A couple of questions

[pkScary]

I started using MMF2 a couple of days ago and I have a couple of questions which I would be thankful to recieve an answer to.

1) I would like to implement a River City Ransom type movement system. For those of you not familiar with the game, the movement is sort of arcadey, except you have the ability to jump on top of some of the obstacles on the street (screenshot, you can jump on this concrete wall - http://www.rottentomatoes.com/g/nintendo/river_city_ransom/gallery.php?page=2&nopop=1 ). I'm currently using an invisible active object to block movement into the background, but obviously this doesn't allow jumping at the top of the foreground. Perhaps I should destroy the active object every time the player jumps?

2) I'm interested in making a music simulator game, along the lines of Guitar Hero. What kind of tools will I have to implement to accurately synch up the music with button presses, and play a whole song's worth of unique samples at the right time? I realize it's probably not simple but I'm willing to work towards it as I appreciate this genre. Any advice to point me in the right direction would be great.

So far I'm excited about the possibilities in MMF2, it's like a sketchpad for games. I intend to stick with it. I'm sure for every completed game there are 100 unfinished.

[DavidN]

1. The River City Ransom-type movement is actually pretty complex under the surface, and I'm not actually certain of the best way to do it. I'd start by having an invisible ground detector separate from the player that is used to check whether the player is standing on the ground or not, and only limit it to below a certain Y position when the player isn't jumping.

2. Some good ideas come from copying other people, and in this case, there's a Guitar Hero-styled game called Frets on Fire for the PC (try it, it's hysterical). It uses two separate music files per song - one for the rhythm guitars, drums, everything else, and one for the melody that the player is meant to play. In this way, the melody can be turned off or distorted whenever the player hits a wrong note. As for synching it up with the music, it may make things easiest if your music was in MOD format, as this format contains note and beat information in the file that can be read by the application.

[jayklik]

Is it possible to pick Mp3s apart to do that, Or would the melody and background files have to be found separately?

[DavidN]

I think it would be possible to do it in a very shaky way by using an audio editor to cut out/paste certain frequencies (it would be about as reliable as any current MP3-to-MIDI convertor, I imagine), but for the most part, you'd probably have to have the two files separately.

[jayklik]

would it be possible to convert the mp3 to a MIDI and then cut the melody out of the mp3, so that the MIDI is backing and the stuff you cut is the melody? it sounds simple enough, with the right software.

[pkScary]

Converting an MP3 to a midi file is nothing I've ever heard of. Usually people end up converting songs themselves by hand. Like DavidN was saying, you can isolate desirable frequencies but the result will never be nearly as good as Guitar Hero's implementation (at least with today's technology).

So your initial thoughts were right, you should probably use seperate background and melody files.

I'm having some issues getting the DDR/Guitar Hero mechanic just right. Is there any kind of command like "When this button isn't pressed" or a way to make arrows light up ONLY when a button is pressed?

[DavidN]

It's slightly counterintuitive, but you can use "(Negated) Repeat while button pressed" to mean "While button is not pressed".

[pkScary]

Negated works! Thanks, didn't know about that option.

Any more thoughts on the River City Ransom system?

[jayklik]

http://www.clickteam.com/epicenter/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Board=10&Number=27624& Searchpage=1&Main=3800&Words=Bears++War&topic=0&Se arch=true#Post27624

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