Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
This forum is in permanent archive mode. Our new active community can be found here.
Piano Hero!
For my User Interface Design class, my team is making Piano Hero. We need input from potential players for the analysis phase of the project, and I thought you guys might have good input. Here is a description of the project.
Piano Hero is a game very similar to Guitar Hero. In Guitar Hero, the controller is shaped like a guitar, and the player watches the screen to play the guitar parts to popular rock songs. The point of Guitar Hero is to make people feel that they are almost playing a real guitar, and to have fun playing along with their favorite songs. This game has, in fact, inspired many kids to take guitar lessons to learn the real thing. This is where the idea for Piano Hero comes in.
The goal of Piano Hero is to make a similar game, where the player actually learns basic principles of music playing. This game should be as fun as Guitar Hero, with a piano controller instead. There are many popular songs, of all genres, that involve piano parts, so hopefully the “coolness†factor will still be there. After playing this game, however, the player should be able to approach a real piano or keyboard, and be able to really play the music they just spent hours having fun with in the game. The player should eventually be able to play along with the songs on a real piano in real life.
In order to learn actual musical notation, however, the musical reading interface needs to be changed. Instead of the vertical scrolling bar with colored dots, we propose to make it horizontal, moving right to left, as real music is read. The colored dots would be placed in the correct spots on the music staff, and also contain the note names. These colors and note names would correspond to the keys on the piano controller.
In addition to correct musical notation, the keys on the keyboard will be designed to mimic a real piano. For example, hitting a certain key on the controller keyboard should make the same tone as it would on a real piano. This is how the game play would be translated to real life, as opposed to Guitar Hero, where the controller is not similar to a real guitar at all.
Right now we are getting information from potential users, before we actually start implementing the game. Our target age group is the same as Guitar Hero's, somewhere around 8-30.
These are the main things we need to find out from people:
Does the music reading interface idea make sense? (see picture)
What is your opinion of modern piano music, and the piano/keyboard itself?
What kinds of songs and bands would you be interested in playing along with? (give examples, we need to come up with a list of possible bands, etc.)
Do you have any thoughts for improving this idea, or awesomely cool elements to add?
Piano Hero is a game very similar to Guitar Hero. In Guitar Hero, the controller is shaped like a guitar, and the player watches the screen to play the guitar parts to popular rock songs. The point of Guitar Hero is to make people feel that they are almost playing a real guitar, and to have fun playing along with their favorite songs. This game has, in fact, inspired many kids to take guitar lessons to learn the real thing. This is where the idea for Piano Hero comes in.
The goal of Piano Hero is to make a similar game, where the player actually learns basic principles of music playing. This game should be as fun as Guitar Hero, with a piano controller instead. There are many popular songs, of all genres, that involve piano parts, so hopefully the “coolness†factor will still be there. After playing this game, however, the player should be able to approach a real piano or keyboard, and be able to really play the music they just spent hours having fun with in the game. The player should eventually be able to play along with the songs on a real piano in real life.
In order to learn actual musical notation, however, the musical reading interface needs to be changed. Instead of the vertical scrolling bar with colored dots, we propose to make it horizontal, moving right to left, as real music is read. The colored dots would be placed in the correct spots on the music staff, and also contain the note names. These colors and note names would correspond to the keys on the piano controller.
In addition to correct musical notation, the keys on the keyboard will be designed to mimic a real piano. For example, hitting a certain key on the controller keyboard should make the same tone as it would on a real piano. This is how the game play would be translated to real life, as opposed to Guitar Hero, where the controller is not similar to a real guitar at all.
Right now we are getting information from potential users, before we actually start implementing the game. Our target age group is the same as Guitar Hero's, somewhere around 8-30.
These are the main things we need to find out from people:
Does the music reading interface idea make sense? (see picture)
What is your opinion of modern piano music, and the piano/keyboard itself?
What kinds of songs and bands would you be interested in playing along with? (give examples, we need to come up with a list of possible bands, etc.)
Do you have any thoughts for improving this idea, or awesomely cool elements to add?
Comments
1.Does the program support midi input?
2.Look into various piano instrumentals of popular artists/songs, such as "In The End" by Linkin Park.
3.Check out the mapping of keyboard keys to piano keys in this application.
4.Similar to Step Mania or Sing Star, Let people add their own songs by importing midi files.
I'm feeling more and more that games which actually teach a useful skill yet are also fun are the way to go. Hence the love for German-style board games. ^_~ The trouble is having an interesting, challenging game that teaches a useful skill and yet still has mass appeal. At least DDR was (and is) really good exercise.
1. playing the piano, even with modern songs that have just one or two chord progressions in the piano line, can be really hard if you've never played before.
2. How would you handle moving up or down through octaves in a piece? I can, at most, see there being 12 keys on a difficult piece. That's not really much range you'll have access to.
Guitar Hero only gets away with it by abstracting the relationship between what you're doing with the controller and what sounds the game makes to such an extreme level: the lack of connection between your skill and the technical level of the music you hear is critical. If the keyboard plays actual notes, you cannot do this, and there is no way to give the feeling of playing the song without having the person actually play the song.
I could go on, but I honestly believe that what you want to accomplish is impossible.
You have to make two versions of the game:
"5-year-old piano recital edition" (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star & Mary Had A Little Lamb) and "Talent show at a genius kids' school edition" (Anything by Billy Joel, and Rhapsody in Blue).
Also, note that Guitar Hero ignores timing and style: you don't hit exact notes with precise stylistic timing, and there's no 1:1 correspondence. If the keyboard plays notes as you hit them, it will sound awful for 99% of people. That song rocks. I played a nice brass arrangement of it back in the day.
"'I beat Twinkle Twinkle on expert!' 'Oh yeah? I beat the Pokemon theme song on Expert yesterday!' '...I'M NOT PLAYING WITH YOU ANYMORE!!!'"
I bow to a superior force. *bows*
Harmonica Hero would be a much better idea. A simple harmonica has ten holes, basic play involves no chords, and you could present the data in a simple and meaningful way with 1:1 correspondence without ruining it.
Make a whole section for Bach, and I might buy two
Beatmania has already been mentioned...and addition to it, there is also Keyboardmania and Pop'n Music.
They're kinda both polar opposites of each other. Pop'n is the type of thing you want to make- the 5 or 9 key keyboard game that's relatively easy, or insane, depending on the song.
Then you have keyboardmania, which has a 24 key keyboard, which in turn makes it pretty intimidating and also a lot more like playing a real piano (especially cause the controller, unlike Pop'n Music and beatmania, has a more-or-less real piano as the keyboard).
And finally, side scrolling notes in rhythm games have been done before, as well- in Taiko Drum Master.
But granted, if you could somehow put all those aspects together into one, good game, then it's probably not a half bad idea.
Scott, fix it. ;^)