If you have ever lived in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for a period of time, you will have seen this sight. For special occasions (like Canada Day) they create a man made waterfall off of the High Level Bridge. It looks pretty neat at night when it is all lit up.
I took this photo from the 18th floor of WatersEdge Condominiums (101 St. and Saskatchewan Drive) using my Canon S50 point and shoot. The falls are in the left hand side and you can see some of the Alberta Legislature to the right.
This looked really funny, but I shouldn't really laugh at it. In 2004 I was traveling in south east asia and was on a tour of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. As we boated along the river we came across this scene. There were a crew of guys quickly working to do something. I'm assuming to try and float it again. It looked like a nasty predicament either way.
I snapped this with my Canon S50 point and shoot camera.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
I was doing a scramble on a mountain (forgot the name) south of Canmore in 2004 and decided to do a self portrait at the top. Not the prettiest photo of myself.
I recently installed Frets On Fire on my computer and have been having a great time. I still need a guitar though, but I'll figure that out soon enough. Getting Frets On Fire to work took a little bit of effort though.
I had issues getting it to work on both Vista and XP, but managed to figure them both out. Check out my article on getting Frets On Fire Working on Windows XP.
Windows Vista Frets On Fire Error #1
I tried installing the latest version which is Frets On Fire 1.2.512. I installed it and loaded it up. I was able to scroll through the menus and make selections. As soon as I enter a song, I get the following error in a window titled cx_Freeze: Python error in main script:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "c:\users\proj\cx_Freeze-3.0.3\initscripts\console.py", line 27, in ?
File "src/FretsOnFire.py", line 79, in ?
File "src\GameEngine.py", line 369, in run
File "C:\APPS\actpython\lib\site-packages\opengl-3.0.0a4-py2.4.egg\OpenGL\error.py", line 90, in__str__
File "C:\APPS\actpython\lib\site-packages\opengl-3.0.0a4-py2.4.egg\OpenGL\error.py", line123, in shortRepr
MemoryError
Here is a screenshot of my error.
Windows Vista Frets On Fire Error #2
The next thing I tried was uninstalling Frets on Fire and then installing the version Frets On Fire 1.2.451. Unfortunately, after I uninstalled version 1.2.512 and then installed 1.2.451 I received the following error on startup in a window titled Errors occurred:
See the logfile 'C:\Program Files\Frets on Fire\FretsOnFire.exe.log' for details
This was slightly annoying. It was even worse off than before. I found out one crucial point though: Uninstalling Frets On Fire does not actually uninstall the whole thing. The folder is still left over and you have to go manually delete it. So I still had remnants of 1.2.512 around. After I uninstalled the all Frets On Fire copies, deleted the folders still sitting around, and the reinstalled 1.2.451, everything worked fine.
Summary Of Getting Frets On Fire Working On Windows Vista
Install Frets On Fire 1.2.451 only. Do not use the latest version and just find mods for the older version. It works great. If you mistakenly installed the latest version, uninstall it and delete the folder manually to make sure it is all gone before installing FoF 1.2.451. There are some excellent mods that will fix any of the issues in 1.2.451 for you so won't need to upgrade anyways. Try out RF-Mod.
I recently purchased an Acer Extensa 5420 laptop that was running Windows Vista. My home computer runs Windows XP and I wanted to network the two machines so that I could access files and the printer from my laptop.
It seemed to be an unending problem that I was unable to fix. Anyhow, I finally got it working.
I can't even remember everything I did, but I tried to do as much as possible through the Control Panel to get the network working. This included:
Running the Network Setup Wizard.
Creating shared folders on either computer.
Defining a name for each computer in the Control Panel->System.
Make sure the computers are both part of the same Workgroup.
After rebooting a couple of times and tinkering with various settings, my laptop was able to see the XP machine when I looked at the Network through Vista. When I double clicked on my computer I would still get the following error though:
xxxxxxx is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Access is denied.
