I had a look through the stuff in "Using MIDI within Flash" and I'd agree. It is a potential route in, useful for getting timing information on which to base a rhythmic interaction.

He is using samples for each individual note. If the samples were longer (and fewer - perhaps polyphonic) it would probably work better than having a large number of samples playing simultaniously. Remember only 8 sounds can be playing at once. It can definitely be used to get a pattern of notes vs. melody into flash, and that can (somehow) be used to feed the groover.

This does not solve the problem of defining a loop however - and that's pretty integral to the problem of generating a groover diagram. I see this useful to get the timing information for a sequence of notes in. Then the looping and other matters must be coded by hand.

Also there is a big potential timing issue. He's running the flash timing about as close to the wall as it can go - if there is a lot of other stuff going on at the same time things might not work as well as they do now, in his sample application, but to try that out requires experimentation.

Performance improvements in flash player 7 may be of help with this.

See http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm8.html

for a very rough prototype of a rhythm interface, not using the MIDI stuff at all, instead relying on some very basic stuff with timers.

Use the record button to record a rhythm, pressing z to make the rhythm dots. Play will replay it and then have to match the rhythm with the same key (z).

If running inside flash (doesn't work on the web) when you press dump, in the trace (output) window you'll get flash code for the array with the time deltas for each of the rhythm dots (I make flash write the flash code to define an array of the deltas). These can then be cut and pasted back into flash again.

Next step is to up the number of rhythm dots and to get it to read in the array and make a new game from scratch. It's really crappy and the interface is horrible etc, early days yet, but the concept works. You can make a rhythm and play it back. It only deals with one sample for now.

There are also latency issues. Maybe cranking up the frame rate will help.

Code is at :

http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm8.fla

I just uploaded a version of the rhythm creator with working load from dump functionality :

http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm14.html

use load to load the rhythm pattern I saved earlier using dump, cut and paste

You'll need the source to actually save out a rhythm pattern (it still appears in the output window, which is only available when running from inside flash):

http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm14.fla

From miker 20031123:

I did some work on the rhythm stuff this morning.

I did one mod so that the buttons are now the right way round (ie, X is for the things which come from the left, etc).

I looked at putting the action on the mouse buttons, but flash won't tell you which mouse button is depressed, I assume because it is trying to be cross platform and multiple mouse buttons won't work on the mac. So that's not possible, at least as far as I know. You can have one key (either X or
Z) on the mouse - you get to choose, 1 or not at all.

I would have put the bush background in, but I don't think you have given me a bush background. I looked at the images I have and besides the office, pan, sally-pan, etc, I have a set of images of the forest, which are lower-res. If you put a bush img somewhere I can get at (remember access to blade doen't work) I'll pick it up and stick it in. (You may have given me the stuff on the assets cd, but I don't have that with me).

Meanwhile, here are instructions for changing the audio ;

To change the background audio for the 2 levels, look it the actions layer, frame 1. Scroll down a bit and you'll see two variables, level1Sound and level2Sound. Simply import your audio into the library and export it for use in actionscript, (there are examples of this already done), then change the name of the sound in the script.

Scroll down a bit to line 135 to 150 and you'll see the audio for the sounds - red and blue exposed in a similar manner. I have not yet put the array in yet, will do this if you still want me to.

Let me have a list of outstanding issues and I will get them corrected as soon as possible. I'd like to make sure your demo goes as smoothly as possible.

Meanwhile, you can find the new stuff here :

http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm34.html

http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm34.fla

nothing has really changed much apart from the keys mentioned above

Outstanding bugs:

Check the behaviour of the audio when you press PLAY more than once, need to stop bg track if it's already playing.

Wishlist:

Make PLAY start from CD's transition from figure to line, then into the game. Make CD's transition faster to make it flow better.

I made some changes to the audio - check it out and see if it's doing what you intended - the track is now reset at the start of play and when you stop.

http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm35.html
http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm35.swf
http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm35.fla

ok. Fixed.

http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm36.html
http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm36.swf
http://www.swirl.com/quality/Rhythm36.fla

I fixed some pretty weird state related problems. It should be much improved.