Mappig Microphone as kick

[vrexperience]

Hi, in Tombe Drums VR there is an option to add a headset microphone as an input audio device. So stomping near it produces a kick effect on the bass drum. I could not find any way to do this in our game. Please be so kind to help.

[ET]

Hey, thanks for checking in about this!

You're right that currently there's no way to do this within Paradiddle, but I'm actively working on this feature. The reason it's taking so long is that I'd like to allow people to directly connect their Rock Band pedals to their mic input and use it within Paradiddle, but it's quite tricky to make this work in a reliable way, due to the way Rock Band/Guitar Hero pedals send audio signals. I haven't tried a real microphone in Tombe Drums, but when I try my Rock Band pedal in there connected to the microphone input, it's actually not reliable whatsoever and seems to only trigger the kick 1 out of 5 times that I intend to. I'm concurrently working on several high-priority new features right now, so I'd say this functionality might take another month or two before it's fully implemented in Paradiddle. Hope that answers your question!

[vrexperience]

Thank you. If a lot of people that bought the game have money for pedals this makes sense. To me, in Europe, these things are much more expensive so for gaming purposes I use the microphone as previously described. Anyhow, thank you for your kind answer.

[bickman14]

Originally posted by ET:

Hey, thanks for checking in about this!

You're right that currently there's no way to do this within Paradiddle, but I'm actively working on this feature. The reason it's taking so long is that I'd like to allow people to directly connect their Rock Band pedals to their mic input and use it within Paradiddle, but it's quite tricky to make this work in a reliable way, due to the way Rock Band/Guitar Hero pedals send audio signals. I haven't tried a real microphone in Tombe Drums, but when I try my Rock Band pedal in there connected to the microphone input, it's actually not reliable whatsoever and seems to only trigger the kick 1 out of 5 times that I intend to. I'm concurrently working on several high-priority new features right now, so I'd say this functionality might take another month or two before it's fully implemented in Paradiddle. Hope that answers your question!

Hi, hows that working now?
I've just find out about your "game" on reddit and have the first Rock Band PS3 KIT here, would like to know if I should try connecting the pedal on the mic port or the whole kit on the USB?
I'm really looking forward on getting your "game" if that's working!

[ET]

Currently the mic jack integration is still in an in-progress state, so you'd have to connect your Rock Band Kit to the PC and then use something like rb2midi (http://www.mattgrounds.com/rb2midi/) to convert the pedal input into MIDI messages (the "USB Pedal" section on the Phase Shift + Paradiddle guide has a few more details - http://dwsk.proboards.com/thread/2661/midi-drums-phase-shift-guide). Let me know if you end up testing this out, I'd be interested in hearing how well it worked for you!

I realize the MIDI method isn't super convenient right now and requires you to jump through some more hoops, so I'm hoping that by the end of February I'll have native support for Rock Band pedals through the mic jack. I must admit I dropped the ball on this last year, especially after finding out about the MIDI workaround using rb2midi, but I've checked off enough high priority features since then that I can now spend some more time on this.

[bickman14]

Originally posted by ET:

Currently the mic jack integration is still in an in-progress state, so you'd have to connect your Rock Band Kit to the PC and then use something like rb2midi (http://www.mattgrounds.com/rb2midi/) to convert the pedal input into MIDI messages (the "USB Pedal" section on the Phase Shift + Paradiddle guide has a few more details - http://dwsk.proboards.com/thread/2661/midi-drums-phase-shift-guide). Let me know if you end up testing this out, I'd be interested in hearing how well it worked for you!

I realize the MIDI method isn't super convenient right now and requires you to jump through some more hoops, so I'm hoping that by the end of February I'll have native support for Rock Band pedals through the mic jack. I must admit I dropped the ball on this last year, especially after finding out about the MIDI workaround using rb2midi, but I've checked off enough high priority features since then that I can now spend some more time on this.

Hi! Thanks for your reply here and on Reddit, if you don't mind I'll keep the discussion going here as it could be easier for others to find in the future!

I've looked into the tutorials you linked and to be honest, if we intend using the pedals via USB and you have keyboard inputs for the same virtual pads/pedals we are overthinking here.
I've just plugged my PS3 Rock Band 1 Kit to the PC via USB and it was promptly reconized, the drivers intalled OK and every button showed up and worked fine on Windows Controller test thing.
The Drum Kit shows up as: "Harmonix Drum Kit for PlayStation(R)3" and the pedal works as button 5, it's a regular digital button. I've launched and old build of Xpadder that I still have lying around and it reconized the buttons and I could map the Spacekey to the pedal and it worked as it should've. I believe it would work OK with Joy2Key too.

I've not tried it yet but after reading about Wheel Pedals possibly being an option, I'm thinking about trying the same thing with my G29, I'm not sure how that will work on Xpadder as the pedals are analog, but I'll maybe give it a shot later!

Now I just need to buy your game to the final test hahah :D
I'll probably do that during the week and I'm hoping to have some good news about the tests and the results by sunday!

I'll keep you posted!

