Guitar Typer

What it does

Guitar Typer takes in input entirely through a Guitar Hero Guitar controller and translates it into easy and usable text. This is naturally done through a rhythm-based interface in such a way that sacrifices little inconvenience for a large tradeoff in user enjoyment. Text is displayed to the user via falling letters in a highly optimized pattern that maximizes speed and efficiency while keeping true to the spirit of Guitar Hero gameplay.

How I built it

Guitar Typer was built almost entirely in Java. We made use of various libraries and SDKs to generate the GUI interface and handle the logic involved with converting Notes-to-Text. We used XInput to take in the inputs from the user.

Challenges I ran into

There was a large amount of planning needed before implementation. Deciding on the most capable frameworks and programming languages to use was one of the biggest challenges. We also dedicated a large amount of time on optimizing letter frequency with an ergonomic sense of playing Guitar Hero.

What I learned

We learned a lot more about how the frameworks we used interact with the Windows operating system. We also spent a very large number of hours on polishing our guitar GUI as best as we could.