

So, as a feature, I will suggest a global timing-modifier (measured in milliseconds, I guess), because trying to play along slightly off the beat adds what I think is an unintended challenge.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

That's a good idea. How does this sound as a way of going about it:

From some options screen (coming around version 0.6.3) you choose something called "Input Calibration". You're taken to the usual gameplay screen, but the "song" is just 3 or 4 successive middle-Cs. You hit each exactly when you think you're supposed to.

Then you test the settings out by doing the same thing. This time, instead of changing how input is interpreted, the game will measure and report exactly how close you got to hitting the notes based on your new input timings.

You would be able to repeat the process until satisfied.

Also, it might help to have an additional option to increase the size of the input "window". Right now I think you have about 0.15 seconds on either side of a note to hit it correctly. I didn't notice that this was very small because I'm a terrible piano player and I have to run every song I play at about 30% speed. ;) That effectively stretches the window out to a half-second on either side of a note, so it always seems plenty long for me. (That also brings up a question of whether the note window should stretch proportional to the song speed.)

I won't be able to get those in the upcoming 0.6.2, but input calibration seems like it should be a pretty high priority after that.
Peej
Posts: 16

Post by Peej »

Actually, when I played at 30% speed (almost always ;) ) I didn't notice the issue. Also, when you play along with the music is when you notice it, not when you play against the visual timings, so maybe you can have some other notes in there for reference points, too.

Like, have it play the first 7 notes of a scale, and then you hit the top note at the correct time. Have it loop that 5-10 times, then average the result.
galenmaly
Posts: 2

Post by galenmaly »

I have this problem as well. I would also recommend a metronome that either plays only on notes that you're supposed to play (like stepmania) or on quarter notes.
bjornsone
Synthesia Donor
Posts: 3

Post by bjornsone »

The calibration feature would be great since I sometimes feel like I need to lead the music for it to count as being right. Was this feature implemented yet, and if not is it still planned? BTW this is a great program; just what I was looking for.
Nicholas
Posts: 13135

Post by Nicholas »

It's certainly still on the to-do list. When I add the online feature voting after the Learning Pack release, you'll be able to assign your "points" to that feature if you'd like. (Forum members will get these made-up points to assign around to the things they want most and it will influence the order I develop new features.)

I've also been pretty bogged-down with the Learning Pack stuff. It'll be refreshing to get back to adding all the other things people have been asking for.
Post Reply