This sprint was about adding a couple new features in the game that would appeal to musicians and DJs. The first feature added was a fully functional looper in the game to be able to build beats. The initial implementation of this was a “Looper Room” in the Oasis Studio Level. Basically, it is a 16 track looper that supports loops either 4, 8, 16 or 32 beats long and syncs them together using the Unreal Engine Quartz Music Clock. We built the ability to swap out Sample Packs so that you could change the loops available to choose. In this first implementation, three sample packs were made to support a Jazz, Blues or Rock Genre. In order to do this we had to create these sample packs, so we had original loops/samples supporting those genres. The first three genre Sample Packs represent about 250 unique sample loops. In addition to the ability to swap genre related sample packs, the looper also supports changing the BPM of the song you are going to mix using it. Here is the video of the “Looper Room” in action:
Since you change the samples by clicking on objects (in this case planes on the wall), we probably will be more creative in the future about how a player might interact and trigger the beats. Like we did in our Game Jam ChronoBeats mini-game by running though gates to trigger the loop within the looper. We plan on developing more Sample Packs for Soul/R&B, Country, Pop, Chill, Techno, House, Classical, Ethnic, etc. We have been thinking of possibly exploring a way to buy these packs within the game play.
The other major feature we added was to add internet radio as an option in the game. This will allow us to have streaming internet radio into the game in the edit sessions. It will also be used to develop a tunable radio station in the game for events. Lastly, it gives another option for musicians and DJs to stream music into the game using Shoutcast and Icecast and other internet radio formats. This means that performers in the game can either share their music by streaming from YouTube or Twitch, direct What You Hear from their desktop and now Shoutcast/Icecast. Here is a video showing the internet radio embedded in the game:
