Today I ventured out to Hadleigh as part of a new library initiative to provide alternative activities on Saturday evenings for teenagers. So we decided to design and make a platform game in two hours (see screen shots).
Each person got to design a level, draw the good guy, bad guy and items and we managed to do it all. I let them use a new new piece of sprite editing and composite software I made in Processing which helps speed up the editing (I do love Processing).
The new software I created allows the participants to draw in a 64X64 grid and the software edits and composite the graphics ready for the game engine. I suppose in a kind a way it’s like a platform game version of the Shoot-em-up Construction kit on the Commodore 64. It’s good the participants get to learn about game mechanics, and just what goes on behind the screen, not the coding side but cause and effect and how objects interact with one another. Good fun was had and hopefully some of them will carry on making games.
“Sonus (One)” is a spatial realisation of aleatoric or randomly generated music. Although not all of the music is left to chance, the player can intervene albeit in a seemingly haphazard manner. Use the blocks either to block the flow of the balls or to trap them removing them from play.
The software in part inspired by the work and teachings of John Cage, with “Sonus (One)” adding the dimension of space to the music of chance. Not only letting “sounds be themselves” but giving them room to do so.
“Sonus (One)” is part of the “Otherwise Autonomous” collection of digital instruments designed and programmed by Pixelh8.The instruments are a culmination of three years of Masters Degree research in to alternative musical instruments and notation systems. “Sonus (One)” is the first of many, “Sonus (Two)” already in production.
I was very fortunate and dare I say honoured to give a talk at the John Cage “Everyday is a good day” exhibition at the Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. I admittedly was nervous Cage’s influence on me as a musician was extremely important in my formative years and it was a little shaky at the start when discussing his ideas about chance and silence. During the talk I discussed how through Cage’s work I learned to stop and listen to the sounds around me and got in to chip tune music, how I expanded those concepts and included them in “Obsolete?” and “Observations” by way of visual and sonic chance. And finally how I created a piece of software called “SONUS (One)” (out soon) to illustrate a spatial realisation of chance music on the Apple iPhone and Android phone. It was good fun and good questions from the audience, I do really like Cambridge hopefully I will be there a lot more soon.
These are the preview trailers for the upcoming Pixelh8 double album, “The Schematic” an album split between “Vol 1. Software” happy poppy classic chiptune and “Vol 2. Hardware” aggressive and ambient glitch chaos chiptune. Utilising computers from the 80′s and 90′s such as the BBC Micro, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amiga 500, we hope you will enjoy the sound.
Internationally renowned chip tune musician, teacher, designer and published author Pixelh8 / Matthew C. Applegate makes his music from reprogramming some of the oldest and rarest vintage computer systems in the world.
Parallel to his involvement in music performance, Pixelh8 encourages creative computing in schools and workshops across the United Kingdom and is a PhD research Degree student researching "Educational Music Technology".
Today I ventured out to Hadleigh as part of a new library initiative to provide alternative activities on Saturday evenings for teenagers. So we decided to design and make a platform game in two hours (see screen shots).
The new software I created allows the participants to draw in a 64X64 grid and the software edits and composite the graphics ready for the game engine. I suppose in a kind a way it’s like a platform game version of the Shoot-em-up Construction kit on the Commodore 64. It’s good the participants get to learn about game mechanics, and just what goes on behind the screen, not the coding side but cause and effect and how objects interact with one another. Good fun was had and hopefully some of them will carry on making games.
