How to build a Guitar Hero/Rock band
clone in a week
Rob Kischuk
@rkischuk | http://blog.kischuk.com

What’s already out there?
• JamLegend - http://jamlegend.com
• Obviously - Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc.
• Frets on Fire - a good head start

Why Do this?
• Hacking Fun Of It
Launch a JamLegend Competitor
• Marketing Sites
Mini-game

Day 1 - MIDI (or - Are you sure?)
• Goal - know MIDI cold
• Tools - http://fretsonfire.net, Hex Editor (HexEdit), Audio Player, Audacity
• http://faydoc.tripod.com/formats/mid.htm
Dig into the spec, understand it, read it like The Matrix
• FoF Song - small metadata file, .ogg audio file, MIDI sequencing

Day 2 - Get Your MIDI On
• Goal: Recognize most Frets on Fire songs with plausible results and no errors
Draw some boundaries - start with one single track
• Find the language of your choice & write a parser - no OS alternative?
• Find a few Frets on Fire tracked songs that you don’t mind listening to a
billion times
Transcode the song (if needed)
• Pay attention to “running mode”

Day 3 - Verify With a UI
• Goal: Work out the kinks and imperfections between your parser and what
_should_ show up
Store your parsed midi data in a format that is going to suit your UI language
• Play the audio and find a way to represent the notes in sync with the audio
In Flash, better to build an absolute timeline for note data and base notes off of
playback progress

Day 4 - Build Out the UI
• Goal: Display all notes in synch with the music
Show the notes that are coming and confirm that they hit them
• Key Considerations
• how to display longer notes?
How forgiving do you want to be
• To strum or not to strum?

Day 5 - Time For A Scoring System
• Goal: Award a score for how well the user did
Point per note
• How much for held notes?
• Bonus multipliers?
• Extra Credit: “Star Power”

Day 6/7 - What Now?
• High Scores
Song Selector
• Add more instruments (Drums, cow bell?)
• Vocals (Midi does have a Karaoke Format)
• Sequence Your Own Songs - http://fretsonfire.wikidot.com/