POM Pro will be the next installment in the Punk-o-Matic series. It will take a step back from the gaming part and instead make a huge leap towards the music creation experience, becoming much more like a simplified music software and less like a game.
NOTE: Keep in mind POM Pro is scheduled for development later because of commitments to other important projects. This is a reference post about details posted on our
Punk-o-Matic.net community site.
Punk-o-Matic.net community site.
To view the full list of Planned Features and other info, click "Read More".
PLANNED FEATURES
- Lagless Playback
Using Flash CS6's new sound features, the playback in POM Pro will be lagless. No more little gaps between the riffs and riffs going out of sync.
- Infinite Song Length
With a dynamic music sheet, there will be no length limit and you will be able to make songs as long as you want.
- More Precise Music Sheet
You will be able to place your riffs at a half beat precision, which is 4 times more precise than Punk-o-Matic 2. In POM2, you can place a riff every 2 beats, meaning that a box lasts 2 beats. In POM Pro, the boxes will be a half beat.
- Riff Start Offset
The riff start offset would allow you to start a special in the middle of it instead of always starting it at the beginning.
- Zoom Feature
With the better note precision and a possibly infinite amount of riffs in the game, the music sheet will not display riffs by letter or number but rather by name, color and octave or something like that. The zoom feature will allow to zoom in on a section to put in the riffs with more precision and see what's going on.
- Tempo Control
You will have control over the tempo to play your songs faster or slower and the possibility to have tempo changes throughout the song.
Note: This feature is still to be confirmed as it is complex to implement, considering the riff-based aspect of the game.
- Volume Control
You will be able to control the volume of each instrument tracks to create fade ins and fade outs for more unique songs.
- Extended Drum and Drum Kits
The drum kit will include more cymbals, probably double bass drum, cowbell, etc. The plan is also to have the drum riffs be definitions of the beat and not the sounds of the beat. What I mean by that is that all the drum riffs will be like custom riffs made from the drum samples the game has. That would allow the player to swap drum kits to use the same riffs but with a different sound bank for the drum.
- Online Riff Repository
In POM Pro, all the riffs will be online and not in the game. This means that the game will be very small and load very quickly and download the riffs as it needs them when previewing riffs, placing riffs on the time sheet and loading a song using the riffs. The game would also allow downloading low quality riffs for slow connections and higher quality riffs for faster connections.
- Extendable Riff Bank
POM Pro will be designed with extendability in mind. With the riffs being online, the game will load the list of available riffs from the server and download them when you use them. This will allow new riffs to be added on the server without actually modifying the game. The game will simply see the new riffs once you refresh your riff bank. From there, the sky is the limit, new solos, new pickings, new chords, new higher notes, acoustic riffs, etc.
- SFX Track
Lots of songs have sound effect in theme, waves, wind, gun shots, police sirens, church bells, etc. With an SFX track in POM Pro, people can add more personality and uniqueness to their songs. Imagine a smooth intro with sounds of waves or wind, with a solo coming in, or a sweet bass section with a police siren. Or church bells during a heavy riff.
- Instrument Effects
You will be able to add effects such as reverbs, delays, EQs and others to your instrument tracks to create more unique songs and tones.
Note: This feature is still to be confirmed as programming audio effects is a complex undertaking.
- Custom Riff Maker
In POM Pro, you will be able to make your own custom riffs using POM Pro's samples. That means you'll be able to create your custom drum beats, chord progressions, solos, etc. Basically, it will let you make a custom little snippet of music with one instrument and then let you use it on your music sheet, like you would with any other riff.
This feature may also include the possibility of making custom song parts that you can reuse, multi-track custom riffs if you will.
Note: The scope of this feature is still to be defined. It might be only for drums but I believe it could be for everything. The precision for drum riffs might be greater than the precision for bass and guitar riffs though. - Song Copy/Cut/Paste
In POM Pro, you will have the ability to select part of a song and copy it into memory to paste it somewhere else in the song or to load another song and copy the part of song that is in memory into the newly loaded song. Transferring solos and data between songs will be much easier.
- More Band Customization
I have decided that I would keep the little band playing in POM Pro. The band will also have one more (possibly optional) member so you can do triple leads and bass or dual leads with a backing rhythm guitar and the bass. You will also be able to customize the band members in greater depth, choosing the gender, voice and lots of new custom parts, clothings, hair, etc.
- Jam Room Customization
You will be able to customize the jam room to play in the little crappy place like in POM2 or choose to play on various stages with various stage light setups.
- Career/Story/Concert Removal
Taking a step back from the gaming experience, POM Pro will not have any career mode, money, concert gameplay or story progression. It will focus on music making and watching the band play the songs you make.
- Streaming In-Game Radio
To limit the file size of the game, the game's soundtrack will also be online and expandable.
- Chord, Octave and Single Note Selection
While POM2 gave you a selection of rhythm (fifth chords) and lead riffs (octaves), POM Pro will let you choose a wide variety of chords as well as octave and single note.
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ANSWERS TO COMMENTS
- Starting from POM2
We are indeed starting from POM2 and will gradually bring it to the POM Pro level changing how it works as we go.
- Backward compatibility
We'll do our best to make it backward compatible with POM1 and POM2.
- Loading/Exporting midi/guitar pro files
We could try to do that, seems like it would be possible, not sure. We'll add it to our todo list.
- POM vs Highend programs
POM will never be a highend program but it'll get closer to that level of control.
- Keyboard addition
For the millionth time, NO KEYBOARD.
- More shirts/haircuts/etc
Like the riffs, the customizable parts will be on the server, so we can add more on demand.
- Changing the band structure
You will be able to turn off some members completely so if you want a 2 members band, or 4 members, etc. You'll also be able to choose if you want 3 guitars, 2 bass, etc
- Electric guitar and acoustic guitar
The acoustic guitar will be a "tone" in POM Pro. That means you can change the tone of your guitarist anywhere in the song. So if you want an acoustic guitarist, no problem.
- Story mode
POM Pro focuses on composing music. If you want though, you can still have your band play your songs a crazy stage. You can customization the stage and the band will have more animations so the show will be livelier.
- Chords
All kinds of chords will be available as well as octaves and single notes. See Chord, Octave and Single Note Selection in the feature list.
- Drop Tuning & Metal
| Drop D may be included initially in the game and possibly Drop C. Sometimes we get requests for metal music features in POM so we'd like clear it up by saying, yup, POM Pro will have a ton of new riffs and extended features that will allow folks to make metal, get the sound they want and look for their band. People already make all kinds of non-Punk in POM2, even deathcore, death metal & grindcore. So even with what we have already mentioned in the features, you'll be able to make epic metal songs. Plus since it will be fed from our server, it will be continually updated with content. So that means a bunch of new metal pre-made-riffs as time goes on. |
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A set of old videos where we talk about POM Pro & developing the Punk-o-Matic series. Note that some of the information might be outdated but if you're interested, it's still a good reference to what we've thought about & the development process of the games.
Thanks for checking out the POM Pro development reference page. Feel free to leave a comment but please note the game is delayed for a while until we finish other important games. Also keep in mind that many suggestions have already been posted on the Official forums for the past two years.
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