johnrazor's Forum Posts

  • The Frozen Synapse soundtrack is pretty lovely to code to.

    Oh yeah, that is a great soundtrack, most definitely.

  • John,

    that is the WEIRD part!

    I can preview the same app (that flickers when previewed from within C2 > preview) once it is on the net and it displays fine.

    But locally, on that machine, every capx I load flickers.

    At first I figured that it is the latest beta and ignored it but now I know that it is on my end.

    There isn't really anything installed other than C2 because I do all of the development on the Laptop which also runs C2 under Win7 and all the gfx work on the iMac, my baby which always works.

    Just so you know ... I am used to that.

    EVERY TIME in my life, when I work on something that matters, something that becomes a product, the hardware around me fails colossally. That's why I bought the iMac in the first place. <img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_smile.gif" alt=":)" title="Smile">

    I know how that goes-- most definitely. I always try to remind myself that technology is just a tool to make things easier, although it rarely seems to work that way anymore.. Heh. Anyway, you might try the updated driver, which you can download here:

    https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail ... rodId=3720

  • johnrazor

    holy moly, you are on to something here.

    Yesterday, as you know, I had somewhat of a setback because of two issues.

    The Visual Studio one is now fixed and was my fault because I downloaded Visual Studio Express 2013 for Windows Desktop (I don't know what "that" is for but the "for Desktop" is not able to open our stuff.

    The second issue is still ongoing.

    I have a high-end MSI laptop with I use for mechanical engineering apps like SolidWorks.

    To make W8.1 games, I bought an inexpensive ACER Aspire. It has 6GIG of RAM and a Intel 4600 GFX chip.

    That GFX chip is customized which means that I can't just download an updated driver from Intel.

    To make things worse, ACER doesn't have an updated driver available.

    The reason why this is important is because I can't test my C2 games on that machine.

    Every time I press the mouse or touch the screen, it flickers.

    Some capx files I have downloaded from this forum flicker right upon opening the app in a browser.

    I would like to send "a" version of my piano app to Microsoft and then update it on a bi-weekly basis.

    The play-back function would lift this app up several notches and is a "must add" feature for sure.

    Let's think about this and in the meantime, I will try to tweak the app and sometime this evening, send it to Microsoft.

    Let's hope it works on their end and they approve it.

    Glad to help! As far as the flickering goes, have you tried different preview browsers? If it flickers in all browsers, there's definitely something weird going on. I'm wondering if it does that in Node-Webkit. Also, does it flicker any other time (like when you're just browsing the internet)?

  • Hey johnrazor,

    and thanks for all the pointers.

    Out of all the suggestions you've made, the save/load a melody interests me a lot but, I still need to learn how to do that.

    I didn't even know that MIDI data could be created yet alone saved? Have to dig a little deeper.

    About my signature ... as you know, stating something In definite terms has become a dangerous game. I think that if a child starts with making compositions and puts a little effort into it, she/he can advance a lot and maybe come up with a unique composition that grows wings.

    Unfortunately, I can't promise that that will happen so I chose "could" become famous.

    My sig is just there. No expectations really. If someone wants to check out the website then it's a quick link to do so but I will see if something pops into mind when the time is right.

    If you come across a tut that deals with saving a melody, I'd be very interested to read it.

    Thanks,

    V

    I think you could do it with the following objects:

    WebStorage, Timer, and Array.

    Just roughly working it out in my head, I would have the Array represent the time, which would loop back to the beginning every X number of seconds.

    When a key is pressed, depending on the current value of Timer and the position of the Array, you could record that value into the array (F# 1.5 second mark, F at 2.5 second mark, E at 3.0 second mark).

    Not sure if that makes sense or not-- let me know if you'd like more detail. Free time permitting, I might be able to throw together a demo for ya.

    Cheers!

    John

  • This is on Chrome for Vista, by the way (not my computer ). I don't see a build version anywhere. One thing I wasn't sure if I should mention or not-- your forum signature reads sort of like a spam e-mail, you might take away the 'could become famous' part, as I think people would be more inclined to check it out. Just my two cents. Cheers!

  • Hey, that's really cool. A couple of ideas for your consideration:

    Keymapping, so that you can set your musical keys to a keyboard/gamepad key of your choosing.

    Saving/loading short melodies. Sometimes I'm away from my music equipment and get an idea for a melody. Would be awesome if you could save tunes. Not necessarily the audio itself-- more like MIDI data.

    Cheers man, good work!

  • Well I was thinking, at first, of ID3 tags, although those are MP3 specific (or at least not applicable to WAV or OGG files).

    I just read your two posts you linked, and I understand what you're saying now. Let me kick this around in my head and do a bit more reading and I'll see if I can come up with any ideas. Cheers.

  • [quote:l8urm5o2]1. User launches application, which has no audio imported.

