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[Dave Matney]

I've been thinking about unique, or at east alternate, game play devices, and I keep coming back to the idea of using my midi keyboard as the interface for a game.  Perhaps something like a side-scrolling space-shooter, like R-Type, where you use the mod wheel to adjust height, the pitch wheel to aim, the sustain pedal as a gas pedal (so not auto-scrolling), and the keys themselves to shoot.

Have any of you tried this, or played games that have? What are your thoughts on this?

[s0]

Perhaps something like a side-scrolling space-shooter, like R-Type, where you use the mod wheel to adjust height, the pitch wheel to aim, the sustain pedal as a gas pedal (so not auto-scrolling), and the keys themselves to shoot

Would that add anything to the game though, other than making the controls more tedious? Also, there are plenty of MIDI controllers that aren't keyboards. I'd love to use a Kaoss Pad for controlling games though.

[Dave Matney]

Perhaps something like a side-scrolling space-shooter, like R-Type, where you use the mod wheel to adjust height, the pitch wheel to aim, the sustain pedal as a gas pedal (so not auto-scrolling), and the keys themselves to shoot

Would that add anything to the game though, other than making the controls more tedious? Also, there are plenty of MIDI controllers that aren't keyboards. I'd love to use a Kaoss Pad for controlling games though.

I don't think it would make it more tedious, just different.  I think you could get a finer amount of control using the wheels, like you do with analogue controls on consoles. 

Obviously, you could (and should) program alternate controls in for people without a midi controller.

And the reason I'd go with a keyboard vs. a kaoss pad or a control surface or something is that the mod, pitch, and sustain controls are universal, where anything else would require a bit of programming on the user's end.

[John Nesky]

I haven't used it for a game, but I've had luck getting PortMIDI to work with my MIDI keyboard:

http://portmedia.sourceforge.net/

I'd be curious to see a MIDI game that uses the pitch of the keys meaningfully without being Piano Hero.

[Dave Matney]

I haven't used it for a game, but I've had luck getting PortMIDI to work with my MIDI keyboard:

http://portmedia.sourceforge.net/

I'd be curious to see a MIDI game that uses the pitch of the keys meaningfully without being Piano Hero.

Though a Piano Hero-style game could be used to teach, taking the game mentality that's really popular and applying it to standard notation.

You could always do something crazy with the musical aspect, like having each key fire a different 'note' of projectile, and have enemies be vulnerable to a certain scale or range...

~Josiah

Again, taking the educational route, you could have the note the creature is weak to float above their head, or something, in name, notation, or even just a chord symbol.  There seem to be TONS of aspects of this that could go the educational route, but I'm thinking of non-educational.  Hell, even non-musical.

[s0]

Maybe something related not so much to music, but to acoustics?

For instance "low note" bullets have longer range but do less damage, "high note" bullets on the other hand, have more limited range but do more damage. Something like that.

[Tanner]

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2010/01/arcadegrade_dj_equipment_midif.php#more

[GregWS]

Great topic; I've thought a lot about this myself. 

Obviously, you could (and should) program alternate controls in for people without a midi controller.

I don't think you should program alternate controls at all.  If we're talking about using a new input, then I think we also need to be talking about creating a new game from scratch that's tailored specifically to that input.  If there's one thing to learn from the Wii, it's that games need to be tailored to their input, and that you can't just port a game from one type on input to another and expect it to work in any nice way. 

For me, the idea of a highly musical game that's played with a musical input would be fantastic, and as mentioned, it could be a really great "fun" teaching tool.  (And people love to learn when it's actually fun.)

I mean, yeah, a game that would be played with a midi controller would be pretty niche, and it would probably have to be freeware as a result (given it would just be musicians playing it presumably).  But this is the indie scene, so I think in light of that there's no good reason not to make that hypothetical midi-controlled game.

[agj]

Hmm, I get behind the idea of a game that's meant to teach you to play the keyboard, or some musical concepts. I have a midi-compatible keyboard that I can barely play, so learning to play it in a fun way would be dandy.

[Farbs]

I screw around with this sort of thing occasionally and it's a whole lot of fun. My experiments have included:

Wii balance board driving the mouse cursor. It's a pretty fun way to drive that little sucker around, especially when the relative weight on the board simply mapped to screen position. Speed and accel based models were less satisfying. I used it to play an old top down shooter prototype by putting the player's aeroplane at the cursor position and adding autofire. So much fun! I'd consider taking it commercial if I weren't so busy. Most amusing part was trying to quickly duck out of the way of incoming fire by stamping down with one foot. You'd inevitably have to stamp down the other foot to regain balance, putting you right back where you were

Steering wheel and pedals to drive a virtual theremin. Totally pointless but fun nonetheless. OOEEOOOEOOOEEEEE.

Gamecube dance mat + Gameboy Player + Tetris. Dancing Tetris is HARD! Donkey Konga worked okay (predictably), WarioWare just kinda felt like WarioWare, but most other games were utterly impossible.

[GregWS]

Farbs, you're my new hero!    I've screwed around with this a bit, but not nearly as much as it sounds like you have.  Balance Board Audiosurf's pretty cool; mapping the cursor position actually sounds a lot better than how I did it though: how do you do that exactly? 

[Farbs]

I just used GlovePIE and the following script (I think... was a while ago):

Code:

Mouse.x = ( Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawFrontLeft + Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawFrontRight - Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawBackLeft - Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawBackRight ) * 0.00001 + 0.5
Mouse.y = ( Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawFrontLeft + Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawBackLeft - Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawFrontRight - Wiimote1.BalanceBoard.RawBackRight ) * 0.00001 + 0.5

YMMV.

[GregWS]

Thanks a bunch man; will try this out later! (I'd been using GlovePIE too, so a good amount of that looks familiar!  )

[anon]

I know this is total necro but I created a layout on MIDI Designer for iPad to play EVE Online. Pretty effective too, including manual ship piloting.