2. Table of Contents
Table of Contents .........................................................................................................................................................2
Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................................3
Features..............................................................................................................................................................3
Getting Started..............................................................................................................................................................3
PC System Requirements ..................................................................................................................................3
Installation...........................................................................................................................................................3
Installation of DirectX..........................................................................................................................................3
Troubleshooting ............................................................................................................................................................4
Game Performance ............................................................................................................................................4
Technical Support .........................................................................................................................................................4
Web Support.......................................................................................................................................................4
Forums................................................................................................................................................................4
Email Support .....................................................................................................................................................4
Adding Songs................................................................................................................................................................5
Song Editor ...................................................................................................................................................................5
Creating New Songs...........................................................................................................................................5
Editing Songs .....................................................................................................................................................5
Options..........................................................................................................................................................................6
Compiling The Sourcecode ..........................................................................................................................................8
Obtaining Sourcecode Using Subversion (SVN)................................................................................................8
Songfile Format.............................................................................................................................................................8
Songfile Header Tags.........................................................................................................................................8
Loud Arts 2 UltraStar 0.8.2
3. Introduction
UltraStar is a karaoke game – a type of game where you use your voice to sing songs and do it the best how
you can to get the highest score. Get your friends, plug microphones to your PC, run UltraStar and sing
together. Computer evaluates how good you sing and helps you by showing if you should sing higher or
lower. Visual effects and movies makes game more pleasant that a simple karaoke player. UltraStar lets you
compete with your friends so each players gets his own score. Try to get into Top5 in each song on every
difficulty level. You can use two displays at once and let 6 players sing at once. For more creative players,
song converter and editor has been made. Over thousand of songs is available from the internet. Don’t
forget to own the rights for the songs you get.
Features
• Special autocorrelation method to detect voice pitch
• Up to 6 players playing at once using many soundcards and external USB cards including Singstar
USB converter
• Support for 2 screens
• Built-in song editor and midi converter
• Configurable sorting options and covers for songs and editions
• Background movies and pictures when singing
• Cache technology to speed up loading covers (useful for system with over 2000 songs!)
• Skin and theme system to let users customize their UltraStar appearance
• Network support to check for never versions and auto-update online profile
Getting Started
PC System Requirements
To play UltraStar, you’ll need the following hardware.
• Pentium II 800 MHz or better processor, 2GHz recommended
• 800 X 600 16 bit color display or better
• Graphics card with OpenGL acceleration
• 128 MB of memory, 512 MB recommended
• 30 megabytes of hard drive space and free space for additional songs
• DirectX 7.0 or better
• DirectX 7.0 compatible soundcard with microphone input
• Microphone
Software Requirements:
Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista or 7.
Installation
UltraStar must be installed on your hard drive in order to play. Simply run the UltraStar-0.8.2.exe and you will
be guided through the installation process.
Additional Documentation
Addition documentation is available at the following site: www.ultrastargame.com.
Installation of DirectX
If you already have DirectX 7.0 or better installed on your computer, you can skip this step. If you don’t have
it, go to www.microsoft.com and download the latest install package for DirectX.
Loud Arts 3 UltraStar 0.8.2
4. Troubleshooting
• Error after starting the game Make sure you have newest graphics driver.
• Firewall reports game connecting to internet By default UltraStar checks for newer version at
The game start.
• Refresh rate is too small Force higher refresh rate in your graphics driver.
• Game sings by itself or doesn’t sing at all Configure recording sources in the options.
• Microphones are to quiet Decrease Threshold and increase Mic Boost in
options.
• Game runs very slow on Windows Vista Install OpenGL drivers if they are not provided with
the system.
• Problem not answered For the latest information, check Web Support,
Forums and Email Support.
Game Performance
The game defaults to having the maximum details possible. You can’t set this lower to increase your game
performance but there are other options that affects performance. In the graphics setup window you can do
the following:
• Resolution Set your video mode to a lower screen resolution.
• Depth On old card setting to 16-bit may increase speed.
• Oscillograph Set it off.
Playing song with background video and singing with many players also decrease performance. Avoiding
this may cause big performance boost.
Technical Support
Should you experience any technical problem concerning the operation of this product, please check Web
Support, Forums and Email Support.
Web Support
Visit these web sites:
http://www.ultrastargame.com
Forums
Visit these forums:
https://www.ultrastargame.com/forum
Email Support
Send email to:
contact@ultrastar.pl
Loud Arts 4 UltraStar 0.8.2
5. Adding Songs
To add new song to UltraStar, you’ll have to do the following.
• Download packed song made for UltraStar.
• Go to the directory where UltraStar has been installed and enter its Songs directory.
• Extract downloaded songs and make sure it's been placed in its own directory.
