Jul 12, 2019

Paradiddle July Update: Improved Drum Sounds, New Cymbals, Stick Calibration, Better WMR and Index Support!

Paradiddle - ET

Hey everyone! It's been a little while since the last major update, and I'm super excited to finally release this one.

Here's what's new:

Improved and Processed Drum Samples

All of the drum samples in the app have been processed to sound less raw, and more mix-ready. The goal with this was to make sure the built-in sounds are ready to be recorded and shared without requiring additional processing or effects to make them sound better.

For those who'd like to know more about the actual processing done, all of the drums now have EQ's applied to them, with compression and reverb effects applied to certain drums. As a result the drums should sound fuller and louder overall. The panning of each sample was adjusted a bit to make sure all the samples sounded clearer when played at the same time. In addition, the snare and tom sounds were improved to have better dynamic range across velocities. The hi-hat open sounds were also made louder overall to differentiate it more than the closed sounds.

A lot of this work was done by none other than ElNeax, who was also behind the American Idiot and Bring Me to Life VR covers that were released recently! We're still trying to get more out of the audio samples and make sure all the drums sound great together within the app, so if you have any suggestions or comments on this, please make sure to let us know. Here's a quick comparison below between the old samples vs. the new: https://youtu.be/171n3vMBbV0

New Cymbals

This update introduces two new cymbals: the 13" Crash Cymbal and 15" China Cymbal! These are the first instruments to be added to Paradiddle since early access launch. Here's a quick video showcasing the sounds you can get out of them: https://youtu.be/jARgtRIp0uc
I've recently licensed a lot more instrument samples so you can expect to see more instruments get added to the app over the next several months. Some of these new instruments will include: the bongos, triangle, cowbell, gong, tambourine, xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel. I can't wait to make these all available to the community!

Stick Calibration

Another addition I'm really excited about - you can now calibrate how your sticks are placed relative to your controllers! Simply click on Stick Calibration in the Options tab, and the calibration window will pop up. You can move and place the window anywhere you want, and hit and play on any of the drums in the environment while you're calibrating. When you're happy with the new calibration, simply hit "Apply" to make sure the new offsets take effect. These settings are automatically saved and loaded, so you won't have to change them every time you launch the app.

I've limited the positional and rotational offset ranges to specific amounts to make sure the sliders are easy to adjust while still offering a reasonable range, but feel free to let me know if you think any of these ranges are too limiting for your use case. Here's a quick demonstration: https://youtu.be/cN76OsVKcGM
Also, if you have any other ideas on how to improve this feature, I'd love to hear them! I'm going to expand the calibration settings further in the future by allowing users to scale the collision box of the sticks, but if there are any other stick settings you'd like to be able to tweak, let me know.

WMR and Index Support/Improvements

As existing Windows Mixed Reality users and any testers using the Index/Knuckles controllers probably noticed, up until now the app was still showing the Vive controller models on your hands even if you weren't using them. This is now fixed, so WMR and Index users should see their own controllers in Paradiddle. The default placement of the drum sticks were also adjusted to better suit these controller types, so you should have a more comfortable time playing now.

A couple of quick notes on what's still missing:

The controller materials currently don't match the Vive or Oculus Touch materials, which are mostly dark gray with purple trim lines along the controller edges. This also means that the correct buttons currently don't light up during the tutorial if you're using WMR or Index controllers, but both of these will be fixed in a future update.
Index users: The A buttons currently don't work properly. This was a somewhat frustrating realization, but Unreal Engine doesn't properly receive some of the Index controller button presses and thinks they're different buttons. Looks like it's possible to fix this using the SteamVR Input Unreal plugin that Valve has recently released, but that also doesn't seem to play nice with the Oculus plugins if they're active, so I'm currently investigating and trying to figure out the best way to resolve this.

Other Changes and Fixes

Grip to Grab: The grip button can now be used to grab drums (including dragging new drums out from the menu) or moveable windows. The trigger button still works the same way it used to in previous versions, where you can use the trigger to click UI elements as well as grab moveable objects.
Introduced a color change to the hi-hat when moving between open and closed states.
Fixed a minor issue with the Controls menu dropdowns where the action names weren't fitting properly into the button.

