Beatmap editor in Unreal 4!

Hey there! This is Lussy.

We've been hard at work on our rhythm game projects, and we've managed to create a feature we've never thought we could do with Blueprints only, coupled with our current experience. But alas, it has happened.

We've created a beatmap editor inside Unreal 4 using only Blueprints and Rama's Victory Blueprint plugin (it's a godsend, check it out if you're using UE4!).

For the editor, we used osu!'s editor as a reference, and for now it can only create and edit Taiko type beatmaps. We plan to overhaul it almost completely for our own game, but first we had to try if it was even possible to create.

The editor uses .ogg files as music, and creates a text file with a matching name for each new .ogg file. The file contains BPM and title information, as well as all the beat objects or notes in the song - similar to how osu!'s .osz files work. We dubbed ours as .beatmap files though.

Once the file is created, the user can enter a BPM calibrator that lets them tap a button in time with the music. The editor then calculates based on those clicks the BPM of the song, or alternatively, the BPM can be input manually.

After this is done, the actual editor lets users put notes down on each beat of the song, change their colors around and then save the beatmap. The beatmap can then be played in play mode.

The whole thing is very raw right now, because we haven't had as much time to work on it as we wanted to, but it's getting there. This tool will be very useful for developing our rhythm games, and we plan to include it in the game too, so users can create custom content with songs they like.

At this point we're starting to feel like anything is possible in Blueprints with the right nodes and tools. Of course knowing C++ would help greatly, so we're going to get on that, too, but there's no rush.

Project BPM Demo!

Hi there!

No, it's not an April Fools joke. The time has come for us to post our very first demo on this blog. So here it is!

We already introduced Project BPM in an earlier post. The game itself stayed the same, but the shell of it changed a lot! Actually, it's a design disaster. Neon colors... Sega Genesis aesthetics.... Neon Genesis Evangelion.... Get it?

It's a very rough build, but it appeared stable to us. We packaged it for Windows 64 bit. Since this is our first time packaging for Windows and actually releasing it, without a test team, please tell us if something is wrong or weird!

The controls are simple - the gameplay controls are detailed on the gameplay screen, and as for the menus, they work with WASD and the arrow keys for navigation (so, the difficulty setting), Esc for skipping and Enter for accepting/starting the song. There aren't any customization settings, but those will come eventually; they aren't hard to do, just time consuming.

We also made a brief documentation for those interested in syncing up gameplay elements to music in Unreal 4. It's here.

We were motivated to post this demo because two very kind people contacted us about Project BPM and gave us a new surge of motivation to work on our stuff. This wasn't an easy feat, because we're swamped with work and had to carve time out of our sleeping time.

So excuse us while we go to sleep, and enjoy the demo!

Keeping the beat in Unreal 4!

We're really looking forward to not beginning our posts with this: we've been very busy this month, and had almost no time for our personal projects.

That's only almost, though. We have had time for an approximately 3-day practice project in Unreal 4 (about 1.5 days of this was done on a GPD Win device, which can run Unreal 4, impressively, and is also portable, so we could work on it during a long trip). I (Lussy) have finally figured out a way to bind things to a soundwave's position (in seconds) in Blueprints, so we've made a replica of the rhythm game Taiko. Because we didn't have to come up with new gameplay, and only had to implement the existing mechanics, we've been messing around with binding things to BPM, and working on sickeningly colorful graphics.


Excuse me for the sub-par play, it was late and oh yeah we had to show off the 'Miss' particle effects!

The song and beatmap in the video are from one of the original Taiko games, but we used this osu file to bring them into our project by exporting the contents to .csv and importing it into a data table.

We tried to only include really light, unlit-only graphics that wouldn't impact gameplay. We even though about only using 2D sprites or just widgets, but it just didn't seem right for an Unreal project. But in any case, the gameplay stays stable even if the framerate dips. I can't overstate this, we're REALLY happy about the whole thing syncing up, and we never had to use ticks. I've been trying for years to accomplish this

So where to from here... This is a really low priority, tiny project, but we have a few ideas for our own gameplay mechanics that we are going to replace the Taiko mechanics with. Only the timing mechanism will stay. Until then, ... We managed to actually sync things up to a given song and rhythm without the framerate messing things up! Woooo!