Instrument Game System and Method
A game system and method that uses an instrument as an input encourages a user to play along with the game's soundtrack on an instrument (e.g. guitar, bass, etc.). The game cues the player to play notes and/or chords on the instrument at an appropriate time and then data is collected from the instrument via a connection between the instrument and the apparatus running the game. The game then scores the user based on note/chord and timing information it receives.
This application claims priority under 35 USC 119(e) and 120 to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/902,066 filed on Feb. 20, 2007 entitled “A Music Video Game with Stringed Instrument Input” which is incorporated herein by reference.
FIELDA system and method for game playing is described. In more detail, a system and method for using an instrument as an input to a game and the game with the instrument input is disclosed.
BACKGROUNDVideo games generally are well known. In addition, video games and gaming system with music type games are also known. The game systems may be both personal computer/gaming console (Microsoft® Xbox® or Sony® Play Station2®) or stand-alone gaming consoles such as might be in an arcade. Examples of these types of games include Dance, Dance Revolution in which a user attempts to follow a dance routine set to music and is scored based on the accuracy of the user's dance routine to the exemplary dance routine and Guitar Hero in which the user has a controller (that looks like a guitar), plays along with a song and is scored based on how closely the user can play the song as compared to the exemplary song. It is desirable to provide a game system and method in which an instrument is the input controller to the game system and it is to this end that the present invention is directed.
The game system and method are particularly applicable to a personal computer based, guitar based game system and method with the exemplary user interface described below and it is in this context that the system and method will be described. It will be appreciated, however, that the system and method has greater utility because: 1) the game system can be implemented with other musical or melodic instruments, such as any melodic instrument including, for example, a bass, violin, banjo, piano, voice, clarinet, steel drums, etc.; 2) it can be implemented on other gaming apparatus, such as gaming consoles or stand-alone gaming units (such as the Microsoft® Xbox® system, the Sony® PlayStation®, Nintendo® Wii®, etc.); 3) it can be implemented in peer-to-peer, ASP model, client/server architectures or as an Internet game; and 4) it can be implemented using other user interfaces and features that are not specifically described below in the exemplary embodiments which are provided to illustrate the game system and method. Now, an example of an implementation of the game system to illustrate the functions and principles is described in more detail.
Returning to
If the user plays the cued note at the cued time, a “Hit” is awarded. If the user does not play the cued note, or waits too long to play the cued note, a “Miss” is awarded.
In some embodiments of the game system, the user interface 100 shown in
In some embodiments of the game system, a note 111 may take on a special characteristic (i.e. glowing star, blinking, moving in a wavy path) from other notes in the note field 106 and may be “hit” by the user (played correctly) for an additional score or otherwise enhance the player's in-game status. In some embodiments, the judgment of the last played note is displayed on-screen in a textual format 113 for the player to receive immediate feedback of the played note. The judgment 113 may read “Great”, “Good”, “Fair”, “Poor”, “Miss”, etc.
The action indicator interface 104 of the game system may be modified in various ways in other embodiments of the game system. For example, each note 108 (shown as a circle in the example in
As another example, the horizontal position of the note indicating the time to play it (cue time), the vertical position indicating the string to play it on (cue string), and the number inside the note indicating the fret that is to be pressed down (cue fret) on the string to generate the correct pitch is an example of the user interface that may be used to cue the stringed musical instrument play and the variables that cue the play (which string, which fret, and what time), may be arranged spatially (horizontally spaced, vertically spaced, depth-wise spaced) and demarcated by notation (using numbers, letters, colors, shapes, etc) and may have many permutations as shown in
The game system user interface may also include, in some embodiments, a performance feedback interface and several components of the user interface 100 may loosely define a mechanism for a player to receive feedback on their performance in the game. In some embodiments, the user interface 100 may include a score window 112 or other graphic that is used to present the player's current score during their performance. In some embodiments, a performance meter 114 may also be used to present the player's current performance which is a measure of the number of hit notes and missed notes and, if the player's performance falls below a predetermined level, the game may end.
The user interface 100 of the game system in some embodiments may further comprise a chord track 116 that may be, for example, located above the note field 106. During game play, chord information appears in the chord track 116 and scrolls from right to left towards that stationary play area 110. Each piece of chord data lines up with a corresponding note(s) 108 in the note field 106 to show the association between the two.
The user interface 100 of the game system in some embodiments may further comprise a signal feedback interface wherein several components in the user interface 100 loosely define a mechanism for the player to receive the quality and power of the instrument signal being fed into the game. In some embodiments, a volume meter 118 shows the total volume of the player's instrument during instrument play. In some embodiments, a signal plot 120 shows a plot of the power of the player's signal vs. the note so that the signal plot will show peaks at the tone(s) the player is playing.
