Would you be interested in this concept...

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1

Hello dear community

As you might or might not now, I made a visualizer system Link], which ties realtime sound to visuals ingame and has gameplay mechanics react to the sound itself. I worked on it non stop to make the system reliable, because realtime sound is more unpredictable in terms of outcome than other systems like beatmapped integrated music.
I chose a real time based approach, because I wanted the end user to have the ability to use his/her own music.
Now I’ve come to the point, where I have a reliable method of integrating real time visualization with gameplay mechanics based on music output.

So my first game idea was to create something along the lines of Mirror’s edge, but with some fighting/fps mechanics in place and having to race against the time.

Naturally the level would be visualized itself, but also part of the game mechanics would react to the music itself.
The algorithm of mine would create a procedural or modular leveldesign based on the time of the soundtrack itself. And when you don’t reach the end at the time the soundtrack ends, you will lose automatically.

It would have a multiplayer mode too and it would have a wave based arena style mode and maybe even a mode more.

It will feature a neon type of style, but if someone has an other suggestion, I would atleast look at and maybe consider it a possibility :).

Now, I think it would be a cool game, but my opinion is biased. What do you think of the idea?

Feel free to voice your opinion. I am asking, because this will be my first release worthy game attempt, so I don’t want to waste my time on something, which might not interest people :).
Thanks for reading.

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@franktech:

Thanks for replying. Yeah, I meant as a game. I’ve seen attempts in the past from other developers making rhythm games. Most of them took the static music approach, which uses a beatmap of some sorts or a tailored map/game mechanic for a specific, integrated soundtrack. Then there were just rarely developers trying to use a real time visualizer and most of them didn’t do well, because realtime sound analytics can be very unpredictable. I spent now a year or two researching a way of generating predictable results, but it was a hard road. I tried countless methods, but they all had their problems. I always tried to use BPM as a common denominator, but eventually I scrapped the idea of relying on the BPM, because BPM can change along a soundtrack.

So I made an algorithm, which basicly scans the soundtrack beforehand and filters out the most prominent frequencies. The system passes them into the frequency array, creates an average threshold for a certain frequency range and puts the values inbetween the value 0-1. That way I get consistent results and I can integrate it into game mechanics, which is a NIGHTMARE, if you don’t have predictable results :).

To your other point:

Well… The system I created in the other thread was actually designed for applications outside of gaming. I didn’t know about Projection mapping :). I thought rather along the lines of these windows media player visualizations, but more in the realm of having impressive 3d models or having an interactive 3d scene change based on the music being played in the background. However, I didn’t know, how to progress further. Either I would need to have it as a creator tool to give the user the ability to make music videos with it or some sort of experience with your friends, where there are predefined levels, which tells somewhat of a story. To be able to use it as a creation tool, I would need a way to exchange models and such, which would meant writing my own importers, which I frankly don’t want to do. It is just too much work.

The disadvantage of the experience with friends is sadly that a time comes, where the predefined levels get dull. I could use procedural generation though, but it hits it’s limits too after a while.

That’s why I want to make a game.

But I would also love to see other applications, which I didn’t think of. The system can do a lot of stuff, but it needs to be tailored into a software, which makes sense.

Phew… Thanks again for replying and telling me about projection mapping :). I always learn new things.