(rockband.com) E3 Round-up

Last week, a troupe of Harmonix staff descended on the LA Convention Center to show everyone Rock Band 2. Frankly, we were blown away by the response - we were nominated for a swath of "Best of Show" awards, which is insane considering the strength of titles that I'll be lining up for on Day 1 like Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead.


(Derek Enos, Harware Engineer, shows off our nominee badges from IGN)

Unfortunately, you couldn't make it. That's okay though, I'll summarise the half-hour presentation that we gave to press during E3!

* We showed off the new Quickplay interface that I detailed out last week.

* We also detailed out the hardware options. While we've covered a lot of the big features in the instruments (autocalibration in the new guitars, expandability in the new drums), there were some specifics that came up during our demos:
- You can plug in three additional cymbals and an additional pedal to give you the same amount of inputs as a real drum kit.
- For those of you who've moved kits around, the kick pedal no longer falls off when you move the kit!
- There are also guidelines engraved onto the drum legs to help you perfectly balance your kit.
- The ION kit uses standard 1/4in jacks to plug into the Rock Band brains that come with the kit. This means that you can plug these surfaces into any other real drum gear, like the Alesis DM5 that we had on stage at E3.

* Battle of the Bands is our flagship feature in Rock Band 2. This isn't just 4v4 - in the words of PR Coordinator John Drake, "four versus four is what I like to call a band sissyfight in the parking lot after a gig". Instead, this is your band battling against your entire friends list, then once you're the #1 friend, the entire world!
- We're going to be adding new content to Battle of the Bands daily.
- Battles are only up for a certain amount of time - from a few hours up to multiple weeks.
- We have different ways to judge battles, like "longest streak" or "highest star count"
- We have full control of special rules like "No Overdrive" or "No Saviors"
- When you're playing, we show a meter kind of like the Tug of War meter that shows who's winning at any moment in time.
- If a friend's band beats you while you're offline, rockband.com will send you an email letting you know that you've been beaten and that you need to reclaim your position!
- I'm going to write a blog post about this later on. Stay tuned!


(The members of "Friendly Sword Masters" prepare to battle against our evil nemesis "Spaaaaaace Hooker!")

* We talked about Tour Challenges but, again, I'm saving a lot of the details for another blog post.

* World Tour has a bunch of changes for Rock Band 2
- You can now hire staff to help your band! For example, you can hire an accountant to get more money or pay a street team to get you more fans!
- We've added a new feature called "Opportunity Gigs". Did you see the footage of Everlong with the trippy colors going off in the background? This was an Opportunity Gig where a music video director came up to the band and asked to record a music video with the band for more fans!
- You can now play it with 1-4 players, where any of those players is local or online
- You can choose the lineup of your band members that aren't playing. Want to make the ultimate nerd-metal band? Just make three characters and assign them to your band, and they'll show up even when you're the only one playing!
- Again, there's a bunch of big tweaky stuff that I'll save for another blog post, but the one I'll sneak out now to keep everyone happy - we've reworked how the fan system operates. There are no more times where you'll be blocked from getting fans, for example!

* We touched on the Drum Trainer and Jukebox Mode, but, yet again, bigger blog material.

* We have a new screen called "Game Modifiers". This screen has a bunch of options that allow you to change your game experience! The ones that were revealed at E3 were:
- "No Fail Mode". This disables failing out of a game, in case you want to play with people who aren't skilled enough to beat easy yet. Since we don't want it to be an exploit online, we also disable saving and achievements.
- "Breakneck Speed". By popular demand, we've added an option that increases the scroll speed of all tracks. Since we consider this a personal taste issue and not a game-changing exploit, we don't disable anything.

It was a pretty gruelling three days of interviews and parties, but the sheer amount of excitement from everyone who checked out the game was overwhelming. Now, we just need to finish the game!


(Kasson Crooker, Project Lead on Rock Band 2, takes one for the team to do an interview for Fuel TV)

And the one more thing: I played the Endless Setlist 2 last week. It took us 10 hours to beat all 84 songs on Expert.

(rockband.com) Inside Rock Band 2 Quickplay

We're starting off small this week and checking out the new "Select Song" screen. Compared to Battle of the Bands or Online World Tour it's a less expansive feature, but the changes to quickplay greatly improve the Quickplay experience.