Coming Up

As always, more changes are coming! Here's a list of what's coming over the next few months:

2nd annual Paradiddle VR Drum Cover Contest
Drum velocity curve controls
UI quality of life improvements (including the ability to move drum sets as a whole)
Additional percussion instruments
Note highway system

Oculus Quest Test Build Release

As some of you probably already know, I was spending some of my development time over the past couple of months to get Paradiddle running on the Oculus Quest. If you have a Quest or know someone with one, feel free to forward them to the Discord or the release notes for the first testable version of Paradiddle on Quest! As the release notes will make clear, not all of the features from the PC version work on the Quest yet, and I'm mostly using this initial release as a way to get some early feedback as I prioritize tasks.

If you're enjoying your VR jam sessions in Paradiddle and excited about upcoming features and improvements, I would really appreciate it if you wrote a review on Steam. It doesn't have to be long - any review helps in showing that Paradiddle is trying to be the most flexible, responsive and user-friendly VR drumming app out there. The more we can get the word out, the more support I'll be able to get in realizing that goal.

- Emre
emre@paradiddleapp.com
Join us on Discord!: https://discord.gg/paradiddle
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParadidleVR
Paradiddle drum covers Youtube playlist (your cover could be on here too!)
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
FAQ: http://paradiddleapp.com/faq
Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/paradiddle

Apr 13, 2019

Paradiddle April Update: Cymbal Choking, Hi-Hat Improvements, SXSW and more!

Paradiddle - ET

Hey everyone!

The April update is out, bringing a few big additions and a bunch of bug fixes. As always, if you find yourself running into any new issues that you weren't seeing before, you can always roll back to the early_version branch on Steam. Here's what's new:

Cymbal Choking

You can now map a controller button to perform a Cymbal Choke. For those who might not be familiar with the term, it basically lets you choke out the sound of a drum that's playing when you hold down the button and touch that drum. The action is currently not mapped to any button by default, so you'll have to go into the Controls tab and choose what button you want to use for it. For those who use the app with MIDI out, the drum choke also sends a proper MIDI polyphonic aftertouch event for that drum, so it should also work fine through other audio software.

If you get around to trying this out, I'd appreciate any feedback with respect to the placement of the cymbal choke sphere (it's currently at the drum stick tip, but I was suggested on top of the hand might be preferable), and whether you'd want to see it as a default mapped action or you're happy with it remaining as an opt-in one.

Hi-Hat Improvements

There were two improvements made to the hi-hat:

Pedal Close Sounds: Hi-hat pedal close sounds have now been added! You can tweak the default pedal close velocity/loudness or toggle the pedal sounds on/off under the "Drum" tab of the hi-hat. The hi-hat will also send a MIDI Note of 44 when it closes, signaling a pedal close sound in most audio software - a slider will be added to adjust the pedal close MIDI note in a further update.
Hi-Hat Close Sound Fade-out: Previously playing **h**i-hat sounds now properly fade out when the pedal is closed. Prior to this update, if you hit a hi-hat when it was open and immediately closed it after, you'd still keep hearing the open sound.

Ride Cymbal Bell Tuning

The two ride cymbals in the app actually have two hit zones that make different sounds: the center (also called the bell), and the edge. You can now adjust the size of the center zone by clicking "Show Center" under the "Drum" tab of the ride cymbal options. This will display a ring that you can grab and move to tweak this center zone. In future updates, I'm also planning on adding a visual cue for this zone on the drum itself so that you can better see where the center and where the edge is when playing in the app.

SXSW + Additional Drum Set and Recording Presets

As some of you might have heard, Paradiddle was selected to be one of the 5 finalists in this year's 2019 SXSW Interactive Innovation Awards in the Music & Audio Innovation Category, going up against some big names like Google! We got to showcase the app with the rest of the finalists, and the feedback from the demos was incredibly helpful in shaping the app's future.

I prepared some additional drum sets and recordings to help showcase the app during SXSW, and those have now been added to the app. I might eventually move these to Steam Workshop instead if people would rather not have them come bundled with the app, but let me know if you have any thoughts. The drum sets added were: Ringo Starr, John Bonham and Neil Peart sets, while the recordings added were a Basic Rock Beat, Basic Swing Beat and a Basic Punk Beat. Enjoy!