• If UltraStar is running, restart it.
Song Editor
Creating New Songs
To create news songs from midi file, you will have to do the folowing:
• Enter editor from the main menu.
• Choose to convert midi.
• Choose open and type the file name you want to convert, accept.
• Select track with voice. Use cursors to move between tracks and press space to select track. It will
be marked as N.
• If lyrics tracks is available it is recognized by many vertical lines. Select them with space. Press it
two times and the track will be marked as L. If the voice track and the lyrics track is the same one
then press space until it will be marked as N+L.
• Choose to save the file.
• If you used the default "file.mid" file for the midi, you'll get converted file as "file.txt" in the UltraStar
directory
• Copy file as a normal song, get mp3 and finish editing file headers manually
Editing Songs
To edit song, you will need to do the following:
• Go to sing menu.
• Select song you want to edit and press CTRL + “E”.
Use one of the following keys.
Basic keys:
• Cursors LEFT and RIGHT moves between notes in current sentence.
• PAGE DOWN and PAGE UP moves between sentences.
• "(" and ")" decreases and increases GAP by 10.
• SHIFT + "(" and SHIFT + ")" decreases and increases GAP by 1000.
• "-" and "+" decreases and increases BPM by 0.05.
• SHIFT + "-" and SHIFT + "+" decreases and increases BPM by 1.
• "P" plays actual sentence.
• SHIFT + "P" plays sentence using midi.
• CTRL + SHIFT + "P" plays sentence using midi and mp3.
• SPACE plays selected note.
• “F” makes current note a freestyle note
• “G” makes current note a golden note
• "S" saves song.
• SHIFT + "S" saves song with relative numbers.
• ESC goes back to the song selection.
Editing keys:
• "M" multiplies BPM by 2 also multiplying all notes timings by 2.
• "D" divides BPM by 2 also dividing all notes timings by 2.
• SHIFT + LEFT and SHIFT + RIGHT moves note left or right.
• CTRL + LEFT and CTRL + RIGHT moves the beginning of the note left or right.
• ALT + LEFT and ALT + RIGHT move the end of the note left or right.
• "~" as a helpful key moves the end of the note to the right.
Loud Arts 5 UltraStar 0.8.2
6. • ALT + CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT and ALT + CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT moves all notes from the selected
to the end of song one step left or right.
• NUMBER KEY "-" and NUMBER KEY "+" decreases or increases all notes pitch by 1.
• SHIFT + NUMBER KEY "-" and SHIFT + NUMBER KEY "+" decreases or increases all notes pitch
by 12.
• "/" divides current sentence. Selected note will be the beginning of the created sentence.
• SHIFT + "/" merges current sentence with the next one.
• CTRL + "/" divided current note. New note has the "- " word.
• CTRL + DOWN and CTRL + UP changes pitch of the current note.
• ">" moves all words in the selected sentence to the right. It starts from the selected note. The first
one gets "- " word and the last note has the it's word plus the word from the previous note.
Mastering keys:
• SHIFT + "C" corrects all spaces. Moves at the beginning of the note to the end of the previous one.
Clears duplicates. Add space to the "-" word.
• "C" makes the first word in all sentences to begin with capital letter.
• "T" fixes timings between sentences.
Options
Game:
• Players: (1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 6)
Here you can adjust the number of players. Starting from 4 players need second monitor.
• Difficulty: (Easy / Medium / Hard)
Depending on difficulty, you need to sing less or more accurately.
• Language: (Croatian / English / French / German / Polish / Spanish / Swedish)
Here you select game language. Requires restart.
• Tabs: (Off / On)
Enabling tabs lets you hide song into category tabs. Requires restart.
• Sorting: (Edition / Genre / Title / Artist / Language / Folder)
Here you select sorting method. If tabs are enabled, category tabs will be created depending on this
selection. Requires restart.
• Debug: (Off / On)
Not recommended for normal play. Enabling debug makes UltraStar create a few helpful files. Some
of them can be a size of megabytes.
Graphics:
• Resolution: (320x240 - 2560x1024)
Sets game resolution. Available options depend on your graphics card and monitor. Requires restart.
• Fullscreen: (Off / On)
Game will start in fullscreen or window mode. Requires restart.
• Depth: (16 bit / 32 bit)
Sets color depth. Requires restart.
• Oscilloscope: (Off / On)
By setting oscilliscope on, it can be visible when singing song. Shows recording sound and helps
adjust recording source.
• Movie Size: (Half / Full)
By setting full, background movie can be shown on full screen. This option may be not used in the
current version.
Loud Arts 6 UltraStar 0.8.2
7. Sound:
• Mic Boost: (Off / +6dB / +12dB / +18dB)
Here you can choose to strength microphone signal. The more +6dB doubles signal strength, +12dB
makes it four times louder, etc.