[OFF TOPIC] About the Phase Shift Integration Tutorial: You really should get in touch with the Phase Shift guys and work on a native option to get all of that working and have a way to display the tracks/music/etc inside your game or have a similar option on yours with support for mods and pre-setted Drums configs, someone could save a Virtual Drum Set for a Song, map it and release the mod, if we are lucky we can have a community like beat saber hahaha.
The results of the tutorial looked really awesome but I'm pretty sure not every one (me included) will go throught all that hoops in order to get everything working. [/off]

[ET]

Wow, I feel so silly after reading your comment about hooking up the Rock Band drums over USB. You're absolutely right, there's no reason to do this through MIDI whatsoever if the button is easily recognized. Joy2Key or Xpadder should definitely work in this case if you just map that button to a Space bar as you said. Better yet, there might be a way to use the Steam input system to capture that key and map it to an action in the app, or I could just program that in as an additional option if it's always the same key no matter the Rock Band/Guitar Hero hardware. That way we could get rid of the whole Xpadder step altogether.

There have been users who have successfully gotten their driving pedals to work in the app through Joy2Key, if it's pretty similar to Xpadder then that should work just fine as well. Let me know if you end up trying that out!

Good suggestion about the Phase Shift integration, it would indeed be cool to have better native support for their charted songs. I'm hoping to get Steam Workshop support up and running within the next couple of months, which will allow users to share their drum kits and recordings through Steam. So I'm hoping that people will start recording and sharing some songs once that's running. I'm also looking into whether I could also support loading midi files or at least converting them to Paradiddle recording files, so that people could just convert existing midi drum tracks into a format that could be loaded up in the app. I'm still trying to figure out the best way of doing all of this so if you have any other input, I'd love to hear it. Looking forward to hearing your updates about the pedals!

[bickman14]

Originally posted by ET:

Wow, I feel so silly after reading your comment about hooking up the Rock Band drums over USB. You're absolutely right, there's no reason to do this through MIDI whatsoever if the button is easily recognized. Joy2Key or Xpadder should definitely work in this case if you just map that button to a Space bar as you said. Better yet, there might be a way to use the Steam input system to capture that key and map it to an action in the app, or I could just program that in as an additional option if it's always the same key no matter the Rock Band/Guitar Hero hardware. That way we could get rid of the whole Xpadder step altogether.

There have been users who have successfully gotten their driving pedals to work in the app through Joy2Key, if it's pretty similar to Xpadder then that should work just fine as well. Let me know if you end up trying that out!

Good suggestion about the Phase Shift integration, it would indeed be cool to have better native support for their charted songs. I'm hoping to get Steam Workshop support up and running within the next couple of months, which will allow users to share their drum kits and recordings through Steam. So I'm hoping that people will start recording and sharing some songs once that's running. I'm also looking into whether I could also support loading midi files or at least converting them to Paradiddle recording files, so that people could just convert existing midi drum tracks into a format that could be loaded up in the app. I'm still trying to figure out the best way of doing all of this so if you have any other input, I'd love to hear it. Looking forward to hearing your updates about the pedals!

Regarding the RockBand Pedal, while connecting the whole kit via USB it's reconized as a regular game controller, in order to avoid the Joy2Key/Xpadder/Steam Controller thing, you probably could code regular dinput and xinput support, with button mapping. I dunno how that works 'cause I can't code, but doing like this one could just open the config in game, click on the controller they want use, press the button they would like mapped as the action and would be ready to go.
I think you could approach this in several ways, adding a third input method (vr trigger, spacebar, user defined) or just changing the spacebar to user defined and adding a reset to defaults option just in case something goes wrong, you'll probably need to change that button from being hardcoded to being a variable, but that must be easy for someone who can code hahaha.

I've tested quickly the game using the Xpadder scheme and it worked perfectly!
Also, it works nicely with WMR (Samsung Odyssey OG not the +), the only issue, at least for me, is that due to it's tracking it's almost impossible for me to play the cymbal and the snare with crossed arms right arm over left arm) because the arm that is playing the cymbal cover the controller of the arm that is playing the snare. Not a problem of your game, just a problem with the WMR tracking system, but as it's possible to rearrange the drums parts this can be solved with some creativity.

As I'm not a drummer, I've dowloaded that Real Drum mobile app that someone suggested on another post and tried to play the first lesson, on paradiddle, it worked fine I just have to work my coordination.
I dunno if that lessons are copyrighted or if they are like standard drums lessons and TBH I haven't tried more than the first one yet, but if it would be cool to have something similar inside Padaddile, maybe you could record something similar and bundle with your game.
I belive for someone who is a drummer and have a good tracking system as the Vive, that would be really easy and quick to do and would increase the value a lot!

[ET]

@bickman14 I also just did a quick test with my Rock Band pedal connected to the portable Madcatz Rock Band drum kit/controller, and mapping to Space worked flawlessly with Joy2Key. But as you mentioned, it's actually quite possible (and relatively easy) for me to support the button press natively in the app, it just registers as a Left Bumper press when you press on the pedal. So I might add an action mapping specifically for the Left Bumper in the controls menu, or do what you suggested and have a custom button that's configurable entirely by the user.

Adding some lessons is something I'm going to be looking into more this year, this seems to be a popular request. Hopefully should have more updates on this soon!