Goals for the week
- Keep reading Relph – I need to get through more of it
- Keep developing updated graphics – begin with the character, THIS WEEK then the setting… with a view to then creating a new prototype that has all my own assets in it
- Continue developing a time-space framework
Main thing:
Read – write – make
This week, I think I need to start making stuff again…
Mon
I did a page of chars from three directions – rather than just front on heads. What a good idea!
Playing through Links Awakening
The r36s sure is convenient.
Making notes as I go…will follow some up later.
Interface – text scrolling is engaging – the part when going to megs cave all goes dark – seems to be an overlay as you can see it switch off when going into other menu – and so is the interface buttons
Baddies are easy to read – they are dark – the walkable ground is light
Equipping items – you can also pick up collectable items with the sword…
Text locks out most controls
A for action – has two modes- if you are in close proximity to an interactable item, you interact with it – otherwise you use what is equipt – sword has reach
We can go overlap the UI at the bottom of the screen by a few pixels before we transition to the next scene.
How many characters are displayed on text per frame or what ever?
Text box – after determining where the player is positioned on the screen (either above or below the mid-point – also, if there is a character that will be obscured by the text box, they are removed temporarily – Marin disappears 4 frames before the text box appears at the top of the screen, and would ultimately obscure the top of her head) appears as an 8px high black box, then expands 8px up, 8px down, 8px up, then 8px down – 2 frames at a time to be full – 5 slices, 40px in total over 5 frames – plus 2 hold at end – then on 8th frame, start text. Text appears one character (including spaces) at a time, every 2 frames. On animating, the top line of text is removed and the bottom line of text moves centrally and holds for 8 frames, then it goes up for 2 frames, the next line starts to appear as per the above rule/sequence. The ‘interact’ downward arrow appears after 4 frames and flashes 16 frames on, 16 frames off. In terms of the sound effect, there are two different sequences of ‘typing’ sound that play seemingly randomly – 1-2-3-pause-1-2-3 and They start after 16 frames of the letters appearing. 3-3-4- 3-3-3-4p- – It uses the ‘wave’ channel for the sound effect.
When getting a powerup such as the triangle of power, the music changes to double speed, and the sword flashes… I guess the shield will too when acorn is collected – not sure how long it lasts but seems a while – and what happens when you go inside… actually i stayed on one screen and it seems to stay indefinitely…
So, what’s the takeaway from all of this?
There are these little odd and even sequences all throughout the game that help give a feeling (for me, anyway…) of texture and depth. It is an asymmetry. There are many little 2, 4, 8 and 16 frame sequences (this includes a 4 frame sequence that has gaps in it). I still need to think about it, but upon investigating further, I wonder if this can ultimately be pared down and codified into smaller metric cells strung together. To be continued…
Tue
Dynamics, asymmetry and metric grids: what game designers can learn from drummers
I think I have talked about this before – but there is a lot to be learned from looking at how drummers approach time and thinking about approaches to breaking things into metric units and organising grids.
Elvin Jones – there is an excellent dissertation investigating Jones’ approach to time and metric units:
David Garribaldi – discussing the dynamics approach.
In Bill Cole’s excellent book on John Coltrane, he discusses how Coltrane would use uneven phrase lengths in his solos, again,
And how the phrasing changes from being triplet based to strait based
There is also a concept I encountered when looking at New Orleans style drumming of a ‘mother rhythm’ which is 12/8 – translating to 4 sets of 3. It has a ‘rolling triplet’ feel.
Syncopation for the Modern Drummer – Ted Reed is set up in 4 bar sequences of . And I guess its no accident that the book ‘syncopation’ has two contrapuntal rhytmic layers.
