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Abstract
Oh No! Banjo is a banjo simulation game I worked on as part of Prof. Schwartz's Alternative Controllers seminar. I worked on a team of five to create a banjo simulation game in the vein of Guitar Hero. I contributed the majority of the source code and assembled our custom banjo controller.
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Oh No! Banjo was assembled in about 5 weeks in XNA 3.0. A custom MIDI importer and processor was written to import songs assembled in an application known as TabIt. The content authors on the project would make a MIDI audio version of the song, and condense that into a note chart for the player to play against. The MIDI would be rendered to a wave file, and since the note chart and wave were built from the same MIDI file, the project managed to avoid de-synchronization errors that are death to music and rhythm games.
The Banjo controller was made from a first generation XBox 360 Wired Rock Band controller. The guts were removed and the contacts were rewired to five arcade buttons taken from a Hori Fighting Stick EX2. The neck was left intact to access the fret buttons. The controller is actually still compatible with Rock Band and can be used to play the game it's circuitry was originally intended for.
Oh No! Banjo was demonstrated on the expo floor of the Game Developers Conference in 2008. The software and two subsequently created banjos are being used by reserchers at the University of Rochester to study language learning.