Duet Mode in UltraStar

[Renard]

I'm investigating the possibility of creating Duet songs in UltraStar. It seems only USDX and Vocaluxe supports it for now, and the file format is not yet clear.

Duet mode allows two singers to take part in a song with a different vocal track for each. A player can be a lead singer and the other produces the backing vocals, for instance:



It can also be used when two characters are singing. For instance, the first player could sing Fluttershy's verses and the second player could sing RainbowDash's part in the Find a Pet song.

Unfortunately, that's still an experimental feature in USDX, so there isn't much documentation on how to create Duet tracks.

Note: Up to 6 players can join the fun in USDX (but you need a dual-monitor setup, with 3 players per screen). I have no idea if the Duet Mode works with 6 players, with each his/her own track. If it works, this could be awesome to use.

[kokairu]

Hiya

Stumbled across this project after seeing that you'd linked to my blog - the idea of having MLP:FIM songs on UltraStar is beyond awesome.  :)

Creating duet songs doesn't require anything extra special. You basically just need to divide the lyrics into 2 lots (one for one singing part and one for the other), paste one under the other in a .txt file, then add "P1" above the first set of lyrics and "P2" above the second set of lyrics. If you're using a version of UltraStar that supports duet mode, then a little icon will appear on the song on the selection screen with two microphones crossed over.

If you search for "duet songs" in the edition field in USDB, you'll find some examples as to how the .txt files are layed out. However, the "P1" and "P2" tags need adding manually, as the site doesn't support these lines and they are deleted automatically when a duet song is uploaded.

The one thing that sets duet songs apart from normal songs is the fact that different lyrics or notes can overlap in places. Bearing that in mind, it's good to set out with the intention of making a duet song (if it's appropriate), as you can "fine tune" both sets of lyrics. It's then not much work to make a "normal" version of the same song.

As far as I'm aware, there's no way to create songs with more than two parts - it would be a bit "messy" to try and incorporate too many set of lyrics on the screen. You never know though, the UltraStar/Vocaluxe development always surprises me!

[Renard]

Hello kokairu and welcome here!

Thanks for explaining how duet songs currently work in USDX. To be honest, I feel that the file format - as it is nowadays - is very incomplete, and its lack of features lead me think that it might (should be ?) completely redesigned, breaking compatibility with the current UltarStar mods. Not to mention that these mods are not released as "stable" versions, and the format is not supported at all (yet ?) by alternatives such as Performous. As changes might be in the work, it might not be that safe to start creating songs for that format.

Also, I tried installing that USDX Challenge Mode on my Windows 7 session but couldn't get the songs to display at all. :/
Didn't try to fix that yet.

There are two things in favour of Duet Songs so far:
- I have no idea how many songs (approx) were created using the current Duet Mode file format. If the number is high enough, that might motivate the devs not to break compatibility with what's now available when implementing a solid format.
- If the format changes, it won't be by much and it will be easy enough to update the files (by merely copy-pasting the content, I guess)


There's a real opportunity to use Duet for a few songs, including Winter Wrap Up or Find a Pet. Will definitely have to look into this. ;)

[LoneBlackhoves]

Hey I would glad to give this a try and create a duet version to the Winter Wrap Up song

[Renard]

Sure! Go ahead. Just modify the existing TXT file :)

[Moonsparkle]

I worked on the duet version of Sister Hate by TheLivingTombstone & MicTheMicrophone...thanks to my PC for deleted it^^
But I'll going to create it again :D

[Renard]

You may be able to recover the lost file thanks to a few tools.
http://lifehacker.com/393084/how-to-recover-deleted-files-with-free-software

[N-TG]

Do we have any new info about the duet mode? I remember seeing this topic here a while ago. Hope you don't mind trying to bring it back from the dead.

Since I'm organizing karaoke events(yesterday was the latest one and we had a few people singing MLP songs too, many didn't wanted it but they enjoyed the songs :P )  there are many songs I'd like to convert into Duets and I was wondering if the method suggested by kokairu works and if it was possible to elaborate a little more in that method.

[Smilley]

Right now, duet songs only work with Ultrastar CMD Edition, but that is horribly outdated and unoptimized, so we can't use it for our songs.
Trust us, once there is a reliable way to play those songs in duet mode, we'll be on it.

[N-TG]

Another reason I was asking in another thread for newer versions  :(

[Renard]

Yeah, very unlikely so far. People have asked for this feature since <2007 with no changes to the core USDX code - instead, we've seen forks happening in the form of USDX CMD, USDX World Party, and a partial rewrite of the engine which is Vocaluxe. I'm not even sure their behavior is consistent with Duets.

You could try separating two singers for existing songs, I guess. Here's a quick tutorial on the format (French); it's mostly copy-pasting segments, when voices don't overlap. However, since this isn't supported by the main USDX branch and can cause quite a few issues (including when using other karaoke engines), we will not officially support this as of now.

[Draycho]

this would make the game 20% cooler in ten seconds flat!! :D

[N-TG]

Too bad we can't add this mode by ourselves in the game. It would be cool for some songs  :-\

[Moonsparkle]

Should I write something about Ultrastar World Party in this thread now...?^^

[michalka_s]

Hello, how can I sing another one in duet? Like I wanna sing in May the Best Pet Win as Rainbow Dash, but I must sing only as Fluttershy.

[Zeitless]

Not really a solution but you can put it on two players, assign your microphone to the second player and sing as the second player. This usually works for me and automatically gives me the other part of the duet

[Renard]

You can swap players by pressing the Space bar :)