Bug Fixes

Fixed a bug where Oculus users would be placed in the floor after pressing Reset View in the Oculus Dashboard.
Fixed a bug with dropdowns that prevented some users from using their Rock Band pedals through their microphone jack.
Fixed an issue that resulted in crashes when using more than 3 Vive trackers in the app.
Fixed a bug where the user would sometimes get stuck in the menu and not be able to switch back to their drum sticks.
Fixed a small issue where a loaded drum set wouldn't be cleared from the scene when the user skipped the tutorial.

Coming Up

As always, more changes are coming! Here's a list of what's coming over the next few months:

Steam Workshop integration
In-app drum sample improvements
UI quality of life improvements
Drum stick calibration relative to VR controllers
Additional percussion instruments
Educational content (this is quite a big task, but I'll be adding various pieces over the next several months)

If you're enjoying your VR jam sessions in Paradiddle and excited about upcoming features and improvements, I would really appreciate it if you wrote a review on Steam. It doesn't have to be long - any review helps in showing that Paradiddle is trying to be the most flexible, responsive and user-friendly VR drumming app out there. The more we can get the word out, the more support and resources I'll be able to get in realizing that goal. Thank you for your support so far!

- Emre
emre@paradiddleapp.com
Join us on Discord!: https://discord.gg/paradiddle
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParadidleVR
Paradiddle drum covers Youtube playlist (your cover could be on here too!)
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
FAQ: http://paradiddleapp.com/faq
Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/paradiddle

Feb 1, 2019

Paradiddle February Update: Major Performance Improvements, Rock Band Pedal Integration, Pedal Guide

Paradiddle - ET

Happy New Year everyone - the February update is out!

Quite a bit has changed and been improved internally, so if you find yourself running into any new issues that you weren't seeing before, you can always roll back to the early_version branch on Steam. Here's what's new with this update:

Performance Improvements

I've been meaning to optimize parts of the app since the beginning of Early Access, and I'm happy to say that I was able to spend the past month and a half to optimize some of the more performance-hungry components. It was really helpful to be able to get your feedback when you were observing performance drops, so a huge thank you to everyone who let me profile and debug their performance issues!

As a result, there have been major improvements in the amount of CPU and GPU time consumed by Paradiddle. If you were ever running into frame rate issues or spikes, or were having trouble maintaining a constant 90FPS in the app, it'd be great if you could give the app a try again and see if things are better now. If you're still having frame rate drops - please let me know and I'd love to help you figure out what the bottleneck might be. There are still a few areas of optimizations left, but all the big ones have been taken care of. On my PC, I've seen CPU usage decreases up to 80% and a GPU usage decrease up to 30% during some of my more intense playing sessions.

Rock Band Pedal Integration

Rock Band Pedals can finally be used in Paradiddle without going through other keyboard emulating software like Joy2Key, or other tools like rb2midi. There are two ways of doing it:

Through USB: This method requires you to connect the pedal to your PC via USB, by connecting your Rock Band kit. You might need to get the USB breakaway cable in addition if the kit doesn’t already have one. Once your kit is connected and the drivers properly installed, it’ll work like a regular controller, and the kick pedal will trigger the kick in Paradiddle by default. If you’d like to use the pedal to control the hi-hat instead, you can change this in the Controls menu under Options, where it says "USB Input" under Rock Band Pedal.
Through the microphone jack: This method doesn't require any additional hardware except for the pedal itself, so you won't need to have a Rock Band kit/controller or the USB breakaway cable. To configure it, go to Controls and click "Mic Input" under Rock Band Pedals. This will bring up a list of your audio input devices. Select the microphone jack that your Rock Band pedal is connected to, and then select the action you want it to trigger. Note: The mic jack currently isn't saved and loaded automatically across sessions, so you'll have to re-do it when you start Paradiddle. This will be added in the next update, sorry about the inconvenience in the meantime!