Let's check out what people will be seeing at E3 this week after they've checked out awesome stuff like Battle of the Bands, Music Videos and Tour Challenges - the Quickplay Song Select Screen:



So, as you can tell, we've used the Rock Band Music Store as a basis for our new screen. We've also added a bunch of new feaures based on the feedback we've recieved, as well as our own personal wants for easy song selection in Quickplay and "Make a Setlist" in our World Tour campaign mode:

SONG INFO AND DIFFICULTY NUMBERS
As well as the nice album art and extended information about a song, we also show difficulty numbers!

This is per instrument, as well as the standard band difficulty ordering! This way, you can tell at a glance whether you'll need to drop down a difficulty level or not.

SETLIST CREATION

We actually have a bunch of different ways that you can create a setlist in Quickplay, all of them really easy to use:



The first one is a new option at the top of the setlist called "[Make a Setlist]". This works in a similar way to "Make a Setlist" in our World Tour campaign mode, however you can specify the number of songs you play!

If you just want to play some songs with one button press, we also let you play tiers as a setlist! With this, you play every song that is under that particular heading.



SHORTCUTS AND SORTING

The shortcut menu has been massively beefed up since Rock Band. If you tap the "filter" button, you'll instantly jump to the next tier. However, if you hold it down, you'll get a navigatable menu of tiers!



This is especially handy for some of our new filtering modes, like "Sort by Location". If you want to get to your new DLC as quickly as possible, you can just move instantly to the "Downloaded Songs" tier.

We still have all of the sorting categories from the original Rock Band, but they've been tuned a bit. For example, if you sort by artist, the songs inside that artist will have subheadings that sort by album - which, yes, can be selected if you want to play that album as a setlist in Quickplay.



ONLINE SUPPORT
Naturally, all of this is supported for online bands too, but we've also added a "Round Robin" selection method so that everyone playing has a chance to pick a song. No more having to deal with leaders hogging the limelight.

QUICKPLAY SPECIFIC MATCHMAKING FEATURES
We also now have a selection of "Session Musicians" that you can pick in Quickplay if you want to pick a character without spending time creating them!



This is on top of all of the other new matchmaking enhancements, which I'll cover later!

SCORING

As you may have heard, we replaced the Solo Tour in Rock Band with Tour Challenges in Rock Band 2, which is a non-linear progression campaign mode. But what if you still really want to play all 84 songs in a linear list? Or even more so, what if you want to play all 200+ songs currently released in a linear campaign?



Well, one of the ways you can do this is in Quickplay! Whenever you play a song, regardless of mode*, we'll record your highest score and show it on the quickplay screen. Even better, this score is recorded both locally and online - so if you're playing without an internet connection, you can still record your highest scores, view them in the Leaderboards section of the game, and have them upload when you reconnect to Rock Central.

* There's an exception here for some Battle of the Bands events, because of a gameplay modifier that changes how scoring, streaks and overdrive works. More on that later.

---------------------

This week's Q&A Question:

Q: "RE: DRUMS AND ANNOUNCED CYMBALS
I understand the optional cymbals are just secondary inputs for the existing pads, but what about during fills and the "drum trainer" modes? Will those two things recognize the cymbals as unique inputs or will every part of RB2 just recognize the cymbal attachments as secondary pads?" - babywolf

A: While they're mapped to the same colors for the note charts, the Drum Trainer and fills in-game treat these surfaces are unique - hitting the yellow cymbal triggers a hi-hat, and hitting the yellow pad plays a tom. Same goes for all the inputs on the Ion kit and other third-party kits in development.

------------------------

So that's the new Song Select list. You might not think it reading this blog, but this was one of the smaller features in Rock Band 2. Things like Tour Challenges and Battle of the Bands are absolutely massive, and I think you're going to be blown away by how much depth there is once you see them.

Oh, and for one more thing, here's a teaser for Tour Challenges: some art from two of the challenges you can play:

(rockband.com) Q&A Responses, Part 1

I wrote up this big post and took a lot of screenshots about one of our new features, and realised that I couldn't show it just yet because it relies on songs - and we hadn't officially announced any yet when I sent this off for approval. Awk-ward.

