gamer_extreme_101
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I'm both shocked and hurt that's no one's mentioned this game, considering that it's the reason I was late for work yesterday.

Audiosurf is an independently made game that allows you to "race" on any custom audio tracks. Essentially, the engine analyzes the song and create a road map based to the tempo, rhythm, and intensity of the song. Slower songs have you going slower and uphill, whereas faster and more intense songs have you flying downhill. As you do this, you need to collect coloured blocks and arrange them to get groups of three or more (Kind of like Puyo-Puyo, except you can choose which ones you get and which ones you don't).

It's truly an indescribably fun game, especially if you're a music freak like I am. The game's on Steam for $10, and it comes with the Orange Box soundtrack in it, not like you really needed another reason to buy it. A demo's on there as well that allows you to play about five songs to try it out.

Oh, and it's also an entry in IGF 2008. If you like the game, don't forget to vote!

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Malorie
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I played the demo of it, and I really don't see what all the fuss is about!

Granted, I only tried two of my own songs, but the 'track' the game made was absolutely terrible for both of them... they both ended up going constantly downhill with a couple of tinytiny bumps for no apparant reason, and the blocks didn't match the timing of the song whatsoever, and were all over the place. Even when the song slowed down, or sped up, it had absolutely no visual impact on the 'course'.

Not only that, but due to the sheer amount of blocks on screen at once, it wasn't even fun to play like a Klax-style game, because if you even tried to scoop up one block, about ten other blocks would rush past you while you were placing it in another column...


After playing games like Lumines and Rez, Audiosurf just jumped out as three things:

1. It didn't fit the music whatsoever,
2. Its graphic style was very basic and dull, like a colour-inverted 'Tempest' from the 1980s and never changing, and
3. It's core game wasn't fun in the first place, regardless of whether it fit the music or not.


The game would be much better if you could design your own courses to songs... at least then the courses would actually fit the song!

But as it stands, it feels like someone took Guitar Hero... made it completely mute... made it generate completely random 'notes' all over the place... and said "if you play your own song in the background, you can pretend it fits the game!!!!"

I'll stick with real music-based games that cost less on consoles, instead of winamp visualiser-style minigames that dont even work very well. :p

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Tuttle
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I liked it. Deliberately not buying it yet because I wouldn't have a weekend left, but I'll get it at some point.

It seemed to interpret the songs I threw at it pretty well. The slow ones were gentle uphill slopes all the way, and the punk/metal stuff was suitably frenetic.

I did notice that the camera angle is such that you always feel that you're going in one direction even though the map says uphill/downhill, but I think that's a good thing -- a camera angle that showed the uphillness properly wouldn't let you see very far ahead on the track.

Any game like this which tries to match arbitrary music is going to get it horribly wrong sometimes -- beat detection, for example, is a lot harder to code than it is to just do yourself. For games like Guitar Hero the levels can be polished to match the songs before release, but Audiosurf doesn't get that luxury.

What it really needs is a continuous play mode -- I reckon tuning it in to streaming Internet radio for half an hour or so could be interesting.

For ten bucks and as a casual game, I think it's well worth a look.

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[Last edited by Tuttle at 02-17-2008 06:23 AM]

Sillyman
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Yeah, they really should have let it tune to internet radio. Only thing is, what about when people talk?

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Tuttle
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That's the slow bit where you can rest. A lot of Internet radio stations don't have live hosts most of the time anyway, just the occasional station ID tag.

goldenferret
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Audiosurf... Just buy it. It's even cheaper than DROD.
(Those friggin' achievements are impossible though.)

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Oneiromancer
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Is there a demo out there that doesn't involve installing Steam?

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Tuttle
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Nope, both the demo and full version are Steam-only. There were non-Steam betas around, but as far as I can tell they were all time-bombed to die on fixed dates that have since passed.

Pilchard VIII
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I'm downloading the demo of this now. I wonder how Dragonforce tracks will affect this game...

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Oneiromancer
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I decided to finally just install Steam and try the demo. I'm kind of intrigued at the gameplay, but I was annoyed that the game couldn't recognize my songs. It gets the artist, but not the song title. I double-checked those songs, and the song title is in the tag in iTunes. The only thing I can think of is that I've modified some songs in audio software to drop "empty" space at the beginning or end (especially applause in live songs), or to normalize the volume, and Audiosurf is matching more than just song and artist so that when people compare high scores, they are for the same version. Since I really don't want to re-rip from CD all the songs I modified in this way (several thousand) it'll probably stop me from buying the game. Out of the 4 songs I'm allowed in the demo, only one of them recognized both the song name and the artist correctly. It might also be related to album art being included in the mp3 file, too. Oh well.