The Pedal Guide

Up until now, information about how to use pedals in Paradiddle, pros and cons of each option, and other tips I've shared have been scattered around on our Discord and the FAQ. This is why I decided to create a comprehensive pedal guide on the website to act as a central resource for all of this info. If it looks like I missed anything out, feel free to let me know so that I can update it. I hope this helps some of you who are trying to figure out which pedal to get, or how to get your existing pedals to work in Paradiddle! You can find the pedal guide here http://paradiddleapp.com/pedal-guide

Other Changes

Kick Drum Default Velocity Setting: You can now adjust the default velocity of the kick drum under the "Drum" tab of a kick drum's options. This affects the velocity that's played when the kick is triggered via the controllers, pedals without velocity information (USB pedals, Rock Band pedals), or any other peripherals emulating keyboard input such as driving pedals.
Drums now have a fun little load animation when they are loaded into the scene.
Opening a secondary window in the Options tab now closes any windows that were previously open. This prevents things from getting ugly where you could have multiple windows open on top of one another in previous versions.

As always, more changes are on the way. I'm still trying to push some smaller core features out, but my plan is to also release some bigger features throughout 2019, such as more types of percussion instruments, a functional note highway system, some built-in educational content, Steam Workshop integration and more.

If you're enjoying your VR jam sessions in Paradiddle and excited about upcoming features and improvements, I would really appreciate it if you wrote a review on Steam. It doesn't have to be long - any review helps in showing that Paradiddle is trying to be the most flexible, responsive and user-friendly VR drumming app out there. The more we can get the word out, the more support and resources I'll be able to get in realizing that goal. Thank you for your support so far!

- Emre
emre@paradiddleapp.com
Join us on Discord!: https://discord.gg/paradiddle
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParadidleVR
Paradiddle drum covers Youtube playlist (your cover could be on here too!)
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
FAQ: http://paradiddleapp.com/faq
Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/paradiddle

Dec 6, 2018

Paradiddle November Update: Vive Tracker Integration, Cymbal Animations, MIDI Hi-Hat Improvements

Paradiddle - ET

The November update is out (a couple of days late because of some last minute testing), with lots of fixes, improvements and a few exciting new features! Since the previous update never left beta due to a few bugs that were still in that version, you might also want to take another look at the previous update's notes in case you had not been using the beta over the past couple of months.

Whiplash Cover and Paradiddle in the News

Before going over the changes in this update, I quickly wanted to add a link to the latest Whiplash Drum Cover I recorded in October in order to showcase some of the more advanced features in Paradiddle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZKheiV1n4c
It was performed using electronic drum hi-hat and kick pedals, playing audio out from Superior Drummer 3 through the live MIDI integration, and recorded in mixed reality via LIV (http://liv.tv), which Paradiddle fully supports. The video description on YouTube has further details on how everything was set up, but let me know if you have any questions about recording similar content, and I’ll be happy to help out.

Paradiddle was also in the news recently, in a one-on-one interview with VRScout on the future of audio production and drumming in VR & AR! Make sure to check out the article if you’re interested in hearing a bit more about how Paradiddle came to be and some of the design choices behind it: https://vrscout.com/news/paradiddle-learn-drum-vr/

On to the updates!

Vive Tracker Support for Pedal and Foot Tracking

I’m super excited to announce that Vive Trackers are finally supported in Paradiddle as foot or pedal trackers! They can currently be used to either trigger the kick or control the hi-hat. Here’s what you need to know about setting them up:

Make sure your Vive tracker is connected before you launch the app, as currently Paradiddle can’t detect it if the tracker is connected after the app starts. As long as it’s connected, you should see a little white sphere pop up where your tracker is with some options floating above it. The options are:

Kick or Hi-Hat Pedal: Use these to select what functionality you want your tracker to perform. The kick mode currently triggers the kick at one specific velocity, but in further updates I’m hoping to add some velocity sensitivity to this that’s based on how hard the tracker is pressed down.
Calibrate: The tracker might just work by default if you’re using it as a foot tracker, but it’s highly recommended to calibrate it on first use. Simply press the Calibrate button, press down on your pedal or your foot down on the ground as the instructions direct you, and pull the trigger to complete your calibration. This value will be automatically saved and loaded, so you won’t have to worry about doing it again each time.
Down and Up Threshold: The down threshold determines how close the tracker needs to get to the calibration height before the pedal is triggered. The up threshold is how far it needs to go back up before the pedal is reset to an “up” state. You can also refer to this picture which illustrates how the thresholds work. The thresholds were set to default values where you ideally shouldn’t have to tweak them at all, but you’re free to do so if you want finer control over the tracker movement and how it triggers the kick/hi-hat.
Reset Defaults: Resets the tracker mode, threshold values and calibration values to default.