    2. Audio is pulled down from a server somewhere, and is not static (names and attributes of audio could be different every time)

    3. Audio is played back when triggered by user.

    es. As far as I know, there is no good way (or maybe even any way) to create a program that can load audio externally, whether it be from an online server, a local hard drive disk, or whathaveyou.

    For instance, I asked this a while ago, and got nothin':

    And this, too:

    Not one reply, even after hopefully bumping them.

    What I would like to do is create a game that can load external audio like Audiosurf can (using a plugin like the File Chooser), pre-analyse said audio before playing it and not during, and then create the game level/layout/etc.

    It seems that the current state of Construct 2 does not offer these features like, say, Unity and Unreal can. I should probably be switching to either of those engines, and not use C2, but I really do enjoy working in this engine, and hence I'd like to actually develop with it.

    /end wall of text

    It seems like this could be possible with metadata--- maybe something like this:

    Upload audio file to server. Server analyzes audio file and creates XML file based on analysis. User launches application/website, selects audio file, and level is procedurally generated based on the XML metadata file. Something like that?

  • johnrazor I have often heard FMOD mentioned when I was researching Audiosurf/Beat Hazard type games. Could one use FMOD for these? If so, I would be extremely interested. The only other step would be getting a C2 plugin that finally allows us to create games that can import music at runtine.

    Just reading through the thread again, and I don't think I understand what you mean when you say importing at runtime-- you mean like this?

    1. User launches application, which has no audio imported.

    2. Audio is pulled down from a server somewhere, and is not static (names and attributes of audio could be different every time)

    3. Audio is played back when triggered by user.

    I feel like I'm missing the big picture, here, which is embarassing since I've spent a fair bit of time tinkering in C2. :/

    Cheers!

  • It depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but if you mean something like interactive/adaptive audio, C2 already handles this pretty simply. My games have interactive music that changes based on player input or game conditions, and I just run it all off a variable timer and some simple events. You can also apply DSP effects if you want, though it isn't necessary for my games for music. I don't know how effective the analyzer is in C2, but as far as cues, crossfades, swaps, interuptions, flourishes and all that, you can do that with C2's events as they are now with no extra libraries.

    Great to know, thanks for sharing. I'm thinking more along the lines of how I present my music in the asset store at this point-- realizing that the tools are already in place, thanks to the feedback here. I really appreciate you all taking the time to help me understand things from your perspective. Cheers!

  • johnrazor : design teams and sound designers who team up generally establish and share a common language to base their discussions on. I've read the analysis functionality in construct 2 had issues. A knowledgeable member around here has done an app that uses it, at least on Construct classic. Can't remember his pseudo though.

    Sure, that makes sense. As a musician, I can tell you that any song I write has the following attributes, which almost never change (unless briefly) throughout a song.

    Tempo = Speed of rhythm. Also known as beats per minute (BPM).

    Key = Harmony of song. For example, C minor is a deep, sad key, whereas A Major is a happy, bright key.

    C Minor: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... ending.mid

    A Major: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... _major.mid

    Energy = This is a bit more abstract, but I look at it like this: the number of different sounds playing at any given time. Louder sounds weigh heavier than smaller sounds, if that makes sense--- basically, the more noise you're making at any given time, the more energy I consider it to have.

    In addition to that, at least amongst the composers/producers I know-- we all live and die by the 8-bar loop. It's longer or shorter depending on the BPM, but 8 bars is equal to one measure. In pop songs, figure the chorus is almost always a single measure.

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  • Valerien good to know, thanks.

    johnrazor Well, have you taken a look at the analyzer built in to C2 already? You may be able to build off of that.

    Yeah, actually that's what gave me the idea. The hard parts are all done, it seems like-- the functionality is all there. I think we'd do well to have a common language we could speak (between audio guys and game designers/developers). DJs use the Camelot system frequently, that might be a handy jumping-off point as well. Hrm.

  • johnrazor : FMOD is an expensive piece of middleware and a low level sound API which doesn't work with html5. It's mainly used by big studios. Although it's free for indie designer, you still have to request a per-project licence, and it's dependent on your actual budget (in other words, you need to be incorporated, I believe).

    To sum things up: it cannot be integrated directly into c2.

    Thanks for clarifying! I appreciate it. I'm going to dig around a bit more and post my findings here. As game designers, would you think it would be handy to have functions like this (just brainstorming, feel free to add your own ideas). Also there very well could be a plugin or something that already does all this--- I'm still pretty new to Construct (mostly use it to prototype ideas, myself). Cheers.

    IncreaseTempo

    DecreaseTempo

    ChangeKey

    NextTrack

    PreviousTrack

    _____________

  • I've been reading up on it a bit since posting, and it sounds like it might actually be easier to design a substitute from scratch than to hack FMOD into working with C2. I'm quite frequently wrong, though, especially when I'm speculating about a project. Cheers.

  • Anyone ever tried using FMOD? If not, would a similar type of audio framework be something that people are interested in? It seems like it would be pretty handy for keeping audio engineers and designers on the same page, so to speak. Just wondering what you all think. Cheers.