Synthesia Arcade Mode is here

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TonE
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Post by TonE »

Have fun and read the file readme.txt in the zip. If anything is unclear ask here. I paste the Arcade Mode philosophy section from the readme.txt:
3. Some explanation on the current philosophy of Arcade Mode

a) After selecting a midi file in FreeCommander and pressing F3, Synthesia checks if the midi file contains any bookmarks, if yes, it will start in looped playback mode between those bookmarks, if not, it will use a MeasureShift measure loop. MeasureShift is by default 2.

b) You play this loop segment always 3 times, first two times do not count, but the third time will count if you will make it into next stage/segment of the song or not. You need higher LoopScore than LoopScoreThreshold, which is by default 98.01, which should more or less equal to 1 note error and 1 second time error per loop segment.

c) If you achieve LoopScoreThreshold you can play next segment. If not, speed is decreased for DecreaseAmountLoop percent, which is by default 10 percent.

d) You continue in this way, playing through the whole song, segment by segment, after last segment, the whole song will loop and you have to achieve also LoopScoreThreshold here.

e) If you achieved also LoopScoreThreshold for the whole song, from step d) above, then you play again the whole song, but this time not started in loop mode, but instead "wholesong" mode, which means, you will get now Achievement (score) rather than LoopScore. Achievement is blue curve, LoopScore is red curve. Here you can play infinitely if you want.

f) If you have more than 90 percent of MaxPoints song speed is auto-increased by 5 percent, if not song speed is auto-decreased by 5 percent. So you could try to achieve more than 90 percent up to 200 percent speed, if you want, just as an exercise.

g) Finally after you practiced enough in loop mode and wholesong mode, you can play the song in Rhythm mode, just press LeftControl and F3 for this while you are in FreeCommander and having your midi selected.


That is the whole philosophy in this first version. Any ideas, improvements are welcome in the forum. Of course you can modify and improve anything you like and share the result in the forum. There are a few other behaviours which I did not explain here, you will see it anyway while playing, e.g. after song speed is increased your next playing will count immediately, not your third playing, as written in 3b) above.
For more background on this Arcade Mode topic, check following: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1957

Get latest version from: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2867#p18133
Last edited by TonE on 03-01-11 6:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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DC64
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Post by DC64 »

Clarify me if i am wrong, it is for a midi playback with loops and a Galaga play at the same time.
"And now for something completely different."
TonE
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Post by TonE »

DC64 wrote:Clarify me if i am wrong, it is for a midi playback with loops and a Galaga play at the same time.
No, the Galaga picture I used only because of the word "Arcade". It is for looped playback, where you need to press only F3 in FreeCommander, just read the readme.txt, if you are interested in Arcade Mode. It does plot also all your playing results visually. It writes your playing results, into separate text files as csv.
vicentefer31
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Post by vicentefer31 »

TonE is the very best :D
Picasso: I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
TonE
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Post by TonE »

No, there might be still some buggy "hanging" problems, but then just switch to another window using Alt-Tab, wait 1 second, back to Synthesia again using Alt-Tab, then pressing SPACE to continue Synthesia, but I just wanted to share it quickly here, not letting you wait more, I can still improve it, especially when knowing where problems are, also for other users.
vicentefer31
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Post by vicentefer31 »

TonE Pack.png
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Picasso: I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
TonE
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Posts: 1180

Post by TonE »

;)

What I like with the command line features, is we can experiment with all possibilities freely, then if we find some combination which is useful and practical, then Nicholas can recognize it and built it into Synthesia itself, so command line features are nice for building quick prototypes for future improvements without changing Synthesia itself. So the more command line information we have, the better.

My next wish for the command line would be: Real-time output of note errors and time errors, again via the Clipboard, then we could even react in real-time to those changes. Unix philosophy rocks. ;)
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DC64
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Post by DC64 »

Maby there should be a display video like Synthesia's in-game play.
"And now for something completely different."
matti
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Post by matti »

Hey TonE, very awesome idea. I gave it a try, and maybe I did something wrong, but it didn't work too well. After each 3rd loop of a segment, it paused to tell me my stats, which seems like what's supposed to happen, but just breaks the continuity too much for me. That, and it seemed like the scrolling speed kept getting faster, when I imagined it would be the song speed that would increase. Lastly, on one song I tried it with, it ended after the first segment. What do you think, is there something I did wrong (or didn't do right?)
TonE
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Post by TonE »

matti wrote:After each 3rd loop of a segment, it paused to tell me my stats, which seems like what's supposed to happen, but just breaks the continuity too much for me.
This is an interesting argument. What would you prefer, of course it could be changed to a different rule of displaying the plots? After each Nth playing, with N=3 as it is now.
That, and it seemed like the scrolling speed kept getting faster, when I imagined it would be the song speed that would increase.
This should be due to the variable ZoomTimes := 4, you can try changing it to ZoomTimes := 1.
Lastly, on one song I tried it with, it ended after the first segment. What do you think, is there something I did wrong (or didn't do right?)
Possible there are still lots of misbehaviours, "hanging" Synthesia, especially if you played a midi which contained midi markers. As I played almost always midi files without any midi markers in them, I did not test them long enough. For example using Electrodes scale midis I could also find out, in those bookmarked midi cases, Arcade Mode is "hanging" too often, so this part has to be improved. It seems in all those if then cases in the automation, I forgot a few cases, so I need to rethink the overall cases and make it correctly, meaning not forgetting any cases which might lead then to those "hanging" Synthesia.

