Summer ends and university starts again. With the change comes the release of Beats 1.7b FINAL, the last version of Beats, Advanced Rhythm Game. This also marks the open sourcing of Beats and the starting point of the Beats2 project! Beats 1.7b FINAL is almost the same as Beats 1.7a-r570 (Beats 1.7b FINAL is r575). For those who haven’t been keeping up with the Google group, here are the changes since 1.6.2b: tablet support!!! improved screen updating and scaling modified sliders and guidelines for osu! Mod smarter osu difficulty selection custom loadable graphics new SM-based default noteskin updated with Immersion …
Read More »BulletsForever
For my CIS 350 ”Software Design/Engineering” (University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2011) final project, we were to work together as teams to create a mobile app as a hands-on exercise with the software development cycle. And so, Team MAGi (consisting of Art Young, Austin Woodlin, Jessica Ouyang, Yash Kandoi and myself) decided to make a game, specifically one inspired by the free 2D fixed shooter game, Warning Forever. The WF clone more or less was a bullet hell (danmaku) with a simple “evolving” AI boss after each level but with no level cap (after lvl 10, it repeats), so we called …
Read More »Beats osu! Mod Work in Progress
One thing I’ve noticed many of my users requesting/mentioning is support for osu! files or a separate osu! port/clone all together. I’m a big fan of rhythm-based music games (mostly StepMania, Beatmania IIDX, and DJ Max) but I actually haven’t tried much osu! style games (I tried Elite Beat Agents a few times on a friends’ DS but thats the extent of things). After downloading the latest version of osu! and trying out a few beatmaps, I convinced myself that modifying Beats some bit could definitely lead to a new Ouendan-style gameplay. Eventually, I could make a proper, full-fledged osu! …
Read More »Beats Tapbox Layouts and Scroll Up
One of the most requested features for Beats is different tapbox layouts (aka the area where you tap to hit falling notes). Ever since Beats 1.0a, notes always fall down from the top of the screen to the arrows at the bottom, with the tapboxes being invisible rectangles on top of the arrows. This is akin to the Beatmania/DJ Max “reverse” scroll where notes fall down and the same setup I’ve always used when I play StepMania (for which I usually play with 3.0x, Reverse, Notes+ and Dark modifiers). The majority of new users, however, are only familiar with DDR-style …
Read More »Rant on Optimizations -> Faster Beats 1.5b?
Warning! Long, random, technical rant ahead! Read at your own risk! I may also misuse a few words incorrectly here and there – I apologize in advance for any incoherence within my rant
Read More »hypup
For the PennApps Mobile 2011 hackathon, I teamed up with fellow STWingers/classmates/friends Albert Kwon, Gianni Chen, and Seth Shannin to form Team CJT and create the Android app, “hypup”, described by Seth as “Stumbleupon, but for local events.”. The official description was as follows: “HypUp aims to present a previously unexplored paradigm in social networking. While services like Facebook and foursquare approach social networking through people and locations respectively, we decided to try a different approach. HypUp is an event-based look at social networking.” The app went through many revisions, feature additions, and changes and we managed to just finish …
Read More »Intro to Android Development
For PennApps Mobile 2011, I was invite to present a tech talk on how to get started with Android development. The talk gave a general overview of what Android was, how the app layers worked, what you needed to get started, a live/follow-along setup+Hello World demo, a small stopwatch app demo, the basics of debugging, and then finally next steps for app publishing. Finally, the talk ended with a quick blurb of Beats as an example of what your project could become. Here are the links and slides. Announcement: Android, iPhone, WP7 Tech Talks! Facebook event: Intro to Android & …
Read More »Interview w/ Beats Creator from PennApps 2010
This is a repost from the PennApps Mobile 2011 website prior to the start of the hackathon. Background: Due to my success success with Beats during the very first PennApps 2010, I was interviewed and asked to give advice to new hackers/participants in the upcoming PennApps Mobile 2011 hackathon. ====== Interview by Justin Meltzer from the Interactive Media Group. I took some time to interview Philip Peng, a junior studying Computer Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. As the lead developer of a mobile game called Beats developed on the Android platform, he and his team transformed a concept hastily …
Read More »Beats 1.0a
“Beats, Advance Rhythm Game for Android” is a Google Android game/engine for playing user-generated stepfiles that follow the StepMania 3.9 .sm file format. Beats is written by University of Pennsylvania undergrads Philip Peng, Matthew Croop and Yui Suveepattananont (Team Notes). PennApps is an annual hackathon hosted by UPenn in which students compete/write a web/mobile app within a 48 hr (weekend) timespan. (Direct download)
Read More »Java-based iPodLinux Package Manager
For my Computer Info Sci culminating project I wrote up a small package manager for “installing” iPL via the loop-mount method. It basically just installs Loader 2 via ipodpatcher and extracts archives to your iPod. Due to its rushed nature (i.e. project to be handed in on Monday) it is far from complete and I won’t even bother listing what else needs to be done/added. For testing purposes, it downloads a packlist from here and installs a minimal ZeroSlackr system (a very old version with outdated components but works for demo purposes). At this stage it doesn’t even differentiate between …
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