• Avatar of Zephram
  • sharing is despairing
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SHAZAM! Now there is a topic where anyone can post secret-lab-worthy things without having to make their own thread.
May the posting candles be lit and may the posting robes be worn! And may there be posting! 
 
Now to launch immediately into some tripe. ^_^
 
Often, attempting to screenshot a game will give you a corrupted image. 
 

 
You can use these images for neat purposes. This one uses 'Color Dodge' blending mode to make a cityscape-thing:
 

 
I dig it.
 
Now, this glitched data is not only useful for making fucked-up textures and tilesets for games. Its structured-yet-non-linear nature makes it ideal fodder for databending. So, let's turn these harsh, unforgiving pixels into "music"! 
I'm using Audiopaint (an image-to-sound program), and the waveform used as the basis is this one I generated: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1566676/sfx30.wav
The tuning is harmonic and all are 180 seconds long. Nothing changes between iterations except the pic I feed the program.
 
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ITERATION #1
 
Here's a 320x240 section from a failed attempt to screenshot Heavy Bullets.
 

 
Audiopaint interprets the lines as oscillators. I tell it to use brightness and saturation for left/right channels respectively.
It sounds like this:
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1566676/apex0.mp3
 
Yowza! Let's see if we can refine it any.
 
 
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ITERATION #2
 

 
I've set the original image's blending mode to 'Color Dodge' on top of a black background again, then messed with color balance. This one also looks a bit like a cityscape. Sounds like this:
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1566676/apex1.mp3
 
Much more sparse and pleasing. Different textures shine through with it ALMOST sounding like music at points!
 
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ITERATION #3
 

 
I've done gone crazy with gradients'n'shit. The square forms have audible effects on properties of the sound themselves. Let's hear it:
 
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1566676/apex2.mp3
 
Huzzah! Weirder, but somehow more structured. The gradient bands play into it as well.
 
There's thousands of ways to have it reinterpret a single image. The main two factors in anything I'd call "success" are having a good Scala .scl file and having a good original waveform to use as the basis. AudioPaint only does sines, so if you wanted squares or ramps or whatever, you'd have to sample a wave yourself. But it's worth it, if only for texture pieces to go in your more ambient songstuff.
 
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Now for some shape studies:
 

 
This's part an experiment to see how the sizing and spacing of basic shapes alone can be manipulated to make different audio/visual aesthetics. It's also useful for messing with image-to-audio stuff like the above. Even small differences like those spacings can totally alter the look of a tileset or the sound of some databent stuff.
 
Well, this has been amusing, I hope.
 
Feel free to post away! This is like dumbtopic, only SECRET.
  • Avatar of Zephram
  • sharing is despairing
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Hallo franz!
This thread concerns material related to several projects, but I'll be focusing on the 'middle' one, Dongland 2: Eclectrick Soupgarou. It was made last in the 'GARA Trilogy' and is the only one still needing active development.
The world it occurs in is meant to parallel our own just enough for humorous purposes. I'll be posting a lot in here; this new subforum seems to be the place for it. I dig any and all criticism/feedback but mostly just want to amuse people. That's more than I could ask for. I'm glad to answer questions, as well.
I'm not sure what I'll post here, because the design document is huge. Given this hugeness, I might end up sounding like a pretentious jackass by copping out and not explaining things that're convoluted in nature.
For now, picture-y things!
 
So, I'm using RM2k3 (now English) for this because it's charming. I'm also subject to its limitations. 3 frames of animation, 8-bit 320x240, and on and on. I upsized this shit 2x so it can be looked at with new eyes that see one pixel as four pixels. The new RM2K3 doesn't like this project so well - there will be a MASSIVE re-importing into it someday soon, so that native screenshots will look better than the 640x480 ones I've posted.
 
On to the gamestuff
 
Almost everything is randomly decided or influenced by var values. Everything is de-boring-ized by being given many variations that have differences that matter if you have no life and look into them or something. The plot is procedurally generated according to a ruleset.
 
