I'm making a game based on simple song creation, and I'm planning on having a feature where players can listen to the songs they've created with the game. the rhythm of the melody is controlled with a system of timers, but this will not work for the backing track presets I am planning on implementing, as each mp3 file in the backing tracks represents one bar instead of one note.
while it would be possible to use my timer system for playing the backing tracks, this would require several more audio files, much more coding and would push the project far behind schedule. therefore, i need to manipulate the playback speeds of the files I already have. I've commonly seen two examples of how to do this, here: http://2008.kelvinluck.com/2008/11/first-steps-with-flash-10-audio-programming/ and here: http://blog.andre-michelle.com/2009/pitch-mp3/
the problem with both of these is that they also alter the pitch as well. this is a problem for me, as I would very much like players to be able to alter the pitch and tempo of their songs separately. I think the code I need is similar to the examples above, but I'm having trouble understanding those since I haven't had much experience with bytearrays and such. I'd like to be able to understand the examples i included so that I can figure out what I need to do in order to get my game working the way it should, but help of any sort is appreciated. thank you =)
You can try https://github.com/also/soundtouch-as3
there is an early (alpha) demo at http://static.ryanberdeen.com/projects/soundtouch-as3/demo/player/stretch.swf
quality is "acceptable" if you are using 1.0x-1.5x factor (less than 1.0 gives very artificial distortion)
You could also try :
http://iq12.com/old_blog/2009/08/25/real-time-pitch-shifting/
test : Online demo
Their online demo didn't load a track for me (deleted MP3?), so I put a recompiled SWF on my server just for testing. It loads this MP3 audio clip, if you wanna compare results to original sound.
It aims to preserve audio length (time scale) whilst adjusting pitch (deeper when slow or higher when faster). You could possibly combine this with Kelvin Luck's Second Steps.... Thereby having example codes for speed and pitch.
It was inspired by some C# code ported from this C code as found at (with concept explanation) : http://blogs.zynaptiq.com/bernsee/pitch-shifting-using-the-ft/
Related
Is it possible to create an automatically generated Rhythm game for Flash Action Script 3 ?
But not just randomly generated, generated from the notes of a song. Or is that something I have to do manually?
How would I go about doing either of these?
I am currently following this tutorial: http://www.flashgametuts.com/tutorials/as3/how-to-make-a-rhythm-game-in-as3-part-4/ so perhaps it can be made to fit around this? (Go to the final part and View Source to see the full thing)
Thanks!
Depending on what you mean by rhythm game, check out the computeSpectrum() function of the SoundMixer class: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/media/SoundMixer.html#computeSpectrum()
There's an example of it working in the link, but basically what it does is take a snapshot of the current sound wave and puts normalised (-1 to 1) values in a ByteArray. What you do with those values is up to you - e.g. you might use them as a height field to generate terrain for example.
Repeat this every frame, and you get the gist
Welcome to SO!
First off, there is nothing already built in, to my knowledge. There may be something lurking around Google that someone else wrote, but you'd need to dig around for that (though I assume you already did.)
Generated from the notes of a song. Hmm, this will take some serious ingenuity and coding on your part. I'll point you in the right direction, but it is up to you to write the code. No one here will do it for you, but we'll happily help with specific problems in your code.
The crazy (yet potentially more fun) approach MAY BE to derive the data in a similar manner that an audio visualizer does...but I can't guarantee that will work. This would work best with MIDI-generated, single instrument songs. Here is a tutorial on visualizers.
A second approach may be to actually convert MIDI files directly. Again, I can't guarantee it will work, but it would theoretically be possible, seeing how MIDI files store data to begin with. Here's an answer on playing MIDI files, to get you started. Consider looking through their class.
However, the "easiest" approach would be to come up with some sort of system by which you store the note values for a song. You can manually enter the values in an array, or in a data file (such as XML) that you can load.
I put "easiest" in quotes because you'd have to account for a LOT of information - not just note values, but note duration, rhythm, and rests.
Anyway, those are just a few ideas to get you started. Good luck!
I'm trying to make a program that can convert ORG files into WAV files directly. The ORG format is similar to MIDI, in the sense that it is a list of "instructions" about when and how to play specific instruments, and a program plays these instruments for it to create the song.
However, as I said, I want to generate a WAV directly, instead of just playing the ORG. So, in a sense, I want to "play" the sounds into a WAV. I do know the WAV format and have created some files from raw PCM samples, but this isn't as simple.
