Intro and Abstract

Welcome to the development blog for Chord, the game that I will be developing for my senior design project. To give you a little introduction as to what this game is about, here's the abstract I wrote for the project:

The term “music game” applies to a set of video games that incorporate music into the core gameplay. This differs from most games in that while many games have music, music games are about creating music. The way that each game deals with its respective musical elements varies widely. Several games, such as Harmonix’s Rock Band, require the player to actually “perform” the music they hear using special controllers. Others, like United Game Artist’s Rez, use elements from other genres of games to allow the player to dynamically control the background music. In both cases, the player’s actions in the game directly impact the music. Music games can be a very powerful sensory experience because of this. In this project, I will analyze the design of several major label and independent music games. I will specifically look at the styles of music included in each game, the visual styles of each game, the methods in which the player interacts with the music, and how well all three elements mesh together to create a powerful experience. I will then use this analysis as notes to design and create my own music game using OGRE, an open source graphics engine, and Fmod, a professional audio engine. In each level of my game, players will build a prerecorded song from its various instrument tracks. Each level will be broken down into several different puzzles. A puzzle will consist of an emitter that sends out a constant beat of pulses, and a receiver that the pulses travel to. The player must construct a path from the emitter to the receiver such that the pulses arrive at the receiver in a desired time pattern. This time pattern is determined by the particular MIDI track associated with the puzzle. If a pulse arrives at the receiver when a note is supposed to be played, the game plays that note. If a pulse arrives at the receiver at any other time, the note does not play. As the player completes and refines the path, the correct pattern of notes will emerge, giving the overall sensation that the player is constructing a machine and a song at the same time. This will likely be a two semester project, with the first semester's work focusing on the core gameplay, including creating the basic level structure, the basic puzzle structure, a demo level with 4 puzzles, and a functional shell for saving progress and loading levels. The second semester will focus on refining the visual style of the game, as visuals will also be critical to the feel of the game. Using OGRE and its HLSL capabilities, I will write pixel shaders that will help create the visual feel for the game.

For this project, I'll have the honor of working with Dr. Steve Lane, the head of the Computer Graphics and Game Technology Masters program here at Penn. I'm really excited to start on this. I've been working on this concept for a long time, and I'm glad I finally have some time and support to develop it to fruition.

Formal proposals are due at midnight, so I've got to get working on that. Once I figure out a plan for next week, I'll post that here, too.