Designer – Drum Team Lead
Neversoft
The Guitar Hero series planned to add more instruments after GH3, and I was promoted to Drum Team Lead aka “Lead MIDI Designer”. I worked with Red Octane and Project Leads to conceptualize, test, and iterate on the Guitar Hero Drums peripheral.
Every song in Guitar Hero World Tour on drums was transcribed and notetracked by me, or was reviewed by me. I wrote the documentation on Drum Notetracking Guidelines, iterated, and maintained it as new features were implemented and mechanics were dialed-in.
- Provided feedback and guidance to the only other drum notetracker/MIDI designer for drum notation and drummer animations
- Transcribed most of the entire game’s songs on drums in MIDI format. These notations are also the drum sounds the users hear in practice mode when the song is slowed down
- The transcription is copied to the drummer animation track and is divided into Left Hand and Right Hand tracks so the drummer animation system knows what drum to hit, and with which hand. These also fire off cymbal and drum model movement animation oneshots at the correct time with the correlating drum or cymbal.
- The transcription is then copied to the Expert drum track, and consolidated based on the 6 lane drum format
- Expert drum notetrack is then copied and reduced according to the Guidelines for Hard, then again for Medium, then lastly for Easy.
- Motion capture actor for drummer performance for 14+ full songs
- Project bandwidth and time constraints forced me and the animation team to come up with generic drummer loop animations, then to perform and capture them. The animation system would correctly interpret drummer animation notation and play the most relevant loop available.
- Provided VO for crowd vocals
- Dozens of media, press, public, and private demos on drums (e3, CES, Gamestop, tradeshows, celebrity visits, pro drummer interviews etc.)
1 song on the soundtrack (drum performance, arrangement)
- An Endless Sporadic – Anything
Notable Skills and Software Used:
Sonar 7, Office & Outlook, Excel, Visual Slick Edit, Dev Track, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere, Video Capture