Make a music-based game that supports using your own music

Based on the recommendation of Mandoling I’ve looked at analyzing audio at a more detailed level. Instead of just getting a single value that represents the “intensity” of the song, getting a spectrum of values could be more helpful. Specifically when trying to determine where the song beats are. So I’ve been playing around with some other code to see where that leads me.

As I just mentioned, one of the things I’m trying to accomplish is detecting where the song beats are. If I can consistently and accurately detect these, I can link it to gameplay elements and further integrate the music into the gameplay. So this was my main goal in the last few days and is what I want to show off in the video below. It’s not perfect yet, by any means, but it’s decently accurate and should form a good basis to build off of.

Next up I want to start prototyping some actual gameplay ideas I have. I’ve got a few ideas that might work, I might just try a few of them or hone in on a single one. I’m not sure yet what’s going to be the best approach.

WARNING: the video below contains flashing lights, take care if you are sensitive to that sort of thing.

As the first step in this project I needed to make a simple proof of concept. I had played around with audio responsive elements before, but was never really able to make it work. So a very simple implementation of some objects that react to the current music that is being played was a must.

Luckily I was able to find an example online that approached the subject from a very simple angle. Previously I had tried to separate out different audio channels and then use them to control different elements, but it proved much easier to just use the current intensity of the music to control everything. This allows for a bit less finetuned control of the level, but it works! So for now that is good enough for me and should provide a decent enough base to build the rest of the game on.

The video below shows a simple demo scene where both the lights and the cubes react to the music that is being played. Make sure to watch it with audio, since that is kind of the whole point of the thing.

WARNING: the video below contains flashing lights, take care if you are sensitive to that sort of thing.