guitar hero controllers and whammy bar - duh but how

[nmarrufo]

ok i getting an adapter that will plug my guitar hero 2 sg contrloller to my pc (via usb) and i was wonderin if there was a mod tht wood let me use the whammy bar

[JMT391]

get an x-plorer they work off the bat whammy bar and everything

[Chemical_Warfare]

get an x-plorer they work off the bat whammy bar and everything

yeah, while the whammy bar works in the controller config, there is technically no use for it in FOF, as they wont add anything that alters scores.

Holy crap, did i really just SEARCH that?!

Im sure you could have too!

[IM_Fletcher]

I know this has been discussed 100000000000 times, but people are going to keep asking until something has been done about it. Let's get the whammy bar functional without allowing it to change the score. I'm tired of people coming over and playing FOF and asking why the whammy bar doesn't work. GZ had it in alpha so there should be no reason we can't get it in FOF.

Guitars shouldn't have vestigial organs.

[nmarrufo]

thank u i no many have asked but i didnt y the whammy bar coodnt work if u had a gh2 coontroller. it should be able to since its designed to

[raph666]

nmarrufo...you write so bad, I don't even speak english and it hurts me.


Okay, so here it is, there ARE reasons why there is no whammy... because, unlike GZ, FOF is coded in python and uses pygame, pygame has no functions that allow to modify the sound while it's streaming. Else than that, FOF was designed for keyboard playing (not for Guitar cotrollers) and the whammy bar on many (all??) guitar controllers is an analog control, which cant be used in FOF (only digital controls).

I don't want to turn you down, you guitar hero fan, it's just that even for codders, the whammy bar is not an easy thing to do, and without a good idea it might just never happen.

And well, I take this time to invite you nmarrufo to read the rules of the forum, read the FAQ's in each section and use the SEARCH function, it will avoid getting useless/repetitive topics like this one

[R4L]

Go play Guitar Zero.

[raptor jesus]

as they wont add anything that alters scores.

I am sick and tired of everyone saying to not do a whammy bar because of this. No one wants it to alter the scores! Everone who wants it just wants to be able to because it is fun. The whammy intself in GH doesn't even effect the score. It just increases star power.

[IM_Fletcher]

ok i went researching a little bit...

you CAN actually have sound effects in python.

http://docs.python.org/tut/node8.html
goto section 6.4 (packages)

Listen to the man! It looks like this link is real.

Just a little clarification here: This page is a tutorial about libraries. This isn't talking about a specific thing that exists; it details how it would be possible to make a library which applies distortion effects.

3) most of user-made tracks use a copy of the guitar.ogg as the song.ogg, guitar.ogg therefore "contains" all the instruments, pitch shifting only one would result in some distorted voice and guitar and bass and drums and etc, mixed with the song.ogg it would sound awful

This is very true. It could be possible to have the whammy bar only work on songs which have a seperate guitar.ogg, though.

one way that this could be done would be if you have an .ogg lets say called whammy.ogg that when you oressed a button, it would play this ogg over the song. this .ogg would sound like a whammy bar, but maybe the whammy could be muted a little so it fits in with the song. ideas on this?

I personally think that this isn't such a good idea. One of the most important things about a whammy bar is the slow changes between notes - this wouldn't be possible to do effectively with just a seperate whammy.ogg. Also, this file would (presumably) have to be made by the person fretting the song, and I don't think that making them do more work is such a good idea.

However, all of this doesn't necessarily mean that we can't do a whammy bar. Unfortunately, realisticly it would need either:
A) Finding a new library to use in python for the sound functions
B) Someone with good C/C++ skills and sound knowledge to write a new python sound library

I have (very briefly) attempted option A, without much success. However, if anyone manages to find such a library, I'm sure they'll be a lot of people interested in implementing it.
Option B would be a lot of work, but if anyone with the necessary skills wants to take on the job I'm sure they'll get a lot of support.

All in all, whammy bar support is technically possible, but could require a lot of work by developers (probably the reason it hasn't been done yet).

Oh and by the way, most of these suggestions aren't new ideas; they are covered in the (many) other threads regarding whammy bar support.

What's the status of this? There are enough people on here that someone can get this up and running.

And let's be honest, while FOF was designed to work with a keyboard, it's a Guitar Hero clone. There's no getting around that. Guitar Zero is pretty much a dead project because the developer hasn't released the code so it won't ever get much better. We HAVE the code for FOF, so let's get this done.

Anyone who has played on both a keyboard and a guitar controller knows that the guitar controller is infinitely better. Now with the advent of the x-plorer controller, keyboard days are numbered.

[dgrams2000]

...No one wants it to alter the scores!

I do.

[raph666]

the problem with this kind of discussion is that it's always easy to say "let's do it, why not?" when you don't know nothing about python. My whammy bar doesn't even register in the control panel, I could never test it. And since it's not possible to distort the sound using pygame, we would have to make it do another thing.

Being a guitar hero clone doesn't mean being able to do exactly like guitar hero

[IM_Fletcher]

http://pysonic.sourceforge.net/

If someone feels like reimplementing all the sound stuff using PySonic/FMOD, we can have a whammy bar.

What would this require?

[IM_Fletcher]

After more reading, this seems like it's totally doable. FMODEx lists "Real-time pitch shifter (changes pitch not playback speed)" as one of its features.

It's true I don't know much about python, but I don't see why this couldn't be done using PysonicEx.

[IM_Fletcher]

I really want this to happen so I'm going to try and post as much information as I am able that might assist someone in figuring this out.

I found the following code for writing pitch shift scripts for FMODEx (which can be implemented in python using pySonicEx:

Enumeration ; FMOD_DSP_PITCHSHIFT
#FMOD_DSP_PITCHSHIFT_PITCH ; Pitch value. 0.5 to 2.0. Default = 1.0. 0.5 = one octave down, 2.0 = one octave up. 1.0 does not change the pitch.
#FMOD_DSP_PITCHSHIFT_FFTSIZE ; FFT window size. 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096. Default = 1024. Increase this to reduce 'smearing'. This effect is a warbling sound similar to when an mp3 is encoded at very low bitrates.
#FMOD_DSP_PITCHSHIFT_OVERLAP ; Window overlap. 1 to 32. Default = 4. Increase this to reduce 'tremolo' effect. Increasing it by a factor of 2 doubles the CPU usage.
#FMOD_DSP_PITCHSHIFT_MAXCHANNELS ; Maximum channels supported. 0 to 16. 0 = same as fmod's default output polyphony, 1 = mono, 2 = stereo etc. See remarks for more. Default = 0. It is suggested to leave at 0!
EndEnumeration

Now it seems to me that if the guitar controller whammy bar is recorded as an axis, that you could set the input variable to a place on the axis from with the range of .5 - 2.0 and thereby create the whammy effect.

I think you can get pySonicEx here: http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/pySonicEx/0.1.0/

Raph666, I think there are ways to get your whammy bar to work in windows even if you don't have the x-plorer. See discussion at the link below for more information:
http://www.guitarzero2.proboards78.com/index.c....&page=1

[warhol]

And let's be honest, while FOF was designed to work with a keyboard, it's a Guitar Hero clone. There's no getting around that.

No. FoF was originally designed as one, but it is trying to call itself a stand alone (Adds reference toward Rock Band and my Sixth Fret idea)