Frets on Fire - Guitar Hero for Linux/Windows

abyssi writes "Frets on Fire, for Linux and Windows, play with your keyboard-alternative to the ever-so-popular Guitar Hero, has been released at ASSEMBLY '06 demo party's Game Development competition together with 13 other experimental, indie games including a new game from the creators of the popular Dismount series. ASSEMBLY '06 runs from 3rd to 6th of August in Helsinki, Finland and enjoys over 5000 persons in attendance. A 24h/day webcast is available at AssemblyTV.net starting Thursday 3.8.2006 at 14:00."

Re:...why?

[CapnARRR]

Usually for games like this (stepmania comes to mind), they have a joystick option. If this program doesn't currently support this feature, it's probably not too far off. If you have a PSX - USB converter, you can use your guitar hero controller on your PC and make your own tracks, etc. I guess you could also hold your keyboard sideways too...

I'll Tell You Why!

[Da Rabid Duckie]

USB Adapters, that's why!

Just grap a USB adapter from a vendor like Lik Sang [lik-sang.com] and you can use your Guitar Hero Guitar or DDR dancepad on the PC, making it more like the original that they're cloned from.

Re:...why?

[Short Circuit]

People use Stepmania with pads all the time. Usually, they use a Playstation->PC adapter. I've even done it myself, using an X-Box pad modded to use a standard USB end. For a couple months, my exercise regimine was playing Stepmania on a similar system.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see the Guitar Hero controllers working with those same Playstation->PC adapters.

Re:Makes me wonder...

[Almahtar]

Midi guitars have been around a while, yes. There are actually a few bands ("Bela Fleck and the Flecktones" are rumoured to be among them) whose drummers are actually just using a midi guitar. They'd have to go down a lot in price to be shipped as an accessory for a game like this, though.

Midi's pretty old technology, though, so I bet the price could go down a ways if a larger market developed.

Re:I'll Tell You Why!

[merreborn]

My dad's got two really nice metal DDR pads (in the $150+ price range) hooked up via a USB adaptor, like the parent mentions, which he uses in combination with a digital projector to create the sweetest DDR rig I've ever seen. The major benefit of step mania, is there are thousands upon thousands of songs available, whereas with regular DDR, you're stuck with the few dozen on each CD/DVD.

However, anyone who's ever tried to use the guitar hero controller with any non-guitar hero game knows that it does something really weird. The DDR pads are really simple -- they're just straight up joystick buttons, basically. The guitar hero controller, on the other hand, actually sends out alternating button presses at regular intervals, even when no buttons are being pressed.

As such, I've not yet heard of anyone actually hooking up their SG controller to their PC, and actually using it to play anything remotely like guitar hero.

Re:...why?

[merreborn]

I actually downloaded this and played it, and I have this to offer:

1) They came up with a novel control scheme that's not too far off from being as good as the guitar hero controller:
Pick up your keyboard. Place your left hand under the F1 - F4 keys. Your right index finger should fall on F1 -- this is the "First Fret", F2 is the second, etc. Hold the keyboard like you would the neck of a guitar.

The default "Pick" key is enter, but I think I'd suggest space.

However, I was unable to actually play this game correctly, as I'm on a laptop, and as such, cannot "pick up" my keyboard as described. I've got keyboards around, but none of those damn PS/2 to USB adaptors.

It's really pretty decent -- it seems to respond to input almost identically to guitar hero, and it has a song editor built in, so it could potentially take off like Step Mania did. However, it only ships with 3 songs, and I couldn't find any user contributed songs via google.

Anyway, the aforementioned control scheme makes this a lot closer to playing guitar hero than playing step mania on the keyboard is to playing DDR.

Re:What we all want to know

[merreborn]

"Perhaps it wold work if you picked your keyboard up and held it like a guitar. (Warning: This may get you strange looks.)"

That's actually what they suggest you do, and that's what the default keymap is setup for.

Here's the official site:
http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/uv/fretsonfire/

And the demo video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5rANYBQvF0

Their logo is a guy holding the keyboard upside down.

Re:Finally!

[nb caffeine]

AFAIK, this isn't the first guitar hero PC clone, though it does look nicer than the one i've been playing:

http://www.hardkore.org/~ohsnap/ [hardkore.org]

That one actually uses the GH miniSG controller via ps2->usb adapter. Its pretty sweet, and theres tons of songs available already. Too bad most of them are wicked hard and I'm average at best.