All of the calibration and threshold values are saved automatically when you exit the app, so no need to worry about re-calibrating or resetting those values! The app also supports as many Vive trackers as can be connected, and will keep track of these values for each tracker.

Quick note: This feature is still in development and this is just a big first step, so if you have a Vive tracker, I’d really appreciate it if you could test this out and let me know if you have any comments or further suggestions. The UI will most likely be improved further in future releases as well, I just wanted to get an initial usable version out so that people with Vive trackers could finally use them in Paradiddle.

Physics-Based Cymbal Animations

All cymbals now have the option to toggle cymbal animations on, similar to the ones seen in the Whiplash cover video! My hope is that this’ll make playing on the cymbals a little more fun, while making it feel like real thing even more. The animations are on by default for the ride and crash cymbals, and can be toggled on/off in the newly added “Drum” tab of the drum options menu. I’m curious to hear about your experiences with it and whether you prefer to keep it on or off while drumming, so let me know if you have any thoughts.

MIDI Hi-Hat Change Control Message Support

For those of you with electronic drum hi-hat pedals, Paradiddle now supports Change Control (CC) messages sent through hi-hat pedals to open and close the hi hat. Keep in mind that MIDI In still has to be enabled for the hi-hat drum for this to work. You can see how this works in the Whiplash cover video, as I was using an e-drum hi-hat pedal.

In addition, Change Control hi-hat messages are also supported through MIDI out. So if you connect Paradiddle to a Digital Audio Workstation(DAW) like Superior Drummer, you can open/close the hi-hat in the app, and have it send the relevant hi-hat open/close messages to the DAW. This allows for effects such as hi-hat choking in DAWs, where the sound of an open hi-hat sound will be choked as the pedal is pushed down and the hi-hat closes. Note that you don’t need an e-drum hi-hat pedal for this - if you do have one, Paradiddle will just forward the messages to your DAW, but if you don’t, then it’ll still send the relevant messages when the hi-hat opens or closes as a result a button press, a USB pedal press, etc.

Other Changes and Fixes

The tutorial messages are now always oriented towards users, to accommodate the app being launched from any spot within the play area.
MIDI: Fixed a MIDI bug where the channel of sent MIDI messages didn’t match up with the MIDI channel selected on the drum. Paradiddle was always sending the message out of the channel+1, but now the MIDI message channel should exactly match up with what’s shown in the drum options.
MIDI: Shortened the duration between Note On and Note Off messages sent out of Paradiddle, in other words the MIDI note length, from 2.5 seconds to 250 milliseconds. This was done to ensure Paradiddle worked better with certain drumming games/apps, but let me know if this duration is too short or still too long, or if you’d rather have the option of tweaking this value. I’m considering turning that into a slider that can easily be adjusted.
Fixed a bug with the previous (beta) release where saved drum sets were missing a name.
The default window size of Paradiddle was changed back to 1280x720 (720p). If you have specific needs to scale the window size up or down, or any preferences when it comes to this, let me know. I might consider making the window size a configurable option in the Graphics menu.
The mouse cursor is no longer “captured” and hidden by the Paradiddle window, and no longer bounded by the window boundaries. This should make it easier to move the Paradiddle window around or do other things on your desktop while Paradiddle was open. Note that you’ll still need to make sure Paradiddle is in focus and the active window if you’re using the Space/Ctrl keys to trigger the drums, because Unreal Engine only accepts keyboard input while an app is in focus.
Fixed a drum set loading bug that had to do with backwards compatibility. Some older drum set files didn’t load properly, which led to broken values for MIDI notes on drums that had more than one MIDI note, such as the ride cymbals, but this is now fully resolved.
Disabled a debug functionality that triggered on a specific key press that displayed additional information when a drum was hit. It wasn’t meant to be enabled for everyone and was just for my own testing.

