Hello,

Long time no see. I don't really check this place much anymore, or even really make a lot of music, but I'm still doing things! Ever since the pandemic started, I really wanted to tackle something which has always had a bit of mystique to me but I could never wrap my head around, and that was FM synthesis. All my musical peers from back in the day got into it a lot earlier and I just could never really figure it all out, but I really loved the sound. So, in late 2019, when feeling more confident in my programming skills after tackling a module replayer in Godot Engine, I started my first attempt at creating an FM synthesizer in a project called gdsFM.

It started off being based off gdscript (Godot's native scripting language) but was incredibly slow and I quickly realized it was not suited for the job. That is when I started to really tackle learning C#. At the time, there weren't very many projects at all that explained on a fundamental level in one place how some of the original implementations of FM really worked in detail that were, you know, both free to use in the libre sense but also commercially. There was still a bit of secret sauce involved with all of it and I had to do a lot of research while avoiding using any of the GPL licensed code out there.

GdsFM's code was convoluted, a bit weird, and not entirely compatible with the timbres of real FM chips, but my goal was actually really humble at first and it was actually part of my attempt at learning a thing called BambooTracker easier. By learning how FM works at the fundamental level, and at the same time building a small replayer I could use for my own project called BambooCopy (allowing users with large amounts of VOPM instruments to quickly catalog and import them into BambooTracker using the clipboard), I thought I could come up to speed with the technology and rekindle my love of making music, chiptunes and the like.

At some point I started fantasizing about an old wish I had for a tracker that combined FM, sample, and PSG type synthesis all in one little bundle. It seemed like that such a thing might've been within reach, and the synthesizer quickly started experiencing some feature creep. I thought about fantasy consoles like PICO-8, Chip8 and thought about having a fantasy chip that people could embed into their own games. This got me lost down a rabbit hole that continued throughout 2020 and into 2021. It was around that time when I discovered that Aaron Giles (of MAME fame) was making an effort to re-implement many of the classic Yamaha FM chip emulators with more commercial-friendly open source licenses. I'm not really that close to the emu community, so I have no idea what spurred this on, but I'm sure it opened a door for many people to really dive into FM proper! Perhaps there has been more commercial interest in classic FM lately....

Anyway, while studying the code, I realized a lot of things I could've done better, as well as why my synthesizer always sounded different than the emulators, even with the most basic timbres. Much of the classic sound used lookup tables that some people went through a lot of effort in the past decade or so to decap, reverse engineer and such, and the nature of the fundamental synthesis meant that those tables made a big difference in the "quality" of the sound. I was inspired to start over from scratch with a new project that conformed much closer to the classic FM synthesis sound, and was able to make my code much more efficient in the process. That project is called PhaseEngine -- The audio core for an as-of-yet not realized set of projects; a tracker, a DAW plugin, a cross-platform game middleware module, and perhaps even a fantasy console.

Since starting this journey, a ton has happened in the commercial FM scene. KORG has released both hardware and software versions of their DX7-like instrument, the opsix. A portable chiptune device called M8 Tracker is in prerelease. Plogue has released their chipsynth ops7 (a DX7 emulator/audio plugin), and Tracktion has released "F'em", yet another 8-op synth which offers to bring the FM sound into the modern era. There's still a bit of "secret sauce" and gatekeeping to this day, especially in the real chiptune part of that scene, but things are changing really rapidly. I kinda want to be part of the club, but I also want to put something out for the world to adopt, free for everyone, and open up the world of FM to everybody who admired the sound but found it too mysterious and confounding to take a deep dive into. To that extent, I hope to differenciate myself from these other projects through new UI paradigms, offering an easy and uplifting sound-creation experience, and a helpful wiki to get beginners into making their own sounds from scratch and giving chiptunes another shot in the arm.

So, hopefully, I get to the point where I can support myself a little bit with my projects, this one included. What's in it for you guys? Well, the best parts are yet to come. Right now, all I have is the basic synth, and it's getting pretty close to being feature-complete, but it's still definitely a work in progress. After that, comes the tracker, the DAW basically, that'll start to complete the set. It's almost certainly going to support both tracker-style and piano-roll style methods of composing, a bit of a hybrid of the two. I've hinted at how this was going to work over on my Twitter account (@nobuyukinyuu) but have been focusing mostly on getting the core synth ready first! I promise it's going to be an interesting experience, if I can make it that far.