But did you also have problems with non-bookmark midi files? Also if you interacted with Arcade Mode, in a different way as suppossed to, it might be possible you pressed somewhere an "unnecessary", Enter or Space or Escape, so all the automation ended in a different behaviour, like closing too early? Maybe... Control-Alt-R reloads Arcade Mode, so whenever you have a misbehaviour you might try pressing Control-Alt-R, then LeftControl-Esc for closing Synthesia when it is the active window, then starting any midi using F3 from FreeCommander.

From my experience midi files which do not contain any midi markers should work quite nicely using measure loops. The current solution to the hanging problem, I wrote already above:
No, there might be still some buggy "hanging" problems, but then just switch to another window using Alt-Tab, wait 1 second or 3 seconds, back to Synthesia again using Alt-Tab, then pressing SPACE to continue Synthesia
So as a general rule, for now it would be more fun with Arcade Mode using only midi files without any midi markers in them, so do not use the Electrodes scale midis yet and see if everything works well enough? I hope so.
TonE
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Post by TonE »

TonE wrote:What would you prefer, of course it could be changed to a different rule of displaying the plots? After each Nth playing, with N=3 as it is now.
Maybe following new idea: Keep looped playing without any interruption until you achieve LoopScoreThreshold, then also plotting after how many loops you could make it to the next segment?
vicentefer31
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Post by vicentefer31 »

Hey TonE, I'm enjoying your Arcade Mode. It's very easy to use and I'm working now on my own "Arcade Mode". I've been changing some commands like "--keyboard-zoom YouPlay" that I don't like it.
It's amazing how many things you can do with this Arcade Mode and it's so easy to use that anyone can use it 8-)
Picasso: I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.
TonE
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Post by TonE »

vicentefer31 wrote:It's very easy to use and I'm working now on my own "Arcade Mode". I've been changing some commands like "--keyboard-zoom YouPlay" that I don't like it.
Yeah, probably I should also change to this version. I fixed a few more stuff, a little more testing then I will upload the new version, also the philosophy changed a little. :)
Now, as matti suggested before, I do not show the plots so often, if you achieve LoopScoreThreshold, you can just continue playing next loop segment, only if you do not achieve LoopScoreThreshold the plot is shown. Then playing feels more fluent.
TonE
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Post by TonE »

Here the new version, changes in v0.001 to first version ~ v0.000
- showing plot results much less so flow of playing is less disturbed
- plot view changed a little, removed the vertical lines, it should look a little clearer now
- inter-bookmark loops should also work nicely
- before plot is displayed a sound file, ShowLoopPerformanceResults.wav is played
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Synthesia Arcade Mode v0.001.zip
Arcade Mode v0.001
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DC64
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Post by DC64 »

Hey Nicholas, could you sticky this?
I find this good.
"And now for something completely different."
TonE
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Post by TonE »

TonE wrote:My next wish for the command line would be: Real-time output of note errors and time errors, again via the Clipboard, then we could even react in real-time to those changes.
Also another command line option "start-playing-from=m/bN-measureX", where we can tell Synthesia where it should start playing from using a simple mathematical equation where we can use the available measure (m) and bookmark (b) shortcuts, then a difference with a new measure (m) value, for example

Code: Select all

start-playing-from=b10-1
which means jump to position where bookmark 10 is, and one measure more to the left, and start playing from there. Together with real-time error output this would allow a few more creative options for "playing-systems".

Oh, I forgot, of course also the current measure position into the clipboard for the auto-pdf-sheet turning workaround via pdf viewer and AutoHotkey.
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DC64
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Post by DC64 »

TonE, you could try to place Galaga sounds in some parts, like the intro theme or score song.
(since it was Galaga-ish)
"And now for something completely different."
hoiung
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Post by hoiung »

Hi,

Will you be making the future release that it doesn't require to install such programs as autokey and freecommander?

Someone mentioned in the forum in my post:
Also, any autohotkey script can be compiled into a standalone exe
For example if you right-click the .ahk file and click "compile file" you can uninstall autohotkey if you don't need it for other stuff
Regards,

Hoi
TonE
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Post by TonE »

hoiung wrote:Will you be making the future release that it doesn't require to install such programs as autokey and freecommander?
Future release yes, but always requiring AutoHotkey and FreeCommander. If you have the source you can compile it to an .exe or change it to your desire.

Btw. on any new installed Windows OS I install AutoHotkey, FreeCommander, Notepad++, Opera, Firefox, Everything, Windirstat as a first step. Using these tools you can fly around in Windows which would be impossible otherwise.
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