Scratch

I am presently working on creating 'GHSE Schools Out For Summer Guitar Medium V0.1' as the first example song. V0.1 is constantly being reuploaded as I find minor bugs, so it may be best to avoid beginning a song until the first example is done.

Last edited by blaster395 (2012-03-29 19:24:00)

All bugs (Except that flash bug) with V0.1 have been fixed.
Change list:
Slight lag on full screen corrected
Combo randomly ending despite correct note pressed is now fixed.
1 in 5 green notes not appearing is fixed.
Bar indicating when to play notes has been changed to appear UNDER the notes and to have a central light grey line to indicate the 'sweet spot' for best timing.

Just throwing an idea to reduce list length: Maybe not have empty (note-less) spaces at all and instead, specificate the duration of the note in each list item? This way, School's Out would have 441+ list items and TTFAF, uh, 3,722+ (still, much less than 29,040! That's just insane for Scratch).

Each "note" list item would look kinda like this, in my head: 1;S;0.5. Note number (1-5), type (normal, star power, and possibly even held/held+star power if we get to implement that), duration (in beats).

There would also be "event" list items, that may mark tempo changes, etc. The first item in the list must specify the song's tempo.

Just a note here, I have no idea how your project works since I'm typing this without even having checked it out.    But ideally, it should work kinda like I described. Also, pretty much anything we come up with, as complex as it may be, should work smoothly on the online Flash player in turbo mode. Not so on the program's turbo mode, though.

I've been interested for a loooong time in making in an engine like this, but never got around to it and probably won't be bothered to help too much with this, but I'll still ask: What exactly do you need help with, other than actual song charts?

(and more, long-term ideas: A simple to use "chart editor" project, and perhaps a project to convert Frets on Fire charts to .txt lists to import into Scratch.  )

blaster395 wrote:

The note lists do not work like that. First, each note number has a separate list (so multiple notes can be created at a time). Second, scratch cannot read the variables in the list like that (As fas as I am aware).

Other than making note charts, you can mod the game engine for various things, such as different graphics, implementing features I have not included yet (If you do a good enough job at that I will make it the next main version!) and even converting the engine to emulate different games, such as stepmania.

In that case, then you could make each list item with 5 characters that may be "0" or "1" plus the type and duration, like so: 01010;S;0.5, making a red/blue chord (using the original GH/RB colors).

And, with the right scripting, you can make Scratch read only certain characters of a list item, like so:

if <(letter (1) of (item (count) of [notes])) = (1)>
broadcast [send green note v]
end

And with the join block and a bit of logic work you could make it read a portion of the list item:

set [a v] to (9) //assuming that in the 9th character starts the note duration. We want to retrieve that value.
set [note_dur v] to (item (a) of [notes v])
repeat until <(a) = (length of [notes v])>
set [note_dur v] to (join (note_dur)(item (a) of [notes v]))

Using 01010;S;0.5 as the note list item, this script should give 0.5 as the result.

blaster395 wrote:

Although you would additionally have to take into account that the majority of notes have no duration.

As in, "the majority of notes aren't held notes", or "the majority of notes aren't notes at all"? The "duration" value would be actually the time the game as to wait (in beats) before proceeding to the next note. If you meant the latter, well, the very reason I'm suggesting this is to eliminate notes that aren't notes.