Something Unreal

This release fixes the bug which the previous release added. The bug would cause the program to freeze with a constant tone coming out of the system speaker, when trying to play only one note, when there wasn’t enough CPU time free. If you were using FMOD, it wouldn’t have frozen – it only did this when using the system speaker. No more! =D

There’s also some more information in ‘info.txt’ related to fixing initial problems when trying to run the program for the first time.

Here’s the usual program download place and new BMM music files download place.

How stupid I felt after realising something so obvious that I messed up in the previous release. It didn’t even pay attention to the “Note/Silence Ratio” slider, when playing only a Note 1 or Note 2.

Fixed. Of course, please use this instead of the previous one. All the timing-fixing is stilled fixed. =D

Here’s the usual program download place and new BMM music files download place.

I’ve finally cracked all timing problems with the program! No longer do you have to worry about it getting out of sync with long notes or high “Note/Silence Ratio” settings, when that’s what the program should be dealing with itself – and now it does!

I consider this such an important fix/update that I’m upping the version to 0.6. If you haven’t gathered already, I seriously recommend updating to this version if you have an earlier version. ;P

As usual, the place to get the latest version is right here. =)

I’ve also updated info.txt, and included 2 new songs – “The Hourai Jewel, Ever Beautiful” by IOSYS (featured in the last video uploaded), and a very different one: “Face Down” by “The Red Jump-suit Apparatus”, which I’d like to make a video of soon.

I’m making a BMM music download section on my site too, although so far all music which will be on the site is included in the program download anyway, in a folder called “music”… will edit this post when done.

You can find the BMM music files here (although all files here so far are included with this revision 124 of the program).

This took the longest to transcribe, by far, of all my bleeper music compositions – about 5 hours.

The song is a remix, by IOSYS, of 2 themes from Touhou 08 “Imperishable Night”, and it’s called 「蓬莱の玉、どこまでも美しく」. Its title has been translated to “The Hourai Jewel, Ever Beautiful”.

The song was made by IOSYS in 2 parts, A and B.
- Part A: 「竹取飛翔」 “Flight of the Bamboo Cutter” (Kaguya Houraisan’s theme).
- Part B: 「Voyage 1970」 (Eirin and Kaguya’s Last Spell theme)

The chorus of Part A repeats to finish the song. So it’s like A-B-A.
Part B gave me so much hassle. The tune really is beautiful, but the beauty is complex. x_x

For those who don’t know – this is a program I made, for creating music with the internal ‘system speaker’ inside PCs. Then I made this music using it. It’s playing along with the original song on my main computer speakers.

I tried to liven things up visually this time with my 4-light sequencer. =D

I’ve fixed a couple of annoying bugs in the program!

Having the “Note/Silence Ratio” slider too high (above about 95%) used to make the program get out of sync with how the tempo really should be. Now, even having it up to maximum shouldn’t be a problem at all. Note that if other programs are hogging your CPU, it still may get a little out of sync until the next silent part. I will certainly try to fix this in a later release.

Also, the way FMOD used to struggle and stutter when trying to alternate between notes is completely gone. The quality of how FMOD pulses now is comparible to how the PC speaker beeps. Theoretically, old computers or cheap soundcards might struggle now, so if you notice any problems, please contact me and I won’t hesitate to fix it. (I know what to do – I’ve just avoided doing it because it will add a short amount of lag from when the note should be heard to when the note is actually heard.) It works fine for me as it is now, but as I said, if anyone has problems… ;)

Here’s the usual link to download the latest version, which is now this revision 123.

Showing off more of this fun little useless thing I made with my bro, after the rather brief original video. It shows how I’ve integrated it with my Bleeper Music Maker program to let you make music for the motor more easily.

I said “I haven’t shown you this before” because I actually made this video before I made my already-uploaded bleeper music videos. I just uploaded them in a different order, because I wasn’t sure I was ever going to upload this.

My actual YouTube page of this is here.

I’ve made a new signature – a Touhou Project one – for a forum which I hang around on (AnimeNuke). There’s something fairly rare about it, considering I made it – no cuteness, just an attempt of showing off the Touhou games’ awesomeness. That’s by no means saying that the Touhou girls aren’t cute, it’s saying that I haven’t actually used them, and it’s even rarer that I’d choose not to use that.

Click to see it in full-size.

I was trying to make one with a really insanely hot/active feel to it. There’s not much more intense/fast-paced than the Touhou games, so I tried to recreate that feeling… and yes, I used 2 screenshots from one of the games (Imperishable Night). I tried to blur the “東方″ into both of the attack formations.

I was playing around with my keyboard (Yamaha PSR-E313) which has MIDI in and out capability, and I was thinking “I wonder how the music from Imperishable Night would sound through this thing…” (since Imperishable Night has an option of MIDI music in its Options screen). I made this little YouTube video out of the result.

The actual YouTube page is here. The idea was that the keyboard’s display would let you see the notes as they’re played (the notes on Channel 1 of the MIDI, so sometimes nothing shows up). But YouTube did as good a job as ever at making the audio and video get out of sync, so it’s hard to follow. <_<

I’m having trouble getting it to set up the channels properly, i.e. what should be PERCUSSION comes out as PIANO. That is, until I start playing a MIDI file on the keyboard itself – at that point, it sets up its channels properly. That means it’s restricted to playing the Touhou music using instrument sets from the MIDIs I have stored on the keyboard at the moment.
So what I’m doing is getting the Imperishable Night music playing on my computer as MIDI, it goes to my keyboard, then I start and immediately pause another unrelated MIDI on the keyboard itself, to force it to set its channels up properly. This means you’re hearing the Touhou music using different sets of instruments than intended to (the instruments of the unrelated MIDIs). I use a few random unrelated MIDIs, so you get to hear the music in a few different sets of instruments.When I unplugged the MIDI cable, it was to prove that it really is playing in realtime. I want to connect the MIDI out of my computer to the MIDI in of my computer, and record, to ‘extract’ the MIDI files from the game. But I need to get some little adaptor to allow me to connect 2 male cables to each other.

Calming down from the ‘technicalness’ of my last entry, I’m proud to announce that there’s a new sticker on the front of my computer. (Click for full-size view)

And Miku is installed on my computer, so it’s not lying! =D It updates my rather old-style “Intel inside” sticker, since it’s in the fancy new style of Intel’s stickers:

The actual “Miku Hatsune inside” image was made by Narugami (from NicoNico). The page where they uploaded this image (which I’ve used here) is here. (…Is it just me, or did that last sentence sound weird?) I printed it on an address label, by the way. And I’m going to have to do it again when my new computer’s up and running. :P

I decided, after a very long time of doing nothing with my robotic arm, to make a program for it. It’s nothing too fancy when I think about it (it did only take today and yesterday to make), but I was excited when I finally saw it working. =D

Here’s the YouTube video!

By the way, the arm’s a Lynx6. Check out the great LynxMotion for more info. It can also move the wrist up and down (although I didn’t use it much here), and rotate the wrist (which I didn’t use at all here). I made the program in VB6.

EDIT: Since it’s such a small program and people can learn from it, I’m releasing a ZIP of the VB6 project files (source code) for the program. Here’s the link.