As always, more changes are on the way, and your feedback can help! Feel free to reach out to me through any of the channels below, or the Steam Discussion Forums, and I’ll consider your suggestions and try to resolve your issues right away. Some of the features and changes I’m looking at for the next release are: stick calibration (repositioning the sticks relative to the controllers), driving pedal support, UI improvements/rework, cymbal choking, and a couple more smaller changes.

If you're enjoying your VR jam sessions in Paradiddle and excited about upcoming features and improvements, I would really appreciate it if you wrote a review on Steam. It doesn't have to be long - any review helps in showing that Paradiddle is trying to be the most flexible, responsive and user-friendly VR drumming app out there. The more we can get the word out, the more support I'll be able to get in realizing that goal. A huge thank you to everyone who's already written a review!

- Emre
emre@paradiddleapp.com
Join us on Discord!: https://discordapp.com/invite/wjHnTVr
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParadidleVR
Paradiddle drum covers Youtube playlist (your cover could be on here too!)
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
FAQ: http://paradiddleapp.com/faq
Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/paradiddle

Sep 13, 2018

Paradiddle September Update: WMR Support, Updated LIV Mixed Reality Integration and more!

Paradiddle - ET

The September update is out with a few exciting additions!

Windows Mixed Reality Support

I appreciate everyone's patience who has been waiting for this - I'm happy to announce that Paradiddle now officially supports Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) headsets! If you have any trouble running the app with SteamVR on your WMR headset, this article might help: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/mixed-reality/enthusiast-guide/using-steamvr-with-windows-mixed-reality

As far as testing on different WMR headsets go, I've only been able to test the app with my Lenovo Explorer, so if you run into any issues with other WMR headsets, please let me know and I'll try to resolve them.

Updated LIV Mixed Reality Recording/Streaming Support

I'm especially excited to let everyone know that the LIV integration in Paradiddle got a big new update, which means it's easier than ever to start recording mixed reality content as you're drumming in VR. The LIV wiki will make sure you're set up in no time: https://wiki.liv.tv/index.php/Main_Page

Note for Oculus Users: If you're using an Oculus Rift, you'll have to right click Paradiddle on Steam and select "Play Paradiddle in Forced OpenVR Mode". This will force Paradiddle into SteamVR/OpenVR mode, which is currently necessary for the LIV integration. Don't mind the warning that says you'll be running the app in desktop mode - this is just a quirk with Steam's launch options. You don't have to do anything special if you have a Vive or WMR headset. I really want to see more people recording mixed reality content with Paradiddle, so if you run into any issues, please let me know and I'll be happy to help you out.

Other Changes

Autosave/Autoload: Skipping the tutorial by holding down both triggers will now autoload the last drum set that you had open when you quit the app. Let me know how this works out for you, and if you think it could be improved further!
The resolution settings under the Graphics tab have been updated to be consistent across all headsets. If you previously didn't think the resolution settings seem to be changing much for you, give it another try, and let me know if you still think the difference between medium/high resolution isn't very visible.
Fixed a bug that messed up inputs when trying to remap the Oculus B and Y buttons.
Forcing SteamVR/OpenVR mode on an Oculus Rift didn't actually work up until now, but this is finally fixed. I'd still recommend launching in the regular, Oculus SDK mode unless you have a specific need for this (such as using LIV for recording mixed reality videos). Due to how Oculus inputs are used by SteamVR, the A and X buttons don't work, but B and Y do work. Also haptics might feel different when using forced SteamVR mode on Oculus, this will be addressed in a future update.

More changes are on the way! Next on the list are: Vive tracker support for pedals, driving pedal support, pedal support directly through the microphone jack, physically animated cymbals, updated documentation/FAQs and more. As always, suggestions for improvements, or any comments about Paradiddle are appreciated!

If you're enjoying your VR jam sessions in Paradiddle and excited about upcoming features and improvements, I would really appreciate it if you wrote a review on Steam. It doesn't have to be long - any review helps in showing that Paradiddle is trying to be the most flexible, responsive and user-friendly VR drumming app out there. The more we can get the word out, the more support I'll be able to get in realizing that goal. A huge thank you to everyone who's already written a review!