The user interface 100 of the game system in some embodiments may further comprise a combo feedback interface wherein several components in the user interface 100 loosely define a mechanism for the player to receive information on the number of correctly played notes that have been “hit” in a row (i.e. a combo of correct notes). In some embodiments, textual information 122 displays the current combo number. In some embodiments, a combo bar 124 is used, containing a graphical representation of the number of combo notes played together 126, as well as a display of a score multiplier 128 gained because of successful combos.
In some embodiments, there may be several time windows associated with an arrangement note 1402 as shown in
In some embodiments, the scoring of notes can be done independent of the octave of the note so that notes played that are one of more octaves higher or lower than the cued note will still be scored positively (i.e. a “Hit”). In these embodiments, the note of the live instrument performance data point is adjusted by one or more octaves so that the adjusted note is then compared to the arrangement note. Then, the live instrument performance is scored positively if the adjusted note is equal to the arrangement note and the live musical performance is not scored if the adjusted note does not match the arrangement note.
The game system may include a level scoring module. In the game, each level is scored based on the number of “Hits” vs. “Misses” awarded to the player. In embodiments with multiple time windows, “Hits” would be subdivided further into “Great”, “Good”, “Fair”, “Poor”, etc. In some embodiments, scoring for a level is done by the multiplying the number of judged notes by multipliers assigned for each rating (i.e. Miss-0, Poor-1, Fair-2, Good-3, Great-4). In some embodiments, a score above a certain amount will unlock one or more unlocked items (i.e. a song, a new character, a new character outfit or guitar, etc.). In some embodiments, a score below a certain amount will “fail” the player and thus not allow the player to progress to the next level.
The game system may also adjust the difficulty of each level of the game. For example, as shown in
In the game system, different arrangements of musical pieces can be used to give more difficult and challenging experiences of playing the same musical piece, as shown by
An alternate arrangement technique is illustrated in
In addition, arrangement of songs do not have to follow the traditional melodies as shown in
While the foregoing has been with reference to a particular embodiment of the invention, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that changes in this embodiment may be made without departing from the principles and spirit of the invention, the scope of which is defined by the appended claims.
Claims
1. A method for evaluating a live instrument performance, comprising:
- providing a set of arrangement performance data, the set of arrangement performance data further comprising a plurality of arrangement data points wherein each arrangement data point further comprises a note and a time tag associated with each note;
- receiving a sequence of live instrument performance data points, wherein each live instrument performance data point has a note and a time tag;
- determining, for a particular arrangement data point having a particular arrangement note and a particular arrangement time tag, if any live instrument performance data points in the plurality of live instrument performance data points have a note equal to the particular arrangement note and a time tag that is within a time window around the particular arrangement time tag that identifies matching live performance data points; and
- scoring, if there are the matching live performance data points, the live instrument performance by comparing the notes and time tags of the matching live instrument performance data points with the particular note and particular time tag of the particular arrangement data point.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein scoring the live instrument performance further comprises scoring negatively the live instrument performance if no live instrument performance data point has a note equal to the particular arrangement note or a time tag that is within a time window around the particular arrangement time tag.
3. The method of claim 1, wherein the live instrument performance further comprises a live stringed instrument performance.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein the instrument further comprises a guitar, a bass, violin, a banjo, a piano, a voice, a clarinet or a steel drum.
5. The method of claim 1 further comprising determining a periodicity component from the sequence of live instrument performance data points, converting the periodicity component to a frequency component, and converting the frequency component into a value representative of a note in the live instrument performance.
6. The method of claim 1, wherein scoring the live instrument performance further comprises comparing a time difference between the particular arrangement time tag and the time tag of the live instrument performance data point to generate a time difference value.
7. The method of claim 6, wherein each arrangement data point further comprises a first time window around the particular time tag and a second time window around the particular time tag longer than the first time window, and wherein scoring the live musical performance further comprises assigning a first score if the live instrument performance note matches the particular note and the live instrument performance time tag is within the first time window and assigning a second score that is lower than the first score when the live instrument performance note matches the particular note and the live instrument performance time tag is within the second time window but not within the first time window.
8. The method of claim 1, wherein the time window further comprises a time window whose time range is adjusted based on a difficulty level of the instrument performance data or a profile of a user performing the live instrument performance.
9. The method of claim 2 further comprising adjusting a note of one of the live instrument performance data points by one or more octaves, comparing the adjusted note to the particular arrangement data point note and scoring the live instrument performance positively if the adjusted note is equal to the particular arrangement note and not scoring the adjusted note if the adjusted note does not match the particular arrangement note.
10. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving the sequence of live instrument performance data points further comprises sampling a live instrument performance.
