Playing Music In Game - Hooking up a digital piano or other MIDI instruments

Please please PLEASE implement some sort of system for actual musicians to play musical instruments as a bard in game. Real-time total chromatic control of as many octaves as possible.

Look at Final Fantasy XIV's implementation of it.

I am someone who figured out how to hook my digital piano up using a simple midi translator program to play instruments in the game and now that is literally ALL I log on to that game to do, to play music for people in town. There are MANY people like me who do this and has created this entire new social aspect of the community and completely changes how hanging out in town can be.

I see there are other threads about this already, and I see a reply Steven talks about it here:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=JH-sX1aFljM&feature=youtu.be&t=1h18m37s

But what he is talking about is slightly different.

I want real-time total control so real musicians can actually play stuff almost as easily as if they were playing their instrument in real life. Yes, you may initially think Lag is going to be a huge issue with this, and it kind of is and is absolutely essential to minimize it for it to sound decent, but it really does not make it not worth implementing and is actually incredibly minimal and totally manageable to deal with as a musician in FFXIV's implementation.

And seeing as the game is supposed to be super strict about not allowing any 3rd party programs to run with the game, its essential you actually implement proper communication protocol with midi devices or something to make what I'm talking about here work.

With FFXIV's implementation and my setup, the only differences between me actually playing the piano in real life, and how I have to play for it to sound in the game, is that the game is only monophonic, so I can only play 1 note at a time (which is basically gotten around by simply rolling the chords if I want to play more than 1 note at the same time), and that there is of course a tiny bit of lag from when I hit the note down and when it actually comes out on my screen in the game, which again is very managable. So it would be super super awesome if somehow you could implement proper polyphonic control

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CROW3

I loved the MIDI integration in FFXIV. Pretty cool to run a sequenced track in game. I wasn’t a fan of Sony’s EULA that grabbed the creative rights for anything composed / played in their game.

Xez

CROW3 wrote: »

I loved the MIDI integration in FFXIV. Pretty cool to run a sequenced track in game. I wasn’t a fan of Sony’s EULA that grabbed the creative rights for anything composed / played in their game.

FFXIV doesn't have MIDI integration. You have to manually set something yourself with 3rd party programs. All you can configure in the game is to trigger a certain note with a certain keyboard stroke.

And again, that's totally not what I'm talking about. That's totally fine if people want to play some macro sequence they wrote or downloaded, but I want actual control so real musicians can actually play...

It would be absolutely AMAZING if MIDI actually WAS integrated, then you could implement touch sensitivity and then people could actually make it sound amazing

CROW3

Huh. I thought you could. I read up on it when I was playing but never tried it myself. I wasn’t thinking of using sequenced music from other musicians, but compositions from the players they sequenced themselves. I suppose you would probably have a bunch of pop songs played out.

http://cyberspaceandtime.com/T6fitRCtN8o.video+related

Voidwalkers

Sounds interesting.

But then there also needs to be a /mute command to let ppl protect their ears from terrible players.

daveywavey

As long as I don't have to listen to it, that's fine. People wanting immersion aren't going to enjoy a rock guitar riff in the middle of their Temple Questing.

Xez

daveywavey wrote: »

As long as I don't have to listen to it, that's fine. People wanting immersion aren't going to enjoy a rock guitar riff in the middle of their Temple Questing.

Don't seriously think you need to post something like that, all you're doing is virtue signalling how much of an uptight bore you probably are. I think if a dev team is smart enough to implement an entire MMO they can PROBABLY figure out it might be a good idea to include some sort of muting options for you snobs who hate music apparently and to prevent people from using it as a harassment tool.

Also regarding immersion, It's a video game, nobody actually thinks they are a bunch of pixels on a screen or they have serious mental health issues. Immersion is totally secondary to overall fun and playability factors.

Warth

sounds like feature creep to me.

While i woudn't mind to see a feature like that in the game, this will just affect a niche majority of the game. I believe that they should focus their resources on making the core gameplay as good as it can be rather than dabble with optional festures like this.

Xez

Warth wrote: »

sounds like feature creep to me.

While i woudn't mind to see a feature like that in the game, this will just affect a niche majority of the game. I believe that they should focus their resources on making the core gameplay as good as it can be rather than dabble with optional festures like this.

Implementing this should literally take 1 person about 10 minutes to write the actual code needed to do this, don't tell me this is some huge feature that is going to take anything away from the rest of the game development.

This is not some tiny niche feature either that's just for the people who actually play the instruments, I'm pretty sure most people LIKE music, and this feature COMPLETELY REVOLUTIONIZES what experience sitting in a town can be and introduces an ENTIRE new social aspect of human interaction with other people in MMOs. I really cannot understate what an absolute game changer this is, and now any MMO that doesn't have this feature now that I've had it I am going to feel is hollow and empty in comparison.