So, NEXT week you'll see that blog post, which will be good because I will be at E3 and usually wouldn't have time to do anything but a photoblog.

In the meantime, I've gone through the questions below and answered the ones that I'm allowed to talk about. Onto the questions!

---

Q: "If your Rock Band 2 instruments are better, if I wanted to switch disc over to play Run to the Hills or something can I use the new instruments?" - quinaking

A: Yes, all Rock Band instruments work on all Rock Band games for that platform, as well as any other music games that adhere to the controller standards.

---

Q: "Will there be any improvements on vocals? Will there still be talky parts, and, if so, will they be fixed or easier to hit than they were in RB1?" - Lady Sia..

A: Yes, on multiple fronts. We've improved the balance for pitched vocals, and completely rewritten the non-pitched talky detection. Rock Band 2 has drastically more reliable talky parts.

---

Q: "Well, I'm going to go on record that this "limited time XBOX360 exclusivity" is total bull crap. Who does this benifit?" - killerew..

A: This benefits both gamers and Harmonix. Microsoft have been awesome in supporting us and have actually helped out on some of these things by visiting us and working hand-in-hand on new platform features. They've been a great partner on everything from development to marketing, and some of the features in the game would not have been possible without them.

As well as this, the other platforms are coming out really soon after the Xbox 360 launch. Trust me, if you're an other platform owner, you'll be surprised at how little you have to wait.

---

Q: "I was wondering if you could create a code or a option to shut off the vocal pitch meter? Singing the song and making it "your own" would be a great idea and make an interesting addition to the game!!" - jd506

A: I can't talk about specific features until E3, but I think you'll be very happy with one of the new features in RB2 :)


---

Q: "Could you find Europe or Australia on a map? Only kidding. After the flamefest of the last European release hopefully you'll be more eager to talk about why there is a delay and such forth. So, why is there a delay and how long will it be?"

A: Trust me, I complain daily to everyone here about the release date in Australia (my home country). As soon as we can announce dates in other territories outside the US we will. Stay tuned for more info about this at E3! The window will be smaller this time around.

---

Q: "Cant wait for E3 and Harmonix's juicy details on Rock Band 2!" - Pamp

A: Me too! It means I can start posting screenshots and in-depth stuff.


As usual, if you have questions, post them below.
-DanT

Oh, and one more thing for people having issues getting gold stars: The gold star score threshold is now easier to achieve in Rock Band 2. No more cursing at impossible deploy paths!

(rockband.com) Let there be Rock Band 2!

Hi rockband.com!

My name is Dan Teasdale, and I'm the lead designer on Rock Band 2. Along with Sylvain Dubrofsky (senior designer) and Casey Malone (designer), we're the design team that's slaving over a hot keyboard to get Rock Band 2 into your hands very soon.

Needless to say, we're really excited that we can finally talk about Rock Band 2. It's a true expansion of the platform, and a realisation of our goals to produce the most authentic band experience available.

A lot of the changes that we've been working on are directly influenced by the wish list that you have all been posting to. As well as improving everything in Rock Band that we felt could be improved, we've introduced some exciting features that'll have people playing as bands with their music collection in fun and new ways. I'll be talking about these over the next few weeks.

Naturally, all of your purchased Rock Band DLC will work in Rock Band 2, and all of your Rock Band instruments will still work (although you might want to buy the new instruments anyway when you see our improvements). We are totally committed to ensuring that Rock Band is a music platform that you can enjoy with friends for years to come, and not just another music game.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be talking about life during development of RB2, as well as revealing some of the details to RB2 that get glossed over in press previews. If you have anything specifically that you have questions about, please post in the comments! I can't promise I'll be able to get my answers past the kind and friendly PR and Community team, but I'll do my best!

-DanT

State of the Band - Software Update Announcement

Hi! I’m Dan T (HMXspraynwipe), and I’m a senior designer here at Harmonix. I’m glad to announce that the Rock Band team has finalized a software update for Rock Band on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that not only fixes some of the common issues we’ve been reading about on rockband.com, but also introduces a cool new feature!

In this latest software update, you’ll find:

[LIST]
[*] [B] (New!) Music Store[/B]: Rock Band now has a new feature that lets you preview and purchase songs from within the game! Accessible from the main menu, the Music Store lets you view, purchase and sort all available music based on various categories, view album art, listen to song previews, and check out extended information about the song like difficulty for each instrument.


