Neon Pleasure - Real time music visualizer

Community Showcase Game Development
1

Hello community!

I want to present you my little side project. My project is called “Neon pleasure” and is basicly a music visualizer paired with games based on the frequencies of the music playing.
It contains a music visualizer, which plays your favourite songs and reacts to it. Additionally random events are happening, which makes every
play of a track an unique experience.

The music visualizer has multiplayer functionality, which can be used to enjoy tracks with friends and other people. Right now it works, but only the randomizer function
isn’t replicating to other clients. This can be solved easily however.

You will be able to play your tracks in various environments and there will be a lot of random effects, which will take some time to discover.

There will be smaller games available, which all react in a certain way to the beat of a track. The beat will effectively influence the games and there would be
various genres involved, so most of the people can enjoy a variety of genres.

(I apologize for the rather mediocre quality. Youtube’s video processing is terrible.)

Features:

  • Various stages, which react to the music you are playing
  • Random events, which changes the environment every time you play a track
  • Possible multiplayer mode for enjoying tracks with your friends (multiplayer prototype already done)
  • A collection of smaller games, which incorporate the track into the gameplay
  • The games contain various game genres.

Now I have some questions for you guys. I hope you give an answer, because I would appreciate it :).

  1. Is it something you would consider interesting?
  2. Would you actually spend money on it? (I don’t want to come across as a greedy person, but I am curious to hear, if anybody would consider it)
  3. If you would be interested, would you preferably have it just as a music visualizer or rather paired with small games?

Thank you for your time

PS: A great thanks goes to eXi, who actually made it possible to package these bloody projects :).

Stay healthy and take care,
DGL

2

Very cool concept! Looks cool!

3

Thank you for your kind words. I wish I could present the Hell level already, but this takes time :).

4

Coohool Audio and Project :slight_smile:
1.Yes
2. Why not, when it’s fun in someway
3. Sure thing, packed to games.
:slight_smile:

5

Thank you for your input, Luftbauch. The feedback is very useful :). It is a lot of fun to work on this project, but man I need more arms to do stuff :D.

6

Woa, looks super sweet!

This could be used for a rhythm input based game, like P4DAN or Miku

7

Thank you thank you, <3. I have already different game modes in mind, but actually getting a certain gameplay out of them is a tricky thing. I already have some kind of tank game working, which explosive damage is dependent on the kick frequency. Also the explosion is scaled to the kick’s strength. There is a high possibility that I am looking into the rhythm game genre too :).

8

Hey hey hey!

I’ve got 2 progress videos, which I wanted to share with you. I made a main menu and a new level!
I hope you enjoy the progress :).

Main Menu:

New level:

Stay healthy and take care,
DGL Games

9

Hey Peops!

Here is a little video of some progress :).
(Sorry for the quality. Do any of you know of a place outside of youtube, where I can upload 1080p HD videos and show them to you guys? I tried a lot of different settings to preserve my original video quality on youtube, but youtube trashes the quality instantly. Are there any alternatives?)

A lot has changed since the last update and what started out as a side project became the biggest time waster in history in terms of my projects. The concept changed and I want to work on it full time.
Instead of having incoherent gamemodes and end up being just another music based game, I decided to fully commit to my theme: All things are based around (your) music. Every blueprint, every item, every system in the game is somewhat tied to the music you supply or the music I put into the game. It is much more interesting to the player and gives you a universe, which actually evolves instead of being rigid.

To do that, I use a lot of blueprints, which are build around a simple rule set. They are able to communicate with each other and are much more flexible than far more complex blueprints. Logically you would think that this would lead to a simple game, but that is not the case at all. By giving the blueprints the ability to communicate and change around rulesets based on their communication, I can create a lot of very complex systems, which are just possible because the blueprints have simple rule sets. The main reason why I planned it this way is simply because I wanted to preserve as much performance as possible. Music visualizers take a considerate amount of performance, because they are updated every 1 millisecond (atleast for symmetric gameplay systems, which are dependent on being updated at the right time). Asymmetric gameplay systems are much more performance friendly, because they are not relying on being updated at the right moment.

So, what am I getting at? Do you know an old game called Freelancer?