If you want to keep up to date with what I'm working on, I still post progress updates over on Twitter right now. As the project matures, I may start up a blog over on itch.io for the actual audio workstation program. There is however already a nice little UI for making sounds that you can play with right now, provided you have the Mono build of Godot Engine, for PhaseEngine itself though! I recommend giving it a try! And if you do, please let me know what you think.

https://github.com/nobuyukinyuu/PhaseEngine
https://twitter.com/nobuyukinyuu

Until next time...

....you may refer to me as "your highness"; failure to do so is now a violation of FA's code of conduct policy :^)


p.s. I totally made a game a few weeks ago, feel free to play it! https://nobuyuki.itch.io/bleb-master-notgdcjam2019

http://nobuyuki.caster.fm

goes up and down occasionally. Generate a media player link and if it stops working, check this location for a new link.

Why on earth would anyone give their actual phone number to a Russian company that claims a secure/encrypted messaging system but doesn't open source the protocol or allow independent auditing? Some of you guys must really like stickers...

PLEASE TELL US MORE ABOUT THE ENCRYPTION METHOD USED FOR THE PASSWORDS STORED ON YOUR SITE AT THE TIME IT WAS HACKED AND WHAT YOU ARE USING NOW, YOU KNOW, JUST IN CASE THERE'S AT LEAST ONE USER WHO IS STILL SILLY ENOUGH TO RE-USE ONE OF THEIR "STILL-GOOD" PASSWORDS FOR YOUR NEW POST-HACK "HIGHER SECURITY" PASSWORD RESET THING. IF YOU WON'T LET ME USE A 5 DIGIT THROWAWAY NONCE THEN YOU'RE TELLING ME THAT YOU EXPECT TO GET HACKED AGAIN. TIME-GATE THE LOGINS OR SOMETHING JEEZ

THANKS, AND I HOPE NOT PAYING THOSE LAST FEW INTERNS HAS BEEN WORKING OUT FOR YOU ALL THESE YEARS


P.S. WHY DO KEYBOARDS ONLY HAVE CAPITAL LETTERS PRINTED ON THEM

P.P.S. DON'T STORE PEOPLE'S OLD PASSWORDS ON THE SITE EITHER SHITCAKES, WHAT IF PEOPLE DON'T TRUST YOU HOLDING ON TO ANY OF THE OLD ONES THEY GIVE YOU GOING FORWARD???

Heya, it's been a while.

For those of you who are wondering where I've been -- I've mostly gone back to real life and doing the things I used to do before I got into this whole business.

I still enjoy doodling from time to time, and I quite enjoy composing still, although I haven't had much time for it these days. Jamming on the piano helps to relieve any urges I have to compose full music, if it wasn't already obvious from my earlier test sounds. I've been slowly improving at that, and sometime in the near future you may hear some new stuff from me.

In addition, the big things that have been taking up most of my time. The first one has been game development, something I hadn't done in earnest for nearly 10 years now, and have as a result been left far behind my contemporaries in it. This has been unacceptable to me, but I've tried to catch up in the meantime and have updated my knowledge somewhat on the kinds of problems (both old and new) that programmers run into when targeting a limited platform.

All old knowledge is new again -- Mobile has seen to it that many people get a second chance, a second spin of the wheel. I've noticed a lot of people who I grew up to respect and admire coming "out of retirement" and actively participating in the independent games scene. That's rather exciting, and I don't want to be left out of it. I've therefore been spending the majority of my time working with a few people to help prep and release a game under them while at the same time using the experience to sharpen up my skills, and hopefully coming back with some products of my own which will (again, hopefully) be able to stand up on its own amongst the products of people who I grew up respecting.

Finally, I've been very busy lately with a large change in my life -- I'm moving into a new apartment! It's exciting, and a bit spooky, but furnishing it, doing repairs, and all the other stuff that comes with all that is giving me quite a number of projects to handle that simply feel more present than some of my other hobbies, which of course I still enjoy. I hope to be settling down eventually.