The sounds generated by the ORG come from a bunch of files containing WAV samples I have. They're mono, 8-bit samples should be played at 22050Hz. They're all under a second long, and the largest aren't more than 11KB. I would assume that to play them all after each other, I would simply put the samples into the WAV one after the other. It isn't that simple though, as the ORG can have up to 16 different instruments playing at once, and each note of each instrument also has a pan (i.e. a balance, allowing stereo sound). What's more, each ORG has its own tempo (i.e. milliseconds between each point a sound can be played), and some sounds may be longer than this tempo, which means that two sounds on the same instrument can overlap. For instance, a note plays on an instrument, 90 milliseconds later the same note plays on the same instrument, but the first not hasn't finished, hence the first note plays into the second.
I just thought to explain all of that to be sure the situation is clear. In any case, I'd basically like to know how I would go about converting or "playing" an ORG (or if you like, a MIDI (since they're essentially the same)) into a WAV. As I mentioned each note does have a pan/balance, so the WAV would also need to be stereo.
If it matters at all, I'll be doing this in ActionScript 3.0 in FlashDevelop. I don't need any code (as that would be asking someone to do the work for me), but I just want to know how I would go about doing this correctly. An algorithm or two may be handy as well.
First let me say AS3 is not the best language to do these kind of things. Super collider would be a better and easier choice.
But if you want to do it in AS3 here's a general approach. I haven't tested any of it, this is pure theory.
First, put all your sounds into an array, and then find a way of matching the notes from your midi file to a position in the array.
I don't know the format of midi in depth, but I know the smallest value is a tick, and the length of a tick depends on the BPM. Here's the formula to calculate a midi tick: Midi Ticks to Actual PlayBack Seconds !!! ( Midi Music)
Let's say your tick is 2ms in length. So now you have a base value. You can fill a Vector (like an Array but faster) with what happens at every tick. If nothing happens at a particular tick, then insert a null value.
Now the big problem is reading that Vector. It's a problem because the Timer class does not work at small values like 2ms. But what you can do is check the ellapsed time in ms since the app started using getTimer(). You can have some loop that will check the ellapsed time, and whenever you have 2ms more, you read the next index in the Vector. If there are notes on that index, you play the sounds. If not you wait for the next tick.
The problem with this, is that if a loop goes on for more than 15 seconds (I'm not sure of that value) Flash will think the program is not responding and will kill it. So you have to take care of that too, ending the loop and opening a new one before Flash kills your program.
Ok, so now you have sounds playing. You can record the sounds that flash is making (wavs, mp3, mic) with a library called Standing Wave 3.
https://github.com/maxl0rd/standingwave3
This is very theoretical... and I'm quite sure depending on the number of sounds you want to play you can freeze your program... but I hope it will help to get you going.
I have an old SWF project file which is a series of png sequence to produce a 3D tour of numerous stadiums (If you can get it to load http://tinyurl.com/7h2zpcb). When I initially created it I never intended it to be published on the web (it was a university project) however I now would quite like to show it on the internet. The structure is of a main timeline with 4 stadiums each with a png sequence, then, when clicking on one of the stadiums, 4 more png sequences. The only problem is that it is all in one file and is over 12mb, plus has no pre-loader.
It is written in AS3 and is rather complicated as I used movie names and trimming to have reusable functions. It does however have global variables already set-up if this could help.
I have 2 questions. First, is there an easy method of separating out the project movies to 5 individual swf files. i.e main timeline, and each individual png sequence? Or will I need to copy and paste and copy assets over to each FLA file?
Secondly, would it just be easier to try using a preloaded and hoping that users wait for the project to download?
If you have any thoughts on this please give them. Is there a way to optimise the project in another way I am unaware of? As a side note there are a lot of pngs and total over 300mb when combined so I think XML is out of the question?
Thank you for your time. Any suggestions are welcome
For completeness' sake.
I did some research and tests and realised the time it would take to change the project to use any other technology would be too great for my needs. I simply just added a pre-loader to the site and saved myself a lot of extra time. When linking to the site I affix a message explaining that is for an offline installation and there may be a long load-time.
Hopefully this will help others in the future.
Thank you to Marty Wallace, shaunhusain and grapefrukt for their time and advice on this.
I am going to be working on self-chosen project for my college networking class and I just had a couple questions to help get me started in the right direction.
My project will involve creating a new "physical" link over which data, in the form of text, will be transmitted from one computer to another. This link will involve one computer with a webcam that reads a series of flashing colors (black/white) as binary and converts it to text. Each series of flashes will simulate a packet of data. I will be using OSX an the integrated webcam in a Macbook, the flashing computer will either be windows or osx.