Basicly imagine freelancer. It has all things freelancer had (except the outdated graphics of course :slight_smile: ). Now imagine the universe wasn’t created and you find yourself in a void of darkness. Now you will feed it a track or a playlist and it will create the big bang, while the music is playing. All celestial bodies, their stats, their design/aesthetic appearences will be created based on your music. You can land on some planets, explore strange phenomenons and solve puzzles, fight enemies and much more.

Sounds insane, right? But it isn’t. Actually, I already built a system, called “Frequency generation pattern”, which not just analyzes your music, but also shapes the universe in terms of it’s prominent frequencies. While you play your music, your universe will actually expand slowly and shape new regions without you noticing.

I already built 3 different procedual generators.

  1. Static Procedual generator. 100% Static. (Generates new pattern after press of a button or a trigger).

  1. Complex Generator. 50% Static, 50% runtime based. (Generates pattern in a four way system going downwards reducing the number of sections, like a bee hive).

  1. Runtime Generator. 100% runtime based. (Generates objects on the fly without a high performance cost).

All these generators will be responsible of populating the universe you find yourself in and generates gameplay elemes on different occasions. These won’t be the last generators, because the game will require more of them :).

Things like a mecha mode (yes, you can fly and control a mech) and an very basic RTS mode are already made too.

All these gamemodes are basicly sub systems, which will be connected in the endgame and tied together. The basic premise of the concept was to combine the elements, but give the player the ability to play in different genres in one game based on the music they choose. I always was a fan of “make your own adventure” games and this is ultimatively the goal I want to achieve. Hope you like it :).

Take care guys,
Stay healthy,
DGL

10

Hey people!

First I want to say that I am sorry for not updating the thread for a long time. Due to some decisions my family made I had to kind of evolve into a handyworker of all sorts. I had to learn and do some stuff completely outside of the realm of UE4 and I also worked on different stuff besides the visualizer. It is still a side project, but I finally have a vision, where this should go. I’m working on my main project, but I don’t want this visualizer to be a dead fish in the water on my system. So I will devote some time here and there for smaller scale concepts to finish up different levels or modes, so it doesn’t blow up and burns me out :). However, I will not get back on my word. It still seems like an over ambitious project lead by a single human being, but trust me that is far from the truth.

I ironed out some bugs in the multiplayer visualizer aswell and the first REAL test (yeah, not the previous test with 16 clients running on my own machine) went surprisingly well. I tested it with my friend and it runs smooth like butter. He could directly connect to my server over the internet. The only strange problem was that I had to press 3x play to synchronize the clients. A weird bug, but nothing which I can’t fix :). The multiplayer visualizer will keep the clients traffic at minimum (I hate lag) and I can safely assume that 16 clients can connect to a server without a problem.

Hope you all have your projects running on overdrive and have fun with them :).
Be prepared for some surprises. I will probably also redesign and rework assets of the project.

Have a nice day,
DGL

11

I must say it looks really cool, but I don’t quite follow what it’s suppose to be. What does the gameplay involve?

12

[MENTION=143220]Surya Sel[/MENTION]: Is started out as a side project of mine. At the time I created this project, I didn’t have a clear concept of, what it is supposed to be in the end. That’s why it stayed a side project. However, I now have a clear concept, what “Neon pleasure” should be.

Mode 1: It is a music visualizer, which you can use to play your own music. The visualizer will react in a randomized way to your music and hopefully give you a pleasant and fun time (see it as a relax mode, where you don’t need to actively engage in any form of interaction. You can also connect to your friends (multiplayer) and hang out with them listenting to the same song and see the music visualizer react on every client the same.

Mode 2: It consists of mini games. With mini games I don’t mean these types, you can get on the internet for free and they have not much content or functionality behind them. The games you can play in “Neon Pleasure” have some kind of interaction with the music and certain gameplay elements will react to the music you are playing.
Let’s take audiosurf as an example. It is basicly a racer, where you evade obstacles generated by the visualizer, which takes your music and uses it to set the obstacles on certain positions. This project however has multiple games and they will probably have different genres, so everybody can have their fair share of fun, if they don’t like a particular genre.

