UltraStar
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| UltraStar | |
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| Developer(s) | Corvus5 |
| Designer(s) | Corvus5 |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (Intel-based only) |
| Release date(s) | July 2004 |
| Genre(s) | Music game |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
| Input methods | microphone |
UltraStar is a clone of SingStar, a music video game. Ultrastar lets one or several players score points by singing along to a song or music video and match the pitch of the original song well. Ultrastar displays lyrics as well as the correct notes similar to a piano roll. On top of the correct notes Ultrastar displays the pitch recorded from the players. Ultrastar allows several people to play simultaneously by connecting several microphones possibly to several sound cards. To add a song to Ultrastar, a file with notes and lyrics is required, together with an audio file. Optionally a cover image, a backdrop image and a video may be added to each song.
The source code of Ultrastar is available bundled with a copy of the GNU General Public License (a free software license) and also a binary of the non-free library BASS, of which source code is not available. There's nothing telling which files the GNU GPL applies to or what versions of the license may be used. To use Ultrastar, one must link the source code together with BASS. As the GNU GPL is a strong copyleft license, linking GPL code with BASS and distributing the result is a violation of the GPL.
Ultrastar comes preloaded with a short sample from Nine Inch Nails hit Discipline from The Slip album. The original UltraStar is programmed in Kylix/Delphi and made for Microsoft Windows operating-system. There are also ports available in C++ programming language for other operating-systems such as Linux, BSD and other UNIX platforms.
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[edit] UltraStar Deluxe
| UltraStar Deluxe | |
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| Developer(s) | Alexander, Blindy, Eddie, f1fth_freed0m, JayBinks, Mog, Tobi, Whiteshark |
| Version | 1.0.1a |
| Platform(s) | Windows (Stable), Linux (Unstable), Mac OS X (Unstable) |
| Release date(s) | November 2007 |
| Genre(s) | Music game |
| Mode(s) | Singleplayer Multiplayer |
UltraStar Deluxe was started as a modification of Ultrastar. Whiteshark initially offered to collaborate with Corvus5, but this offer was declined. Instead Whiteshark started to add some features on his own with the help of Mota. The first release is known as X-Mas mod, due to a release date around Christmas time. This attracted the attention of other developers that were willing to help. The team grew and the source code departed more and more from the original. Smaller features are often implemented in both projects allowing them to benefit from one another. Though the different projects' implementations of such features often differ. UltraStar Deluxe is different in three key ways from UltraStar. Significant effort has been put into improving reliability by repairing bugs. The second difference is the visual appearance. Sparkling stars and various other effects have been added in addition to skin support. Many effects are also based on the Singstar on PS3. Many new features have been implemented:
- More video formats are supported, such as DivX, XviD, FLV, Avi and WMV.
- Singing screen with golden notes, line bonus and popups
- Party mode with various game types. This includes support for plugins that allow further extension of such game types.
- Improved song management and selection with the ability to search for songs and use playlists
- More detailed statistics screen
UltraStar Deluxe is written in Object Pascal, and compiles with Delphi, Free Pascal Compiler and Lazarus. Ports for Linux and Mac OS X are being worked on. An early and unstable version is available as a Debian binary package from their project website.[1]
As of version 1.0.1 Ultrastar Deluxe runs on Linux via Wine.[2]
[edit] Performous / UltraStar NG
| UltraStar Next Generation | |
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| Developer(s) | Lasse Kärkkäinen, Stekern, Touff-Ray, Yoda-JM |
| Version | 0.3.0 |
| Platform(s) | Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X [3], PS3 (Yellow Dog Linux,Gentoo Linux) [4], Microsoft Windows |
| Release date(s) | November 2007[5] |
| Genre(s) | Music game |
| Mode(s) | Solo singer, multiplayer, pitch practice |
UltraStar Next Generation (USNG; since version 0.3.0, Performous) is a similar game written in C++. USNG is currently available for Linux and Mac OS X. USNG features better pitch detection with fast fourier transform than Ultrastar and Ultrastar Deluxe which use autocorrelation. Multiple simultaneous tones can be detected and separated by the FFT post-processing algorithm, but the game currently only uses this information in the practice screen, not in the singing screen.
A feature unique to USNG is drawing the singing pitch as a line on the screen, in addition to the notes. This allows the player to easily correct their singing pitch instead of having to guess which way to correct.
USNG uses SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) cross-platform multimedia framework, and the graphics rendering is based on OpenGL for high performance even on slower machines, with full effects. Various background video formats are supported using ffmpeg.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ ultrastardeluxe.org: 13.02.2008 05:05 First USDX binary available for Linux! cited 21. February 2008
- ^ ultrastardeluxe.org: 23.11.2007 15:40 UltraStar Deluxe 1.0.1 Release! cited 20. December 2007
- ^ USNG SVN: 23.07.2008 UltraStar-NG added Mac OS X building scripts
- ^ YellowDogLinux Forum: 22.03.2008 UltraStar-NG screenshots on PS3 cited 24. March 2008
- ^ sf.net: 05.11.2007 04:11 UltraStar-NG 0.2.1 Release! cited 28. February 2008
[edit] External links
- UltraStar - Original game created by Corvus5 (Delphi/Kylix)
- Ultrastar Deluxe - Based upon UltraStar, has more features (Delphi/Kylix)
- UltraStar NG - Another fork of the Corvus5 version, earlier known as UltraStar-ES, has nothing to do with USNG (Delphi/Kylix)
- Performous, formerly UltraStar NG (USNG) - Native Linux game written from scratch in C++. Sourceforge link is here.
- UltraStar Mac OS X - Mac OS (Intel) port of UltraStar
- [1] - Page where users can up- and download txt-files for ultrastar
- kJams - Mac OS software that can play UltraStar (SingStar) files "karaoke style", and convert them to CD+G format for burning.
- Ultrastar Italia - Portale interamente dedicato ad Ultrastar con molte risorse e testi di canzoni reperibili
- Canta Game - Python plattform-independent karaoke game that can play ultrastar-files uses a 3d engine for output including 2d/3d themes.
