This one is a contribution to the do-it-yourself music night, that was organized by Etsy, Create Digital Music and the Make Magazine. From my point of view the do it yourself culture grows itself an own branch with events like this, that can be considered new. Events like this are definitely heighten the awareness of what music instruments are and how they can made or changed. And events like this are indeed somethings for geeks. So check out and multiply. Read and see more here, here and here.
The researcher Johnny Lee is spending his time on inventing new technical possibilities to make use of the Nintendo Wiimote Controller for user interfaces, that so far were only affordable with high budgets or high technical effort. The video below for example shows how you can make a multi-touchscreen with a Wiimote, two pens and two infra-red leds. The total cost will be under 50 Euro for this technology – that is very far below the price for multi-touch that was so far. Just look on the other projects from Johnny Lee and have much fun with this lo-tech technologies for an affordable price.
It seems that New Years greetings are mandatory, so I do the same. After wishing you a good christmas time on microcontent here now have fun celebrating with this fine robot. It is a robot that plays the well known famous tune ‘Crazy’ from Gnarls Barkley on the Theremin. Let’s celebrate!
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Tomas Pettersson wrote a small application, that hit the gaming scene like a rock. SFXR is a sound tool to quickly make sound effects to use in any game. At least Tomas is very surprised about the success of this application, because for him it was just a logic step to write that app.
Tomas “DrPetter” Pettersson is a 25 year-old guy from northern Sweden who has been toying with computer programming since the age of twelve. His first real contact with electronic and computerized entertainment was the NES and from there it has progressed through the classic line of various consoles, C64, the Amiga and finally PC. Since 2001 he studies computer science and technology at the Linköping University in Sweden, but most of his spare time he uses to experiment with all kinds of things from sound synthesis to game/utility development, music composing and drawing. Digital Tools asked him some questions on the SFXR tool, the context it appears and on future plans and inspiration.
Hi Tomas. Why did you made this tool?
The main motivation for this specific application was that for several years I had noted a distinct lack of sound in most LD48 games.
What are LD48 games?
LD48 stands for Ludum Dare 48-hour game development competition. It is, as the name implies, a competition where entrants sit down and develop a game within a period of 48 hours. Everything about the game has to be created by one person within the given time limit, so you’re not allowed to use content downloaded off the net or borrowed from friends.
At the website of the excellent Pragmatic Programmers publisher website I came across a book that’s called Practices of an Agile Developer. The book seems to be very good, not only for newbies, but also for experienced programmers in order to get insight and knowledge of good development practices and coding habits. There is a try-for-yourself chapter online with the weight of not less than 27 pages. It is about coding and debugging and I highly suggest the reading of it.
I’ll point out one of the things mentioned there: it’s a good habit in object-orientated programming to design your objects in a way that they are somehow independent from other objects. Each should only influence things inside itself, not in the other objects. Other tasks should be submitted by communicating with the other objects.
“Tell, don’t ask. Don’t take on another object’s or component’s job. Tell it what to do, and stick to your own job.”
There’s the example of the paperboy, who delivers paper and then turns around the receiver (you) to get your wallet out of your pocket, in order to take the money for the paper. That’s the unwanted way. We want objects, that clearly do for what they are intended for and nothing more. So in this case, the paperboy should deliver the paper and ask for money. The rest is up to you. If you want paper, you have to do specific tasks on yourself and once again communicate with your own objects. There’s much more like this, so best directly start reading.
At the Independend Gaming Source I discovered this tiny tool, called SFXR. It is a soundgenerator for retro-game like soundeffects, that you are familiar with by playing hundreds of classic games. It basically has three oscillators sinewave, sawtooth, squarewave and a noise generator. With various parameters like vibrato, pitch and filter settings you can quickly customize you sound settings, play around with it and get squeaky effects within seconds. A very nice feature is, that you can use some random generators. They are random in constrains, so the results will come on in some good default fashion for most used and effective sound like “explosion”, “pickup” or “shoot”.
Ok, now. You selected a sound, but want some variation? No problem. Example: you have three kinds of shooting sounds and want them just to differ a little bit. You can edit or select one and then hit the “Mutate” three times. This will automatically generate parameters that will sound similar to the initial sound, but not the same. Generate your similar sounds, write them on disk and you are done.
The author of this tiny application ‘DrPetter’ made this tool for the website Ludumdare, where they held the fast paced gaming competition LD48. He complained about the fact, that so many entries were without sounds. That’s why he wrote this app to help the contributors get their sounds. In his own words, the SFXR is:
DrPetter
And in fact, the soundeffects are good, but a little thin and I bet that now thousands of games will come out with this remarkable sound tool. So don’t forget to fatten up your sounds with some special techniques and recipes, so that your sound makes a difference. And don’t tell anybody about them.
Read an interview with Tomas Pettersson on his SFXR.
Meanwhile YouTube is becoming my favorite research tool of choice. After doing an inquiry on Marble Madness again, I fell into Marble Machines. There is lots of interesting stuff going on there. Just have a look for example at this remarkable Marble Machines:
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