Sorry for not giving you a definitive answer, what game modes it will have in the final release. It is very difficult to create games based on music (or rather music analysis), because there can occur odd exceptions or odd behaviour, which can result in a negative experience for the user. I always need to think a lot of steps ahead and place a lot of failsafes to keep a music based game playable.

I can only say one thing for sure: This is something, which just doesn’t exist right now in the game scene, because it has multiple ways, how it can work. It blurs the line of being a game or a software. That’s why it is very difficult to say, what it is. When I have a release with enough content, I will provide a download for the demo. I think people need to play it themselves to understand, what this is :).

You are probably even more confused now :D.

Have a nice day,
DGL

13

Haha, but not really. Thanks for the response, it gave me a pretty decent idea of what you’re aimin’ for. I think it’s a lovely concept. Sounds like a tough job to pull it off the right way though.

14

It is a tough job indeed. If I think about new features or things, I want to react to the music, I barely can keep up mentally to make it still work. Players are the most random thing that can happen. And they will find ways to break even the most stable systems. I have to constantly prevent players to break the stuff, so they won’t get mad at me :D.

However, I would not work on the project, when it wouldn’t work. But I already have a prototype, which handles random player interactions pretty well and doesn’t bug out or behaves weirdly. I just need to keep a fine balance between player interactions and the system doing stuff itself :).

Thanks for the nice words btw. Only makes me want to work more on it :).

15

This looks very interesting. I would definitely like to see more.

  1. It is definitely interesting.
  2. In its current form, I probably wouldn’t - but if made into something interactive. It would definitely have a run at my money.
  3. Continue from the last question. Whether its a game or a tool all depends on your perspective and direction. I think some level of interactivity is key, whether that’s plugging in your music or interacting with premade music.

Some potential I see immediately for something like this is a game I always think about whenever music and gaming comes in mind, http://www.audio-surf.com/ - Audio Surf. It did very well, and I think there always potential to make something new and exciting when it comes to music. For example, Karaoke is making a come back. Who would of thought?

There is plenty of music related games which are more likely to stick, but I think there is practical applications for sound visualization that have yet to be seen.

What may be more interesting at this point is ways to analyze music and use the information in interesting ways to create something truly different every time. I think figuring that out will truly make a music visualizer stand out, and may even be worth just for the visuals it creates alone. No game necessary! Just some thoughts. I digged into this topic for some time ago, and came across some interesting finds if you’re interested.

Good luck!

16

Thanks for the response!

I agree that there are a lot of music related games and I thought I want to have something which isn’t just a game nor a visualizer, but an experience (especially when playing with friends). I am going completely new ways and that’s where most of my problems arise from. I tend to find myself in a position, where the music visualizer takes too much control from the player away. But on the other side the player shouldn’t feel bored, because his actions is not relevant in the slightest. To balance these two extremes out, I have to think a lot of steps ahead, which is mentally burdening. However, this was before I didn’t have a clear concept and goal. Now I have a vision and I exactly know, where to go with it. That made it much easier for me to think of game mechanics and new visualizations.

The music visualizer in itself will create different actions every time it is started. There will be stuff, which always stays the same, but the whole scene will change over the course of the music. How much of random actions will happen is yet to be decided. I can just say that I plan on making many levels, because I am a supporter of content rich stuff :D.

I genuinly think people will be surprised, what this turns into. This is certainly not something, which anybody has seen before (I hope I don’t sound arrogant, cause it is not my intention). I just have to be a little less critical about my work, because I tend to lose my objectivity, when I run a plethora of tests. I started to let the project just rest for a little while (a day max), when I get too self critical :).

Ah, I just wished I could post the progress I made, but I am still missing a lot of parts. I plan on showing something before christmas, but I can’t say for sure, if I will be able to. I will try my hardest atleast :).

17

Hello again!

Sadly I couldn’t show you something on christmas, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t progress. I worked a lot on new content and on a temple. This thing is just enormous and I had to invest a lot of time just creating the geometry. Most of the time however was used on trying different designs and I scrapped a whooping 10 of them. It was worth it though and I finally have a clear design down, so the world is coherent. I made already one female character with a lot of customization options, so people can actually shape their own avatar :). I need to add a few assets, but I am 90% done with the geometry of the temple. Then I will need to do texturing, hooking up the temple to the visualizer, importing cloth and a lot of other stuff. I want you to show something in motion, so I will make a video to introduce you just a tiny bit to the world :).

