UltraStar

UltraStar is a clone of SingStar, a music video game by Polish developer Patryk "Covus5" Cebula. 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. 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. UltraStar comes preloaded with a short sample from Nine Inch Nails hit "Discipline" from The Slip album.

UltraStar is released under Freeware License. Very old versions were available under GNU General Public License and most game forks were initially based on the old code.

New version of the game introduces Song Shop, where users after free registration can download free songs and buy points. Free songs include:

L. p. Artist Title Language All countries Add date 1 Nine Inch Nails "Discipline" English 24.02.2010 2 Dead Smiling Pirates "I 18" English 24.02.2010 3 Antarhes "Different Way" English 24.02.2010 4 Viola "Cute Destroyer" English 24.02.2010 5 Magdalen Graal "Behind You" English 24.02.2010 6 Hungry Lucy "Just Imagine" English 11.05.2012 7 Hungry Lucy "Balloon Girl" English 11.05.2012 8 Devyn Rose, formerly known as Tanya T6 "Fly Away" English 11.05.2012 9 Josh Woodward "Heritage Place" English 11.05.2012 10 Josh Woodward "Go" English 11.05.2012

The original UltraStar is programmed in Kylix/Delphi and made for Microsoft Windows operating system. There are also ports available in C++ for other operating systems such as Linux, BSD and other UNIX platforms.

Performous is an open source rhythm/performance platform that contains singing, guitar/bass playing, drumming and dancing all in one game. The project began as rewrite of the UltraStar singing game in October 2006, using C++ and targeting Linux. Adding more elements to the game was planned for several years and in 2009 first band game features were added and published on Assembly game development competition. A few months later work on the dance game feature began and even though it is not yet complete, the feature is already available on the development version of the game. The project was originally known as UltraStar NG, but the name was changed in version 0.3 in anticipation of adding other instruments and to avoid confusion as the game is not a fork of UltraStar. Also, since version 0.3 the graphics rendering is based on OpenGL for high performance even on slower machines, with full effects, as long as any OpenGL support is available. Various background video formats are supported using FFmpeg.

This part of the game is essentially karaoke, but with scoring and realtime feedback. The gameplay is similar to SingStar: the game analyzes each singer's pitch and gives scores based on how precisely the song was performed. As a reference, the lyrics, the notes and the singer's pitch are displayed on screen as the song plays. Performous does not attempt to clone SingStar but rather has unique features such as scrolling notes and precise singing pitch display as a wave drawn on screen. These allow players to sing without interruptions and to correct their singing pitch to hit the notes precisely. Performous does pitch detection with fast Fourier transform (FFT) combined with a sophisticated post processing algorithm. This system is able to operate well in extremely noisy environments, even when using very cheap microphones. On Linux the game autodetects any connected SingStar microphones and uses them automatically. On other platforms and with other types of microphones (e. g. webcams or analog microphones connected to sound cards) a best effort detection is done. Songs need to be supplied in UltraStar or Frets on Fire format. Performous comes with a tool named 'ss extract', for converting SingStar DVDs into UltraStar format.

The gameplay is similar to Guitar Hero or Rock Band: a guitar controller is used and the player will need to match the notes. For guitar and bass the game tries to figure out the intention of the player rather than just comparing the nearest available chord, making it easier to play fast passages. Hammer ons and pull offs (HOPOs) also consider player's intention. If the player intends to pick a note in a regular fashion but happens to HOPO it by accident a moment before, the pick will undo the HOPO and no mistake happens. These little gameplay tweaks in favor of the player make the game much more enjoyable as playing correctly will no longer produce mistakes when the timing is slightly off or when the player chooses not to use the HOPO feature. Timing accuracy is still considered in the scoring so that hitting all notes does not always give the maximum score. Performous detects any connected Guitar Hero or Rock Band controllers automatically. Additionally, a PC keyboard can be used as a guitar controller. Songs need to be in Frets on Fire format.

The gameplay is similar to Dance Dance Revolution or StepMania: the dancer will have to match the steps displayed on screen on a dancing mat as precisely as possible. Songs need to be in StepMania format.

'Performous Band', a stripped down version of the game, containing only the band game (guitar, bass and drums) took part in the game development competition. The game was displayed with a pre recorded presentation video, but there were significant audio video synchronization issues with the video even though the game itself had no such issues. Due to copyright issues and the lack of freely usable songs at the time, part of the demonstration was done with the music completely muted. The game finished on the 12th place with 642 points.

On 2014 11 01, Performous released its 1.0 version containing a new engine based on SDL2, the ability to create playlists, and a lot of bug fixes. On 2016 01 23, Performous released its 1.1 version containing mostly bug fixes. On 2022 03 27, Performous released its 1.2 version.