Jan

Frets On Fire - Free Version Of Guitar Hero

Written by Neil Galloway

What is Frets On Fire

If you have ever played Guitar Hero then you will understand Frets On Fire. The Guitar Hero series has been one of the best selling games the past few years. Basically the game consists of trying to play a pattern of notes for various popular songs by following the note patterns on the screen. It sounds simple, but it can be really difficult and very addicting.

Frets On Fire is an open source software program written by some guys in Finland. It is free and has the ability to do any song. So if you are looking to try it out, then it is a great opportunity to see what it is all about. If you are looking to play songs that are not in the real Guitar Hero series, then Frets On Fire might just have them.

Check out the Frets On Fire Homepage or watch a demo video of Frets On Fire.

What Is Great About Frets On Fire

Free

You cannot beat the price. If you don't like it, then who cares? Guitar Hero itself costs anywhere from $50 for just the software to $100 for the guitar and software. It is available for all the major consoles and Guitar Hero 3 is the only PC version available.

Huge Selection Of Music

All the Guitar Hero series of songs are available on bittorrent sites to use in the game. This means that you can now play Guitar Hero 1 and 2 on the PC, which isn't even possible using the commercial games.

You download the original Guitar Hero 1, 2, and 3 songs if you look around the internet. In particular, check the torrent sites like BTJunkie.org and search for Frets On Fire Guitar Hero. They will be in the list somewhere. As of January 18th, 2008 this Frets on Fire Guitar Hero torrent was at the top of the list that contained the songs from all 3 versions. If you do not understand how bittorrent works, then check out the Bittorrent Beginner Guide.

There is a tool to create your own songs in the game and there are thousands available on bittorrent and many have even been packaged into download sets for the game. Now you can play your favorite songs and if they aren't available and you feel like it, you can create them as well.

Looks Great

The graphics are nice and crisp and the scrolling fretboard looks just like Guitar Hero.

There Are Mods To Make It Better

There are quite a few mods you can download to give it added functionality or changes the looks. I would say at a minimum you should download and install RF-Mod. It adds multiplayer and a variety of other features.

Runs on Many Platforms

Runs on Linux or Windows, which means you will be able to play regardless of the OS.

Guitars Work With It

Playing Frets On Fire just isn't the same using the keyboard. Having a guitar is the only way to go. Unfortunately, you have to own the official Guitar Hero guitar. The Playstation, Xbox 360, and PC guitars will all work, but you need to already own them or pay CA $60 to buy one. The Playstation guitar requires the Playstation to USB converter to work (it is only around $10 on eBay).

I have been using an XBox guitar and it works totally fine. You can read my article on using the XBox 360 guitar for Frets On Fire.

There is even a community of people that have built there own guitars. It only needs 5 buttons to control the frets and one button for strumming. Frets on Fire lets you map any keys to be used for the different functions so people have used controller and USB cable from USB Keyboards and just connected the wires from children's toy guitars or built their own using switches.

Top Scores

There is a whole community of players and the software supports automatically uploading your high scores so you can compete against others.

What Is Bad About Frets On Fire

You Have To Find A Guitar

It does not have a guitar since it is a free download on the net. There are a variety of ways to get one and you can use any of the guitars from the consoles, but then you still end up paying for it. Some people have built their own as well. I would think the easiest for people to do is purchase a Playstation or Xbox guitar on eBay and then get the appropriate adapter along with it.

No Campaign

There might be a mod for this, but it is definitely not built in. If you like the single player campaign from Guitar Hero you will not have it in Frets On Fire. It is just play the song and try to beat your high score.

HOPO Feature Takes a Mod

The Hammer On and Pull Off technique that you can use in Guitar Hero doesn't work without downloading a mod package and installing it. Even then, it is not quite the same.

Mediocre Animations

Guitar Hero has camera angles rotating around the stage as the rock band performs. No hope for that here as it will probably take a lot of work. For those of us who just want to play and figure out the crazy fretwork then this does not really matter, but sometimes eye candy can be nice.