• Click Assistant: (Off / On)
Click Assistant makes a click at the each note start to help you sing.
• Beat Clicks: (Off / On)
Beat Clicks are click generated with the sound rythm.
• Threshold: (5% / 10% / 15% / 20%)
This sets from how much percent the microphone actually registers acoustic signals. The higher
value indicates, the louder the signals must be. If the microphone captures signal from the speakers,
increase this value.
• Echo: (Off / On)
Enables microphone echo in the speakers. Only recommended when using one soundcard as a
source. This option is still under development.
• Preview Volume: (0% … 100%)
Sets music volume on the song selection screen.
Lyrics:
• Font: (Plain / OLine1 / Oline2)
Select font used displaying lyrics when singing.
• Effect: (Simple / Zoom / Slide / Ball)
Different effects can be used for displaying lyrics when singing.
• Solmization: (Off / Euro / Jap / American)
This option lets UltraStar do the solmization of the song. You won’t see the lyrics but only text like
“Do re mi”.
Themes:
• Theme: (Singstar / [other installed themes])
Theme indicates where your UltraStar button and graphics are located on the screen. More themes
can be installed to personalize your UltraStar. Each change in theme enables different Skins.
Requires restart.
• Skin: (Singstar / [other installed skins for selected theme])
Skin is responsible for displaying graphics. It doesn’t change the layout. Requires restart.
• Color: (Blue / Green / Pink / Red)
You can select which color do you prefer and UltraStar will try use this color when it can. Requires
restart.
Record:
• Soundcard: ([all available soundcards])
Here you select soundcard for which you want change recording options.
• Input: ([all available inputs for selected soundcard])
Selected input is being used for recording from the soundcard.
• Left Channel: (0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6)
This option assigns left recording channel to the player. Setting it to “0” disables recording from this
channel. Setting it to “1” tells UltraStar that the first player will use microphone connected to the left
channel of the selected souncard’s input. Numbers from 1 – 6 corresponds to the player numbers.
Try not to assign the same number twice as it may confuse UltraStar and it will analyze sound from
different sources and may not give the best pitch analyzing results.
• Right Channel: (0 / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6)
Here you assign right channel to the player. It works the same as Left Channel option. Do not
duplicate numbers from left channel too.
Loud Arts 7 UltraStar 0.8.2
8. Network:
• Version Check: (Off / On)
If Version Check is enabled UltraStar uses internet connection to check for the game updates and if
found any shows result in the main menu.
• Send Version: (Off / On)
This options lets UltraStar update your online profile with the UltraStar version you use. It updates
profile and each game start and requires internet connection.
• Use Anonymous: (Off / On)
To properly use your internet profile account you have to disable this option and manually type your
login and password into config.ini file.
Compiling The Sourcecode
The sourcecode of UltraStar is available as seperate download at www.sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastar.
You will need Borland Delphi 6 or 7 to compile UltraStar. It may run on never or older version but it don’t
have to and you may encounter problems with installing libraries. When you have Delphi installed do the
following:
• Unzip the sources (with subdirs) into a new folder.
• Install the following libraries:
- JEDI-SDL
- Bass
- fbmidiplay
- ICS
• Extract precompiled UltraStar to the "bin" subdirectory of the directory where the sources has been
extracted. Make sure there are all required dlls.
Obtaining Sourcecode Using Subversion (SVN)
Sourcecode is also available through SVN service. Repository can be checked out through SVN with the
following instruction set:
svn co https://ultrastar.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/ultrastar ultrastar
It is possible to browse this repository using www interface at ultrastar.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ultrastar/.
Any changes can be sent using Patch Tracker on www.sourceforge.net/projects/ultrastar.
Songfile Format
Each song is stored in single text file with “.txt” extension. File structure consists of 2 parts:
• header tags
• song notes and lyrics
Songfile Header Tags
#ARTIST: Artist name
#TITLE: Song title
#CREATOR: Creator of the file
#EDITION: Edition name to which the song belongs
#GENRE: Music genre
#LANGUAGE: Language of the song
#COVER: Name of the cover file
#BACKGROUND: Name of the background file
#VIDEO: Name of the background movie file
#VIDEOGAP: Numver of seconds to skip the movie file at the beginning of the song
#MP3: Name of the mp3 file
Loud Arts 8 UltraStar 0.8.2
9. #RELATIVE: When set to “yes”, enables using relative number in sentence time
#START: Time in seconds from which the song starts
#END: Time in miliseconds at which the song ends
#BPM: Number or beats per minute
#GAP: Number of milliseconds from the beginning of the recording to the first beat of the
song
Loud Arts 9 UltraStar 0.8.2