So my questions are: which programming languages or API's would be best for reading live webcam data and analyzing the color of a certain area as well as programming and timing the flashes? Also, would I need to worry about matching the flash rate of the "writing" computer and the frame capture rate of the "reading" computer?
Thank you for any help you might be able to provide.
Regarding the frame capture rate, Shannon sampling theorem says that "perfect reconstruction of a signal is possible when the sampling frequency is greater than twice the maximum frequency of the signal being sampled". In other words if your flashing light switches 10 times per second, you need a camera of more than 20fps to properly capture that. So basically check your camera specs, divide by 2, lower the resulting a little and you have your maximum flashing rate.
Whatever can get the frames will work. If the light conditions in which the camera works are gonna be stable, and the position of the light on images is gonna be static then it is gonna be very very easy with checking the average pixel values of a certain area.
If you need additional image processing you should probably also find out about OpenCV (it has bindings to every programming language).
To answer your question about language choice, I would recommend java. The Java Media Framework is great and easy to use. I have used it for capturing video from webcams in the past. Be warned, however, that everyone you ask will recommend a different language - everyone has their preferences!
What are you using as the flashing device? What kind of distance are you trying to achieve? Something worth thinking about is how are you going to get the receiver to recognise where within the captured image to look for the flashes. Some kind of fiducial marker might be necessary. Longer ranges will make this problem harder to resolve.
If you're thinking about shorter ranges, have you considered using a two-dimensional transmitter? (given that you're using a two-dimensional receiver, it makes sense) and maybe have a transmitter that shows a sequence of QR codes (or similar encodings) on a monitor?
You will have to consider some kind of error-correction encoding, such as a hamming code. While encoding would increase the data footprint, it might give you overall better bandwidth given that you can crank up the speed much higher without having to worry about the odd corrupt bit.
Some 'evaluation' type material might include you discussing the obvious security risks in using such a channel - anyone with line of sight to the transmitter can eavesdrop! You could suggest in your writeup using some kind of encryption, a block cipher in CBC would do, but would require a key-exchange prior to transmission, so you could think about public key encryption.
I'm building a game such as Same Game, when I have to create a new level I've just run an algorithm to fill the board with N colors, this algorithm fills the board at random, but obviously the levels generated this way are not all has a solution.
I have to make a function to resolve this problem, so the game can be played by a perfect player for ever.
I have a maximum of 6 color and a minimum of 2 and the board has a reasonable size (14x12) but can be modified.
The language is irrelevant.
EDIT: I don't need to solve the puzzle, I need to create levels that has at least one solution.
I've just check out about five different versions of the game on Ubuntu and I've found an answer you can pillage from!
Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection
I play about five of his games incessantly but preferred Same GNOME. I just loaded up his Same Game and it has the option to ensure solubility when creating custom games. Even has a customisable scoring system. It's all awfully advanced.
An exe and source code is available from the above link.
And the license is MIT (meaning you can use it freely in commercial games - but please donate something to him if you can afford it)
One method, which, I'll add, is rarely the most efficient, is to build the level in reverse.
It's fairly simple to do in this case though. You just start with nothing and add clickable groups with some randomness... I say some randomness, as you may need to add extra blocks to make sure all columns are filled.
But thinking about it, even then there's a possibility two clickable groups you add will touch each other and cause an unforeseen collapse, resulting in an unfinishable game. So this method wouldn't guarantee a solvable game.
You could have a look at the source for an open source version like Same GNOME and see how they do it (if they do it at all!)
create a "solved" board, and then change it using N valid but random backwards moves. After adding each backward move, you could run the moves forward (on a temp board) to verify a solvable puzzle.
If you can't run a verification algorithm, because of time constraints, perhaps what you need to work with is a library of puzzles. You can have a background thread generating new random puzzles all the time, and running a verification algorithm on them to check if they are valid. When a valid puzzle is found, it is added to your library of puzzles (assuming the same puzzle doesn't already exist).
Then your game just loads randomly from the library. This allows you to ensure you always have valid puzzles, but still allows you to randomly generate them and verify them without slowing down the puzzle-loading.
I think the best way is, if you generate a level randomly, I mean add 1 or more blocks at the same time to the same column, so you're gonna have some connecting blocks. Then you write a simple solving algorithm, which just solves the board till there is no more possible moves. Then you just simply try to complete the remaining part, just pushing some blocks from the top so that you have some more blocks to vanish. You continue till you finish the board.
You store the pieces you added in another matrix.
After that you just have to add the 2nd matrix to the 1st from the top. If the board is not full, you simply complete the board with blocks to start with(connecting blocks).