Medieval multiplayer combat game Mordhau has quickly become a massive hit, despite some launch-week server issues (in fact, the overwhelming popularity of Mordhau is part of what caused its server issues). But players aren't just hacking and slashing each other to death with swords and maces, they're also rocking out. One of the items in the game is a lute, which you can play by moving your mouse in various directions to strum different notes.
Or you can have a third-party program called Lutebot do it for you. Lutebot (with a bit of tweaking) can play just about anything you can find in MIDI form, which is how I wound up running into battle playing Yakety Sax on my lute. You can see the video above (or here on YouTube).
It wasn't quite the inspirational, motivational battle hymn I'd hoped for, though considering the frenetic and largely uncoordinated battles that take place in Mordhau, it still seemed quite fitting. If Yakety Sax isn't your thing, below you can see a guy rocking out to Doom's E1M1 "At Doom's Gate" to the delight of a teammate.
Here's another player shredding Darude's Sandstorm in the middle of a battle . And yes, someone has played Despacito. Of course.
See, Lutebot translates the musical notes from MIDI files into your character's directional movements and feeds them into Mordhau's console (which is why I can only stutter-step across the battlefield while strumming). It plays all the notes for you, in other words. The MIDI files can require some experimentation if there are multiple music tracks in the file, and you can play with them by turning them on and off in Lutebot's track filtering menu and seeing what works best.
If you're wondering how you too can annoy the hell out of friends and strangers alilke in Mordhau, start by downloading Lutebot here, and making sure you read the full description of how it works and what the various settings do. Then head here for a lengthy but useful tutorial on how to get it working, including some MIDI files you can test out which are listed in the video's description. Happy strumming.
