Parks and Recreations Ben Wyatt is a great nerd character, becoming completely lost in his hobbies are various points in the series, much like most of us real-life geeks. His magnum opus to nerdity is his “punishingly intricate” table top game, Cones of Dunshire. It appears to be mocking Settlers of Cat’an but looks to be about ten times as complex. In the show, it becomes a surprise hit on the Internet and with his complexity-loving buddies at Tilton and Randomski Accounting Firm. The show’s finale even shows it’s sequel Winds of Tremorrah, which is supposed to be even more insane.
Well, some fans who just don’t feel that the current table-top games and RPGs are hard enough to learn, are running a kickstarter to have Cones of Dunshire made, for reals! They have about 10 days left, so, if you’re into that sort of thing, help them out!
I’ve been working with Gazapper for a while now. This is probably our 4th title together. Gazapper continues to bring us classic feels from the 80s and 90s consoles on our modern phones. You play Super Box Boy who must rescue his lady box freind from the clutches of an evil box factory. Super Box Boy has the look and feel of something straight off the gameboy DMG01. It’s also has that deceptively simple appearance that Donkey Kong has. It looks simple, but its not! It’s a great trip down memory lane and will get you addicted quicker than you think. Pick it up today [play]
Moore Interactive has really created something cool with Chesslike. Imagine a game of chess, but instead of a square board, you have a dungeon-like maze from Zelda. It’s a novel idea but it plays out really nicely. Some levels pit you in a maze filled with enemy pieces, others put you in crazy scenarios like 2 queens vs 10 rooks. It’s chess like you’ve never played it. As you move thru the levels you encounter more interesting scenarios. You will come to dread what I call the “knight mazes” – just crossing a room to get a key as a knight requires some serious thought. Fortunately, the difficulty is well-balanced and never overwhelming.
For the music of Chesslike, we create some light medieval-themed chiptunes that with a soft edge to them. It’s a little lighter than the standard Beatscribe tunes. The soundtrack is free right now on band camp. Go grab a copy!
Imagos Software only has about 48 hours left to raise at least $2,000 on their kickstarter for an amazing game that combines SCUMM elements with SHMUP fun!
As chiptune fans, not only do we have a possibility of getting an awesome game for PC, Mac and Linux (possibly the consoles should they hit their stretch goal), but the possibility of getting almost 4 albums filled with chiptune regulars like Alex Mauer, Bright Primate, Cheap Dinosaurs and more should they reach their stretch goal.
It’s definitely worth putting some money towards. The T-Shirt is really slick looking too.
If you haven’t checked out Russ Lyman’s retro gaming channel, you should. Not just because he now has a megaman inspired theme song by me. I mean look at the car this guy drives. He may be a bigger fan of retro gaming than me!
Had some down time so I decided to dig into the iTunes package and screw with some things. 8bit NES iTunes came out the other end. If you’re interested in a tutorial on doing this (it doesn’t need to be 8-bit, you can modify various things in it with the right tools), post a comment. Otherwise this stays one of a kind :)
If there is one Sega game soundtrack we will remember forever, without a doubt it’s Sonic the Hedgehog. The bar was set high by the games original tracks and every game that followed pushed the envelope without changing the amazing core formula. Game Chops’ awesome new Spindash album has some amazing reimagined versions of some of the most beloved Sonic tracks from various games in the series.
The album starts with a tease of a starlight zone remix, playing those lovely and familiar first three notes before juxtaposing into a pretty sweet Hydrocity Zone remix by Coda. Personal favorites for me personally include a remake of Sonic CD’s Stardust Speedway that recalls everything that is amazing about Daft Punk. My all time favorite Sonic track is the Marble Zone from Sonic 1, and Absrdst’s glitchy remix does not disappoint. Cutman himself puts a minor key harmonic change on the Starlight Zone classic to give it a erie middle-eastern flavor.
I admit I did not know some of the tracks from the newer sonic games like Sonic Colors and Knuckles Chaotix, but the remixes made me want to check out the originals. I highly recommend picking up this awesome album today!
Plogue Chipsounds works great with its presets. But that wave table can really throw you off if you’re new to the tool. This should will help you learn how to use it to create classic sounds and also show you some great examples along the way.
Wave Sequencer Settings
Sync – This determines if the steps that happen in your wave table are in time with your MIDI tempo or the tempo specified in the BPM.
BPM – Set’s the internal BPM of the controller. It can be overridden by clicking Sync.
Vel – Check this if you want the notes playing to respond to the velocity (how hard you hit it) of your keyboard or midi notes. If you uncheck this, notes play at full volume. Usually you want to uncheck this for realistic NES sounds.
