Series: Robot Music I, Robot Music II: Modes, Robot Music III: The Circle of Fifths, Robot Music IV: Scales of the World

(This post features the hip guitar stylings of none other than ME! I’ll play some real life, randomly generated, Robot Music! The link is at the end.)

I’ve wanted to see more procedural music in games for a long time, but the most we see are pretty sorry attempts. I’m not just talking about “shifting volume on pre-recorded riffs” procedural, I mean “the game is writing its own live soundtrack” procedural.

“But Chris, that doesn’t even happen on consoles! We can’t do it in flash, no way!” Sounds difficult or even impossible, but it isn’t. The only problem is it takes an understanding of tricky programming concepts and tricky musical concepts. Without programmers that also study music theory, we just don’t see procedurally written music.

Well, I’d like to help change that. I know a thing or two about music and a thing or two about programming so in this article I’m going to do my best to tip off any programmers interested in putting together a simple music generator. Today’s generator won’t be truly procedural, but it’ll start things off in that direction.

And if you play a little music, but don’t know how to write a song, maybe this article can help you out too.

Continue Reading…

I purchased a new Lenovo desktop about a month ago to replace my poorly aged HP laptop. Yay! Windows Vista. Amazingly pretty isn’t it? In spite of the bugginess and the lagginess, I think the interface is a big improvement over XP. Anyway, I stumbled upon my Half-Life 2 disc in a random CD spindle and decided it’d be a good time to reinstall it cause I haven’t had it installed for a couple years.

It’s good that you don’t need a CD key for the game! Especially since I don’t have the box on hand. That’s all verified through your Steam account. Luckily I remembered mine. Unfortunately, you still require a net connection so it sucks for the fools still living in the 1800s without electricity and running water. It took about an hour 🙁 to get all the updates for HL2 and Counter-Strike: Source. But I’m happy now and that’s all that matters.

Steam is my new best friend.

Continue Reading…

Everybody Votes!

This blog has more posts about the Wii on it than anything else, but that’s okay because it deserves the attention.

I was just putting the “Everybody Votes Channel” to use on my Wii and thinking about what a concept of genius it is. Look around for thoughts on the Wii voting channel and you see a lot of complaints about how mundane the questions are. A lot of gamers seemed disappointed when they tried it out and realized the questions were irrelevant to gaming and others seem to expect questions of, I don’t know, more scientific value. However, people seem to enjoy it.

Today I answered the following poll questions (I’ve included my answers, just to let you know I take a stand on the issues):

I wish peole would say this more often: A. Hello B. Thank You

My Answer: Hello.

Which language would you prefer to learn? A. Chinese B. Japanese

My Answer: Japanese

Where can you eat the best food? A. Mom’s house B. Restaurant

My Answer: Restaurant

My friends, these may seem mundane, but this information is of the utmost importance to Nintendo! And I’ll tell you why.

Continue Reading…

Since it’s so much easier to post links to other peoples’ material…

Relating to an earlier post by Chris – A Day at the Wiicade – where he was exploring the possibilities of Wii & Flash, here is Wiiflash!! Wiiflash is what Chris was waiting for, actually this still won’t be enough for him… but apparently this software not only takes the data from the Wii controller but it passes it along to Flash so you can make things move by tilting and swinging and whatnot. This is possible by connecting Wii remote to a computer through Bluetooth. So no native Wii support still but this is better for sure!

It would be great if Nintendo would acknowledge the possibilities with Flash gaming on Wii, but it seems unlikely because they’d rather have you buy Virtual Console titles. They’re still selling out of hardware so there’s not a big incentive to make things easier for Flash game devs. But in a perfect world…

By the way.

I jacked this – verbatim – from another Flash game development blog, PhysicsDev. Check it out!

-Bryson

Long time no post. I’ve been very busy coding. Coding, coding, coding.

I just wanted to stop by and say that I’ve uploaded some new videos to my youTube account and welcome all to check them out: http://www.youtube.com/rockytastic

Continue Reading…

I know Chris just wrote something about the game but we’re often redundant like that.

The game is Reunion by Mike Bithell, I found it on GameSetWatch a few days ago. This is an amazing game. I believe the execution is phenomenal. I need more big sounding words to show how much I like it! Immediately the game reminded me of something I’d see coming out of Cal Arts, such incredibly good design going into it.

Continue Reading…

Bryson sent this one my way saying the flash8 bevel function appears to have been used for lighting. I was really impressed: http://www.mikebithell.com/reunion/

The game is interesting, but laggy. Too laggy. To be honest, I couldn’t play through the whole thing because it lagged so much, and I’m on a Mac G5. I’ll have to see how it runs on a PC at home.

What I like about this game is that Mike Bithell demonstrates a keen understanding of tone and this game demonstrates its careful manipulation via visual and aural media. His moves are subtle, but effective.

Lighting, my friends, lighting! Lighting is everything! The use of music is good too. Lighting and music are not used to a tremendous effect. Don’t expect anything mind blowing, but they’re used and used well. Continue Reading…

“I make world-class images. Why not put those images into a game?”

-Micheal Bay

Why does Micheal Bay going into game design worry me? I feel like I just saw a kid drowning kittens and now he’s staring at my pup. . . .

“One thing about my game design is that I never try to look for what people want and then try to make that game design. I always try to create new experiences that are fun to play.”

-Miyamoto

Ahh. Nothin’ like a cool glass of Miyamoto.

I am decidedly against the idea that any art “should” be created in any particular way.

After my post on The Marriage, I felt like this was the obvious next subject. I’ve played a number of games claiming to use game design as the primary avenue for artistic expression. This idea is completely absurd.

These art games are interesting, I like playing them, they’re unique, and maybe they’ll help grab some attention, but they’re not proving anything we didn’t already know. On the contrary, by ignoring 90% of game capabilities and simplifying the last 10% for the sake of philosophy, we will severely retard the progress of our art form. In an industry with so few calling themselves artists, we need everyone we can get pushing games as far as they can. But let me slow my heartrate and digress. . . .

Let’s examine the feat of the art game: the hope to remove all other art forms from games and, in doing so, prove the importance of games to the art world. I’ll use Rod Humble’s The Marriage and Raspberry by Jonathan Blow as examples because these are a couple of games I like by designers whom I respect. Continue Reading…

I played The Marriage, read the explanation and read the interview with Rod Humble on Arthouse Games. Good thoughts all around. Good interview. If you haven’t yet played the game, do so. If you haven’t read the interview, I suggest it.

The circles represent outside elements effecting the marriage. Will this one be for the better?

The game is interesting. I’m glad it’s getting the attention it is, but I must say I’m disappointed. Continue Reading…