Hey! Clara here and I am here to say that I am (finally) releasing a public beta of Keyboard Hero V7.5 for you all. Starting with this beta is 6 DLC songs. 5 of which being from LuigiBlood’s “Cell Pack” and 1 song from Timaeus and mVelocityHD. 3 more are going to come soon as I chart and upload them. Maybe some more when I get rights to put them in the game. Be aware that these songs don’t come with the download. Download them from the “Downloadable Content” menu in-game.

You can now get the game from Gamejolt, download, extract, and play! :)

Link to game page (for convienence’s sake): [Link] :)

A lot still has yet to be released along with this game. Many DLCs will come in the future as long as composers out there want their music in the game (At least 3-5 songs will come really soon so hang on). I’m mainly looking for decent FL Studio composers. If you are interested, read below in the FAQ to see how you can get your stuff in my game. :)

I am open to critisism. Find something you think is rather weird about my game? Don’t hesitate to tell me about it in the comments or though messaging.

Here’s an FAQ (more like an “omg what”) of stuff just to prevent further questions:

Q: What is this… msvcr100d.dll that I need?

A: Right… if your computer was unfortunate enough to not have that (like everyone else’s), follow the directions here and you should be good to go. :)

Q: So I started the game… Where are the songs?

A: It comes with no songs. On the main menu, go to “Downloadable Content” and you can download those songs. In addition, if you have a lot of Frets on Fire custom songs, you can import them. There are THOUSANDS you can import as long as they have “.chart” files. In a nutshell, the songlist of this game is YOUR own songlist. :)

(Bonus: If you have Rock Band 3 or Phase Shift MIDIs, you’ll need to run them through this tool that I wrote just yesterday to convert them to “.chart” format.)

Q: k so I have an MP3 of my favorite song and I can’t play it in your game…

A: This isn’t audiosurf and MP3 is a horrible format to begin with (I suggest “OGG Vorbis”). I don’t have a magical algorithm to chart the songs automatically (neither does Rock Band or Guitar Hero). You’ll have to get software like “Feedback Chart Editor” or something and chart the song on your own if you want to play music that isn’t DLC (If it is DLC, either the composer of the music or I take care of the charting). Also the Frets-on-Fire community may have already charted your favorite song so you can download it from there and enjoy it. :)

Q: I want my songs in your game!

A: That isn’t really a question but that’s great that you want that :) Just click here, read, and then send me a message anywhere with song files. Remember, they “MUST” be multitrack to be DLC. This is why it’s a good idea to keep project files to your songs if you are a composer. If you choose to also take the role of charting your own song (accurately), your DLC should be up within 24 hours of sending it. :) Otherwise, I’ll chart it which, depending on how busy I am, could take a while.

Q: The game crashed! D:

A: Restart it. There are some issues already known and their solutions are there as well. Sadly I wasn’t able to get around these bugs in the months that I worked on this. :(

Q: Glitch glitch glitch!?

A: Submit any glitches to me in any way possible, chat (provided no spam), E-Mail, message, comment… I want you all to have the best experience possible and glitches, while they can be fun, are not what I want in Keyboard Hero. Just do me a favor and be as “specific” as possible. :)

Q: Why is it that sometimes I can’t hit notes?

A: If you participated in the previous beta, you would’ve seen even more broken gameplay. This version requires “perfect” tapping of the required button. Now there is a “massive” timing window which you all can exploit if you want. You shouldn’t have much a problem. If it gets TOO annoying, just go to the main menu -> Game Settings -> Gameplay Settings -> Looseness and toggle it “on”. It will trigger the old timing window which you will probably like better xD.

Q: What resolution does this game look good in?

A: I originally programmed this game on a 1600x900 monitor. Recently, I’ve been on a 1920x1080 monitor. If you want the best experience with Keyboard Hero, go with a widescreen 16:9 or 16:10 monitor. It hates resolutions like 1280x1024… don’t ask me why. D:

Q: Why do some difficulties not exist?

A: Usually when you see missing difficulties, that means that the instrument was so lacking in notes to have that difficulty. For instance, if you see all difficulties but Expert missing, it is a “really” easy song (Because Expert “must” exist for each song).

Q: Will High Score tables exist in the future?

A: Actually yes. I plan on adding high score tables for DLC songs. Feel free to compete but not hack. >:(

Q: Why doesn’t Listen mode or Replays work?

A: Replays “do” work, but were too glitchy to add into this beta. Trust me, you don’t want to see it. As for listening mode… yeah it’s kind of silly that you can “play” the song but not just “listen” to it… but let’s just say there were some… technical difficulties.

Q: Sound is lagging…

A: Put the game on a faster hard drive. Something is causing the audio files to not load fast enough. The audio files in this game load in “chunks”.

Q: My Trophies are nuked when I sign in with Gamejolt D:

A: This is exploit prevention. You could platinum the game offline but when you sign into Gamejolt, only the ones you recieved online will count. If you want to go for trophies, sign into Gamejolt from the Keyboard Hero Launcher and go for the trophies. This is to keep those exploiters away from platinuming my game unfairly. ;)

In a nutshell, just sign into Gamejolt and earn the trophies while signed in and you should be good. When it syncs, what you achieved and haven’t on Gamejolt will be what appears on your offline profile in the game.

Q: Did it really take this long to make this?

A: Both yes and no. I’m not one to complain but the gameplay actually was made in 1 day back in 2010. The project was sort of abandoned for a while (like, 1-2 years) and when I got back on it, I announced it on Gamejolt. Then I ran into some security issues with encrypted DLC and also had to deal with switching from sinBass to FMOD. In addition, the Game Maker anti-decompiler didn’t want to encrypt (because I don’t want decompiling) so I had to copy a LOT of code over to a brand new GMK file. In addition, I had a lot of stuff in my life to deal with as well (university, etc) so it was quite a hassle. A lot has changed since I first announced it but hopefully it’ll be good enough for now. :)

I hope this covered everything… have a nice day :)
~Clara