Drums sensitivity

[charlescanato]

First of all, thanks for your fork! It just does the job!

In your findings, have you seen anything related to adjusting drums sensitivity?

I found 2 or 3 reports like mine on Reddit, but no solution so far. I have GHWT drum kit and it's currently working 100% on my Wii.

It also gets connected on WiitarThing (I use Mayflash DolphinBar) with no problems - I just found it weird that the icon is a question mark. Don't know if this is by design, it's just that the guitar has a proper icon.

Still on Wiitar, if I open controller test, pads and pedal only light as a button if I got them hard, or on a precise small location. Of course, inside a game (GHWTDE), the behavior is the same and ruins the experience.

Any hints? I'll take a look at the code, just raised this on case there's a simple solution.

BTW, the guitar is working great! But you already knew that 😊 Thanks!

[TheNathannator]

Drum sensitivity unfortunately can't be configured directly through WiitarThing via the wiimote. They use the MIDI In port for that for whatever reason, and RedOctane made a program to do so back in the day. I have a backup of it on my Google Drive, sketchy ancient installer lol but I've verified it's genuine, and all of the messages it sends are documented on my PlasticBand repo. You'll need a MIDI to USB cable of some kind to use it, with the Out cable connected to the port on the kit.

I just found it weird that the icon is a question mark.

That's odd, there's definitely an icon for it. Might be something not assigned correctly somewhere.

[charlescanato]

Thanks for a quick reply, @TheNathannator ! Indeed, after I posted the issue, I checked a small bit of your source code and went to the wiibrew link mentioned there, where it was also said how to program drums sensitivity - through MIDI. :-(

Probably this should be something like rhtyhm games on Wii programming the drums sensitivity via wiimote, it's just that so far, we don't know how to do that yet. This conclusion is purely (erroneously?) based that, when playing on Wii, drums do have the sensitivity I'm used to.

Well, so far, nothing more to do (maybe trying the popsicle mod, lol, and later getting the MIDI to USB). Thanks again for the reply, man.

[TheNathannator]

As far as I know, none of the GH games ever included sensitivity adjustments in-game. RedOctane made that drum tuner program because people were having sensitivity issues even on console, and they just so conveniently already programmed the kits to adjust sensitivity based on specific MIDI messages. I assume they knew about the sensitivity issues and didn't have the ability to test and adjust each and every drumkit, so they had to make do with this.

The difference between console and WiitarThing is probably due to WiitarThing determines hits, the drums implementation ignores the button bits that the drums send and instead only looks for their velocity values, because it's more responsive to drum rolls and other fast hits, but from what I've seen over the years it might cause more harm than good. Just haven't gotten around to figuring something else out; doesn't help that I don't have the hardware myself lol

So many things I need to get around to with WiitarThing, but I've been busy with a few other projects as well ^^;

[charlescanato]

As far as I know, none of the GH games ever included sensitivity adjustments in-game.

I just expressed myself very poorly. I meant that maybe the games themselves did some form of sensitivity initialization - but I also never saw any kind of free setting for sensitivity adjustment.

But as I did some more tests, I already abandoned that non-sense guess of mine. :-) In some days, I'll buy a MIDI to USB and just test it, in companion to WiitarThing.

So many things I need to get around to with WiitarThing, but I've been busy with a few other projects as well ^^;

And I wish you the best in your endeavours, man. WiitarThing already runs beautifully.

On another Reddit thread, where I was also asking for hints, another pal gave a hint of what he has changed. I've tested that, and it really got very close to my experience on console.

Indeed, he changed exactly what you mentioned about using the button bits, instead of using the velocity values.

I've created a fork and put this change on a branch, but of course, I need to play much more to feel any side effects.

[TheNathannator]

Nice! Lemme know how it goes, and of course, feel free to PR if things go well :3

I've had a loose idea on how to potentially combine the two strategies, something like resetting the pad/cymbal values on each state update and only setting them based on the button bit when it's first activated; then from that point forward until it's released and re-activated, it goes based on velocity.

Bit hard for me to explain that lol, but you probably get the gist of it.

[ZKYB0Y]

I also have a problem with the sensitivity of the drums, I hit the drum but the color disc does not break, it does tell me that it works because I can navigate the menu, but when playing a song no color disc breaks. I hope there is a solution.

[TheNathannator]

If it works in the menus it should work in gameplay, that's most likely not on WiitarThing's end.

Do you have a video of what's happening?

[ZKYB0Y]

I already checked it hahaha and it was very dirty inside, I cleaned it and it worked.