ryan-pro / rhythmgame

BeatNova

BeatNova is a rhythm game developed as a portfolio project. Styled after games like Chunithm, Arcaea, and Guitar Hero, players are tasked with tapping notes as they travel down a track in sync with the music.

This project is targeting mobile devices, and has been tested on Android. It is playable on PC in a development context. Using Unity 2022.3.29f for development.

Project Overview

Rhythm games pose challenges unique to their genre, and it's what drew me to try making one myself. In particular, synchronization between audio and visual presentation is critical; if the music and notes are out of sync by even a little bit, then the game becomes a frustrating mess to play.

Further, even at high framerates, it's very likely that a song's beat could end up between two different frames. Tracking and recording time per-frame soon becomes too inaccurate, and relying on such a method would cause the visuals to become more and more desynchronized as time goes on. It became apparent that the timing had to be measured precisely and independently from framerate.

RhythmConductor is the component that drives audio-visual synchronization by tracking the song's beat. It uses AudioSettings.dspTime, rather than Time.time, to more accurately measure the current time. RhythmConductor is given the song's BPM, and determines the seconds-per-beat in order to calculate the song's current position in time. We accomplish two things this way: we know exactly when a beat will play, and we can avoid delta time inaccuracies by using beats-per-second as an incremental basis.

BeatNova, as a game, is very much a work-in-progress. This is largely a research project for me, and it is missing many critical features right now. I plan to continuously update this project as I find the time.

All art assets, unless stated otherwise, are AI-generated.

Current Features

• Basic gameplay mechanics: Players can tap on each lane of the track. Tap-hold input is registered, but no gameplay elements yet use it.
• Audio-visual synchronization: Visual elements synchronize with the music beats.
• Some user interface: Title screen and basic main menu implemented, with music-synchronized elements. Simple results screen implemented.

Roadmap

Short-term Goals

• Code comments: As a portfolio project, more comments are needed to explain some areas of the codebase.
• In-game feedback: Game lacks any visual or other feedback for hitting notes. No in-game way to tell if you hit the note correctly.
• Pause screen: Some basic logic for pausing exists, but is not yet implemented.
• Audio-visual sync calibrator: Some devices introduce audio or visual lag; a calibration tool is essential.

Long-term Goals

• Enhanced visual effects: Stage needs visual elements behind the main track visual.
• Scoring system: Player should be scored based on hit type, streak, etc.
• Song selection menu: Menu should list every playable song along with available song info when selected.
• Working options menu: Add a menu to change game settings, calibrate audio-visual synchronization, etc.
• Better notes editor: Placing notes is too manual and tedious to do. A better way can be made, either in-editor or with an external tool.
• Download more songs remotely: Using Addressables, implement the ability to find and download songs from a remote server.

Acknowledgments

Shoutout to the following articles that set me on the right path when I first started this project:

• Hafiz Azman (fizzd) - An LD48 Rhythm Game?! (Part 2)
• Graham Tattersall - Coding to the Beat - Under the Hood of a Rhythm Game in Unity

These two articles helped me form the foundation for what became the RhythmConductor component.

Songs Included

• A Good Boi - Dreams & Visions
  • Used under the Creative Commons Sharealike license
• rk - Starry night
  • Used under the Creative Commons Sharealike license
• Spiky Candy - Used under the Creative Commons Attribution license
  • Hello World!!
  • Clear
  • Ray of Light
  • Rose
  • Violet

Third-Party Software

Outside of Unity-provided packages, this project utilizes the following third-party code:

• UniTask, used under MIT license
• DOTween, provided under proprietary license