[*] [B]Revised Fan Caps[/B]: To allow Easy, Medium, and Hard players to progress further in the Band World Tour, we’ve increased the number of fans that you can earn before hitting the cap. Easy players can now travel across the Atlantic, Medium players have a wider range of venues they can play at, and Hard players on the Xbox 360 are now able to unlock the “One Million Fans” achievement.


[*] [B]More diverse songs in Band World Tour[/B]: If you’ve ever cursed about having to play “Say it Ain’t So” or a Metallica track multiple times in the same hour, then you’ll be glad to know that we’ve tracked down and fixed the issues that triggered these very repetitive moments in Band World Tour.


[*] [B] Improved phoneme recognition[/B]: We’ve improved the detection and scoring for phoneme recognition. If you had trouble on songs like “Timmy and the Lords of the Underworld” or “Blitzkrieg Bop”, you should have an easier time beating these songs now.


[*] [B]Microphone Latency on PlayStation 3 improved[/B]: Our awesome team of audio programmers has found some optimizations that reduce microphone latency on the PlayStation 3 in certain situations.


[*] [B]Xbox 360 Band Logos are now visible through Xbox LIVE[/B]: An issue with parental controls stopped band logos from being visible over Xbox LIVE. With this update, you can now view all of the awesome band logos that people around the world have created!


[*] [B]Faster loading of downloadable content[/B]: Not only is the loading speed faster, but this information is now cached so that this loading time is a “once only” wait rather than something that happens every time you turn on the game.
[/LIST]

Updating any game is something that takes a lot of effort to do – not only do engineers, artists, production and designers all have to be involved at some point, but each change has to go through a rigorous Quality Assurance pass to make sure that it doesn’t introduce any new issues (like corrupting old save data, for example). After we’re happy with the software update, we then pass it on to Microsoft and Sony, who each have their own rigorous testing and certification processes. The entire process can take months for a simple day’s worth of fixing!

Because of this, we’re very aware that there are features that the community has requested that aren’t addressed in this software update. I want to make it very clear that we’re listening to all of your requests, and actively want to get these features onto the Rock Band platform in the future – but when we do add them, we also want them to be 100% perfect, and not rushed just to make it into any specific software update.

Lastly, and most importantly, thanks for being an awesome community! There are changes in this software update that wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the well-reasoned and polite attitude that most of the members on rockband.com have, and I’m really proud not only of the work that we’ve put into Rock Band, but also of the work that HMXSean, HMXJohnlok, Apples, and the rest of the rockband.com team have put in to maintain this great place for Rock Band fans to hang out in.


Have fun!
-DanT

"I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split."

Kurt Vonnegut quoted in "The War Between Writers and Reviewers," New York Times Book Review (6 January 1985).

Episodic Content soapboxing

One of the email interviews I'm involved in popped the question about episodic content. I thought it was an interesting question with a very soapboxey response, so I'm republishing it here:

"As a developer in general, do you think it's difficult for video games as a popular medium to keep up with more reactionary media -TV, movies, pop music - due to lengthy development cycles? It's hard to be timely when a game takes two years to make, versus the opposite extreme, a talk show which is written, rehearsed, played out, edited and aired all in the same day."

I think a lot of the problem is people trying to make games fit into models that other media use, like TV and movies, instead of discovering the model that works for game development and design.

With linear short-form media like TV, it's almost compulsory to pump out content on a regular basis to keep people interested, just because it has almost no reusability. You're not going to sit down and watch the same episode of "How I Met Your Mother" every day or two with your friends, because you've sucked out the goodness on the first (or second, if you're hardcore) viewing.

With games, we have the opportunity to build these experiences that have much broader reusability. I think the real focus is making sure that developers grow these titles with content that fits, like tournaments, new features through title updates, and especially affordable or sponsored downloadable content.

For single player centric only titles, it comes down to also designing the mechanic and narrative to allow players to participate in a world rather than just crafting some linear narrative that people won't want to sit through again. Mass Effect is a great example of this, while there's a critical path there's also a big fat universe out there that people actively want to go and explore after "beating" the game.