Rudiments are typically 1 bar in length – and form metric cells that can be used in many places: https://ae.vicfirth.com/wp-content/uploads/VicFirth_RudimentsPoster_2016.pdf
Using an x0x style sequencer – again, its a 16 beats… https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/article/acid-patterns-how-people-are-sharing-a-visual-notation-system-for-the-roland-tb303-to-create-and-recreate-acid-house-music/1FE37195243684AD6B6912FAE99E99E0
Abakwa – 1-2-3–1-2-3-1-2-3-
Source: https://www.garciamusic.com/educator/articles/learning.swing.afro.cuban.html
While I am at it, I will just say that I really think Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley is totally underrated – his sense of musical phrasing, timing and swing is impeccable (his playing on his own album “Somethin’ else” (an understatement of a title!) is a great example. Oh, and the rest of the band, which had some guy called Miles as a side-man. Best listened on the best gear you can if possible!
Syncopation
And while I am going on about rhythms, and drums in particular, a shout out to Clyde Stubblefield and Jabo Starks, two of the great drummers who played with James Brown. They pushed the concept of syncopation – where they would begin to delay the snare hit, building anticipation, to extreme levels, as heard in the incredibly funky
Sadly, wikipedia has an exceptionally western view of syncopation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation) Best left unread. Stick with Jabo and the gang.
Did I mention there were MANY ideas from New Orleans in what James Brown did?
Ok, now we can look at something else… The illusion of polyphony. Like this:
TWO voices – but there is just so much in this!
More about it here:
(note that swing is NOT the same as syncopation)
And remember, Cannonball Adderley was doing all of the stuff in the previous clip on an instrument that can (usually) only produce one note at a time (monophonic) – and well, that did not slow him down at all. Even the best lines played by the pianist here are monophonic (with chordal ‘comping’ at the same time)
Ok, and then there is this, which I think is a total bad ass piece of music – and the harpsichord is awesome!
SCORE: https://vmirror.imslp.org/files/imglnks/usimg/c/cb/IMSLP569938-PMLP179288-bach_bwv_903.pdf
PERFORMANCE:
This is my favourite interpretation so far – his timing is perfect – lingers where it should and pushes along when it should…
Counterpoint style –
- Arpeggios – chord tones
- Compound Melodies – implying the counterpoint (see the above thing) – i guess the rule of thumb is that the main melody goes first, on the DOWN beat.
- Bariolage – playing of different timbres (the example is playing a violin string open (usually played higher, and sounds brighter), and playing it dampened)
Change timbre, tempo, accents, gate length etc.
By the way, I think all of these things are possible using GBStudio. But think about which effect is going to be most effective – don’t need all of them! And there is a hard limit on how much data we can have, so best to be sparing:)
Oh, this was also fun:
https://caterinabarbieri.com/Patterns-of-Consciousness-Liner-Notes
So now, some of these ideas come back to what I was looking at last week in terms of Chaos theory and generative stuff: Log 4 – 11.5.26 – 17.5.26 (in particular, Tuesday…)
Going back to an earlier post Log 1 – 19.4.26 – 26.4.26 (see ‘Friday’) – the gameboy music engine has the ability to change tempo for various musical effects, which very much contribute to the expressiveness that can be had from it:
Think also about LINEARITY progression in composition, as opposed to VERTICALITY – we want movement. Its a time based art form, people.
Think multiple melodies, rather than a bunch of chords together (well if you are sequencing on a monosynth, or the gameboy, you won’t really be able to anyway).
Ok, final example here – on the indomitable Roland MC202 in the hands of a master. What a beast. The delay/echo helped too.
And, this is what sent me down this particular rabbit hole today (thanks Mal. But I think my bags were already packed and I was primed to go)
One last thing…
There is a lot of references to fungi, and mushrooms in particular, in Miyamotos (and adjacent) games. Why not:
https://biotanz.landcareresearch.co.nz/scientific-names/1cb18f1e-36b9-11d5-9548-00d0592d548c
Dinner time.
