[WIP] FoFiX Theme for 4.0.0 - by the community

[slantyr]

as far as the notes go

hopefully we can come up with something everyone can agree on

some flame notes

Link (the spinnotes are a big picture to post)

you will have to put these in a gh theme

i tried turning the ho/pos blue to make them more noticeable

try them out

[Jama7301]

i tried turning the ho/pos blue to make them more noticeable

I had that turned on when I started with RF mod. Then once I got more accustomed to the notes, I turneded them off, haha.

[drihscol]

umm, with the star notes, why did you use those static ones.
they look like a very large person has sat on them.

[slantyr]

every theme must have a static set of notes(that's how fofix recognizes valid themes)

i'm gonna assume you don't have the spinnotes turned on go to

settings\display settings\in-game display settings\theme display settings\animated star notes = yes

[Azzco]

Looks like this thread needs a little something to chew on.

I was playing a bit and got to a song with weird chords that I did not expect and misread them as single strum notes (Green+Orange can be hard to identify.
Something like this would probably help a lot on those situations.

I don't know if either GH or RB has this already, in any case it's very basic.
The link could be presented in a much different way.

And something else for the score screen/songlist.

Combo display, just shows your multiplier on each note, Green:1, Red:2, Yellow:2, Blue:4, Black:Miss.
The border makes this look really cluttered but with more notes it should look more like a gradient.

I haven't taken starpower or bass mutlipliers into account.
This could somewhat replace the stars in the song list (how much does stars really tell anyway?).

Anyway these are just mock ups to get some ideas flowing and maybe it would fit better into the thoughts section...

[Tormann71]

RBU does the chord thing with a thin orange line connecting them. It helps alot on the small PSP screen.

[Leapo]

I came up with a nifty idea for Starpower meters and effects (I've hidden the rest of the in-game UI in these screenshots to highlight the Starpower effect). Click any image for full-size.

Standard blank Fretboard:


Starpower meter fully charged (gold bars on either side of the fretboard):


Starpower active (flame on!):


Doesn't get any more "frets on fire" than that

[death_au]

I think those SP sidebars are very plain and not very obvious. But the flames are good. REALLY good
(Just need to be able to make a shader that will be able to do that, that would look the best)

Also I like Azzco's results bar idea

[Leapo]

Yeah, the SP meters are a bit subdued. I could brighten the yellow and add some glow to make the meters stand out more.

As for making a shader that will render flames; it shouldn't be all that difficult. Those flames were made fully in Photoshop using some simple filters, after all.

[weirdpeople]

Yeah, the SP meters are a bit subdued. I could brighten the yellow and add some glow to make the meters stand out more.

As for making a shader that will render flames; it shouldn't be all that difficult. Those flames were made fully in Photoshop using some simple filters, after all.

which ones?

[Leapo]

As for making a shader that will render flames; it shouldn't be all that difficult. Those flames were made fully in Photoshop using some simple filters, after all.

which ones?

Difference clouds, followed by a color overlay (two-tone radial gradient), edges masked off in black roughly, Polar Coordinates, then finally some work with the smudge tool to make the flames a little more dynamic.

This method can turn out some pretty nice flames if you do it right, like so:

[coolguy567]

I like how we finally have a neck that goes well with the rest of Leapo's mockups.

The SP bars are far too subtle. They also need some graduations on them so you can see how much you really have (or at least the half-way mark like GH2 so you can see when you can activate). Preferably I'd have 8 graduations (so each graduation is one measure, and you get two graduations from each set of SP notes), with the half-way one darker. But with such think meters there isn't really enough space.

Also, gold for SP is very Rock Band.

EDIT: Can we not do a curved neck? That's totally Rock Band's thing, and it already looks quite RB.

EDIT: here's my idea - the song structure bar.

The whole thing would be slightly transparent (and generally better looking, of course). It would replace the timer at the very top of the in-game screen. Horizontal direction represents time. It tells you how far along you are in the song (the translucent red bar shows this) and you can also see what sections are coming up.

The separate boxes represent practice mode sections.
* The first box is the intro. As intros are quite rare, there's no special marking for an intro.
* The next box is verse 1. Verses are simply shown as a box with the number of the verse in it.
* Then it's the first chorus. Choruses are lighter and have a C in them, for obvious reasons.
* Then verse 2.
* Then the second chorus.
* Then - you guessed it - the bridge. Which has, surprise surprise, a B in it.
* Now the guitar solo. It's blue (matching the blue neck colour during solos in Rock Band - if we use a different colour then that would be reflected here). It would show whatever icon we use for "guitar" on it to show that it's a guitar solo (a drum solo would show the drum icon, of course).
* Chorus again. This one's twice as long.
* Outro. Same story as the intro - no special marking.

So now the player can see exactly what's coming up. He can also adjust his star-power planning accordingly. If the player knows that the choruses are very chord-heavy then he can save his star power for that. A new Expert player who's unfamiliar with the song would save his star power for the solo which he knows is coming up (I don't want to know how many times I finished a song with a full bar of star power, which I was saving for the non-existant solo, when I first played Expert on GH2).

Also this could be displayed above Azzco's results bar, giving some meaning to the position in his bar. (so instead of knowing "I missed over there" you know "I missed at the beginning of chorus 2").

EDIT: potential problems with implementation. Some songs (especially in GH3) have weird section names from which it would be hard to determine these sections from. For most songs it would be easy to say "Any section containing 'chorus' but not 'pre' in its name is a chorus" but in TTFAF the choruses are called "So Far Away #". I guess putting it in the ini would work:
chorus_string = "So Far Away"
So it will mark any section containing "So Far Away" a chorus.

[Azzco]

Tormann71, I honestly didn't know it existed in RBU, I just played a song with weird chords (as I mentioned) and thought an indicator would be appropriate.
I do remember GH..WT? M? having some weird graphics along the neck connecting some of the notes. Would someone please point out which feature I'm thinking off?

Leapo, your mock ups are awesome as always. I just hope that we'll be able to see those graphics looking as awesome in game as they do now.
I have to say though, the starpower/fuel/overdrive meter would probably be hard to read in game.
As mentioned earlier you'll want to know how much you need to be able to use it, also some hint on 1/4 as well as 3/4 would be nice as well.

Coolguy, I think we've been needing a song position slider thing quite a bit for a long time.
Though I think it'd be better with more icons and less letters, as long as the graphics makes sense that is.
I think it'd be hard to implement the combo graph I suggested and even harder if you're to make every note as long as it is in time, though probably fully possible.
Also displaying song length of the song to the right of, as well as current time under the structure bar, would be nice.

[death_au]

I do remember GH..WT? M? having some weird graphics along the neck connecting some of the notes. Would someone please point out which feature I'm thinking of?

Purple slider notes have a line between them to indicate you should slide to the next note. That's what you're thinking of I think.

[Jama7301]

Alright, to get this back on track...

How well do you guys think the ideas we have this far fit together as a theme? Which ones need to be worked on to make it all 'gel' as it were?