No 2 Player Mode Without Modding

You need to install a mod for 2 player.

Songs Are Not Set Up As Well

This depends on how much work the individuals who created the Frets On Fire settings for a song did. Two things can happen here.

First, on Guitar Hero there are multiple tracks to a song. The guitar part and the rest of the song. When you miss notes, they kill the guitar part and you can still here the rest of the song. In Frets On Fire, it supports these multiple parts but some people only rip the song and provide that. When you miss the note, it kills the sound for the whole song and it is dead quiet. Some mods let you just dampen the sound by a percentage value, but it still does not sound as good. The sample songs they provide with the game have the multiple tracks, but I notice some of my downloaded ones to not.

Secondly, the fretwork might only have one difficulty level and not be that well thought out. I have been playing Alice Cooper's Poison and the fretting is a bit lame in some places and there is only one difficulty level which I would say is Medium to Hard. This being said, if you don't like it you can create your own version that is better.

Getting Frets On Fire To Work

Frets On Fire works for both Windows and Linux. I have got it working on both Windows Vista and Windows XP, but I had problems on both before I finally was playing it.

Read my article on getting Frets On Fire Working On Windows Vista and on getting Frets On Fire Working On Windows XP.

One piece of advice though. Do not install the latest version. Use the 1.2.451 version of Frets On Fire. This is the one the worked on both Vista and XP for me. There are mods that you will probably end up installing that fix some of the issues anyways.

There are a ton of good sites out there, you just need to Google it. Here are some of my favorite ones though.

Getting a Guitar For Frets On Fire

I have researched this a lot and all the console guitars apparently work, plus home built ones using a USB keyboard. I will write more on this when I actually get mine.

Performance of Frets On Fire

My Acer Extensa laptop has a AMD Turion 64x2 TL-58 processor, 2 GB RAM, and a ATI Mobility Radio HD 2400XT (256MB) video card. It handles Frets On Fire perfectly.

My desktop is a Pentium 4 2.4GHz, 1 GB RAM, and GeForce FX 5200 (128MB). It was unable to handle FoF version 1.2.512 and the performance was terrible, but Frets On Fire version 1.2.451 works flawlessly on the PC. Whatever they did between those versions has killed the performance on that machine for me, so just use 1.2.451.

Check out this YouTube video of Smoke on the Water being played on Frets On Fire.

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Category: Computers

16 Comments

Daxman Says:
2008-02-02 00:32:23
ausome

007beetlebug Says:
2008-02-02 00:33:44
frets on fire is cool,where did u get that mod though?

kyle Says:
2008-02-05 13:22:38
sup this game is awsome

I Says:
2008-04-20 17:35:27
can you play without downloading

Marlen Says:
2008-04-28 14:32:42
Cool! this game is awsome

Ace Says:
2008-05-02 20:00:07
FoF is cooln I've been playing it for a while but could you send m a link to dwnload songs n mods? Tnx.

andreas Says:
2008-05-04 12:54:40
i want it

Jason Says:
2008-05-09 21:00:33
Cool but i would like more songs like iron man, smoke on water, ect. But i don't want torrent so let me know if u have a way to get it without torrent

ty c3 Says:
2008-05-26 15:41:28

bob Says:
2008-06-18 16:18:45
cane i do this for free

Adoba Says:
2008-08-01 12:40:31
ppc. omg. wtf?

Tommy Says:
2008-09-24 15:20:08
I like videogames.

Chickendippers Says:
2008-11-21 11:42:07
Its free, and to download songs, go to the web page I have included with this message.
For mods swap the /custom-songs/ for /mods/

Chickendippers Says:
2008-11-21 11:43:25
whoops forgot the web page. it is http://fretsonfire.wikidot.com/custom songs. Once again, swap /custom-songs/ for /mods/

chickendippers Says:
2008-11-21 11:44:26
Thats not a Torrent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous Says:
2009-01-07 06:53:13

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