xKaraPlay v0.1 Beta
© 2007 ElSemi
xKaraPlay is a Midi-Karaoke player for XBOX.
It's in very early beta stage so you can expect some problems (lyrics not showing,wrong music, hangs,...)
Midi-Karaoke files (usually .kar extension) are standard MIDI files (.mid) with
embedded and syncronized lyrics.
In order to generate the actual music from the midi stored score, the player will use SoundFont 2 banks (.sf2).
Soundfont banks contain the instrument sounds and description required to play the score
contained in the midi files.
I've included a SoundFont bank made by merging Creative's 8MBGMGS.sf2 drums and SynerGi-8M.sf2 instruments.
If you want to use a different soundfont file, just name it bank.sf2 and place it in the same directory than
default.xbe.
CONFIGURATION
Before starting using the program you should configure the directories where you have your .kar files stored.
By default the program will always read all .kar files in the same dir than default.xbe.
To add more files/directories just open karaplay.ini and add Dirx=directory (where 'x' is a sequential number and 'directory'
is the directory name where you stored the files.) remember than the program will always run as if the directory where
default.xbe is stored is d:\ .
The player also supports .kar files inside .zip files, to add a zip file, just add it to the .ini file as if it
were a directory (for example: Dir3=Karaokes.zip)
The player also supports a simple piano keyboard visualization that you can enable/disable with the ini option Vis.
Setting Vis=1 will enable the piano visualization, Vis=0 will disable it.
USAGE
Once you have placed the zip contents in a directory on your xbox hard drive, have copied there all .kar/.zip files and
configured the directories properly, you can start the player.
When it starts you'll see a blade with a list of all songs you have configured (alphabetically sorted).
Use the D-Pad UP and DOWN to move a song at a time, use LEFT TRIGGER to scroll up fast and RIGHT TRIGGER to scroll down
fast. Pressing LEFT TRIGGER+DPAD UP will scroll faster, and the same for RIGHT TRIGGER+DPAD DOWN. Once you have found the
song you want to play, press the A button, the blade will close and the song will start playing and the lyrics running
in the bottom area.
While a song is playing, you can use DPAD UP/DOWN to increase/Decrease the tone of the song and LEFT/RIGHT to decrease/increase
the tempo (it's a bit buggy yet and it can crash the player easily).
Pressing B button will stop the song (no pause yet, sorry). Pressing START button will show the song list again to choose
another one (the current song will keep playing and the lyrics running till you select another song or stop the current one).
Pressing START+BACK+LEFT TRIGGER+RIGHT TRIGGER will return you to the xbox dashboard.
TODO
Fix some bugs regarding missing notes.
It doesn't recognize all ways of storing lyrics inside midi files.
Voice analysis and melody matching (like SingStars. I'm not sure if I can record the voice in xbox).
Credits:
Programming - ElSemi
Graphics - Wesker
Speksnk is hosting the file (im not sure if a link is allowed) (IMG:
style_emoticons/default/huh.gif)