The solution was found on this Microsoft's Support Site article. Basically you just need to change a registry setting to 0 from 1. Here is a cut and paste of their instructions.
Click Start, click Run, type regedit, and then click OK.
Locate and then double-click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
On the right side, double-click restrictanonymous.
Make sure that the value in the Value data box is set to 0, and then click OK.
Close Registry Editor.
Restart the computer.
After this, everything worked great. I was able to install the printer hooked up to my XP machine on the laptop via the network and stream video and other files from the shared folders as well.
I was traveling in South East Asia in 2004 and went to see the Cuchi Tunnels outside of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. These are the tunnels where the Vietcong would hide and use to move in on U.S. troops during the Vietnam War. They are impressively small as our guide shows himself going into one and putting the lid on. I took this with my Canon S50 point and shoot.
I have recently been watching hi definition video downloads on my laptop. Their sound was encoded using AC3 and I found that I was not able to get the sound loud enough on my laptop to watch the movie enjoyably.
The movies were mkv format (otherwise known as Matroska).
Fortunately, I found a very useful AC3 configuration too called the AC3 Filter that allows you to boost the sounds volume and push your speakers a little farther. You can download the program off their site and install it.
Just open it up, adjust the gain or any other settings, restart your media player, and enjoy. The only catch is that you will need to restart your media playing application anytime you change a setting to see its effect.
I recently installed Frets On Fire on my computer and have been having a great time. I still need a guitar though, but I'll figure that out soon enough. Getting Frets On Fire to work took a little bit of effort though.
I had issues getting it to work on both Vista and XP, but managed to figure them both out. This is my article for Windows XP, but you can also read how I got Frets On Fire Working With Vista.
I have seen 2 different errors and experience terrible performance, but I will explain further below.
Windows XP Frets On Fire Crash
I installed Frets On Fire version 1.2.512 and loaded it up. The first time I tried to load the game it just plain crashed. I received the Windows XP error message:
FretsOnFire.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
Here is a screenshot of hte error.
This error was random and could happen on startup or when trying to play a song.
Windows XP Frets On Fire Error
I tried loading it up right again to see the error and this time it was different. I was able to get all the way into the song selection and when the song would just start to play, I would get the following error in a wndow titled cx_Freeze: Python error in main script:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "c:\user\proj\cx_Freeze-3.0.3\initscripts\console.py", line 27, in ?
File "src/FretsOnFire.py", line 79, in ?
File "src\GameEngine.py", line 376, in run
File "src\Dialogs.py", line 1153, in showMessage
File "src\Dialogs.py", line 1043, in _runDialog
File "src\GameEngine.py", line 366, in run
SystemExit: 1
Here is a screenshot below.
Solution Is 16 Bit Color
After searching the internet I managed to get rid of both of these errors by right clicking on the desktop and changing the color depth to 16 bit from 32 bit. The game would now load and actually play the song.
Frets On Fire Performance Is Terrible
Once I had it working, Frets On Fire was slow and jittery. Basically unplayable. My PC is a Pentium 4 2.4Ghz and over 5 years ago so I attributed the performance to that and was content playing on my laptop. While writing this article I got it working smoothly though.
Install Frets On Fire 1.2.451 For Best Performance
I had to install version 1.2.451 to get FoF working on my Vista machine at all. Once I put it on my XP machine, it worked just as well as my laptop which has better specs.
I also tried changing my color depth back to 32 bit and what do you know? Frets On Fire 1.2.451 still worked fine.
If you have already installed 1.2.512, then uninstall it and delete the folder yourself to make sure it is completely gone. Then download Frets On Fire 1.2.451 and install it. There are some excellent mods that will fix any of the issues in 1.2.451 for you so won't need to upgrade anyways. Try out RF-Mod.
Summary To Windows XP and Frets On Fire
Install FoF 1.2.451 and never look back. If you already installed 1.2.512 then uninstall it and delete the folder before installing 1.2.451.
