Guitar Anarchist

Download.

This is a program I created about a year ago, which takes input from a USB Xbox 360 Guitar Hero or Rock Band guitar controller*, and plays various samples at various pitches based on your button presses and strumming.

It's quite feature intensive for a program of it's scope. Once I got the basic sound manipulation in, new features seemed to appear of their own volition within the code.

There are other projects which aim to do this same thing, notably FretBuzz, used by The Guitar Zeroes, which is slightly more powerful and versatile. However, my aim with this was to make it simple to set up and use. You literally just plug in a controller, run the program, and start mashing buttons.

There are a couple features which I'm not sure are mentioned in the help file, most importantly, you can place your own sound samples in the \Samples\ folder, and edit voices.ini to load those into the program. Simply record a note of whatever you want, playing Middle C, and you're good to go, it will generate the rest of the notes on startup.

Here are some YouTube clips, the first runs through the features of the program, the second is just goofing around with some various voices.

* Technically any USB controller will work, but since you can't remap the buttons in Guitar Anarchist, the majority are not very useful. I've only tested it with the 360 Guitar Hero X-Plorer and the 360 Rock Band Stratocaster, but other USB guitar controllers might work.

Beatbox

Download.

This is a simple Game Maker prototype exploring the idea, "Everything happens in time with the beat."

WASD to move, Arrow keys to shoot. Destroy rocks to level up. At levels 10 and 20, more tracks are added.

The thing to note is, these aren't looping tracks, the program is counting a tempo and playing notes, to keep everything in sync regardless of framerate. The tempo can be changed on the fly, and tracks are simply arrays of notes.

Ideas:

• Each type of enemy has a track associated. When they're on screen, that track plays.
• Powerups that change your weapon also change the percussion pattern.
• The player generates percussion, the enemies generate melody.
• Bonus levels that start you off with a full song and gradually chip away at your health, muting tracks as you get hit. Survive as long as you can.