This game makes you rely on spatial memory to navigate when in the wilderness. The scenery becomes surreal.  The fractals ARE the landscape, with cleverness applied for overhang/pass-through effects. Battle/victory music is almost always the same as the map's music for that 'cinematic' feel.
 

 
"FLORIDA"
 

 
"VANISH" (emergency teleport/escape spot, full of BAD MONSTERS that the 'land' must be reclaimed from)
 

 
"ORIGIN" (zoomed in)
 

 
"MACAW"
 
For most of 'em, I generated 640x480 fractal backgrounds with Apophysis. The transparent PNG backgrounds were then Photoshopped to look how I liked (posterize rules) and sliced into four 320x240 images. Finally, the whole picture was shrunk to 320x240. So there's five 'quadrants' of a 'map' that can represent different areas, different degrees of progress, or just visual variation when you're wanderin'n'fightin'.
I use 'zoom in/out' for battle/map transitions so it looks like you're zooming in and out of (regions of) the fractal. It's pretty nifty.
 

 
Unnamed wind-fan-like extraplanar monster. 
 

 
Unnamed velella/by-the-wind-sailor-like monster.
 

 
Challenge map 'ORIGIN'. For now it has all the devstuff I use to test the game. All NPC interactions call a menu that lets you choose expressions, vibes, make gesticulations, give items, and do other neat stuff. Lots of conditional forks, man.
 

 
New loadscreen. Faces are lazily scaled-up placeholders. I like 'em, though.
 

 
Dev Store. Has everything a Dev needs.
 

 
Old menu screen with old 'face' sprites. The game has no "levels" - clr is "clearance" and refers to Spey Organization security access. No experience either - raising stats is hard and takes work, but practice and study pay off. No grinding monsters unless you want their parts for crafting or something, and even then, fighting works differently than other RPGs. The default side-view ATB system is used, but heavily modified.
 
 
 

 
One of the old 'dossier' cards you'd view when selecting a character.
Yeah, different universe. They still use our zodiac until I make one up. Let's just assume it's what they'd be if they were here. It (Zodiac sign) barely matters and is mostly just RNG fodder. There is not only PSI but 'magic' in this game, but hardly any. If it had a full magic system like other ESOS 'verses, Zodiac sign would matter a lot more - for now it's just an interesting tidbit.
 
So, what IS D2:ES about? Basically, the plot picks someone to host a lycanthropy-like disease that involves becoming a ragamuffin-junk-golem-thing that steals useless objects, grinds 'em up, and turns 'em into soup, all to synthesize the taste of chicken even though several well-known creatures in the world are already the exact taste and texture of chicken. People're stuck on chicken, it doesn't exist, but they're curious and Garou just steers one of 'em around robbing the entire town and feeding its ill-gotten gains back to them. Anyway, you can try to figure out who's Garou if you want, or do all that cool open-world shit.
  • Avatar of Zephram
  • sharing is despairing
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thecatamites informed me of this place.
 
I make all kinds of things in all kinds of media, but mainly music/sfx and video games. I write scripts for games as if they were movies or choose-your-own-adventure books, then put 'em together.
 
This seems like a place where creativity and discussion can flow unhindered. I dig it!
I'm not sure what to post to showcase my work since it's prolific, to say the least. I'm working on jamming a bunch of it onto an html page.
 
This intro kinda sucks, but it's really intimidating just trying to describe the extent of my own dumbassery. I'm not involved in other gamedev communities, but had mentioned looking for a friendly one to thecatamites.
 
My only active project at present is both a prequel and a sequel, which ties two of my other unrelated stories together with its own, and which has procedurally-generated plot, art/sound style, and character traits/development. I am thinking of posting the complete design document, but am not sure whether it's a good idea, since it's a work in progress. It's also a big text file full of links and explanations that describes what goes on in the actual engine (currently RM2K3). Do we talk about that sort of thing around here?
 
Either way... Hi! ^_^