new user with questions

[Kathleen]

There are seven letters in the musical alphabet, A through G. They just keep repeating. On the staff, they move upward from line to space to line to space, etc. So if you have a staff with 35 notes on it, each of the seven letters would be represented five times.

The notes that have the same name, but are higher or lower than each other, are multiples of the same frequency. The "A" that I might sing, which a man with a fairly high voice could also sing in falsetto, is 440; the "A" that is seven notes lower is 220; the "A" that is seven notes higher, which only a woman with a high voice could sing, is 880. All of these notes sound the same except that they are higher or lower than each other. It's like if you plucked a note on a string, then held the string down in the exact center and plucked one side of it. That would give you two pitches that had the same name but were an octave apart.

So on the staff on my game, the note that is the second SPACE from the bottom in the treble (upper) clef (set of five long lines) is "A" 440; the note that sits on the first shorter LINE above the treble clef is "A" 880; and the note that is on the top LINE of the bass (lower) clef is "A" 220. The first SPACE in the bass clef is "A" 110.

[Sieg]

Alright I think I get it, except for the "A" 110:

The first SPACE in the bass clef is "A" 110.

Shouldn't this be the first space from the BOTTOM of the bass clef?



Anyway, tell how you want it to work. I can think of 2 ways:

1) When you select "A" with the left and right arrow keys and shoot, all "A" notes should explode, regardless of being a 110,220,440 or 880.

2) Add the ability to select an octave/frequency in addition to the letter.

Which would you prefer? Or maybe you have another idea?

[Kathleen]

Yes, you've got it. When I say "first space" on a clef, I mean the bottom of the four spaces, not the top. And there is only one note, a line note on middle C, in between the treble and bass clefs, even though they are generally shown far enough apart to squeeze in more than that. So the space note sitting on top of the bass clef, tangent to and above the "A" 220 line, is a B, the line note on that little line between the two clefs is C (middle C), and the space note hanging below the treble clef and tangent to the "E" line at the bottom of it is a "D". B, C, D, right next to each other, even though they are usually shown because of the separation of the clefs as being farther apart than space-line-space patterns that are actually on the clefs.

It is as if you peeled a line off the page to make the two clefs more distinct, which they started doing when keyboard instruments were invented four or five hundred years ago (two hands), spread the clefs apart, and then just drew a small piece of that "C" line back in when you needed it to show a middle C.

I hope to turn you into a music theoretician before this is all over, Sieg.

I don't need the player to identify which octave the note is in (whether it is A 440 or A 220, for example), but I do need all 35 notes to be fired individually and randomly. The player can still just have A-G on her, no need for A',A'', A''' or anything like that, and whichever A drifts by, she just has to change the fighter to an A and it will explode the note. I tried piling all the different A's onto the condition for Global A = 0, but of course the program just sent all five A's at the same time when the letter "A" came up at random when I did that.

Eventually, I would like to somehow record the 35 different sounds as wav or mp3 files or whatever, so that when the note explodes it will sound like someone is singing that note. Like the music is bursting free from the prison. That would reinforce to the player exactly which of the five notes it was. Have you heard that setting on a lot of electric keyboards where you play the keys but the sound is like a choir of men for the low notes or a choir of women for the low notes, singing "ah" on the note you played? It would be even better if I could somehow get it to sound like they were singing EH-ee, BEE, SEE, DEE, EEE, EFF, or JEE when the note explodes, but that might be a lot harder to do.

[Sieg]

Ok I understand. That will not be a problem
I already know how to do everything you want, now I hope I can explain it to you properly.

Here goes:

To tell the shooting notes apart (the yellow rings), I sort of "tagged" them. When an "A" note is fired, I put a label named "A" on it.
Then, when your bullet (the spinning star) overlaps the note, I check the note's tag, to see if it matches the letter that was selected with the arrow keys.
That is the way your game works right now.

Are you with me so far?

So to fix your problem, all you have to do is make sure "A"110, "A"220, "A440" and "A"880 have the same tag. If they all have tag "A", then the bullet is not going to care wether it was a 110 or 440 or whatever. As long as the note's tag = "A", it explodes!

So how do you put the right tags on the right notes?

Take a look at this picture:

The action I circled is the one setting the "tag". I used "Alterable Value A" as a tag.
You need to edit this action, and change it to this:

You see what I did there? I set the Alterable value to 0 (zero).
This way, the note that is created on this eventline, will be tagged "0"
Why 0? ->because we have to use numbers instead of letters.
0=A
1=B
2=C
3=D
4=E
5=F
6=G

So if, for example, you want to tag a note "E", set it's "Alterable Value A" to 4. Make sure you put a 4-tag on all octaves of E.

