who would be uninterested in joining a new project for a 'Guitar hero' / 'Fire on Frets' like game?
I would be uninterested. Guitar Hero is a press-button-when-you-see-it-on-the-screen kind of game, no fun making that.
There is already Freetar Hero that uses jME (or at least used to, I haven't looked at it in a long time). www.freetar.net
You might want to see about joining that project, they are far along.
I've actually already started my own version of this (very preliminary) but more just for fun and experience as has already been noted here - there's plently of GH clones out there. Still, I think it's a fun and relatively easy project and I needed a diversion from my "real" game project for a while as I was getting burnt out on it and progress was slowing.
If you're looking to do this project as a more serious effort, I agree with mojo - add your efforts to an existing project and make it better. I'm just doing it as "something to do", nothing more.
If you're still interested in starting this up for fun, I'd be willing to lend whatever help I could - the amount of which varies greatly depending on how sick my kid is at any given moment. At some point I wanted to examine the code/process used by FoF to import songs right off the PS2 DVDs. While the strength of a PC/open GH port is that you can add any songs you like, it sure is nice to have a solid base to draw from (however legally questionable) when testing.
Right now I'm just working out the look and feel and the mechanics of moving the fretboard texture and the notes and keeping them in sync - not to music yet. I also have some simple collision and key-press detection to test out "hitting" a note as it crosses the bridge. I'll try to post some screenies of what I have when I get home tonight.
Anyway let me know what your plans are.
Interesting feedbacks. Thanks all.
I'll have a look at freetar as well.
Thanks