2013年10月25日 星期五

Percussion Games: Taiko no tatsujin (太鼓の達人), Drummania

  This week is about drum-simulative games. I am going to introduce two arcade games: Taiko no tatsujin  (太鼓の達人), a simulation of a Japanese traditional instrument, and Drummania ("DM" for abbreviation, "狂熱鼓手" in Chinese), a simulation of  a drum set.

1. Taiko no tatsujin (太鼓の達人)
   Taiko no tatsujin  is a series of rhythm games created by NamcoThe series has seen releases for the arcadeNintendo DSNintendo 3DSPlayStation 2PlayStation PortableWiiiOSAdvanced Pico Beena, and mobile phones. I only introduce arcade. While the series is mainly designed for use within Japan, there are also official releases for other regions, including two Chinese arcades accommodated for Asian regions such as Hong KongTaiwanSingapore and Malaysia. You can play Chinese songs in Taiwan. Please watch the video from youtube 蔡依林- 特務J. It's a pity, however, taiko arcade games in Taiwan haven't been updated for several years, so as the Asian version. The latest version in Taiwan is 太鼓の達人 14.

蔡依林-特務J
 
   As the song plays, notes will appear and moves from right to left across the grey scroll bar in the center. Respective hits to the drums should be done as the notes reaches the hit mark towards the left to receive score and build up the "spirit gauge (魂ゲージ)". If it reaches the "clear(クリア)", you pass; otherwise, you fail.
   Here are the introduction of notes.
   Red marker (don (ドン)): hit the drum at its face.
   Blue marker (kat (カッ)): hit the drum at its rim.
   Large red/blue marker (don (dai) (ドン(大))kat (dai) (カッ(大))): similar to the smaller counterparts, but the score for this note doubles when hitting hard enough on the drum.
   Yellow bar (renda (連打)): repeatedly hit don or kat as many times as possible across its length. This does not contribute to building up the spirit gauge, only to give players bonus points.
   Balloon (fūsen onpu (風船音符), but shown as geki-renda (ゲキ連打)): repeatedly hit don for the designated number of times within the time limit. An extra bonus will be given upon completion of the note until counter hits 0.This does not contribute to building up the spirit gauge, only to give players bonus points.

2.Drummania

   Drummania is a music video game series produced by Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc., where colored notes travel down the screen which correspond with color-coded parts of an electronic drum set. The player must hit the drum parts when the notes reach the bottom of the screen in order to fill in missing drum parts from a song.
    The latest version is called "gitadora", consisting of 9 drums. Upgraded from the old set -which consists of hi-hatsnare drumbass drum, high tom, low tom and cymbal, a second bass pedal, a floor tom and a left cymbal are added, resembling a professional drum set.
(from the powerpoint made by 洪郁凱)



The "Excite Gauge" at the left side is similar to the health bar in osu! When the Excite Gauge drains to zero, you fail.

For more professional details about drums, please consult 陳昶昇.

Let's enjoy the show in which 洪郁凱, the leader of NTU music game club, played drummania.



Last but not least, I arrange the notation of accuracy in the games I have introduced before.

Osu!      Taiko    Osu!mania    Drummania
                            MAX 300       PERFECT
300        良              300             GREAT
                               200             GOOD
100        可              100               OK
50                            50



2013年10月18日 星期五

osu! "Rhythm is just a click away"

   This is part 2 about osu!. I am going to show you how to create a beatmap as I promised last week. You can refer osu! as "plagiarism"; however, it's still worldwide popular. Why? Osu! adds huge customisation via skins/beatmaps/storyboarding, online rankings, multiplayer, all of which are the keys to success. The significant feature is making your own beatmaps, and it is the topic this week.

   Before beginning the topic, I want to make sure that you all know what is "BPM". 陳昶昇 have taught us last week. See http://b02203013.blogspot.tw/2013/10/introduction-elements-of-music2.html. Let's do one exercise.
   A famous anime song "only my railgun" is measured as 143 BPM, then (a) How long is the time between two adjacent beat? (b)  There are 56 bars in this song of TV size and four beats per bar. Determine the length of it.

If you know the definition of BPM, you can get the answer easily.
ANS:(a) 60/143=0.420 s
    (b) There are 56*4=224 beats in total, so the length is 224/143=1.57 min=1'34".

 Now let's start learning the most interesting part of osu!, making your own beatmaps! I'm not a good mapper, so I just show you some tutorial clips only for osu! standard. It may be quite boring.

