Archive for August, 2008

“Crazier” StepMania announcer (I apologize in advance)

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 31, 2008
in Games and Random
. 2 Comments

“Crazier” for StepMania 3.9 (←Download, 21.2 MB)

StepMania announcer by me (Robbi-985) and my bro (Stevn-986) (aka Something Unreal and Steeeven1).

This announcer intended to be used on StepMania 3.9. Although it mainly works with StepMania CVS 4 as well, it does randomly say something like “Come on, man, pick up the pace!” every now and then. This is a bug within SM 4, though, and is noticable when using any announcer.

Information
This is a really insane announcer consisting of needless distorted shouting, messed-up lines and dodgy accents. I apologize for the severe distortion, but without amplifying them so much and performing an EQ on them to boost the treble so much, it was too hard to hear them over the majority of the StepMania songs I have.

We originally made this announcer for a theme I was going to make called “StepCrazier” (yeah, we didn’t spend much time thinking of a name) which I never did get around to making anyway. So the “title menu game name” and “title menu attract” sounds all involve that name. Therefore, when they inevitably become unbearably annoying, please just delete those folders.

Installation
Just extract this ZIP file to the “Announcers” folder within your StepMania folder. Make sure that a folder called “Crazier” is created, and directly within it is a large number of other folders.

To actually get StepMania to use this announcer, go to StepMania’s options, then “Appearance”, and set “Announcer” to “Crazier”.

Sota’s Cheap Touchscreen effect with normal 19 ” TFT + Bemani Style

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 31, 2008
in Random and Videos
. 0 Comments

Firstly, Sota’s made an awesome touchscreen effect by using a Wiimote (which can pinpoint the position of an infrared light) and putting an infrared LED and switch into a pen. It’s really cool, and thankfully, he’s made a video to share the awesomeness.

Secondly, I’ve uploaded our remix of Shikieiki’s theme, “Critical Judgement”, to Bemani Style - here’s the download link. It will probably be faster to download from here.

Remix: “Critical Judgement” - StepMania

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 27, 2008
in Games, Music, Touhou and Videos
. 3 Comments

My friend, Sota Systems (Sota250993), and I, made this techno remix of Shikieiki’s theme, “Critical Judgement”, after hearing IOSYS’s remix of the same theme, “Koko de atta ga 60 nenme”. Then I made a StepMania simfile for it.

We play it on StepMania at the same time, but in our own separate countries, recording our gameplay with several cameras, and here you see it all mixed into one video - our combined gameplay views. I have a few custom things connected to my comp being controlled by StepMania. ;D

You can download the simfile (even if you don’t play StepMania, it’s just a ZIP and it includes the MP3) from a new “StepMania Simfiles” section of my site, here.

Also in the video is a crazy announcer which my bro (”Steeeven1″) and I made, after being told that a previous attempt wasn’t crazy enough. I won’t provide a download link for it unless anyone seriously wants one. ;P

The StepMania theme is called Pop☆Candy 2, and you can get it from the author’s site, here.

Subwoofer Mod

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 24, 2008
in Music, Random and Videos
. 4 Comments

My friend Sota-sama did a neat little mod to his subwoofer the other day, making blue LEDs flash in the pressure hole. Looks really neat in my opinion. It makes me wonder… why don’t companies make subs like this?

If you’d like to comment, it’s probably best to comment on the YouTube page, since this is his, and not mine, after all. ;)

Bleeper Music Maker (revision 139)

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 22, 2008
in Music and Programs
. 3 Comments

This release halves the time the program takes to initialize MIDI output (and when changing what channel to send the data on) - on some soundcards, this is quite noticable. You also now get a little status message at the bottom of the “MIDI Output Settings” window when things like that are happening. Also, program should no longer crash when you enable MIDI input or MIDI output on computers which don’t have a MIDI in/out device (thanks to Ed for pointing out that bug to me).

(Usual download place)

The next release should be the best in… well, possibly the best ever. The reason? It should have a built-in MIDI file player. Yep! So you can play MIDI files directly through your PC speaker, straight from the program (without needing a soundcard or MIDI device). I’ve been putting off coding this for a long time, but 140 is a nice number. So “stay tuned”, as they say, people.

