Jamie TehFeb 22
I've just spent far too long writing the beginnings of a ridiculous music game for web browsers. You use either a MIDI keyboard or the computer keyboard (a s d f g h j k). The game plays a bar of random notes and you have to play it back, correct notes and correct timing. As you level up, the patterns get more rhythmically complicated. If you make 5 mistakes, game over; you have to start again. Still probably a lot more to do to make this more interesting, but I'm curious as to whether anyone finds this remotely worthwhile.
One challenge right now is how to calibrate if you don't have absolute pitch. I feel like I might need to add some sort of screen where it plays you a few notes until you find the right ones or something. For now, note that it's in A minor, A3 to A4.
https://files.jantrid.net/simus/
Simus

Show threadRay DogFeb 22

@jcsteh Oh boy I love this. Level 3 is a killer for me though, I'm great at melodies but am weaker with dense/syncopated rhythms. For me level 1 is easy, level 2 is moderate, level 3 is very hard (or impossible right now). Maybe I'll get better with practice.

My only suggestions are that the levels feel a tiny bit too long? Might just be me getting impatient though. Also, I think there should be a way to earn lives/mistakes. I need all I can get for level 3 hahaha

Show threadJamie TehFeb 22
@musicalman Yah, I was wondering about the lengths of the levels. Part of the problem is that I'm running out of ideas to make more levels, haha. I probably need to add more loops so we can do faster tempos and stuff. Agree on adding lives. Any suggestions as to how to earn them? Maybe every 10 correct responses gives you 1 life back or something?
Show threadRay Dog

@jcsteh Yeah that was the first thing I thought of with getting lives back, and I think it would work well. I also like the idea of adding different loops at different tempos.

Big thing I'm worried about is just how to curve the difficulty progression of the melodies. I actually experimented with a similar idea a few months back. I tried adding more notes closer together to increase difficulty, but I didn't like it. I don't know if i'll be coming back to that project any time soon, but if I did, I'd likely make a probability system where certain steps of the sequence are much more likely to have a note dropped on them. As just one example, the first note of each beat has a higher chance than the rest. Or something like that, I'm still nowhere near done mulling it over. Anyway that could be a powerful dimension for difficulty adjustment.

Feb 22 at 9:26pmWeb
Show threadJamie TehFeb 22
@musicalman Yeah, I tried a pattern with all eighth notes and I couldn't do it. The pattern just wasn't melodic enough for my brain to process it. Wondering whether I need to manually enter patterns at various levels of difficulty and have it randomly choose them, but I'd need hundreds of them.
Show threadRay DogFeb 22
@jcsteh Yeah that would suck if that's the only way you could do it. In any case, an audio game that allows me to use my midi keyboard is certainly a new one. I know of other games that can make use of midi, but none that integrate it into gameplay. I hope you can continue to work on it!