Beat Hazard 3
Melia Hazinski
Beat Hazard is a shoot 'em up where the player controls a small spaceship that must fend off waves of hostile ships and asteroids that spawns around randomly. Destroying ships and asteroids will earn points and sometimes spawn power-ups that can be collected to increase the score multiplier and boost the FX and Sound of the music that is playing. During gameplay, larger enemies known as bosses will occasionally appear. Destroying bosses rewards more points and causes multiple power-ups to appear.
During each music sequence, the main goal is to earn as many points before the song that is playing in the background ends. When the song is finished, a screen then shows how many points was earned and is used as experience to move up ranks. When the player ranks up, a variety of gameplay options can be unlocked, including harder difficulty options and starting with a higher multiplier.
If the player's ship is hit by any enemy projectiles or collides into each other, the ship will be destroyed and a life is deducted. It also causes some of the FX and Sound power-ups to be dropped in the process. If all lives are lost, the music sequence immediately ends, but any points earned will not be lost.
As an important element in Beat Hazard, music affects gameplay in many ways. Enemies spawn in with each beat of the song and the background effects are determined by the sound volumes. Custom Soundtracks can also be used, allowing more gameplay opportunities like playing to a song with faster beats that causes enemies to spawn in more frequently.[1]
After being made redundant at his previous employer, director Steve Hunt chose to go indie instead of work for another company. He conceived Beat Hazard because of his interest in music visualizers, leading him to turn the idea into a video game. He was further influenced by the music video game Audiosurf.[citation needed]
An enhanced edition of Beat Hazard was later released for Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android and the PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 version of the game was re-released under this edition afterwards.[2] This edition added more features; new weapon power-ups such as missiles and a perk system. It also introduced money that can spawn by destroying enemies and bosses. Money is used to buy and upgrade perks once they're unlocked after ranking up.
On April 17, 2014, the Shadow Operations DLC was released exclusively for the Steam version of the game.[3][4] It added nine new ships to the game, each with new levels and scoreboards. It also added Steam Workshop support, allowing the creation of custom ships to be created and shared online.
The PC version of Beat Hazard has a rating of 70/100 on Metacritic based on 11 critic reviews.[6] The PlayStation 3 version of Beat Hazard Ultra has a Metacritic rating of 63/100 based on 7 critic reviews,[7] while the iOS version has a rating of 91/100 based on 6 critic reviews.[5]
What does interest me is how these games work. I do not know much about audio (well, data-side), but how do they process the song to understand when it is settling down or when it's speeding up? I guess they could just feed the pitch values (assuming those sorts of things exist in audio files) to form a level, but it wouldn't fully explain it.
EDIT: After some searching and a little help, I found out about FFT (Fast Fourier Transform). This maybe a step in the right direction, but it is something that does not make any sense to me..or fits with my physics knowledge of waves.
The term you're looking for is signal processing/analysis There are lots of techniques involved but the fundamental one that those games make use of is Beat Detection. This tries to calculate the tempo of the song and where the beats in a measure are and hence place the obstacles the appropriate distance apart to coincide with each beat.
The way that the games know when to "kick in" etc can range from being very simple and measuring the amplitude (volume) of the waveform or something more complex like isolating the volume of certain frequencies and measuring their volume.
FFT is a way of calculating the actual Fourier transform of a waveform. Basically, if you load up an audio file into Audacity, you'll see the wave form with the timeline along the top, this is known as the time domain. The FFT will convert a signal from the time domain into the frequency domain (basically all the frequencies that occur within the audio).
This conversion is useful for spectral analysis. In a game example, if you were to do a Fourier transform, you could easily calculate the amount of high frequency occurrences in the audio, and from that you could add twinkly visual effects, stars, or something associated with typically high frequency sounds. For the low frequencies you could have big, gluttonous monsters moving in time to the bass sounds, etc.
The data that come from the analysis oft the spectral energy variation are enough to generate this kind of maps. Here the problem may be if there are too much data to process: not what kind of data are used, but how.
After seeing some videos, I'm starting to believe that the data are moved further in the feature-domain (time-domain -> frequency-domain -> feature-domain). The software generates data by using the spectral energy changes and try to recognise known features, then it use the information about the features to setup the map. Recognition can be done by clusterization, maximum likelihood, neural networks, Genetic algorithm and so on.
