UltraStar Deluxe Buzzer Gameboard - passion-works/usdx-gameboard GitHub Wiki

Ultrastar Deluxe Buzzer Gameboard

Contents

  1. What it is
  2. System requirements
  3. Installation & usage
  4. Important keyboard shortcuts
  5. Known issues

1. What it is

UltraStar Deluxe Buzzer Gameboard is a piece of software that enhances the awesome party mode of UltraStar Deluxe CMD Edition (though it should also work with the standard edition). When in song selection mode you can start the countdown that will automatically choose (and start) the current song when run down to zero. Players have the possibility to user their jokers, which will (depending on the type of joker) i.e. skip the song, by pressing real buzzers. The buzzers on the picture above are self-made by disassembling a keyboard and soldering the controller keys 1, 2 and 3 to palm switches. The software just recognizes these keystrokes and triggers the according joker - this means you can basically use whatever piece of hardware you want as buzzers, as long as each buzze triggers the according keystrokes 1, 2 or 3 (for example you could use old joysticks or even the PlayStation Buzz! Buzzers in combination with additional software that remaps the according keys - read more here).

Types of jokers:

  • Random (the "normal" joker that skips the current song and selects a random song)
  • Nudge left/right (same as pressing keyboard left/right in the song selection screen)
  • Direct play (directly play the current song)

2. System requirements

  • Java 7.45 or newer (get it here)
  • Windows 32 or 64bit (tested on Win7, should work from XP onwards, though)
  • UltraStar Deluxe CMD Edition (tested with r9.22 - get it here)
  • An additional screen where the gameboard is displayed on
  • Buzzer hardware (see explanations above)

###3. Installation & usage

  • Just download the usdx-gameboard.zip file you find in the tree, extract its contents and run ugb.jar (normally by just double clicking it - if this doesn't work for you start it from the bash (cmd.exe) by running "java -jar ugb.jar")

###4. Important keyboard shortcuts

  • New match: Home (German keyboard: "Pos 1") -> this will open a dialog where you can enter the amount of jokers each player should have
  • Start/pause countdown: Insert (German keyboard: Einfg.) - also accessible from numbpad when numlock is turned off
  • Reset round: End (German keyboard: Ende) - this just resets the counter
  • Ctrl + s (Germany keyboard: "Strg + s") - this opens a settings dialog where you can define the probability of each joker (or even disable them entirely)

###5. Known issues

  • Joker count in USDX: Using the gameboard the jokers are only counted in the gameboard itself (the number inside the circle of each player) - the count in UltraStar Deluxe can't be set and does not decrease when jokers are used
  • Nudge joker: When using the nudge jokers UltraStar Deluxe occasionally skips on song (so the second song to the left or right is chosen instead of the next) - this seems to be a bug in UltraStar, though as it is reproducible with a normal keyboard. If you don't want this to happen just disable this joker entirely until this gets fixed.

Feel free to post issues and improvement suggestions here if you have any!