Rock Band

[jdport]

http://www.rockband.com/vbforum/showthread.php?t=586


I *love* the guitar hero games... bought my playstation just for it. But now it looks like I have no choice but to save up for an xbox360... :\


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One disk with 4 separate campaigns. Guitar, Drum, Bass and Vocal. Each can be played on its own from start to finish, in addition, a full band game is designed to allow for one huge co-op playthrough.

- Will feature full support for four player online play on both 360 and PS3. Any combination of on/offline play will work and each player can pick their own difficulty setting.

- Flexible community system will allow you to find bandmates anywhere in the world

- There will be a way for you to share your band's triumphs with the world, but the details are still under wraps.

- Musical fret-boards are now transparent so you can see more of the background visuals. Guitar is on the left side of the screen, Bass on the right and drums down the middle. Vocals scroll from right to left along the top of the screen.

- Guitars and Bass now have 10 frets. 5 for the regular sections of the game and 5 for the newly designated solo sections.

- Whammy bar is back as is the tilt to activate rock band's version of star power

- there is a five way switch on the guitar that allows for 5 different self-applied effects to the sound.

- Singing is now more in depth. There is a phoneme detector that will pick up individual vowels and consonants you say. Build up enough highly judged phrases and you'll be able to sing free-form. If you do well enough in free-form, then you'll trigger the vocalist's version of star power.

- Microphone doubles as a tambourine on many songs to combat super long guitar solos where the singer doesn't have much to do.

- Drums are apparently insane. You use actual sticks and hit one of four colored pads in front of you, in addition to a kick pedal attached to the drumming unit. Drummers will also have the ability to do fills etc. in their own little free-form section, do well and you'll trigger the drummers version of star power.

- If one person fails, the whole band does not fail, their section simply turns gray and they have to sit out the rest of the song unless one your band mates initiates star power, which will bring you back into the fold.

- If all bandmates can reach the end of a song, you'll be greeted with one huge free-form jam session.

- There will be a character creation system, and you can create multiple avatars that play different instruments.

- Four themed clothing stores in addition to licensed guitars and pedals and other rock paraphernalia.

- A full set of mo-cap stage movements have been added for each instrument. You can decide whether your vocalist moves like Axel Rose, or stands his ground like Clapton.

- 40 performance venues planned

- All peripherals will be unique to each platform. This isn't the developer's decision. Apparently MS peripherals require special circuit boards.

- You'll be able to craft your own band logo

- The HUD in the screens isn't final but is a good indication of what you can expect

- 4 songs announced in the article, not sure if this is new or old but whatever.
Weezer - Say It Ain't So - Original Master Track
Black Sabbath - Paranoid - Original Master Track
The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again - Original Master Track
Nirvana - In Bloom - Original Master Track

INSTRUMENT DESCRIPTIONS

Sorry I can't post photos so my descriptions will have to suffice

Guitars/Bass

Guitars are an exact 3/4 replica of a Fender Strat.

Xplorer guitars will work for 360 owners, but you may not be able to pass on all the new stuff this model has.

Five familiar buttons near the top of the neck, five buttons near the body of the guitar. You will use these new buttons during specially designed solo sections using ONLY hammer ons and pull offs, no having to worry about your strum bar. Signature Fender 5-way switch has been added. By shopping at the in game store you'll be able to purchase several virtual effects pedals such as Flange, Wah, Chorus and Echo. These can be applied during your song by setting the 5 way switch to the desired effect.

Microphone

There will eventually be a Rock Band branded Mic

Other USB mics will be supported, but Harmonix will probably NOT allow the use of the 360 headset due to its low fidelity. Mics will be usable as tambourines during certain songs.

That's all for mics!

DRUMS

The picture of the drum peripheral in the mag is not final.

It consists of four pads, a kick pedal and legs for the enire unit to stand on. Think of it as a TV dinner tray stand only cooler

Leftmost pad (red) is your snare drum, everything else doubles as toms and cymbals depending on the song.

A set of real wooden drum sticks will ship with the unit.

A piece of the stand can be taken off so that the unit can sit lower, or on a coffee table.

There is a kick pedal

If you play drums in this game on hard or expert, then you're really playing the drums. Apparently you could sit down at a real set and play the same songs

 

[BD2003]

Interesting, but unconfirmed.

Need to see pricing on the set, and I'm not quite convinced they can pull off online play properly considering internet lag.

 

[jdport]

If they can pull off online play in other games, I don't know why they couldn't with this... but yea we'll have to wait and see. I doubt I'll be able to buy a 360 before this comes out.. so I'll see what people think before I drop all that cash.

If you buy all the peripherals it will get pricey as well... but I'd probably start with a guitar and add on the drums and maybe a microphone later.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: jdport
If they can pull off online play in other games, I don't know why they couldn't with this... but yea we'll have to wait and see. I doubt I'll be able to buy a 360 before this comes out.. so I'll see what people think before I drop all that cash.

If you buy all the peripherals it will get pricey as well... but I'd probably start with a guitar and add on the drums and maybe a microphone later.

Well, music is a bit unique in that it MUST be precisely in sync - most other games can get away without being perfectly in sync. You will notice it any band member is even slightly off, and everyone has their own particular lag to each other.