After completing the recognition, you have infomations like: where the feature if found in time and frequency, what type of featuature is found, the velocity the feature vector is moving and so on; you can use these data to feed a map generation algorimth, leaving room for improvements like making better recognition algorithms, recognize more family of features, extract more data, find new ways to "render" these data and so on.
The top results based on the latest update are Beat Hazard 2 [Score: 2.9], Bullet Beat [Score: 2.6] and Groov [Score: 2.5] The top rated games you can find here are A Dance of Fire and Ice [SteamPeek Rating: 10.3] ranked #14, Just Shapes & Beats [SteamPeek Rating: 9.5] ranked #8 and Super Hexagon [SteamPeek Rating: 9.5] ranked #26 Also don't forget to check the newest releases Rocket! [Release date: 2024-02-19] ranked #19, Beat Hazard 3 [Release date: 2022-11-14] ranked #7 and Temp Zero [Release date: 2022-04-28] ranked #10 While it is tempting to play with the newest and the best, there might be some other gems in the results, like Audiosurf 2 [SteamPeek Rating: 7.1] ranked #12, A Dance of Fire and Ice [SteamPeek Rating: 10.3] ranked #14 and The Polynomial [SteamPeek Rating: 4.5] ranked #16.
Hey there, fellow gamers and music lovers! Get ready to have your mind blown by the one and only GameGal, coming at you with a pitch for Beat Hazard!
Picture this, my fiery friends: an insane arcade shooter experience that takes your music collection and turns it into a heart-pumping, adrenaline-fueled adventure! Beat Hazard is the name, and it's here to kick your eardrums and challenge your reflexes like never before.
You see, my awesome squad, Beat Hazard is all about immersion. This game takes your favorite tunes, whether it's smooth jazz or bone-crushing heavy metal, and transforms them into epic battles in outer space. I know, it sounds insane, but trust me, it's even better than it sounds!
Each song you throw at Beat Hazard becomes the foundation for your interstellar fight. The intensity, the rhythm, the highs and lows - everything is mapped to the beats of your audio masterpiece. It's like your music comes alive and becomes your personal soundtrack to a galactic showdown!
And hey, don't think this is some walk in the park, my friends. Oh no, Beat Hazard will put your gaming skills to the ultimate test. You'll face hordes of enemies, deadly bosses, and mind-bending visual effects that go hand in hand with the flow of your music. It's a mesmerizing spectacle that will leave you breathless and wanting more.
But wait, there's more! You know me, GameGal, always on the lookout for fierce upgrades and power-ups. Beat Hazard doesn't disappoint in that department! As you blast through the mesmerizing levels, you'll unlock new ships, weapons, and abilities to customize your playstyle. It's like you're DJ-ing your own battle, with every upgrade bringing you closer to the title of ultimate space maestro.
So, my punk rock warriors, if you're ready to have your mind melted and your senses electrified, grab your rainbow headphones, fire up the sickest tunes in your collection, and dive headfirst into the wild and addictive world of Beat Hazard. Get ready to shoot, dodge, and groove your way to space domination!
Remember, with Beat Hazard, your music becomes the game. It's time to turn up the volume and let the beat guide your destiny. Get ready to rock the galaxy like never before! Game on, my friends, and party hard!
Bullet Beat is a shoot'em up, where everything at the levels is in tune with the music, even shooting. You can also upload your track and enjoy the experimental generated levels! Keep the combo to get stronger!
Groov is a frenetic dual-stick shooter that makes you the conductor of an intergalactic jazz fusion orchestra. Every action in Groov has a musical reaction, and with three unique modes, randomized music, and powerups that slow down the song (and your enemies), no two playthroughs are ever alike!
Ride your music. Audiosurf is a music-adapting puzzle racer where you use your own music to create your own experience. The shape, the speed, and the mood of each ride is determined by the song you choose.
Have fun destroying your enemies in a reinterpretation of games from the 80s! To the sound of a mixture of unique musical genres, complete missions, improve your ship, be precise in your shots. All of this without worrying about GAME OVER! Show the world your score! Competition is what counts here!
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