Overview

Drum Beater is a VR rhythm game developed during university's Virtual Reality course. Players use hand tracking via Leap Motion and Google Cardboard to hit virtual drums to the beat of the music, choosing between 3 difficulty levels mapped through custom MIDI files.

MIDI files were chosen as the charting format for several reasons. Compared to custom JSON, they are less error-prone to author and easier to synchronize with the audio track. Compared to automatic beat detection, they give full manual control over note placement and difficulty design. Moreover, a song's track can be converted into a playable chart simply by exporting it from any DAW, with no manual note entry required.

Charts were created and edited through a MIDI editor, keeping the pipeline fast and completely decoupled from code - changing a chart never meant touching Unity scripts.

The game was designed taking inspiration from Band Hero and focusing on the expressiveness of drumming.

My contributions include:

• Designed and iterated song charting across 3 difficulty levels using MIDI files;

• Designed UX feedback systems for timing comprehension, including visual cues for hit accuracy;

• Programmed beat-matching, timing-windows synchronization, MIDI import, score system, hand gesture recognition, and data saving;

• Curated the game's look & feel: created UI icons and fine-tuned visual and audio feedback for the VR experience;

• Managed task planning and edited the gameplay trailer.

Gameplay Trailer:

Full Song Gameplay:

Gallery