They'll have to fake something, somewhere. Especially with the singer - thats not even just a hit a note or not situation, it's a continuous stream. Maybe if you miss one note, everyone else hears you missing a later note.

That probably won't make a difference to most people since it'll have mostly the same end effect, but it'll definitely be interesting to see how they try to get around it.

 

[jdport]

Didn't they have to deal with the same thing in the DDR games? Well maybe not since people weren't playing a cooperative song together... but well all I know is it sounds awsome, I hope they can deliver.

 

[Kev]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: jdport
If they can pull off online play in other games, I don't know why they couldn't with this... but yea we'll have to wait and see. I doubt I'll be able to buy a 360 before this comes out.. so I'll see what people think before I drop all that cash.

If you buy all the peripherals it will get pricey as well... but I'd probably start with a guitar and add on the drums and maybe a microphone later.

Well, music is a bit unique in that it MUST be precisely in sync - most other games can get away without being perfectly in sync. You will notice it any band member is even slightly off, and everyone has their own particular lag to each other.

They'll have to fake something, somewhere. Especially with the singer - thats not even just a hit a note or not situation, it's a continuous stream. Maybe if you miss one note, everyone else hears you missing a later note.

That probably won't make a difference to most people since it'll have mostly the same end effect, but it'll definitely be interesting to see how they try to get around it.

I don't know much about netcode for video games, but logically I wouldn't think this could be as difficult as syncing up hitboxes for players in FPS games.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Kev

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: jdport
If they can pull off online play in other games, I don't know why they couldn't with this... but yea we'll have to wait and see. I doubt I'll be able to buy a 360 before this comes out.. so I'll see what people think before I drop all that cash.

If you buy all the peripherals it will get pricey as well... but I'd probably start with a guitar and add on the drums and maybe a microphone later.

Well, music is a bit unique in that it MUST be precisely in sync - most other games can get away without being perfectly in sync. You will notice it any band member is even slightly off, and everyone has their own particular lag to each other.

They'll have to fake something, somewhere. Especially with the singer - thats not even just a hit a note or not situation, it's a continuous stream. Maybe if you miss one note, everyone else hears you missing a later note.

That probably won't make a difference to most people since it'll have mostly the same end effect, but it'll definitely be interesting to see how they try to get around it.

I don't know much about netcode for video games, but logically I wouldn't think this could be as difficult as syncing up hitboxes for players in FPS games.

Oh no way...this is much harder. An fps game isnt synced to a specific rhythm with everyone else....fps is probably the easiest to pull off. You kill someone by shooting at them whenever you feel like it - the server then decides whether its a hit or not.

Music requires you to hit the note when the note must be hit, and when the note itself changes every 50 msec, its just not going to work with a 75 ping, let alone the extra 75 or so msec best case its going to take to jump from player to player or from player to server to other player. In a sense, the server doesnt have any freedom to "decide" whether or not the note was hit...the music itself determines it.

So your client tells everyone else you hit the note, and they find out about it 100msec later, which in music, is LONG after you'd actually have had to hit the note. So it really has no way of knowing whether or not you hit it until after the fact. They can get away with it on long notes that are held (just cut it off later), but its just not going to work with drums or finger picking.

They're going to HAVE to fake it somehow. Whether or not itll really matter in the grand scheme of things is a different question though.

Hell, lag is so crucial to music that GHII had a way to tweak the lag from your HDTV upconverting...and thats on the order of 20-30ms...yet it made a huge difference.

 

[jdport]

It seems like if they just sync the beginning of the music on all 4 players machines... and then let everything play locally from there then the only thing that you would need to actually communicate would be note misses for your co-players...

So you'd see your band-mates misses after the fact... i'm not sure how much impact this would have on the game. I see your point though, 60ms is a pretty good ping time generally but just that much delay would have a huge impact on the music. I don't know how they'll deal with that.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: jdport
It seems like if they just sync the beginning of the music on all 4 players machines... and then let everything play locally from there then the only thing that you would need to actually communicate would be note misses for your co-players...

So you'd see your band-mates misses after the fact... i'm not sure how much impact this would have on the game. I see your point though, 60ms is a pretty good ping time generally but just that much delay would have a huge impact on the music. I don't know how they'll deal with that.

Well, at the very least, the singer would have to be in front of everyone else, because thats not just a matter of hit/miss.

 

[Bacstar]

Now how bout us keyboardist's... we need some consideration too. I imagine most keyboard or piano players have one already...probably would just require a midi to USB cable to get it rolling...

hmmmm...

 

[clamum]

Man if they actually come through and deliver what they say this will be a damn fun game.

 

[CPA]

This will be the game of the decade if they can pull it off. And as far as confirmation goes, there has been a lot put out by Harmonix on this, so I suspect it is far from rumor.

 

[potato28]

If they don't screw this up this game will go down in history, just like SMB and Zelda.

 

[blurredvision]

http://gear.ign.com/articles/798/798395p1.html

The guitar looks awesome. Depending on the song list, I'll be looking more forward to this one than Guitar Hero III.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: potato28
If they don't screw this up this game will go down in history, just like SMB and Zelda.

Eh, I think guitar hero is going to get the historical nod - this is just the next step.