UltraStar

Infobox VG| title = UltraStar


developer = Corvus5
designer = Corvus5
released = July 2004
genre = Music game
modes = Multiplayer
platforms = Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X (Intel-based only)
input = microphone

UltraStar is a clone of SingStar, a music video game. Ultrastar lets one or several players score points by singing along to a song or music video and match the pitch of the original song well. Ultrastar displays lyrics as well as the correct notes similar to a piano roll. On top of the correct notes Ultrastar displays the pitch recorded from the players. Ultrastar allows several people to play simultaneously by connecting several microphones possibly to several sound cards. To add a song to Ultrastar, a file with notes and lyrics is required, together with an audio file. Optionally a cover image, a backdrop image and a video may be added to each song.

The source code of Ultrastar is available bundled with a copy of the GNU General Public License (a free software license) and also a binary of the non-free library BASS, of which source code is not available. There's nothing telling which files the GNU GPL applies to or what versions of the license may be used. To use Ultrastar, one must link the source code together with BASS. As the GNU GPL is a strong copyleft license, linking GPL code with BASS and distributing the result is a violation of the GPL.

Ultrastar comes preloaded with a short sample from Jamelia's hit "Superstar". The original UltraStar is programmed in Kylix/Delphi and made for Microsoft Windows operating-system. There are also ports available in C++ programming language for other operating-systems such as Linux, BSD and other UNIX platforms.

UltraStar Deluxe

Infobox VG| title = UltraStar Deluxe


developer = Alexander, Blindy, Eddie, f1fth_freed0m, JayBinks, Mog, Tobi, Whiteshark
released = November 2007
version = 1.0.1a
genre = Music game
modes = Singleplayer Multiplayer
platforms = Windows (Stable), Linux (Unstable), Mac OS X (Unstable)

UltraStar Deluxe was started as a modification of Ultrastar. Whiteshark initially offered to collaborate with Corvus5, but this offer was declined. Instead Whiteshark started to add some features on his own with the help of Mota. The first release is known as X-Mas mod, due to a release date around Christmas time. This attracted the attention of other developers that were willing to help. The team grew and the source code departed more and more from the original. Smaller features are often implemented in both projects allowing them to benefit from one another. Though the different projects' implementations of such features often differ. UltraStar Deluxe is different in three key ways from UltraStar. Significant effort has been put into improving reliability by repairing bugs. The second difference is the visual appearance. Sparkling stars and various other effects have been added in addition to skin support. Many effects are also based on the Singstar on PS3. Many new features have been implemented:

*More video formats are supported, such as DivX, XviD, FLV, Avi and WMV.
*Singing screen with golden notes, line bonus and popups
*Party mode with various game types. This includes support for plugins that allow further extension of such game types.
*Improved song management and selection with the ability to search for songs and use playlists
*More detailed statistics screen

UltraStar Deluxe is written in Object Pascal, and compiles with Delphi, [http://www.freepascal.org Free Pascal Compiler] and Lazarus. Ports for Linux and Mac OS X are being worked on. An early and unstable version is available as a Debian binary package from their project website. [http://www.ultrastardeluxe.org/ ultrastardeluxe.org: 13.02.2008 05:05 First USDX binary available for Linux!] cited 21. February 2008]

As of version 1.0.1 Ultrastar Deluxe runs on Linux via Wine. [http://www.ultrastardeluxe.org/ ultrastardeluxe.org: 23.11.2007 15:40 UltraStar Deluxe 1.0.1 Release!] cited 20. December 2007]

UltraStar NG

Infobox VG
title = UltraStar Next Generation


developer = Lasse Kärkkäinen, Stekern, Touff-Ray, Yoda-JM
released = November 2007 [http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=751198 sf.net: 05.11.2007 04:11 UltraStar-NG 0.2.1 Release!] cited 28. February 2008]
version = 0.2.1
genre = Music game
modes = Solo singer, multiplayer, pitch practice
platforms = Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X [http://ultrastar-ng.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ultrastar-ng/trunk/osx-utils/ USNG SVN: 23.07.2008 UltraStar-NG added Mac OSX building scripts] ] , PS3 (Yellow Dog Linux,Gentoo Linux) [http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?t=2713&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30&sid=d066647fdb9f4ea5713e00b3bafe9dca YellowDogLinux Forum: 22.03.2008 UltraStar-NG screenshots on PS3] cited 24. March 2008] , Microsoft Windows

UltraStar Next Generation (USNG) is a similar game written in C++. USNG is currently available for Linux and Mac OS X. USNG features better pitch detection with fast fourier transform than Ultrastar and Ultrastar Deluxe which use autocorrelation. Multiple simultaneous tones can be detected and separated by the FFT post-processing algorithm, but the game currently only uses this information in the practice screen, not in the singing screen.

A feature unique to USNG is drawing the singing pitch as a line on the screen, in addition to the notes. This allows the player to easily correct their singing pitch instead of having to guess which way to correct.

USNG uses SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) cross-platform multimedia framework, and the graphics rendering is based on OpenGL for high performance even on slower machines, with full effects. Various background video formats are supported using ffmpeg.

See also

* Karaoke Revolution
* Xbox Music Mixer
* Boogie (video game)
* StepMania
* SingSong

References

External links

* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastar/ UltraStar] - Original game created by Corvus5 (Delphi/Kylix)
* [http://www.ultrastardeluxe.org/ Ultrastar Deluxe] - Based upon UltraStar, has more features (Delphi/Kylix)
* [http://www.dwe-games.com/web/index.php?id=inicio&lang=i UltraStar NG] - Another fork of the Corvus5 version, earlier known as UltraStar-ES, has nothing to do with USNG (Delphi/Kylix)
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastar-ng/ UltraStar NG (USNG)] - Native Linux game written from scratch in C++
* [http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastar-mac UltraStar Mac OS X] - Mac OS (Intel) port of UltraStar
* [http://usdb.kilu.de/] - Page where users can up- and download txt-files for ultrastar
* [http://kjams.com/ kJams] - Mac OS software that can play UltraStar (SingStar) files "karaoke style", and convert them to CD+G format for burning.