Finding the BPM:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKqv0K1nisM&list=PL-GdEOe3g8BqpOKKrlS4cPM3LwDKt15Rb

Mapping Basics:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxX0IDGYtSY

If you think the tutorial clips aren't easy enough to understand, please visit http://osu.ppy.sh/wiki/Category:Beatmapping for further information. Thank you.

This is the end of osu!. I will introduce other rhythm games next week.




2013年10月11日 星期五

osu! "Rhythm is just a click away"

  This is my first game I would like to introduce. Osu! is a free-to-play online rhythm game. Osu! gameplay is based on a variety of popular commercial rhythm games. While keeping some authentic elements, osu! adds huge customisation via skins/beatmaps/storyboarding, online rankings, multiplayer and boasts a community with over 500,000 active users!
   There are four modes in osu!.

1. Osu! standard
   This mode is adapted from Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (押忍!闘え!応援団 Osu! Tatakae! Ōendan?, lit. "Yeah! Fight! Cheer Squad"). In each beatmap, a song will play and different hit elements (hit circles, sliders and spinners) will appear on the play field. Players must use a pointing device to manipulate these elements in time with the playing song's rhythm in order to earn points. While the mouse is considered the most popular input device, combinations of mouse, Tablet PCgraphics tablet and keyboard can be utilised. Some beatmaps are hard to play by mouse, but easier to play by other devices.
 When you are playing, the "healthy bar" drains steadily through out the game except break time. If it drains to zero, the music will stop and you fail.
 There are four hit values, 300(great), 100(good), 50(bad), 0(miss). 300 means you click elements accurately, while others infer you are off the beat. A miss will cause the healthy bar to drain rapidly, and sometimes a 300, 100, and 50 can recover it.

2.Taiko
  The Taiko mode is based on Taiko no Tatsujin, another rhythm game which involves hitting drums to the beat of a music piece. It will be introduced in the topic of taiko.

3.Catch the Beat
 This mode puts the player in control of a character holding a plate above their head, with the objective of catching fruits falling from the top of the screen. 
  Regular beats on a map are converted simply to fruit falling straight down. Sliders have one fruit at each end of the slider and a trail of juice drops leading between the ends. Large juice drops are the equivalent of slider ticks, while small drops add extra points to the score (and affect accuracy). Spinners become fruit falling en masse from the top of the screen; the player does not need to catch all of the fruit, although catching more fruit will earn them more points.
 I wonder whether a sense of rhythm is required.

4.Osu!mania
 This mode was made public at September 30, 2012. Osu!mania is a mode similar to Beatmania IIDX(which will be introduced after the mid-term exam) and DJMax, where players need to press keys bound to several columns according to the music.
 A special set of mods is available in osu!mania, namely 4K, 5K, 6K, 7K, 8K. K means the amount of keys. Usually beatmaps are meant to be played by a certain amount of keys set for the beatmap; however, using one of these special mods can change this amount of keys for a score reduction. I suggest you play the beatmaps that are made exclusively. Do not play the ones that are converted directly from osu! standard by computer, because they are often strange and messy. 

The following clip is about osu! tutorial. I will show you how a beatmap is created next week. Thank you for your reading :).





2013年10月4日 星期五

Introduction

Hi, everyone, I have created a blog about rhythm games. In my first blog, I am going to introduce some basic elements of rhythm games.

Here are some important terms in rhythm games.
1.You play the games with your eyes watching to the "beatmaps". Beatmaps are like music scores. The icons telling you what to do are called "notes". Beatmaps consist of notes. You may need to press some certain keys or beat the drums, etc. when seeing notes.
2.You play the games with your ears listening to the music. Music is the combination of tone and tempo. Tempo is the most important element in rhythm games. We use a unit, "BPM", the abbr. of beats per minute, to measure the speed of a song. Notice that BPM is a unit of frequency, and 1BPM=1/60 Hz.

The rhythm games I plan to introduce in this semester are Osu!, Taiko, jubeat, reflect beat and beatmania IIDX. I will emphasize on my favorite one, beatmania IIDX.

You can have a look on these games by clicking the links as follows.

Osu!:PSY - Gangnam Style
Taiko:紅蓮の弓矢
jubeat:dj TAKA feat. AiMEE - True Blue
reflect beat:dj TAKA feat. AiMEE - Broken
beatmania IIDX:南拳媽媽 - 香草叭噗