I've seen a few mentions of this in the Creators Club Forums And I thought...wow, this is a frickin' cool piece of hardware, What can I write against it? Well it turns out that the Guitar controller is a lot like a Wii controller. In that it monitors the position of the guitar, as well as it's acceleration in any given direction. What's great is, it is simply accessible through the standard GamePad class in XNA. Here is a list of the different button states, as well as values for each and a short description (The common use ones are bolded):
| Input Mapping |
Guitar Control |
Functionality |
| Buttons.A |
Green Fret |
Button |
| Buttons.B |
Red Fret |
Button |
| Buttons.X |
Blue Fret |
Button |
| Buttons.Y |
Yellow Fret |
Button |
| DPad.Up |
Strum Up, DPad Up |
Strum a note, and menu navigation |
| DPad.Down |
Strum Down, DPad Down |
Strum a note and menu navigation |
| DPad.Left |
DPad Left |
Menu Navigation |
| DPad.Right |
DPad Right |
Menu Navigation |
| Buttons.RightShoulder |
Not Reporting |
- |
| Buttons.LeftShoulder |
Orange Fret |
Button |
| Triggers.Right |
Acceleration? |
no idea, but the characters in GH3 seem to respond when you give a quick yank on the guitar. |
| Triggers.Left |
Roll of guitar |
no game use, but interesting |
| ThumbSticks.Left.X |
Not Reporting |
-(Reserved?) |
| ThumbSticks.Left.Y |
Not Reporting |
-(Reserved?) |
| ThumbSticks.RIght.X |
Whammy Bar |
-1 to 1 with 1=fully depressed |
| ThumbSticks.Right.Y |
Starpower(horizontal) |
-1 the head is pointing to the ground 1 the head is pointing straight up 0 = ~horizontal |
I've created a handy little app that simply reports the status of all the buttons on a controller, if you want it, lemme know and I'll send you a copy. With all those unique readings that you can get (Like the acceleration one) It's going to be interesting to see what kind of unique inputs games can be created. The first idea I've had was to create a 3d version of the guitar in xna and show it's position in real time. Beyond that, I bet it would be interesting to see a paddle ball game using the guitar... watch out for the vases and lamps :)