Bleeper Music Maker (revision 138)

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 21, 2008
in Music and Programs
. 3 Comments

This improves the logging (makes it more detailed), and adds an option of, while using MIDI input, trying to make each “cycle” of the currently-held notes last for the same amount of time. Let me try to explain this better - when you play vast and complex MIDIs, as more notes are held down, it starts to sound silly as the cycling through the notes becomes too slow. This option tries to make the cycles always be at the same speed, even as more notes are held down, by playing each note for less time. It should always work with FMOD, and should work with the PC speaker with hyperthreaded computers. Oh, this also adds a little number in the MIDI input area which tells you how many notes are currently being held on, so you don’t have to count the number of red squares to find out any more. >_<

(Click image for full-size view)

(Usual download place)

Model aircraft nitro engine, computer-controlled

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 20, 2008
in Random
. 2 Comments

My brother’s new engine being controlled from a laptop. He made a little makeshift frame for the engine, the starter’s battery and the microcontroller. There is a program he made in VB6 on the laptop, which sends commands to the microcontroller via a serial cable, which controls a Futaba servo, which moves the throttle on the engine via a paperclip, which spins the propellor and spinner up to 17,000 RPM.

We’re just messing around here. =D

He intends to buy a plane chassis and RF transmitter/receiver to make a full remote-control plane in the near future - as soon as he has the money.

I apologize for the low video quality - I was recording with my PSP, and had to reduce the video quality because the memory stick was almost full. The video still ended due to it running out of space, though.

The engine is a Thunder Tiger GP42.
The microcontroller is an SSC-32 made by LynxMotion (yep, we use these in so many things).

…And to anyone who’s seen our “singing motor” videos - well, I’d love to do it, but he won’t let me. -_-

Bleeper Music Maker (revision 137)

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 12, 2008
in Music and Programs
. 4 Comments

This fixes the crash when you try to exit the program. Since you were already wanting the program to exit, it wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t right, and was annoying to me. The bug had only been introduced somewhere in the last few releases, and was probably only present on computers which have no MIDI input device.

(Usual download place)

Bleeper Music Maker (revision 136)

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 9, 2008
in Music and Programs
. 1 Comment

A tiny update which allows the PC speaker to be truely 100% note and 0% silence, when you set the Note/Silence Ratio slider to 100%. It’s been working with FMOD for some time, and with the PC speaker on CPUs without hyperthreading, but this update makes it work with CPUs with hyperthreading. I have yet to test it on a CPU without hyperthreading, though…

(Usual download place)

Heh, I like the way that this shows up on the blog as being released “a whole day” after revision 135, when in reality, it is actually only about 38 minutes since I released 135. That’s gotta be the shortest-lived version yet. Well, at least I’m keeping busy.

EDIT: Just fixed it so that notes don’t sound so rushed-on any more, and updated this ‘136′ revision, but releasing a 137 already would be ridiculous. The first note after silence (a blank line) will be 20 milliseconds early now, rather than 100 (still only when Note/Silence Ratio is set to 100%).

EDIT 2: Just tried to make the synchronized play be synchronized again (why am I finding that so hard?) and updated the 136 release. I also tried to get FMOD slightly more ‘in tune’ with the PC speaker.

Bleeper Music Maker (revision 135)

Published
by
Robbi-985
on August 8, 2008
in Music and Programs
. 0 Comments

Well, I discovered that in the last release, FMOD sounded absolutely terrible, and this releases fixes that. I should really test things more before I release them… =/

(Usual download place)

Also, there’s a new “debug logging” feature - if you create a file named ‘logenable’ (with no extension, and nothing needs to be stored in the file) in the same folder as the program, detailed information about exactly what’s going on in the program will be written (or appended) to a file called ‘debuglog.txt’ (also in the same folder). If you have problems with Bleeper Music Maker, telling me what the problem is as well as sending this file to me should allow me to diagnose the exact problem much more quickly, because I’ll be able to see exactly where it ‘trips up’. Note that having logging enabled will make the program require more CPU power (and therefore, probably decrease performance).