- Emre
emre@paradiddleapp.com
Join us on Discord!: https://discordapp.com/invite/wjHnTVr
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParadidleVR
Paradiddle drum covers Youtube playlist (your cover could be on here too!)
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
FAQ: http://paradiddleapp.com/faq
Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/paradiddle

Jul 27, 2018

Paradiddle July Update: Metronome and Camera Tools!

Paradiddle - ET

The Paradiddle July update is finally out, and it introduces two new features that will make your drumming and recording experience much easier!

Metronome

The metronome tool has been a popular request by many users for a while now, and it will make the process of playing on time and learning how to play much easier, especially if you’re just getting started with drumming. It's super easy to set up: just click on Metronome in the Options tab, grab the metronome window to place it anywhere you want, and use the BPM and volume options to configure it to your own liking.

Quick customization tip: The “click” sounds used for the metronome sit under Program Files(x86)\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Paradiddle\Paradiddle\Content\Metronome\ (Click_High.wav and Click_Low.wav). If you have some audio samples you’d like to use for your metronome instead, simply place them (currently have to be .wav files) in there and rename them to Click_High and Click_Low, and you’ll be all set!

Here's a demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqUnIBcC1y0

Camera Tool

This update also introduces the camera tool, which makes it easier to record
Great-looking footage from within the app. After clicking the Camera button in the Options tab, you can choose to enable the first person and third person cameras, either separately or together at the same time.

Here's how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IBYk0uGHDY
The first person camera settings allow you to specify the positional and rotational smoothing amounts, in order to eliminate possible shakiness caused by fast head movements (which are prone to happen in an intense drumming session!). It’s now possible to change the field of view of the first person view to fit more of the drum set in the view, which has been a widely requested feature as well.

The third person camera currently only has field of view controls, and can be placed within the scene with just a simple grab and drop. This makes it incredibly easy to capture your drum covers from any angle you'd like to record it from. If both the first person and third person cameras are enabled at the same time, you can position and resize the individual camera views on the preview window that combines the two, which in turn will be reflected on the desktop spectator view of Paradiddle.

Just a heads-up: Enabling either one of the cameras introduces extra performance overhead, because the scene has to be rendered from another camera again for each one enabled. This is pretty visible with the third-person camera since it’s showing a view from another perspective, but what might not be super obvious is that enabling the first person camera also essentially creates a new camera that smoothly follows your head around. Therefore I’d recommend only enabling these cameras when you know you need those views, such as recording footage, or demoing to friends etc. And if you’re having any performance problems, let me know and try disabling the cameras first to see if it helps!

Bug Fixes/Small Changes

There are also some smaller bug fixes and changes included with this update.
- The hi-hat now smoothly opens and closes rather than immediately opening/closing, which should make it look a bit more pleasing when in use.
- The default desktop window size is now set to be 1920x1080 windowed, it used to be smaller.
- Fixed a bug that sometimes caused the drum particles to fly away really fast in a seemingly random direction.
- Fixed a MIDI bug that used to happen when loading certain drum sets or recordings, where the MIDI notes for the drums would never properly get set up and as a result would never work.

What’s Next

More changes coming soon! Next on the list are: proper Windows Mixed Reality support, Vive tracker support for pedals, driving pedal support, pedal support directly through the microphone jack, physically animated cymbals and more.

As always, suggestions for improvements, or any comments about Paradiddle are appreciated! The metronome and camera tools have been in the works for a while and they're still very new, so if you especially have any suggestions for improving either of these, I'd love to hear them.

If you're enjoying your VR jam sessions in Paradiddle and excited about upcoming features and improvements, I would really appreciate it if you wrote a review on Steam. It doesn't even have to be long - any review helps in proving that Paradiddle is trying to be the most flexible, responsive and user-friendly VR drumming app out there.

- Emre
emre@paradiddleapp.com
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Twitter: https://twitter.com/ParadidleVR
Paradiddle drum covers Youtube playlist (your cover could be on here too!)
Official Paradiddle website: http://paradiddleapp.com
FAQ: http://paradiddleapp.com/faq
Reddit: http://reddit.com/r/paradiddle