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This is awesome. I was heavily involved with designing the audio and gameplay for DJ Hero, the sequel to Guitar Hero. I'd love to see you do this for DJ Hero ne

by jmfldn 6y ago

This is awesome. I was heavily involved with designing the audio and gameplay for DJ Hero, the sequel to Guitar Hero. I'd love to see you do this for DJ Hero next!

nik12795 6y ago
Wow that’s sweet! Glad you liked it. What was the process like to design the audio/gameplay? Sounds like a great gig
- jmfldn 6y ago
  Hey there, nice to meet some fans! Yeah it did really well critically and we shifted a lot of units but the marketing investment killed the profit as we spent on it like it was going to be the next Guitar Hero. It was always going to be more niche than that so this was its achilles heel. Activision loved what we did almost too much and killed the profitability. When I started to see Eminem and Jay Z turning up to promo events I thought "wow" / "oh crap how much did this cost us?!" Working on it was amazing. My job was remixing music for a video game and turning it into gameplay so what was not to love! I prototyped some of the earliest mixes in the game so helped to get the project through it's earliest milestones. I met a lot of famous people and got to remix Daft Punk, DJ Shadow and a few other heroes of mine. My favorite moment was opening the Ableton project sent to us by Daft Punk containing their stems. The music nerd / fanboy in me couldn't believe I got to play around with these stems that very few people ever had access to. They basically don't work with anyone as a rule so the fact that they collaborated on our project was insane. We had their likenesses in the game and the big pyramid stage. Was surreal! It was a great gig and I feel we produced a cult classic game that stood the test of time. The financials just didn't stack up.
  - adrianh 6y ago
    Thanks for sharing this — that is really cool! What are you up to now? Still in the music/tech space?
    - jmfldn 6y ago
      Actually not any more. I'm a software engineer these days in the energy sector so nowhere near as glamorous! Gaming industry is a young man's game so I decided to move on and scratch my programming itch instead! I didn't fancy being a game programmer. Music is back to being a hobby again. Was just a 3-4 year thing that I went into it professionally.
  - vuciv1 6y ago
    Wow, thanks for sharing. Very cool story :) You put together a lot of fun hours in my childhood
  - nik12795 6y ago
    Wow man that's an awesome story. Sounds like it was quite the ride. Thanks for sharing!
Baeocystin 6y ago
Random fan here: DJ Hero was my absolute favorite of that era of music games. You did a stellar job figuring out how to make it really feel like you were doing the thing, and not just hitting buttons in time. Thanks for a great experience. :)
Lammy 6y ago
Off-topic, but I feel like one of the few people who really really loved* this game, so thank you! It was interesting to see companies like FSG and SEGA try to make a DJ game without getting sued by Konami, and I don’t know of any other games besides CRACKIN’DJ and DJHero that employ the track switching/fading mechanic. [*] And I would have 1000/1000 achievement points except for the one mix (Beats & Pieces) I was never able to five-star on Expert difficulty :argh:
jugg1es 6y ago
DJ hero ended up sitting in my closet. It just wasn't nearly as fun to play as the guitar was. The game itself was good but the hardware didn't do it for me.
GuB-42 6y ago
DJ Hero looks much harder. On screen you need to follow the crossfader line, detect the notes and scratch arrows, all of them on top of each others. On the control side you need to control the crossfader, turntable and buttons, and the buttons move with the turntable. Plus the effect knob, but IIRC, it isn't required, but it is important for scoring. But since the Guitar Hero robot doesn't use the star power, I think it can be overlooked. Maybe an easier target would be BeatMania IIDX. It is actually a ridiculously hard game when played by a human, but the screen is very clean and you just have to press 7 button and move the turntable back and forth (or use the auto-scratch if that's a problem).
- jmfldn 6y ago
  Yeah DJ Hero would be insanely hard to do, the machine vision part would be tricker for all the reasons you suggested. Simulating the scratch dynamics from the peripheral would be tricky too since it's not just a binary switch as far as the game goes but has certain tolerances which you'd need to calibrate. Effects dial you could ignore but I guess it would be easy enough to send a signal emulating that. Agree that Beatmania would be amazing as a challenge and could build on the Jon Bot Jovi design!
  - nik12795 6y ago
    Wasn't too familiar with DJ Hero. Took a look... dang. That would be an interesting and challenging project!