Wed
Reading “Gleick, J. (1988). Chaos: Making a new science (Nachdr.). Viking. Very interesting. See you in a while…
“The Butterfly Effect acquired a technical name: sensitive dependence on initial conditions. And sensitive dependence on initial conditions was not an altogether new notion” – p23
“In science as in life, it is well known that a chain of events can have a point of crisis that could magnify small changes. But chaos meant that such points were everywhere. They were pervasive. In systems like the weather, sensitive dependence on initial conditions was an inescapable consequence of the way small scales intertwined with large.” – p23
Non-linear equations are very tricky to solve
“In fluid dynamics, everything boils down to one canonical equation, the Navier-Stokes equation. It is a miracle of brevity, relating a fluid’s velocity, pressure, density, and viscosity, but it happens to be nonlinear.” p24
And, where the image of the Lorenz attractor appears: Lorenz. (1963). Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow.
Ya just never know: “Within a decade, physicists, astronomers, and biologists were seeking something just like it, and sometimes rediscovering it for themselves. But Lorenz was a meteorologist, and no one thought to look for chaos on page 130 of volume 20 of the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences.” p. 31
faces and bodies
the stuff in aseprite
thinking also about which body we inhabit – when projecting remembering and imagining we are less present – doing a physical thing can also put you in a physical flow state
and this is part of the idea – getting into that flow state – setting elements up to allow for that
Thu
And, I kept reading…
And then, when you add the above ideas about Chaos in Roguelikes with Synergy Networks, things can get VERY interesting indeed.
Ezra Szanton (https://ezra-szanton.itch.io/) designed Hellscaper and Mr Magpie’s Harmless Card Game, two roguelike deckbuilders.
Designers add in the synergies, but so could the system…
In the talk, Szanton talks about a difficulty/skill/learning curve, and how to allow for that in the design of the ‘synergy network’.
He offers a cheat sheet:
| OBSCURE | Benefit from same gameplay choice |
| Multiplicative relationship | |
| Chains of events | |
| Resource generation and use | |
| OBVIOUS | Explicit callouts |
And interestingly, he offers am ‘Anti-synergy brainstorming cheat sheet:
| OBSCURE | Promote conflicting gameplay choices |
| Diminishing returns | |
| Using the same resource | |
| Compounding downside | |
| OBVIOUS | Explicit downside |
Ways of reusing existing nodes for new networks are:
- additional ‘cards’ (adding in different nodes) – players learn new synergy networks
- new characters – base cards with new ones added in
- Rules changes – changes how things are evaluated.
Takeaways:
- Categories are your friend – find many ways to slice up your card set
- Include synergies from obvious to obscure
- make sure your network is not sparse (even accounting for goal scaling)
- Make sure your clusters are not silos
It is kind of like some of the idea in Hades (mentioned on Tuesday in Log 4 – 11.5.26 – 17.5.26) in terms of how all of the various fates work internally as well as synergisticly with the others.
Links from the talk:
https://cdn.aaai.org/ocs/ws/ws0340/15142-68464-1-PB.pdf
Network theory
And, I always get to this point in the week and feel like I haven’t done anything. But then look back at the weeks dev log…
Fri
Of course, I have started writing notes back in zotero lately, so kind of forgot to do it here. Oops! I did do plenty today;)
I read the next chapter of Chaos book. Not mich to note – but it is very interesting!
Level design
In links awakening – how do they design scenes so you dont get stuck when transitioning? They use obsticles such as walls, trees, water, elfences erc. more like the default is zero way out of a scene and they create the ways to get out – i think i had been thinking more along the lines of it being that you could leave and enter any where and the blockages were added in.
Ok, so I am going to investigate.
Lots of the corners of scenes have a quarter of a tree in its corner tile – the idea being that the over lap gives (at least thats how I see it…) a sense of continuity and that this current view is part of something bigger – that there is more… Again, the designers are masters of their craft, and there is so much to learn from.
Sat
- Finish off tasks or, if done – start another task…
Sun
A quick catch up session