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   LudumDare 11 -- Cowbell Hero
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By Joel Davis (joeld42@yahoo.com) for the LD11 contest,
4/20/2008.

Getting Started:
-----------------

To play Cowbell Hero, you must first generate a list of songs for
it to use. After the contest, I will try to make an easier (or
built in) way to do this, but for now here are the instructions:

To do this:

1) Make sure you have python installed (www.python.org)
2) open a command prompt (Start Menu->Run->Type "cmd")
3) type "cd <path where you installed cowbell hero>"
    (go to the directory where you unzipped cowbell hero)
4) type "python musicdb.txt <path to where you keep your mp3 files>"

For example, for me I ran this command:

python musicdb.py "C:\Documents and Settings\jdavis\My Documents\My Music\iTunes"

5) This should create a text file called "musicdb.txt" that cowbell hero will load.

Playing the game
-----------------

Once you pick a song (or let it choose randomly), the rocking will commence. You may
notice that every song in your music library sounds better with cowbell. 
This is scientifically proven. 

When the song starts, to sync the beat of the game to the song that is playing, tap 
the SHIFT key in time with the music. If the music gets out of sync, you can re-sync 
it this way at any time during the song.

When the green note indicator reaches the target, tap the 'c', SPACE, or ALT keys to wail
on your mighty cowbell. 

Currently the game is a little incomplete. It doesn't have a score, and it can't tell when the
song ends and stuff like that. But you'll know in your heart if you are rocking out or not.

The "Difficulty" is approximate -- it depends a lot on the tempo of the song. If a song is 
too easy or to hard, try tapping at double or half speed to manually adjust the tempo.

Notes:
-------
This version was developed over a 48 hour weekend for the ludumdare game contest.  All
code and graphics were created during this time.

Thanks to Dr. Petter for sfxr which I used to make the non-cowbell sound effect.

The cowbell sound effect (music instrument samples are allowed per the rules) is a
public domain file from the internet. Alas, I have no physical cowbell to record.

The font was created with my "FontPack" program (fontpack.sourceforge.net), and the ID3 python
library is written by Ben Gertzfield, license and copyright notices for it can be found in the src
directory.

Enjoy! 

