Draft:Vocaluxe

Vocaluxe is a free and open source singing game, inspired by SingStar™ and Ultrastar Deluxe. It's first version was released on July 4, 2012, being in continous developement up till 2024. The game allows up to six players to sing along with music using microphones in order to score points, depending on the pitch of the voice and the rhythm of singing. The most appealing feature is that the game supports custom songs. The project’s goal is to bring ideas of popular UltraStar game to modern technical standards. It was featured by heise - a well-known german IT news site.

Gameplay and features
Vocaluxe features a similiar gameplay to UltraStar, Let's Sing or SingStar. Basically players have to sing in time to songs with correct pitch to gain scores. The player with higher scores wins. Beside this standard mode there are various party modes like tournament-kinda challenge mode or duets and medleys. Rap notes are not scored yet and support for Linux or MacOS is missing.

Vocaluxe allows players to use any USB-Microphones that are compatible with PC. SingStar microphones are supported too. Unlike SingStar it’s possible to have up to 6 players singing at the same time. The game can be controlled via mouse, keyboard, WiiMote or smartphone (via webbrowse app). Each player can define a profile with personal avatar and difficulty settings. Photos can be taken via smartphone or webcam.

Songs
The game supports the popular UltraStar song file format and fullfill the new standards of upcoming song file features in future. Unlike commercial alternatives which have a built-in setlist, Vocaluxe doesn’t include songs with installation. It's developed with creative common songs.

The content can be made by players themself or is done by third-parties that may sell song packages according to licenses. Players have to consider their specific copyright laws in their own country. In general it's more effort for players to have playable content compared with commercial singing games.

Development
The Game Vocaluxe startet in May 2011 as a successor project to UltraStar Deluxe and turned out to be a rewrite from scratch. It’s goal is to bring open source singing games on a better technological level, since all former UltraStar Games were made in deprecated PASCAL/Delphi code that is not popular with coders for over a decade now.

Because the game was a new implementation in a new programming language (C#) the initiative developers decided to create a new brand instead of using UltraStar: Vocaluxe [ˈvoʊˈkəˈlʌks] is the new name, refering to UltraStar Deluxe. From 2012 till 2017 there were three releases with introduction of many new features. In version 0.2.0 support for up to 6 microphones was added, as well as Medley mode, Short Song mode, Playlists, Webcam support and WiiMote. In version 0.4.0 party modes and smartphone control was implemented, including a lot of refactoring. Version 0.3.0 was skipped. In 2017 multi-monitor support and genius theme were introduced.

After a long pause of developement the initiators joined forces in late 2023 with the new meta-team of Open Music Games. The non-profit group is actively searching for voluntary game programmers and game artists to make the project finally complete. Right now Vocaluxe is getting a new design and branding. New Milestones and a task board on GitHub are updated regulary. Planned features are statistic screen, improved installer, automatic updates and animations. There are first thoughts about using Godot game engine someday but its unsure.

Collaboration
In future Vocaluxe maintains good relationship with the similiar games Performous and Melody Mania/UltraStar Play. These projects also try to use modern technology like Unity engine and watch out for proper legal and license standards.

The various teams behind the games already start co-working on shared song standards in 2023. They also agreed to create destinctive experiences for the players through different look&feel or different gameplay elements. One motivating factor for a renewed interest of open source community in music games is the shutdown of SingStar franchise after 15 years in 2020