Rok Drummer v1.5.0 [9/12/15] – Play your game drums on PC!
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WHAT IS IT?
A silly little program to turn your Xbox 360 game drums into a sort of e-kit that can be played on your PC. At this point, most Xbox 360 drums or e-kits connected via the MPA are supported, as well as some PS3 kits. Wii support may or may not be added later, but no promises.
See the included Help documentation for the list of features included and how to use them.
FEATURES / CHANGE LOG
Updated change log with latest features and changes can be found here:
Rok Drummer v1.5.0 – Features & Changes
DOWNLOAD & INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS
Extract these files to any folder and run the executable. INSTALLING IN PROGRAM FILES IS NOT RECOMMENDED.
Rok Drummer v1.5.0 – WinRAR archive
EXTRA DRUM KITS
To use these, just extract them into the /kits/ folder and you will be able to use them with Rok Drummer.
YOUTUBE VIDEO
REQUIREMENTS
Microsoft .NET 4
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download … x?id=17851
Xbox 360 Controller for Windows drives (already included with Windows 8 and up)
Wireless – https://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-u … or-windows
Wired – https://www.microsoft.com/hardware/en-u … or-windows
This was done as a little proof of concept and it’s not something I plan to devote much more time to, so enjoy it if you can – but don’t expect too much from it!
Note that most of the GUI is customizable and new sounds can be added easily. Feel free to share anything you make that you think others might enjoy (i.e. nicer images, more or better drum sounds, etc).
Enjoy
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />Are we talking about an application that lets you play the drum track on a Rock Band song/custom on the PC? Because if so, I’m into that.
Wouldn’t mind something similar for the guitar/bass too, while we’re on the subject, but then I worry we’re veering into “making an unofficial Rock Band game for PC that can play Rock Band tracks”, which is potentially iffy, legally-speaking.
Are we talking about an application that lets you play the drum track on a Rock Band song/custom on the PC? Because if so, I’m into that.Well, the initial idea was to satisfy the question/request on Reddit…it lets you use your Rock Band drumset on PC as if it was an electronic kit. By default it includes the 5 drum kits that RB3 comes with, but the user can easily add many more kits. At the moment you can play the drum samples by playing on the wireless RB drums for Xbox 360, by clicking on the desired tom/cymbal/pedal, or by using the keyboard shortcuts.
Then I thought, why not show the drum track of songs and play the audio so one can try to play along? So that’s added now, and you can mute the drum track when the song has multitracks. But it’s more like a play along kind of thing. I have no intention of scoring your playback or turning it into a game, because…
Wouldn’t mind something similar for the guitar/bass too, while we’re on the subject, but then I worry we’re veering into “making an unofficial Rock Band game for PC that can play Rock Band tracks”, which is potentially iffy, legally-speaking.
For that, there’s already the very well made Phase Shift. Converting a Rock Band song into Phase Shift format takes a couple of seconds using Phase Shift Converter in C3 CON Tools, and it’s a fully featured game with its own engine. All I’m doing is a rough representation of the drum chart with the limitations of Visual Studio…I’m not a game maker
” src=”/wp-content/uploads/invision_emoticons/default_SA_smile.gif” />I understand why you don’t want to turn this into a full-fledged game with scoring and such, but might perhaps this app also show energy phrases and when fill-ins trigger with a full-enough energy bar? That could allow for some quick smoke-testing of the drum part before going through the trouble of putting the file on a memory stick, starting the XBox, waiting for the cache to rebuild, etc.
If that’s not the intention and you just want to create something that lets people play along, that’s cool too. Either way, I’d be interested in trying it out.
That’s definitely getting too much into the realm of game-making. If I get even close to it looking like it would in game, I fear it would encourage lazy review by authors who would rely on it instead of firing the game…which in turns means I would want it to be perfect to avoid false positives…which in turn gets us back to that whole make it into a game thing.
Not to mention I’m getting a headache just thinking of how to go about checking for scores during playback
I have never hooked my e-kit up to my PC before but would love to test it out on this program if it ever comes out.
You would get infinitely better results using your e-kits built-in sound samples and just hooking it up to the PC or a sound system for audio…but sure, you can try it out. It does raise the question of “will it work with an e-kit”
Right now I can only test with wireless RB drums. I can recognize the MPA as a controller, but I no longer have an e-kit at home to test the inputs with. Would you be willing to do some testing on your end to help me make sure the MPA sends the same signals the stock kit does?
Sure, as soon as someone sends me a free PS3 drumset so I can figure it out
There’s no way I can make this work with a system I don’t have access to a drumset for to test with.
You would get infinitely better results using your e-kits built-in sound samples and just hooking it up to the PC or a sound system for audio…but sure, you can try it out. It does raise the question of “will it work with an e-kit”
Right now I can only test with wireless RB drums. I can recognize the MPA as a controller, but I no longer have an e-kit at home to test the inputs with. Would you be willing to do some testing on your end to help me make sure the MPA sends the same signals the stock kit does?
Sure I’ll test it out.
I know this is outside of the plans for this project but can RB3 keyboard be implemented as well?
It could display pro keys like you are doing for drums except without lane shifts so it displays the entire keyboard range and can optionally highlight a section of the keyboard for when lane shifts are authored
I know this is outside of plans for this project but can RB3 keyboard be implemented as well?It could display pro keys like you are doing for drums except without lane shifts so it displays the entire keyboard range
That’s outside the scope of this project. But I may or may not already have had this requested and may or may not have already agreed to do it. I’m confident I can make it happen based on how it went with this one, except this one uses WAV samples and for the keyboard I might need to do midi sound banks or something. We’ll see.
P.S. I’m done working on this, short of fixing whatever I’m told is broken. I’m going to be sending a test version to Slideshow tonight and I expect an initial release tomorrow. I really did this as a proof of concept and it will not be getting much support like my main projects do. I might actually share the source code (with some redactions) if someone who can continue it wants it.
v1.0 of Rok Drummer is out now. I edited the OP to make this an official release thread and it will be the designated Rok Drummer thread going forward.
Thanks to Slideshow for confirming that e-kits using the MPA work and for pointing out I had the pedals switched.
I find this program useful in checking out other authors drum charts of which you don’t have their project files for. Just load the con into the program, press play, and view drum charts ala “Drummania” highway style. Whats great is that it views drum charts in Pro Mode so you can see if the chart is missing tom markers. Nifty little program.
That’s definitely getting too much into the realm of game-making. If I get even close to it looking like it would in game, I fear it would encourage lazy review by authors who would rely on it instead of firing the game…which in turns means I would want it to be perfect to avoid false positives…which in turn gets us back to that whole make it into a game thing.Understood. Awesome project either way, thanks!
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