Ultrastar Format

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Gordon Neal

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Aug 3, 2024, 2:49:40 PM8/3/24

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Why? UTF-8 (without BOM) is a great encoding that can represent a vast number of symbols from all kinds of languages. Other encodings, like Windows code pages, are far more limited and are only suitable for a small family of languages.

Why? The TXT files are quite simple and easy to understand for non-coders. You can read them and edit them with a simple txt-editor. That's what made the format so popular in the first place. So even if there are many good mark up languages like xml we keep on using TXT-Files for this decade unless there are good reasons to change that.

The version attribute helps the game and apps to understand how uptodate a song file is and how it should be treated. Ideally all txt files will be upgraded to the latest version. The value are version numbers according to semantic versioning. Song Editors, Managing tools or txt-hostings should set this automatically.

Filename of the cover image. Should end with *[CO].jpg This is an image that shows the album cover or a picture related to the song. It should be in 1:1 aspect ratio. It should not be larger than 1920x1920px. All software support at least JPG/JPEG-Files.

Filename of the video file. This is a video that shows a music video or other visual content related to the song. The sound of the video is generally not played. Exception: If there's no audio file UltraStar Deluxe and Vocaluxe play the audio track from the video. It must be in a format supported by UltraStar, such as MP4 or AVI. See format support here: here

Specifies the delay in seconds between the start of the video and the start of the song. This value can be used to synchronize the video with the music. This attribute is useful when the video and audio files are not perfectly synchronized and you need to adjust the timing of the video to match the audio. By setting a positive or negative value for VIDEOGAP, you can delay or advance the start of the video relative to the start of the song.

#VOCALS defines the audio file that contains only the vocals of a singers voice. It's the acapella. This comes in handy when some games have the feature to change the volume of a singer while playing a song from 100%-0%. So that you can decide how loud the singer sings along to your own vocals. Needs to be complemented with #INSTRUMENTAL.

Specifies the genre of the song. This information can be used to categorize songs by their musical style. The value of the GENRE attribute can be any text string that describes the genre of the song. Some common genres include Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, Country, and Jazz. You can add multiple tags and seperate them with comma.

#TAGS allows you to add any reasonable keyword for this song like topic or mood. This helps to categorize songs by keywords. You can add multiple tags and seperate them with comma. Song Editors have an auto complete function in GUI that adds common keywords.

This attribute specifices wether a song is used in commercial games or not. It's only for "Editions of games" like SingStar - Pop Hits, GuitarHero Live, Rockband vol.4, Let's Sing 2020. See list of editions here: List of Editions. This information can be used to categorize songs by their edition. You can add multiple tags and seperate them with comma.

Specifies the name of the person who created the ultrastar txt file. This information can be used to give credit to the person who created the file. The value of the CREATOR attribute can be any text string that represents the name of the person who created the ultrastar txt file. You can add multiple creators and seperate them with comma.

Specifies the language of the song. This information can be used to categorize songs by their language. The value of the LANGUAGE attribute should be English language names, not translated language names (e.g. "French", not "Franais" or "Franzsisch"). You can add multiple languages and seperate them with comma.

Specifies the year the song was released. This information can be used to categorize songs by their release date. The value of the YEAR attribute should be a four-digit number that represents the year the song was released.

START specifies the time in seconds from the beginning of the audio file at which the song starts. This value can be used to skip any silence or intro at the beginning of the audio file. The value should be positive integers that represent the start time of the song in seconds.

Specifies the time in milliseconds from the beginning of the audio file at which the song ends. This value can be used to stop playback before any silence or outro at the end of the audio file. The value should be positive integers that represent the end time of the song in milliseconds.

Specifies the time in seconds from the beginning of the audio file at which the preview of the song starts. This value can be used to set the start time of the preview that is played when browsing songs.

Specify the start beat of a medley section within the song. These value can be used to create a medley of multiple songs by specifying which section of each song should be included in the medley. Needs MEDLEYENDBEAT

Specify the end beat of a medley section within the song. These value can be used to create a medley of multiple songs by specifying which section of each song should be included in the medley. Needs MEDLEYSTARTBEAT

Specifies whether UltraStar should automatically calculate the medley section of the song. If this attribute is set to on, UltraStar will automatically determine the most suitable section of the song for a medley based on the note data. If it is set to off, the automatic medley calculation can be disabled.

#PROVIDEDBY helps to understand where a txt-file cames from. This is important cause there are many third-parties that host txt-files with different quality standards. This information should be normally set automatically from the provider. But you can set it as well manually with a song editor if you know where you got it from. Value should be a URL.

Use comment to write any important information in the text file that might be interesting for song creators. Right now there is no definition for what this attribute should be used excactly. It's not displayed in the games.

Specifies whether the note timings in the file are relative to the previous note or absolute. If this attribute is set to yes, the note timings are relative to the previous note. If it is set to no or not present, the note timings are absolute. If this line is missing, then the timestamps are absolute.

Specifies the character encoding used in the txt file. This attribute can be used to ensure that special characters are displayed correctly. Possible values are UTF-8, CP1252 and CP1250.This is not needed. All TXT should be UTF-8 (without BOM).

UltraStar is a clone of SingStar, a music video game by Polish developer Patryk "Covus5" Cebula. UltraStar lets one or several players score points by singing along to a song or music video and match the pitch of the original song. UltraStar displays lyrics as well as the correct notes similar to a piano roll. On top of the correct notes UltraStar displays the pitch recorded from the players. UltraStar allows several people to play simultaneously by connecting several microphones possibly to several sound cards. To add a song to UltraStar, a file with notes and lyrics is required, together with an audio file. Optionally a cover image, a backdrop image and a video may be added to each song. UltraStar comes preloaded with a short sample from Nine Inch Nails hit "Discipline" from The Slip album.

UltraStar is released under Freeware License. Very old versions were available under GNU General Public License and most game forks were initially based on the old code.[citation needed]

The original UltraStar is programmed in Kylix/Delphi and made for Microsoft Windows operating-system. There are also ports available in C++ for other operating-systems such as Linux, BSD and other UNIX platforms.

UltraStar Deluxe was started as a modification of UltraStar. Whiteshark initially offered to collaborate with Corvus5, but this offer was declined. Instead Whiteshark started to add some features on his own with the help of Mota. The first release is known as X-Mas mod, due to a release date around Christmas time. This attracted the attention of other developers that were willing to help. The team grew and the source code departed more and more from the original. Smaller features are often implemented in both projects allowing them to benefit from one another. Though the projects' implementations of such features often differ. UltraStar Deluxe is different in three key ways from UltraStar. Significant effort has been put into improving reliability by repairing bugs. The second difference is the visual appearance. Sparkling stars and various other effects have been added in addition to skin support. Many effects are also based on SingStar on PS3, Vocaluxe and Performous. Many new features have been implemented:

After the v1.1 release many developers left the team to work on the new and very similar karaoke games Performous and Vocaluxe. This caused development to cease. Some (new) developers started the UltraStar Deluxe World Party mod and the Challenge & Medley mod. These projects started as forks from UltraStar Deluxe 1.1 sourcecode and eventually developed many new features and bugfixes.

As of version 1.3 UltraStar Deluxe uses SDL2, ffmpeg 2.8, compiles with freepascal 3 and runs natively on all current versions of Windows, Linux and OS X. This version merged the various forks of the game and was intended to revive free/libre open source development of the game.

The version "2017.08.0" released at 2017-08-08 adds support for ffmpeg up to 3.3. It is the first version which is marked as a stable release after the version 1.1 release from 2010 and after the revival of the project.[3]