Here are WIP screenshots from the temple in the Unreal editor (some parts are still missing inside):

509c5c5c96f7427dd643635e67853fbf57f413e4.jpeg
9f97021d50e5d5a1f25345eb3928a1f637fd596f.jpeg

Temple3.jpg
Temple3.jpg1200×706 94.4 KB

In the next days the thread will be updated more, because I can finally show stuff to you guys. Thank you for being patient with me :).

Take care!

18

Hey man! Nice stuff you got there! It all looks amazingly interesting.

I’m currently trying to make a rhythm game (a project I made on Game Maker a couple years ago and now I’m trying to reproduce it in UE4) and the stuff you are doing (with the lights and object movement all syncing with the music) may be just what I need to base my game mechanics.

If it was a Blueprint tool on marketplace I would surely consider taking a look and buying it. In any case I surely would love to see how you made it.

Also, there isn’t much stuff on music themed gameplay around for UE4 yet, but watching your videos now I see it is quite possible. So thanks a lot!

You made it all with Blueprints or you used C++?

19

@MuriloBeraldo
I’m very sorry that I haven’t seen your post. I thought I subscribed to my own thread, but apparently I didn’t. Will do that after this post though :).

I won’t take the credit for the music analyzer.

You can find it here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?94974-eXi-s-Sound-Visualization-Plugin-(works-in-cooked-builds)-4-13-Version

It was originally made by a person, who as far as I know participated in an EPIC Games contest and created this feature. The only problem was that you couldn’t build or cook a game with it, because he never finished it.
A lot of kudos goes to eXi for adding this feature and n00854180t, who made it possible to use the ogg format for this and the whole process of analyzing music in runtime :). So it started out as a fancy idea and was improved and made better by the people I mentioned before :).

As for my stuff, I originally thought about making something for the marketplace in regards to this. I just never knew, what people actually want to do with it and if there is even interest in it. Every game has different needs and I couldn’t find a general function, which would be of benefit for a lot of game types.
If there is interest in this stuff, I would look into that aswell. I would definitely need people to tell me though, what they would want for basic functionalities and such :).

I made it entirely with blueprints. I am also able to use C++ and other programming languages, but I fell in love with blueprints and there are really powerful. I want to push the blueprint system to it’s limits and I also want to show people, what you can do with it. I love the idea of a visual programming/scripting language and this system is the best I’ve come across this far. It has the potential to be one of the most powerful game developer tools in the future.

For the other interested people:

EDIT: I made a lot of progress. I wanted to have a video up till now, but I had trouble finding time for it. I’m a team member of horror game right now, so it takes priority. That’s why I have decided to make the video and finalize the assets on my free time. It will take a little longer than expected, but I will try to get it done before march. I will also update the thread with game data and what not. “Neon pleasure” will be the name for the game system, but not for the games based on it. I will also keep the old videos at the bottom of the first post, when I update the thread, so I don’t have to open several threads. I really don’t want to clutter the unreal forums with unnecessary threads :).

To the new feature:

Ever tried to combine a music visualizer with a procedual nature generator with trees, plants, grass and ground decals? I tried and I like the performance. Runs fairly well, even when reaching 100000 objects (naturally instances). It runs in realtime/ingame.

Take care,
DGL

20

This is the last iteration of the Neon Pleasure visualizer system called the “Rexa” build. It is the last build, until the tech is being integrated into my serious game project called “Sounds of Etheraeon”. Everything in this video was controlled by the music visualizer, even the camera cutscenes. I apologize for the video quality. I need to find out some way to make it better looking. Raw footage is suberb, but on the conversion process of video platforms the quality get drastically reduced and I don’t know why.

Because the forums doesn’t have a working embed for vidme, just click on the picture to go to the video :).

[https://vid.me/Sryn]

http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa365/darkgodslairgames/RexaClick_zpsd04twlaf.png](https://vid.me/Sryn)