11. An apparatus for evaluating a live instrument performance, comprising:
- a storage unit that stores a set of arrangement instrument performance data, the set of arrangement instrument performance data further comprising a plurality of arrangement data points wherein each arrangement data point further comprises a note and a time tag associated with each note;
- a computing device coupled to the storage unit, the computing device having an instrument interface that is capable of receiving a sequence of live instrument performance data points, wherein each live instrument performance data point has a note and a time tag; and
- the computing device further comprising a game unit having a scoring unit that determines, for a particular arrangement data point having a particular arrangement note and a particular arrangement time tag, if any live instrument performance data points in the plurality of live instrument performance data points have a note equal to the particular arrangement note and a time tag that is within a time window around the particular arrangement time tag that identifies matching live performance data points, and that scores, if there are matching live performance data points, the live instrument performance by comparing the notes and time tags of the matching live instrument performance data points with the particular note and particular time tag of the particular arrangement data point.
12. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the scoring unit negatively scores the live instrument performance if no live instrument performance data point has a note equal to the particular arrangement note or a time tag that is within a time window around the particular arrangement time tag.
13. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the instrument further comprises a stringed instrument.
14. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the instrument further comprises a guitar, a bass, violin, a banjo, a piano, a voice, a clarinet or a steel drum.
15. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the scoring unit further comprises a time window unit that defines a first time window around the particular time tag and a second time window around the particular time tag longer than the first time window, and wherein scoring the live musical performance further comprises assigning a first score if the live instrument performance note matches the particular note and the live instrument performance time tag is within the first time window and assigning a second score that is lower than the first score when the live instrument performance note matches the particular note and the live instrument performance time tag is within the second time window but not within the first time window.
16. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the instrument interface samples a user performance using the instrument.
17. The apparatus of claim 11, wherein the computing device further comprises a personal computer, a game console, a networked computer or a gaming apparatus.
18. A computer readable medium having stored thereon instruction which, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to perform the operations of:
- providing a set of arrangement performance data, the set of arrangement performance data further comprising a plurality of arrangement data points wherein each arrangement data point further comprises a note and a time tag associated with each note;
- receiving a sequence of live instrument performance data points, wherein each live instrument performance data point has a note and a time tag;
- determining, for a particular arrangement data point having a particular arrangement note and a particular arrangement time tag, if any live instrument performance data points in the plurality of live instrument performance data points have a note equal to the particular arrangement note and a time tag that is within a time window around the particular arrangement time tag that identifies matching live performance data points; and
- scoring, if there are the matching live performance data points, the live instrument performance by comparing the notes and time tags of the matching live instrument performance data points with the particular note and particular time tag of the particular arrangement data point.
19. A method for displaying the time and pitch cues to the player of a musical instrument performance, the method comprising:
- providing a representation of a musical instrument having one or more elements;
- providing a plurality of note symbols representing a musical instrument performance to be played by the player, each note symbol having a graphical symbol and a character within the graphical symbol that represents a position of the musical instrument to be played by the player to generate a particular note;
- displaying the representation of a musical instrument having one or more elements and the plurality of note symbols traveling across the representation of the musical instrument; and
- cueing the player to play the particular note when the note symbol associated with the particular note crosses an element of the representation of a musical instrument.
20. The method of claim 19, wherein each note symbol further comprises an alphanumeric symbol that specifies a chord associated with the particular pitch for the note symbol.
21. The method of claim 19 further comprising displaying a score of the player.
22. The method of claim 19 further comprising displaying a performance meter that displays the performance of the player.
23. The method of claim 19, wherein displaying the representation further comprises displaying a user interface in which a vertical position of the note symbol represents a string of the musical instrument, a number inside of the note symbol corresponds to a fret of the musical instrument, and wherein cueing the player further comprises cueing the player, when an event of the note symbol traveling in a horizontal direction and crossing the graphical element occurs, to play the string represented by the vertical position of the note symbol and hold down the fret of the musical instrument indicated by the number inside of the note symbol.
24. A method for changing the difficulty of an instrument game, the method comprising:
- providing an arrangement having a plurality of notes to be played by a player;
- determining a level of difficulty of a game for a particular player; and
- adjusting the difficulty of the arrangement by changing the numbers of notes in the arrangement to be played by the player based on the determined level of difficulty of the player.
25. The method of claim 24, wherein adjusting the difficulty further comprises increasing the difficulty of the arrangement by adding more notes in the arrangement to be played by the player and decreasing the difficulty of the arrangement by reducing a number of notes in the arrangement to be played by the player.
Type: Application
Filed: Oct 1, 2007
Publication Date: Aug 21, 2008
Applicant: GAMETANK INC. (San Mateo, CA)
Inventor: Jakob Parks (San Mateo, CA)
Application Number: 11/865,681
International Classification: A63F 9/24 (20060101);