INTRO:
My goal with this is to just have an indie-style Guitar Hero clone with original songs.
NO copyrighted material.
My goal is also NOT to harm Harmonix/Red Octane in any way, because they've created a kickass game, and this is just a cheap imitation.
If they tell me to take this down, I will.
Harmonix/RedOctane - you guys kick ass.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
Harmonix/RedOctane - concept, original game, pretty much everything. 
Spades Alone & SchizoRec -  for Open Your Mind, How Many Words, and Through the Haze, as well as the crowd sounds
Brad Sucks - fantastic music that he is allowing people to remix and use for free. And it's kick ass.
Adam Sampson - who did the MIDI track for Look and Feel Years Younger ( Brad Sucks ) and kindly gave his permission for me to use it
Whoever did the Fake It MIDI track - I haven't been able to figure that one out, but whoever you are, I'm not omitting you out of spite. I'll remove if you contact me with such a request.
IMaCarrot - for the 3d venue and his continuing work
HylianHero - for artwork, the forums and general support 
Razielillo - for particle textures
Anybody else I've forgotten- it wasn't intentional, I'm just exhausted. Let me know.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE:
Submissions of artwork to make this game look polished/nice.
New songs - legally distributable with separate band/guitar tracks, like the ones included here
full difficulty levels for each song.
Enough songs to actually do a career mode
New sound effects & particles
New menu art overall

MY GOAL:
To have enough interest and fan submissions that I can assemble a 'nice' copy of this to distribute, with freely available songs included 
that can serve as a fun little indie game. This will depend largely on the submissions of others. You up for it?

QUESTIONS PEOPLE WILL ASK ME :
Can I put Guitar Hero songs in here? : Why would you? You own Guitar Hero, right?
Can I get song X put in the game? : That's up to you.
Can you distribute song X with the game? : If you have the rights to the song, and the will to make the tablature, sure. 
How come this doesn't work for me? : I have no idea
can you add feature X? : Who knows. You can ask. But my time is super-short of late, and my energy will largely depend on the contributions we get to make this a more full featured game.
Why does the art suck? : Because I just slapped together templates in the hopes that enterprising modders would make better art with them. 



MODDING:
All the .dat files are text files. Open 'em up. You can hand edit pretty much anything.
The MOD pack includes 3dsmax plugins, as well as a midi converter that will convert GH Mid format songs to GZ's .dat format - which is ALSO text editable.
You can also save any song into Freetar Hero .sng format by pressing the DOWN arrow key while the song is playing. How klunky is that? Pretty klunky.
But it does give you the ability to get any Guitar Hero song into Freetar format, so that's gotta be good for something.
NOTE: Freetar format doesn't include tempo changes during the song. That means that the fret bars won't line up properly with the measures, which looks a little shabby.
You'll need to do a real MID if you want it to be all nicey-nice.
All the textures are in standard formats, so they're easy to change.
Ditto for the sounds.
MAX plugins - well, put them in your /plugins folder. The MOD pack includes documentation on the plugins and file formats.
You pretty much need to know what you're doing here, so if you don't know your way around 3dsmax, I'm not really going to have time to help out-
I'm including sample MAX files that include the media included with the initial game release.
There's also a viewer in the MOD pack that will let you drag and drop any of the 3d models onto it to see what they look like.



SETTINGS:
There's a config.dat file in the game folder. Pop it open in wordpad, and the settings are hopefully pretty self explanatory. You can change screen res, fullscreen,
and several graphics related options. Should there be an ingame options menu for this? Sure. And someday maybe I'll get around to it if we get enough content to warrant.

PLAYING:
You've played Guitar Hero, right? Because you own a controller? Then you pretty much know how to play. No Career mode right now - I don't have enough songs in here to support it.

FINAL NOTE :

This game doesn't support keyboard. At all. 
You can use the keyboard to navigate the menus so that you can remap your controls -
but well, that's about it.
You should OWN Guitar Hero and the controller.
Seriously.
A PS2 to USB converter is cheap - about 15 bucks. I'm using a Super DualBox Pro, and it works great. If you happen to have one, the default control settings will just work for you,
as long as you have your controller set up in Button and Analog mode.


Travis Baldree
travis@buildingworlds.com