That's it for now. Let me know if you understand all this.
Once you have this working I will tell you how to add the sound-effects. One thing at a time

[Kathleen]

Thanks, Sieg. I basically get that A through G are being called 0 through 6 and that the counter on the fighter, and the missile, are somehow synched up to that relationship. I'll look at this later tonight and see if I can get anywhere with it. I really appreciate all your help with this.

[Kathleen]

Hey Sieg! This is actually working! I just put the A 880 in and it came across the line and I exploded it.

I had already put in all the "Global Value = 7, 8, 9, etc.) last night, but just now after rereading your post I created a note on the A880, dragged the box about setting the alterable value and the x position 660 down to that line from the Global Value 6 line above it, changed the alterable value to 0 and then changed the random number from 7 to 8.

Now I think I see that for the first seven, you were able to just say, "Set alterable value to Global Value A" because those two numbers were the same. But after the first seven letters, we have to start over repeating the numbers of the alterable values because we only have seven notes. I think I get that possibly even slightly more than vaguely. Thanks! I'll put all this in and get back to you.

Do you mind continuing to help me with this? It is a huge help. I've been wanting to do it for a year but didn't know how.

Kathleen

[Kathleen]

I've got all the notes in now. I need to tweak their locations a little, but basically the game is working the way I want it to! Thanks again!

I was wondering some other things. Do you know of a way to get a better looking treble and bass clef sign on those staves? Those are the signs at the left of the rows of long lines. I can draw them freehand pretty well, especially if I have a staff to draw them on, but I can't do it very well with a mouse. But I want it to look like it was drawn on there and not use a picture from the web with a background that would stand out. I don't mind a picture from the web, but I don't see how to get one without a background.

Also, I notice that after blowing up thirty or forty notes, the particle maker seems to gradually quit working. Do you know why that would be?

I'm going to be making a bunch of different levels for this game, maybe about eight. The one you have helped me put together is basically the hardest one, other than speeding things up and maybe adding some alien bombers the player has to avoid. Or I might switch to having a fighter who moves horizontally across the bottom of the screen to make it a little harder at the end. I think I know how to do all of that. I have figured out how to make a copy of what I've done within the game, so I think for the easier levels I will be able to just delete a bunch of the notes from a copy so the player can focus on a few notes, gradually learn them, and not have to deal with all thirty five at once.

Is there a command I can program that says that once a player has successfully exploded three or whatever of each of the notes that are being randomly generated, the game will jump to another level?

And did you say you had some idea about how to get the notes to sing their names on explosion?

[Random]

If you have a scanner (or know someone who does) you could handdraw and scan them in, import them to MMF and then clean them up there with the mouse.
Or you take a picture from the web, and then use the eraser tool to remove the background by hand (mouse).

For advancing through levels you should set up a counter for each note type that you make go up by 1 everytime the player explodes a note. I'm not sure how you handle note destruction here as I didn't follow the entire discussion. But I assume you have an event for each note to be destroyed?
e.g.
+ shot A collides with note
+ note Alterable Value A = 0
> destroy note

Then you create an action that increases the matching counter:

> Add 1 to note counter A

This is also where you would add a sound effect for the note's name.

You'd then add an event to end the level when all counters are ready:

+ note counter C >= 3
+ note counter D >= 3
+ note counter E >= 3
+ etc.
> jump to next level / start end of level sequence

You could also display the counters so the player can see what is still missing. E.g. when a counter is high enough you could hide it, so it is obvious what has to be accomplished.

[Sieg]

Great to hear it is working Kathleen, and you are starting to understand the code! Good job.

Also, I notice that after blowing up thirty or forty notes, the particle maker seems to gradually quit working. Do you know why that would be?

Thats because you reach the maximum number of objects (500). Every time a note explodes you create 40 particle objects. This quickly adds up to 500 . When you run your game with F7 or F8, you can see how many objects currently exist in your game.

To fix this you should destroy particles once they are outside the screen:

"Particle" is getting closer then -10 pixels from window's edge
-> Destroy particle

This picture shows how to get that event:


Now about changing levels when 3 of each note is shot, and adding sound effects:
Random (the guy who posted above me) explains roughly how to do it, and he is right. Well, almost right.
I know exactly how to do it but it would be a pain to explain it to you with words. It would be alot easier if you would email me your newest version of the game. I will then add in the required code and comment them as I did before. Then, if you have any questions about what I did, you can ask them here. Ok?

And how about this picture for the music sign?

[Kathleen]

Thanks, Random! I am going to grab drawings from the web and try the erasing. I think that will work.

Kathleen