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Tuttle
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The recognition is purely based on the tags, not the length or graph. Those other things are shown in the high score table, but that's it. I've never had a problem with songs that have album art embedded either. I suspect that your MP3 tags aren't quite right -- maybe you have both ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags in the file but one set is incomplete, or something like that.

Banjooie
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Yeah, for purposes of high scores, the mp3s need to be /exact/.

But you probably knew that. It makes it fun when you realize you have the high score on some obscure mp3 someone else inexplicably has.

Oneiromancer
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Okay, it looks like a significant number of my mp3s have the Title not filled out in the ID3 tags. I can't find any rhyme or reason to which ones don't have a tag filled out. The information is there in iTunes, but it's not in the ID3 tag...I'm confirming this with an ID3 tag viewer I downloaded. So...anyone with iTunes know how to force it to fill out ID3 tags with the track information already entered? And yeah, I know iTunes is a pain, but clearly if my ID3 tags aren't filled out then I need to keep working with iTunes if I'm going to get it done in anything resembling a reasonable time. If I tell iTunes to "convert file to mp3" (for a song that is already in mp3 format, thank you very much) then it creates the tags successfully. Ugh...I'll ask on the iTunes forums too.

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

Tuttle
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No experience with iTunes, but if your filenames are accurate then it might be worth looking at Mp3tag as a bulk fix -- I've used it in the past to do batch tag<->filename conversions. Of course, for something like that it's well worth having a backup of your whole library first.

Oneiromancer
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Thanks, Tuttle, that's exactly the one I downloaded earlier tonight. I was thinking that I should be able to have the program open every mp3, arrange by title so I can choose the empty ones, then convert filename to title (my filenames are only title, so that works) and then only a few might have issues (when there are characters that can't be in filenames, or are too long.

I actually found that the only thing missing from any ID3 tag is the title, all the other fields are filled out. If I change the title in iTunes to something else, and then change it back to the original name, it finally puts something in the ID3 tag Title field. But there doesn't appear to be a way to do a mass update, so it looks like the other program is the way to go.

And after all this hassle, if I even want to see if it works in Audiosurf I have to buy it since I'm past my 4 song limit. Oh well, only $10, not gonna break the bank.

____________________________
"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

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[Last edited by Oneiromancer at 03-11-2008 03:56 AM]

gamer_extreme_101
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I've used iTunes for about two years now, and all the songs that I've used in the game haven't had any problems with ID3 tags. The only thing I can think of is that the title may have shown up as the filename, which is the default action when iTunes can't find the information in the tag.

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13th Slayer
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Sorry to necrobump, but i just followed the link that they gave to me in my thread . Sorry again. Well... Does anyone know what tracks work good with the game? I have tried my fav, "The device has been modified" and it's quite good for beggining. Since i have only 4 songs left, i'd like to know what would both sound good and give good tracks.

Pinnacle
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13th Slayer wrote:
Sorry to necrobump, but i just followed the link that they gave to me in my thread . Sorry again. Well... Does anyone know what tracks work good with the game? I have tried my fav, "The device has been modified" and it's quite good for beggining. Since i have only 4 songs left, i'd like to know what would both sound good and give good tracks.

Any post-rock is excellent, Explosions in the Sky, 65daysofstatic (Aren't We All Running? is a lot of fun), Do Make Say Think, This Will Destroy You, etc.
Anything by the Mars Volta works exceptionally well.
Oh, and King Crimson, oddly enough.


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NiroZ
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bumpity bump.

I've found that anything off mindless self indulgence's If album goes rather well, as not only is it bumpy, but it keeps frantically speeding up and slowing down. But by far the best is 'They're coming to take me away' by neuroticfish. It really captures the feel of the song.

A friend recommended trying to play black sabbath on audiosurf, and into the void is pretty good.

Any other recommendations?

Briareos
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Orbital's "P.E.T.R.O.L."?
Future Sound Of London's "We Have Explosive"?
The Prodigy's "Firestarter"?

If it kinda looks like Wipeout 2097 it better sound like it...

Bonus track: Autechre's "Gantz Graf"

np: Orbital - P.E.T.R.O.L. (In Sides)
(By full coincidence...)

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NiroZ
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Dude, next time warn me when you recommend industrial techno/electronica. I swear I got a concussion from it.