Update

I've been busy lately. The journey to begin to understand FPGA programming is neither short nor easy.

Video Games

GrazerBeam is still a thing. I haven't done any actual work on it, but I've put a little thought into it. I ordered a Pandora, so when I get mine and fine the time I'll start work on GrazerBeam for that. I feel that analog sticks would allow for more skill-based difficulty or something.

I've got another small game in development called Ten Strokes to Victory (nsfw). It combines elements from the rhythm, typing, and masturbation genres. It's much simpler than GrazerBeam, so I'm going to try to get some work done on weekends, maybe, if there's time. That means I might finish it before May.

Not Video Games

I'm turning away from video games some in my personal projects. I've got two projects in the works that relate to music. Sinusynth is a parametric sinusoidal synthesizer. I made the original prototype in September and used it to make this abomination. There are a number of improvements that can be made, including dynamic synchronization of phase to phase 0 at t = 0 to avoid undesirable volume changes caused by changes in frequency. There are also some significant simplifications that can be made to the way sounds are described.

The other project is one that I also prototyped last year. I don't know what the demand is, and I don't particularly care, but there aren't a lot of Theremin companies out there, so maybe there is a market, especially given how much most Theremins cost. I've had the opportunity to play a Moog Etherwave, and having tried to build some Theremins on breadboards, I can really appreciate the excellent engineering that went into the instrument. It's really, really beautiful...

Anyway, I feel like there's a lot more that can be done with the Theremin form than has been done. A typical Theremin produce a single output signal consisting of a frequency and an amplitude. The signal can be amplified and played by a loudspeaker, but that's about it. It's not useful for much else.

I intend to create a Theremin that outputs two voltage signals: one to describe frequency, and one to describe volume. Different modules can then be installed in the Theremin or connected to the Theremin to produce tones based on those two voltage signals. The Theremin could serve as a standalone instrument using oscillator and signal processing modules, or it could serve as an analog controller for some other instrument or device using its two voltage outputs.

Modules might also be used to modify the way the Theremin is played. A simple differentiator on the volume signal changes the volume control from a position sensor to a motion sensor, so that the faster the performers hand moves, the louder the Theremin plays. The voltage signals could be processed by a microcontroller and discretized to produce only notes of a scale or transformed to change the relationship between distance between the performer and the antenna and output pitch or volume.

Summary

I intend to begin work on the modular Theremin project full time in May. If I have received my Pandora, I may also begin work on GrazerBeam in may during my free time. Along the way I may drop a little time in a few other things here and there, but until May I don't expect to get much done.

Blur/Glow/CRT

Was messing around with some ideas for GrazerBeam and some techniques from DSP. Ended up with this. It's not much of a CRT, but I think it looks nice.

GrazerBeam

It's been a couple weeks since I stopped on limit quest and started grazerbeam, so this post is a little bit overdue.

Also improved the width so that images are no longer cutoff all the time.

LORA finished, Limit Quest just beginning

3D gameplay, 2D graphics. Tile sizes are 33"x33"x22" and derived from the character's height ,which is why they are in inches. The guy there is for size reference. Movement involves ladders, stairs, and ramps as well as futuristic devices such as teleporter rays and pneumatic elevators (not shown).

LORA progress

Cells Redux Image loading bug

I have found that on a number of windows computers, Cells Redux fails to load images. Further investigation reveals that this is not true. The SFML image gives the correct height and width of images, openGL appears to create the textures without any problem. I honestly don't know why its not displaying anything.

I plan to rebuild the Windows version using static linking and a newer version of gcc in the near future. Maybe that will fix it. I sure hope so.

Cells Redux Complete

Available here for windows and linux.