March 28, 2008 6:00 AMRPG Vault has posted a new interview with GameTank CEO Jake Parks about the upcoming Guitar Rising. Unlike other rhythm games, Guitar Rising will make use of real guitars connected to a computer via a guitar-USB adapter, a microphone, or directly to the sound card. The game will teach real guitar skills, ramping up the difficulty as players improve their abilities.Jonric: How do you actually play? What are the mechanics, and how does the scoring work? What changes as you advance through the difficulty levels? Jake Parks: Guitar Rising cues the player as to what note to play by using a guitar tablature that moves across the screen. Each of the six individual rows tells him or her to play one of the six strings, and there is a number inside the note that tells which fret to press down. So, for example, if a note is traveling down the top row with a number '2' inside it, it is telling you to play the top guitar string with the second fret pressed down. Scoring is similar to most other rhythm games. The player gets a certain number of points for hitting a particular note, multiplied by a combo factor. As the difficulty levels increase, the player is exposed to greater note density (you have to play more notes in a given time span), as well as higher frets, more jumps between strings, and more challenging solos. Jonric: What's your situation with respect to licensing music? How many songs can we expect to see in the demo and the full game? Jake Parks: We anticipate the demo will have about five songs, and the finished product at least 30. The exact numbers will be determined during licensing discussions we're now having with three top music publishers. We hope to have an announcement about this in the next few weeks.Head over to the link below to read the rest of the Q&A.RPG Vault: Guitar Rising Q&AGuitar Rising
