Category Archive

Actually, this is about Frets on Fire X:

I can beat this one if I'm not taking screenshots...

Frets on Fire X takes the base that Frets on Fire built as an open source clone for PC and makes it awesome. You can get the game for Windows, Mac, or Linux from http://code.google.com/p/fofix/. It’s pretty slick but the download itself doesn’t include any music. However, if you head on over to http://geetarfreaks.webs.com they can hook you up with music from the games and their original note charts. The site is also full of great stuff like themes (make FoFiX look like Guitar Hero or Rock Band) and a tech center for ripping the songs off the games if you, say, find the game for sale used and don’t have a console, and feel uncomfortable about downloading the songs off the site for whatever reason. Disclaimer: The song downloads do seem to be in a gray legal area. The site is not distributing full copies of any copyrighted material, so I think this falls under Fair Use. However, if you get in trouble for this, it is in no way my fault. OK, now that I’ve covered my own hide:

First of all you’re going to need a guitar, and toysrus has one for $20 that works in Windows and Linux. I actually got mine on sale for $10 so if you hit up slickdeals.net you might be able to get it cheaper. That one is Red Octane too so it’s not a cheap knockoff; it’s a great guitar and it’s not expensive. The only drawback is the wire, but the wireless ones just aren’t worth $60+ to me.

See? It even says official.

In Windows you need to go to Google and find the Xbox 360 Controller driver. This guitar uses the same one.

In Linux the guitar is usually plug-and-play, but I had some issues plugging it in before booting. When you plug it in, the light on the guitar should be your only indication. Start FretsOnFire and go into Options->Controls. Start changing the controls and if you can select a control and press a button on the guitar you’re golden. If this doesn’t work, make sure the “joystick” package is installed on your distribution.

Now, if you did download some music from GeetarFreaks and you’re on Mac or Linux the music isn’t going to work, and it’s due to some naming problems. I’ve written a python script (make sure you have python 2.x and not 3k when you run this) that will take their .zips, rename them properly, and organize them. Other than that, follow their how-to. Here is the code for the script:

import string
import os
import zipfile
import shutil

def lowercase() :
        contents = os.listdir(".")
        for x in contents :
                if os.path.isdir(x) :
                        print "Entering " + x
                        os.chdir(x)
                        lowercase()
                else :
                        print "Renaming "+x+" to "+x.lower()
                        os.rename(x,x.lower())
        os.chdir("..")

def unzipall() :
        zips = os.listdir("./")
        for filename in zips :
                if (zipfile.is_zipfile(filename)) :
                        print "Unzipping "+filename
                        short = filename[:-4]
                        os.mkdir(short)
                        shutil.move(filename, short)
                        os.chdir(short)
                        unzip(filename)
                        os.chdir("..")
                        song = open(short+"/Song.ini")
                        for i in song.readlines() :
                                if (not i.find("Name")) :
                                        Name = i[7:-2]
                        song.close()
                        print "Renaming "+short+" to " + Name
                        os.rename(short,Name)
                        os.remove(Name+"/"+filename)
                else :
                        print "Skipping "+filename

def unzip(filename) :
        fh = open( filename , 'rb')
        z = zipfile.ZipFile(fh)
        for name in z.namelist():
            outfile = open(name, 'wb')
            outfile.write(z.read(name))
            outfile.close()
        fh.close()

unzipall()
lowercase()
print "Finished."

I had the wrong script up for the first day.
Apologies to anyone who tried to use it.

This is Python so make sure you keep the indentions. This is known to work in Windows (useful for the mass unzipping) and Linux, and possibly works in Mac OS X. To use:

• Place the script in the same folder as all of the .zips you downloaded from Geetar Freaks.
• In Windows, just put it in something.py and run it.
• In Linux/Mac be sure to put it in a file named something and make it executable (chmod +x something.py), then run it. (./something.py).
• Be careful with this script because it will keep renaming files to the same name but lowercase all the way up the directory tree, so if you put it in /home/ it will rename everything in /home/username/etc/etc/etc/etc but if you just put it in /home/username/etc it will only rename etc/etc/etc :P In that vain: Second Disclaimer: This script is provided as-is with no warranty or copyright (consider it public domain), and if it breaks your computer, that’s your problem, not mine.

Everything not covered here is covered in either the FoFiX howtos and/or the Geetar Freaks “Tech Centre.” This is just what I had to figure out on my own.