With all that being said, here are a few things you should/shouldn't expect from me for now:

* I won't be submitting much on this account anymore, save for my music. FA, unlike SoundCloud, lets me upload as much music as I want.
* New artwork will be at a minimum from now on. I use most of my time on artwork dedicated to producing game assets and logos. Feel free to inquire about commissioning some of those things, however. Or a sketch. That's probably fine, too. Everyone's probably noticed that I don't really use this account for contributing artwork anymore. Those of you who are fans of it already know where to look for new stuff.
* I will talk about my new projects when they are reaching a state of maturity, but I usually don't talk about the projects I'm making at work, for obvious reasons. If you want hints of that, you can follow me on twitter.
* Sometime in the future, I plan on making one or two final large contributions to the community, and hope to go back to professional gamedev full-time. Keep your eyes peeled for information on this; when the project is nearing maturity, I may start a fundraising drive for the final 9 yards and take out advertising here.

That's all I got for now. Catch me online, I've got twitter and g+, and those of you in-the-know can find me on IRC, too. See ya all again real soon.

http://imcumm.in:8000/doogtopia.m3u
http://imcumm.in:8000/doogtopia.m3u
http://imcumm.in:8000/doogtopia.m3u

Hello! Long time no see. I just wanted to let everyone know that Doogtopia Radio is coming back soon! Our previous hosts at iichan have been kind to us for many years, but unfortunately there has been a major downtime which could spell the end for the venerable second-oldest western imageboard still operating.

Since I've been away for several months, Doog hasn't been around, and we missed all of December, so Holiday mode wasn't enabled for very long. Doog being down isn't going to stay that way for much longer, though, as a friend has offered to give me a new relay server to play the tunes again!

I am considering upping the stream from 96 to 128kbps, or possibly swapping over from MP3 to Ogg Vorbis, or even Ogg OPUS. However, I'm unsure of how many users would require special consideration to make sure they will still be able to listen to doog on their devices. Therefore, I may continue to serve MP3, even at the cost of (slightly higher) personal bandwidth. The relay server, however, won't have any such issues -- the pipe is HUGE!

When doog comes back, it will be loaded with tons of new music, courtesy  sukebepanda ! We have a ton of Millennium Retro style stuff lined up from some really cool artists you may not have heard before, some super oldschool stuff by veteran anime soundtrack composer Yuji Ohno (this stuff's really great and nostalgic!), and lots of great tracks from Toshiki Kadomatsu (JADOES), for those of you who have really been hankering a j-fusion fix. With a playlist almost a week long, (all approved by me!) chances are you're not going to get bored with the selection available.

Stay tuned, and thanks again to all you loyal listeners out there.


P.S. I wrote some new music while I was on vacation, so stay tuned for that, too!

If you type "@lower username" at the end of your search string, it will show only the artwork belonging to that particular username.

Yep, I'm going to magfest. If you have a MIDI controller, bring it over sometime and maybe we can jam :V

For the record: I'm gonna be at MFF, and I'll probably be trying to make a few bux at artist's alley, so do drop by the table if you please and we'll see what we can do for you.

In addition, I'm trying to make plans to head to this Magfest. This is going to be harder to do, but hopefully everything will work out. I'm looking to meet some old friends there, let's see what happens!

get it while it lasts!

http://ice.blackmage.org:8000/nobuyuki.m3u

Hi everyone!

Just wanted to let y'all know that I've managed to publish my very first app on the android market. It's not much, but it's something to help me get the experience of publishing, self-marketing and all that other good stuff I need to know for when I publish my actual game. If you would, please check it out and let your friends know about it. The proceeds from the app go to pay for my bills and help fund the project I'm currently working on!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/.....om.djnkero.ecd

Promotional Video:
https://youtu.be/9zwN2_HTX5M

Note: If you have a Nexus One, HTC MyTouch 3g, or HTC G1, please be aware that these devices may not work for this app due to their old GPUs. I might be working on another version which will work with these phones! But until then, please be aware of this, and remember there's a 15 minute no-obligation period after purchase where you can get a refund if the app doesn't work, as per Google's policy. Thanks again.

https://twitter.com/nobuyukinyuu

I plan on using this thing a bit to promote my new projects. I'm not sure really how to leverage it, since I normally field my random thoughts to IRC. But I'll definitely post stuff which I can't make a "full journal" out of here that may be interesting.

I'd like to meet interesting people on there, instead of quietly stalking them all the time, haha

https://youtu.be/Zh86Vv7YsPg

not shown in video: magnets, force fields, pins and bumpers, switches and apertures

This is a project I'm working on right now. I'm hoping to sell it on the android marketplace, and perhaps also the app store. However, I'm not sure what the reception will be. Are you interested in a game like this? Would you support future development with a front-loaded initial price? In-app purchase may not make it to the first release, so I might have to charge a bit higher price for it than I like just to get it out there and give me some breathing room. I eventually hope to convert the game into an F2P model.