by jmfldn 6y ago

This is awesome. I was heavily involved with designing the audio and gameplay for DJ Hero, the sequel to Guitar Hero. I'd love to see you do this for DJ Hero next!

nik12795 6y ago

Wow that’s sweet! Glad you liked it. What was the process like to design the audio/gameplay? Sounds like a great gig

jmfldn 6y ago
Hey there, nice to meet some fans! Yeah it did really well critically and we shifted a lot of units but the marketing investment killed the profit as we spent on it like it was going to be the next Guitar Hero. It was always going to be more niche than that so this was its achilles heel. Activision loved what we did almost too much and killed the profitability. When I started to see Eminem and Jay Z turning up to promo events I thought "wow" / "oh crap how much did this cost us?!" Working on it was amazing. My job was remixing music for a video game and turning it into gameplay so what was not to love! I prototyped some of the earliest mixes in the game so helped to get the project through it's earliest milestones. I met a lot of famous people and got to remix Daft Punk, DJ Shadow and a few other heroes of mine. My favorite moment was opening the Ableton project sent to us by Daft Punk containing their stems. The music nerd / fanboy in me couldn't believe I got to play around with these stems that very few people ever had access to. They basically don't work with anyone as a rule so the fact that they collaborated on our project was insane. We had their likenesses in the game and the big pyramid stage. Was surreal! It was a great gig and I feel we produced a cult classic game that stood the test of time. The financials just didn't stack up.
- adrianh 6y ago
  Thanks for sharing this — that is really cool! What are you up to now? Still in the music/tech space?
  - jmfldn 6y ago
    Actually not any more. I'm a software engineer these days in the energy sector so nowhere near as glamorous! Gaming industry is a young man's game so I decided to move on and scratch my programming itch instead! I didn't fancy being a game programmer. Music is back to being a hobby again. Was just a 3-4 year thing that I went into it professionally.
- vuciv1 6y ago
  Wow, thanks for sharing. Very cool story :) You put together a lot of fun hours in my childhood
- nik12795 6y ago
  Wow man that's an awesome story. Sounds like it was quite the ride. Thanks for sharing!

Baeocystin 6y ago

Random fan here: DJ Hero was my absolute favorite of that era of music games. You did a stellar job figuring out how to make it really feel like you were doing the thing, and not just hitting buttons in time. Thanks for a great experience. :)

Lammy 6y ago

Off-topic, but I feel like one of the few people who really really loved* this game, so thank you! It was interesting to see companies like FSG and SEGA try to make a DJ game without getting sued by Konami, and I don’t know of any other games besides CRACKIN’DJ and DJHero that employ the track switching/fading mechanic. [*] And I would have 1000/1000 achievement points except for the one mix (Beats & Pieces) I was never able to five-star on Expert difficulty :argh:

jugg1es 6y ago

DJ hero ended up sitting in my closet. It just wasn't nearly as fun to play as the guitar was. The game itself was good but the hardware didn't do it for me.

GuB-42 6y ago

DJ Hero looks much harder. On screen you need to follow the crossfader line, detect the notes and scratch arrows, all of them on top of each others. On the control side you need to control the crossfader, turntable and buttons, and the buttons move with the turntable. Plus the effect knob, but IIRC, it isn't required, but it is important for scoring. But since the Guitar Hero robot doesn't use the star power, I think it can be overlooked. Maybe an easier target would be BeatMania IIDX. It is actually a ridiculously hard game when played by a human, but the screen is very clean and you just have to press 7 button and move the turntable back and forth (or use the auto-scratch if that's a problem).

jmfldn 6y ago
Yeah DJ Hero would be insanely hard to do, the machine vision part would be tricker for all the reasons you suggested. Simulating the scratch dynamics from the peripheral would be tricky too since it's not just a binary switch as far as the game goes but has certain tolerances which you'd need to calibrate. Effects dial you could ignore but I guess it would be easy enough to send a signal emulating that. Agree that Beatmania would be amazing as a challenge and could build on the Jon Bot Jovi design!
- nik12795 6y ago
  Wasn't too familiar with DJ Hero. Took a look... dang. That would be an interesting and challenging project!