Accents and Flams, Anyone? That Would Be Awesome.

[Chrono_Xay]

Looking at the charted streams of snare notes (with ACCENTS) in this song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5wIfwsxAus], that just reminded me: they need to add accents on the drums like Guitar Hero: World Tour did. I mean, the stock kit and the Ion are both velocity sensitive, so by including accents, It would help clean up drum charting a little.

(I'm glad they charted the song to where you can TELL those are accents, but that only re-emphasizes the fact they need to be added. Make it to where you can turn then on and off (perhaps even optional when they ARE on, so you don't get a misstroke if the game can't tell you've accented the note), and so they're worth extra points (like the cymbal notes in Pro mode.)

This leads me to my next thought: Flams. The second stroke tends to be accented, and they also tend to be charted on two pads at once, which hints at a flam, but for those who don't quite understand, they'll play it like any other combination of two pads. Maybe the notes (when on a single pad) could be white (or purple- just whatever color), so people can tell them apart; the programmer could notate a flam on the snare or a tom (or even cymbal), but unless the person playing has flams are turned on, the game will chart them as you've normally seen them; when they ARE turned on, you see white notes.

(I'm not entirely sure about how they would go about displaying flams between pads, but I think the same idea as before (white notes) would be nice. What I'm not sure about is how one would go about displaying just WHICH pad is supposed to be played first...)

Your thoughts?

[kangaroo62]

Yes.

[eringoesmoo]

I actually think accents and flams would be quite fun.

Not that i'd do well

[Chrono_Xay]

I guess the *real* question is, how are they going to notate an accent? Maybe put a circle or something around them?

It seems like ghost notes would be pretty easy to chart, haha. You just make them noticeably darker (not to where you can't SEE them, obviously, but just enough so that you can tell).

Something like what you can see in the picture here: http://www.xbox360achievements.org/g...ck/showimg-25/

You know what I'd LOVE to see as well? open hi-hat notes mapped to the yellow cymbal, but make them a different color like purple (or even just leave them blue, but put them in the yellow lane, so you KNOW it's an open hi-hat). I'd also love to see bell hits on the ride cymbal (if not for the rest of the cymbals) charted, but that starts getting into using dual-trigger pads... :-/ What about charting crash/ride (aka secondary crash) cymbals in the blue lane as a different color? Maybe make the tertiary crashes (on the yellow cymbal) a different color as well?

How about charting accessories, like the cowbell, tambourine, etc. as... triangles on the screen? (I've considered percussion accessory triggers for Y/B/G accessories.

[What you may have noticed is that my ideas aren't asking for CHANGING one color to another (except, perhaps, in the case of charting open hi-hats as blue cymbals in the yellow lane, but rather the addition of colors, so that you'd be ADDING additional nuances of a song to the charting, rather than having to learn your colors all over again.]

Actually, I'm completely forgetting about something Rock Band has been lacking for a while now: the ability to flip the order of colors on the screen, so that lefties can play, and not have to read backwards. I understand that the addition of a red cymbal would fix this quickly and easily, but that lane has been left alone just because of how important those snare notes are. I may have seen a preview of a song for RBN where it sounded like they'd charted a cymbal there, and I was shocked. (The video was in the RB2 charting format, so I couldn't visually tell it was a cymbal, which is why I'm not sure).

This just came to me, too (and this is assuming that even a couple of the additions I'm thinking of are put into the next installment): what about making a sort of in-game trainer function you could turn on and off that, upon the completion of a song, would look at patterns you had the most difficulty with, as well as the same data for the last several songs you played, and make a couple of suggestions as to what songs use these same (or similar) patterns, so that you can play those and hopefully build up for familiarity with that pattern(s). (This could be used for ANY instrument- drums, guitar, bass, keyboard or vocals- I listed those in an order of who MIGHT benefit from that kind of function most).

[Chrono_Xay]

So, then (obviously), if you have an accented flam.... A WHITE NOTE(s) WITH A CIRCLE (or something) AROUND IT!!!

[Chrono_Xay]

One of the big things about trying to get flams to work is that double-triggering would have to be addressed more strongly- for all I know it might even require a test to be done in 'calibration,' but if you're using a Midi-PRO adapter maybe it could just as well be fixed by adjusting the sensitivity...