Here's another method that involves putting the following customized files in the system-wide Synthesia folder on each computer:
- An override.xml file to turn on the sheet music display setting and turn off the falling notes display setting.
- A bindings.xml file to remove the F5 shortcut key to toggle the falling notes display.
- A ui.xml file to do the following:
- Hide the switch on the game play screen to turn on the falling notes display.
- Hide the "Settings" button on the main screen to prevent your students from going into the Shortcut settings to re-add a shortcut key to toggle the falling notes display.
- Hide the "Manage Profiles" button at the bottom of the list of profiles shown when you click on the profile name on the main screen. This is another way to get into the Settings screen.
- Hide the "Get More Songs" button at the bottom of the songs list. This is another way to get into the Settings screen.
Background Information
Read the page
Classroom Setup Guide for the basic procedure of copying settings files to the system-wide Synthesia folder on each computer.
Read the post
Getting Started with Modding Synthesia for an introduction about the ui.xml file.
- * Note: the link in that post will always provide the most recent ui.xml which may be for a development preview version. You can get the ui.xml for the Synthesia version you are currently using by extracting the default ui.xml from within Synthesia itself. On Windows, use 7-Zip or a resource editor to extract a copy of the SETTING_UI item and rename it to ui.xml. On Mac, go to the Applications folder, right click on the Synthesia app, choose "Show Package Contents", look in there for the ui.xml file and make a copy of it somewhere else so you can customize it.
Custom File Details
Make an override.xml file that contains the following:
Code: Select all
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Settings version="1">
<setting key="Gameplay.ShowFallingNotes">0</setting>
<setting key="Gameplay.ShowSheetMusic">1</setting>
</Settings>
Make a bindings.xml file that contains the following:
Code: Select all
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<InputBindingList version="1">
<Action name="Toggle All Notes Hidden" version="1" />
</InputBindingList>
Open your working copy of ui.xml and find each one of the following four lines at various places in the file:
Code: Select all
<ui id="falling" inherit="settingsArea" size="470, 44" />
<ui inherit="leftTitleButton" id="settings" tid="settings" />
<ui id="profileEditButton" inherit="settingsButton" autoWidthPadding="-1" size="388, 44" position="9, 212" tid="manageProfiles" />
<ui id="moreSongs" inherit="button" position="10, 742" align="left, center" anchor="left, bottom" tid="libraryMoreSongs" size="0, 38" autoWidthPadding="6" fontSize="14" />
For each of these lines, add an item visible="0" before the closing /> like this:
Code: Select all
<ui id="falling" inherit="settingsArea" size="470, 44" visible="0" />
<ui inherit="leftTitleButton" id="settings" tid="settings" visible="0" />
<ui id="profileEditButton" inherit="settingsButton" autoWidthPadding="-1" size="388, 44" position="9, 212" tid="manageProfiles" visible="0" />
<ui id="moreSongs" inherit="button" position="10, 742" align="left, center" anchor="left, bottom" tid="libraryMoreSongs" size="0, 38" autoWidthPadding="6" fontSize="14" visible="0" />
Now you can put these custom override.xml, bindings.xml, and ui.xml files in the system-wide Synthesia folder on each computer as described at the bottom of the Classroom Setup Guide page.