Also someone earlier mentioned this breaks immersion depending on what people play: Ok ya but isn't it far more NOT immersive to have people in your world NOT be able to play music period...? Like, isn't that a thing we people are known to do in real life sometimes, sing and play instruments... so having our in game characters LACKING that ability is a HUGE immersion BREAKER.

ESPECIALLY if the character is a BARD whose entire lore is that they are supposed to be able to PLAY INSTRUMENTS. Ya, including some sort of music making ability in an MMO is absolute no brainer in terms of adding immersion.

Warth

It just takes 10 minutes, that's why no game ever did it before.
It has such a huge positive impact on the game, that's why no game ever did it before.

Does not quite add up. If it just takes you 10 minutes to implement it, then you should apply to Intrepid as a contractor. Make them an offer to implement the system for ~ 50$. I'm sure they will happy to have you, if what you are saying is true.

daveywavey

Can't decide if you're just trolling me here, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you're just stoned, or 12yrs old, or something...

Xez wrote: »

Don't seriously think you need to post something like that, all you're doing is virtue signalling how much of an uptight bore you probably are. I think if a dev team is smart enough to implement an entire MMO they can PROBABLY figure out it might be a good idea to include some sort of muting options for you snobs who hate music apparently and to prevent people from using it as a harassment tool.

I've been a musician myself for 28 years. Multiple instruments. There is absolutely no way that I "hate music" simply because I don't want to hear rock music in a high fantasy game. Grow up. Rather than having to Mute you, I'd rather have to Unmute you if I wanted to listen to you.

Xez wrote: »

Also regarding immersion, It's a video game, nobody actually thinks they are a bunch of pixels on a screen or they have serious mental health issues. Immersion is totally secondary to overall fun and playability factors.

I indeed do not think that I'm a bunch of pixels on a screen. But hearing you playing a tune that doesn't fit with the game isn't what I'd class as "fun". If you want to play music to people, get away from the PC and go out gigging.

Now, your other comment about bards being a musical class is on point. I fully agree that Bards should have a greater amount of in-game music that they can play. Emphasis on the in-game music. Something designed by people who have the feel of the game in mind, and has been vetted by the game designers.

daveywavey

Ohhh man, look what you did to me. You turned me into a forum essayist

Xez

Warth wrote: »

It just takes 10 minutes, that's why no game ever did it before.
It has such a huge positive impact on the game, that's why no game ever did it before.

Does not quite add up. If it just takes you 10 minutes to implement it, then you should apply to Intrepid as a contractor. Make them an offer to implement the system for ~ 50$. I'm sure they will happy to have you, if what you are saying is true.

Other games HAVE done it before, did you not read anything written before? and that is just a horrible non-argument anyways. Don't do something because nobody else ever did it before, right, ok!

And regarding it taking 10 minutes, Ok I might have been exaggerating SLIGHTLY, but not really actually, depending on how it is actually done. If they took FF14's approach, It could literally require no actual new "functioning code" so to speak at all, and could be done by simply adding each note as another move/ability in the game and defining the sound effect appropriately.

If they took the approach of actually trying to implement full proper MIDI control, then ya it might take the tiniest bit of actual programming, but for the large part is just a COPY-PASTE job from one of the MANY open source MIDI control programs that exist that literally did all the hard work already, and it's just a matter of inserting it in the game code in the appropriate places and making whatever edits are needed. And that's all assuming there isn't some programmer at the company already that already has written and worked with their own MIDI control code before and would even need to reference any open source projects.

daveywavey wrote: »

I've been a musician myself for 28 years. Multiple instruments. There is absolutely no way that I "hate music" simply because I don't want to hear rock music in a high fantasy game. Grow up. Rather than having to Mute you, I'd rather have to Unmute you if I wanted to listen to you.

This is something that only adds to the game, it doesn't take anything away from players like you that don't care about it, and you can have the experience you want by keeping the option muted if you so please. Why then should you therefore insist other people can't have it in the game?

And having a bunch of canned tunes to choose from is just so lame compared to having actual control. It's not a feature then, just another animation.

Noaani

Warth wrote: »

sounds like feature creep to me.

While i woudn't mind to see a feature like that in the game, this will just affect a niche majority of the game. I believe that they should focus their resources on making the core gameplay as good as it can be rather than dabble with optional festures like this.

This is my thoughts as well

What I would suggest though, is about 9 - 12 months in to the game, have a music themed DLC for the game.

Since that is about when support classes (aka, bards) will be in need of a rebalance (they will be broken on release, either broken good or broken bad), that seems like a good time to do it.