Loop start – Once the entire wave table plays through, this tells it where to start looping (if at all).
Rel Start – If you don’t want to start at the first command the first time through, put the step value in here that you wish to start on.
We will cover Sequence settings in a future tutorial.
The Table
Let’s start by looking at what each feature is for and the options under each one.
T – The T column is for tempo. This controls the length of each sequence of commands and notes that you play. For example, if you make two wave table items with T = ¼, when you play the note, the commands will execute starting from when the midi event (or keyboard hit) is detected and then the second command will kick of ¼ of a note later. Check the Sync checkbox to have it get it’s tempo from the MIDI environment (aka your song’s tempo). You can also put T=0 which means you want to change something about the upcoming note but not actually have it count time for this command. We’ll see how this works in the examples later on.
Type – The type column explains what each step will actually do. They are defined of the following:
Null – Nothing happens, use this to leave a gap or a delay of a certain time before the next command executes.
CC – Control Channel – You use this to change things like the vibrato, expression (volume level), filter cutoff ect.
NoteOn / NoteOff – These do what you’d think, they tell the note to play or not to play. You can use this to make gaps, echoes and arpeggios.
Pitch – This will take the note up or down the amount you specify in the Evt1 column. It is used for making arpeggios.
KS – Keyswitch controls which of the channels of the default chip you are using, you use this to change from pulse1 to pulse2 to triangle, to noise. This can create some interesting effects that would be hard to do in a real tracker but not impossible for the chip to play.
Evt1 Column – The settings here depend on the type you’ve selected. For CC it’s the selection of the note property you wish to change. It will give you a drop-down of valid choices based on your type. For pitch, it is the amount of up or down steps you wish to go.
Evt2 Column – This column is usually the value of the change For example, if you select Type CC and Evt1 = 1 (which is Pitch LFO Depth aka Vibrato) Evt2 tells the system how much vibrato you want to be added to the note at this point.
Some examples will explain it best. We will explain what happens at each step in the process.
Echo
0 – The note plays for 1/64 of a whole note.
1 – The note is turned off for 1/48th of a whole note.
2 – The note is turned back on but at a lower volume (evt2=61)
3 – The note it turned off again.
4 – The note is turned on again at a much lower volume (evt2=20)
The 64th and 48th notes give it the offbeat echo effect that we commonly hear in music.
Looping Staccato Arpeggio
0 – The note is turned on and plays for 1/64th.
1 – The note is muted for 1/64th.
2 – The pitch is stepped up 5 half-steps. Since T=0, this is done before the next note plays.
3 – The next 5 half-step higher note plays for 1/64th.
4 – The note is turned off for 1/64th.
5 – The pitch is changed to +12, since T=0 it’s done before the next note plays (no time passes)
6 – The note is played an octave above the original for 1/64th.
7 – the note is muted again.
Loop start = 2 – the sequence goes back to step 2 until the user lets go of the keyboard or the MIDI note ends.
Increasing Vibrato
0 – The volume (CC=11) is set to 127 (evt2=127)
1 – The vibrato (CC=1) is set to 0. No time has passed, nor has a note played.
2 – The note begins to play for ¼, each time a key is pressed, steps 0 and 1 execute with no time pass before this step.
3,4,5 – After 1/8 the vibrato (CC=11) is increased slightly.
6 – The volume (CC=11) is decreased slightly.
7 – The vibrato reaches its maximum of 8 here.
Make sense? It’s really about setting up a series of steps that happen in a finite space of time. Do it right and you can really get some sweet sounds of out this unit.
One of the great things about being a freelance composer, is you get to work with people from all over the world and all types of games. I was commissioned to do a couple of fun 16-bit style arcade songs a few months ago for BDI Software and now their sweet games are hitting the shelves.
War of the Coins, Satoshi Puzzle and Spin of the Coins are all fairly involved multiplayer card game endeavors that have an interesting thing in common, they teach you about online currencies such as AltCoin and BitCoin.
Pick up these fun games today for both Android or iOS.
Parks and Recreations Ben Wyatt is a great nerd character, becoming completely lost in his hobbies are various points in the series, much like most of us real-life geeks. His magnum opus to nerdity is his “punishingly intricate” table top game, Cones of Dunshire. It appears to be mocking Settlers of Cat’an but looks to be about ten times as complex. In the show, it becomes a surprise hit on the Internet and with his complexity-loving buddies at Tilton and Randomski Accounting Firm. The show’s finale even shows it’s sequel Winds of Tremorrah, which is supposed to be even more insane.
