How real men play Star Control

What began as a quest for finding new ways to add handicaps for the Net Melee on #uqm-arena turned into this. It was one damn mess to set this up, but man, it was worth it. It took me around 8 hours to code the software for this, and then a day to set up the recording in Linux (damn that is difficult). In the end I had to use my digicamera for video and audio as I couldn't get my screen recording, digicamera filming and quality microphone audio synchronized with each other. The screen recorder kept skipping frames, my digicamera kept going ahead the microphone recording and I had issues with sound quality. So here's a filmed match of a MANLY way for playing Star Control - using a musical keyboard. Congratulations to Ziper for defeating me! I would have used more volume if it wasn't 04:00 in the morning. I doubt my neighbors would appreciate a sonata before sunrise.

Originally when this idea came to my mind I was mostly wondering what the sound of Net Melee would be like. Then I further began wondering if one could present a Star Control battle with music, and then figured out that all you have to do is wire up a MIDI keyboard and do some coding. For many weeks I was considering if I should go through the trouble of creating this, and finally on Sunday evening I began hacking.

If someone is interested, here (https://www.gitorious.org/gekko_code/practices/trees/master/python/midi , the zip) is the program I made. It works only in Linux as I have no idea how to do the process handling in Windows. If someone wants to port it, go ahead. It's simply the pygame midi library reading the input, then sending them to the actual application running in a second thread. I call it Instrument Controller.

Disclaimer: No, I can't play piano. The mod used is Shiver's Net Melee Balance Mod for 0.6.2

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• star
• control
• net
• melee
• keyboard
• synthentizer

[oEQjet]

ok chenjesu and the androsynth were different,

the dash left flames and the shards spun! so I ASSUMED you were using 0.7.0

5 hours later after figuring out that you have to make a packages directory and don't even look in the direction of that random version file and the ships are not different. REVEAL YOUR SECRETS.

[Roisackius]

@oEQjet As the description says, using 0.6.2 with Shiver's Net Melee Balance mod, a highly edited version of the game that fixes balance issues for more competitive net melee and makes all ships actually usable.

[Roisackius]

@Roisackius Interesting. I didn't mentioned the mod anywhere. I'll add it.

[biffrapper]

Close Encounters of the Third Kind... muwhahahhahahaha

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

That is, make something like Patapon, but with controlling your ships.

[MyOtheHedgeFox]

I would also suggest you set some keys to play drums and make the controls functional only if you follow the Chmmr Rhythm Pattern (as heard in the beginning of their theme music).