Have a bard rebalance, add in tavern music options, ship music options, the ability to play live music, and maybe even some music themed PvE content as well (some of the developers of this game that worked on EQ2's Desert of Flames expansion would know what I am thinking here).

We don't know how big the DLC for this game will even be, nor if there will be any real theme to them, but I do like this idea.

Xez

Noaani wrote: »

Warth wrote: »

sounds like feature creep to me.

While i woudn't mind to see a feature like that in the game, this will just affect a niche majority of the game. I believe that they should focus their resources on making the core gameplay as good as it can be rather than dabble with optional festures like this.

This is my thoughts as well

What I would suggest though, is about 9 - 12 months in to the game, have a music themed DLC for the game.

Since that is about when support classes (aka, bards) will be in need of a rebalance (they will be broken on release, either broken good or broken bad), that seems like a good time to do it.

Have a bard rebalance, add in tavern music options, ship music options, the ability to play live music, and maybe even some music themed PvE content as well (some of the developers of this game that worked on EQ2's Desert of Flames expansion would know what I am thinking here).

We don't know how big the DLC for this game will even be, nor if there will be any real theme to them, but I do like this idea.

Uh I've absolutely no idea why you would think this is something that needs to be reserved for DLC or and expansion.

To implement this is really a TINY, absolutely MINISCULE amount of work, especially when we're talking about not just an MMO... but seemingly the most ambitious MMO ever. A single programmer should literally be able to do practically everything needed for this in a single day, even if everything I'm saying in my post above is completely wrong and ignorant on every level.

As I tried explaining before, this is NOT a tiny little niche feature that is just for the people who are going to be playing the instruments. It's MUSIC we're talking about here. That's like a HUGE facet of our identity as human society and one of our primary forms of emotional communication.

I really cannot understate how huge of a social game changer this is for just hanging out in town. Entire communities will develop around it and people will literally log in to the game just to experience people's music. Even in FFXIV's extremely pathetic implementation where people have to manually set their own thing up to play properly, there is a HUGE community of people that play the game just for it, including myself.

And come on, even if you're someone who can't see yourself actually enjoying hanging out in town listening to random bards or whatever, just like imagine, what about your friends, your guild mates??? These people you're gonna spend years with in the game, how amazing would it be to actually get to appreciate their music making through the game if they wanted to share that with you??? What if they wrote like a guild battle theme, that they could play before every big encounter??? What if you could play a love song to woo your potential spouse??? Like there are Soooooo many possibilities here for making the social game so much more rich an experience by incorporating music, music made by YOU, your FRIENDS, the PLAYERS. Like, isn't that what MMO's are all about, the world being shaped and controlled by the players in it. Isn't that like the core philosophy of this entire GAME in particular too?? The players developing and ruling the game, not the developers.

Noaani

Xez wrote: »

Uh I've absolutely no idea why you would think this is something that needs to be reserved for DLC or and expansion.

To implement this is really a TINY, absolutely MINISCULE amount of work, especially when we're talking about not just an MMO... but seemingly the most ambitious MMO ever. A single programmer should literally be able to do practically everything needed for this in a single day, even if everything I'm saying in my post above is completely wrong and ignorant on every level.

I've never played an MMO where players have not asked for this many times.

If it was indeed that easy, it would be a staple of MMO's.

I've never really worked in depth with midi, but I can guarantee that it is not as easy as you suggest. The character animations alone would take months - and that isn't even the actual system.

Then there is coming up with a system for collaberations - timing over the internet isn't good enough for third party listners to not automatically want to rip their ears out when two people are attempting to play a piece of music together, but latency between each of them, the game server and the listner make it unbearable.

That is just two things off the top of my head that would absolutely need to be included in order to make this work, and between them they would take a multi-disciplinary team several months to implement and test - and neither of them are the actual core system.

That said, I am absolutely a fan of this idea - just not until the core game is finished and released.

DeadlyDave

Music is a subject of individual tastes, what might sound glorious to you, might sound like a swinging cat to another.
MMORPG is no place for you to air your music it's not top of the pop's.
When i play online pc games and feel the urge for a bit of rock this what i do.
1. turn on woofer box and select track
2. turn down in game volume
This will allow me to listen to the music of my choice without annoying anyone else.

Xez

Deadly Dave wrote: »

Music is a subject of individual tastes, what might sound glorious to you, might sound like a swinging cat to another.
MMORPG is no place for you to air your music it's not top of the pop's.
When i play online pc games and feel the urge for a bit of rock this what i do.
1. turn on woofer box and select track
2. turn down in game volume
This will allow me to listen to the music of my choice without annoying anyone else.

Riiiiight.. and there could be a nice big shiny BUTTON you could press in a menu somewhere that would MUTE this for you. You can have your experience the way you want. Nobody's going to force you to listen to anything.

Noaani wrote: »

Xez wrote: »

Uh I've absolutely no idea why you would think this is something that needs to be reserved for DLC or and expansion.

To implement this is really a TINY, absolutely MINISCULE amount of work, especially when we're talking about not just an MMO... but seemingly the most ambitious MMO ever. A single programmer should literally be able to do practically everything needed for this in a single day, even if everything I'm saying in my post above is completely wrong and ignorant on every level.

I've never played an MMO where players have not asked for this many times.

If it was indeed that easy, it would be a staple of MMO's.

I've never really worked in depth with midi, but I can guarantee that it is not as easy as you suggest. The character animations alone would take months - and that isn't even the actual system.

Then there is coming up with a system for collaberations - timing over the internet isn't good enough for third party listners to not automatically want to rip their ears out when two people are attempting to play a piece of music together, but latency between each of them, the game server and the listner make it unbearable.

That is just two things off the top of my head that would absolutely need to be included in order to make this work, and between them they would take a multi-disciplinary team several months to implement and test - and neither of them are the actual core system.

That said, I am absolutely a fan of this idea - just not until the core game is finished and released.

#1 - it's music dude, it doesn't need animation work lol. 1 stock animation would be more than enough.

#2 - I have EXTENSIVE experience playing music together IN PERFECT TIME with other people in FFXIV. There is indeed some lag we both have to compensate for, and it's actually pretty hard to do well, both players actually have to be fairly competent musicians, but I can do it and I have met a few people who can do it too.

Regardless, the inability to play ensembles with others is beside the point anyway. It would be great if it can, but irrelevant for solo play.

#3 - Regarding the supposed difficulty of implementation: While I've not made an MMO I am a programmer with game coding experience so I'm not completely just talking out of my butt when I keep claiming I know how much work it would take to implement.

I'm think real actual MIDI control implementation could actually be the easiest way to go about it. It should just be a matter of asking Windows if a MIDI piano or whatever is plugged in, finding the port it's talking with, establish a connection on that port, and then just reading the actual data which I believe is just 3 numbers, and writing the proper associated logic tree to corresponds to the proper values to point to the appropriate sound file with the appropriate volume augmentation.

Then just a matter of writing a mapping calibration function to account for the fact that different midi instruments can use different protocols, then adding it to the menu's in the appropriate place and... boom, done.

I really don't see what else there is. Ya, there's like 1 or 2 big things of busy work for a couple of hundred lines of code to edit to write the logic tree, but that's it.

Noaani

Xez wrote: »

#1 - it's music dude, it doesn't need animation work lol. 1 stock animation would be more than enough.

#2 - I have EXTENSIVE experience playing music together IN PERFECT TIME with other people in FFXIV. There is indeed some lag we both have to compensate for, and it's actually pretty hard to do well, both players actually have to be fairly competent musicians, but I can do it and I have met a few people who can do it too.

Regardless, the inability to play ensembles with others is beside the point anyway. It would be great if it can, but irrelevant for solo play.

#3 - Regarding the supposed difficulty of implementation: While I've not made an MMO I am a programmer with game coding experience so I'm not completely just talking out of my butt when I keep claiming I know how much work it would take to implement.

1, you may be happy with that, most won't. Do it properly, or not at all.
2, they put the time in to it in FFXIV.
3, if true, you would never have suggested 10 minutes. You would know that nothing gets done in that amount of time.

Themata

Like a lot of the others have said, I would not mind if this was put in the game, and it's also good you're so passionate about it.

My advice to you OP would be to learn a little perspective. This just isn't important at all to the vast majority of people. That doesn't mean it's not important, it just means it's not a priority. You can't just repeat over and over "but it's music". I don't play mmo's for live music, and regardless of how talented you are, you aren't going to give me much to write home about compared to a live performance with real instruments, you know, the thing people go to when they are wanting to enjoy music, not play a game.

Essentially you're asking for quite an intricate system for such a niche RP crowd. If it ends up in the game one day I'll be happy for you, but it absolutely should but be focused on while there is core gameplay still being worked on.

maouw

Hey, I don't mind this idea - but let's be real this is NOT a 10 minute job.
It's going to need a UI
It's going to need some sort of animation of you sitting on a chair with your instrument
It's going to need integration with the Sound Engine
It's going to need midi plug-and-play capability <-- without opening up exploits for macros etc.
You/your instrument's sound will be implemented as some in-game object with a location so that only people near you can hear you playing
Someone will have to make decisions about what midi libraries will be available for you to use
How far is the music allowed to travel out?
Should there be a mute button/slider? Should it be a player specific setting, or just mute all bards?
A feature like this will involve multiple people and they'll have to have meetings about it and run tests.

I do think I'd enjoy a feature like this, but "this is a 10 minute job" is just not true.

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