I’ll admit it; I am one of those people who can’t sing, but thinks they can. I don’t know if there’s a word for people like me, but it doesn’t matter. With UltraStar Deluxe, I have everything I need to sound good. Not only is this fun piece of karaoke software functional and bug-free, it sports a competitively professional design. Developed as an open source alternative to SingStar ™ for Playstation, this has the following features:
– can play solo, with a group, or with two teams competing
– searchable and customizable playlists
– different difficulty levels
– available in many different languages
– keeps track of scores and stats
– many customizable options for display and sound
– customizable look, so you can change the skin of your install
– syncs video, lyrics, and your singing
Code Monkey Like UltraStarDeluxe!
Your song lyrics need to be put in an UltraStar Deluxe-compatible txt file with the metadata, and you can either use existing songs on your machine, or download a package from various places on the Internet. UltraStar Deluxe has a few songs available for download from their SourceForge.net project page. Of particular interest to me, was the long list of Jonathan Coulton songs. It doesn’t get much better than that.
The main developer, Canni, tells me that UltraStar Deluxe is an offshoot of the original UltraStar software app (still on SourceForge). Originally developed as a PC alternative to SingStar ™, the creator was using UltraStar as a learning tool, and thus declined support from other developers. This group of other developers decided to create their own project called UltraStar Deluxe in 2007, and the result has morphed into its own entity. Most of these developers live in Germany, but there are others that are spread throughout the world.
Over the years, the team has had to deal with numerous obstacles. “Mostly real life conflicts, the small amount of developers contributing to our project, the neverending deadlines and some license issues,” says Canni. Above all those, the greatest issue has been with the comparisons between UltraStar Deluxe and SingStar ™. Canni says, “It’s really hard to satisfy those who came from SingStar to using UltraStar Deluxe but we learned to deal with that. We introduced features SingStar does not have and vice versa.”
When I asked Canni for advice for other open source projects he said, “patience is the key to success. Small projects often tend to expect too much from their community child which has just been born or even from themselves, giving unrealistic deadlines.” Nothing becomes successful overnight, inded. Communication is also important; Canni goes on to say, “an important thing is to tell users what’s going on, so that they see there are some guys active and the project is still alive.” As well, “it’s always a good idea to ask them what they think of your work, what could be done better or if there are some decisions to make, why not ask them to decide. Users are quite happy and interested in participating in any way to the project, even if it’s a just small voting for something which seems not to be that important.” Feedback and interaction are also wise words of advice.
Canni has big plans for the project, with many new ideas floating in from the community, making it a “neverending story.” Canni says, “I wouldn’t say we are trying to create the best karaoke solution for PC but we hope to get close to that.” Canni also stressed to me the open nature of the Ultrastar Deluxe community. “And of course we always welcome new people to our community or development team taking a part in that story.”
If you would like, get involved, donate to the project, or try out Ultrastar Deluxe for yourself or for your next party.