This is my first foray into mobile development, and the physics engine and all that have been written from scratch. I hope that I can make many more games using the engine, and already have another one in my head. However, I think whether or not I'll be able to do it depends on whether or not this concept will sell by itself. Please expect a beta testing period soon, to evaluate its market viability.

Any thoughts you may have would be appreciated

Then check this out:

https://youtu.be/m70OP1C-EzI

thanks  prettykitty13 for writing this, it's very relaxing. It's really cool when people make stuff like this, honestly, so everyone give this a listen and maybe leave her comments and stuff TwT

Now, most porn just bores you.


First world problems

I just had an interesting dream last night. I was playing what I call the "quarters game" at an arcade called the Red Baron, when the owner behind the counter told me to give it a rest and not to overwork the old thing, because it was an installation at the original Red Baron many years back. I told him how I used to play the game myself, and he started telling me about its rarity and how it needed to be bolted to the floor and everything.

I didn't think about it at the time, but now that I'm awake I understand why such a game needed to be bolted to the floor (to prevent cheating and theft). I laughed, thinking that he was right and I'd already won a lot of money from the thing, and just wanted to explain to him how I always wanted to be good at the game since my mom would leave me there most of the day with only a dollar to play the games with. I guess I fulfilled that dream within the dream, so while still feeling pretty good about it,

I told him "man, if you'd only been around 10 years ago...". We started talking about the old times for the mall we were in, which looked foreign and unfamiliar to me, and I started reminiscing about a few malls I went to at the time, without realizing (it's a dream, duh) that I was remembering an amalgamation, and not one specific mall. Even though I felt more like an adult at the time, because I picked up some grocery bags full of vegetables (broccoli and cabbage; things my mom almost never bought fresh on her own in those days), after waking up something struck me as strange. More on that in a minute.

The owner walked and talked with me, and left his re-opened arcade on autopilot while explaining that there used to be another attempt to re-open the Red Baron by another guy in another part of this dream mall. I remembered it, and I even remembered the secret nostalgia/retro mode reserved only for the people who could complete all of the owner's little personal achievements. You see, the other owner ended up being a personal friend from my past. I remember this place was an amusement center with mostly ball pits and other "physical" type games, but when the special mode was activated, all the lights went down and the kids were shooed off, and well. It didn't make any sense but was interesting.

The place where this attempt to re-open the arcade was, in the dream mall, had been covered up, and replaced with a false house facade in a cozy-corner kind of arrangement. The earlier owner looked disappointed when we finally got there and said "that's where it used to be". I'd seen that kinda crap before -- an experimental virtual reality arcade in Glenbook Square mall (Ft. Wayne, IN, a far cry from the NW Ohio I had once lived) had shuttered down, and when they were renovating their ice rink, they walled over the entire thing, making it seem like that and an arcade called Gold Mine (a crane-game exclusive arcade) never existed. Ironically, many years later they'd do the same thing to the ice rink, which is now a food court.

Shortly after being shown the location of the special arcade, which had been covered over, I woke up. That's when my common sense started to come back to me. The mall in my dreams wasn't one mall, but an amalgamation of many malls I went to as a child, including the aforementioned one. The one with my favorite arcade, though, the Red Baron, was only open at a few malls in Toledo, all of which are now demolished. Here's the kicker, though. "If only you'd been around 10 years ago" was what I said to the owner, thinking back to when I was around 10. The only problem was, Red Baron shut down more than 10 years ago. The heyday of my times spending all day at the arcade was at least 17 or 18 years ago now. In my subconscious mind, I'm apparently still barely older than 20... :c

Feels kinda sad, man. It's thanks to computers and the internet that I have a life and livelihood at all, but at the same time, they robbed me of my childhood. They've made vast swaths of my memory simply disappear into the ether. Time doesn't move in a linear fashion while absorbed into the internet. One remembers it as a different sorta world; a nondescript blob of information, where some of it is harder to remember than others without a physical record linking to the past.

In a way, nothing significant in my life has happened since I was 21; I contrast it to the years I don't remember hardly anything at all on TV, what was going on around me, etc. back when I lived in Ohio. The years between 1995 and 2000 were all computer/internet things, and a blur for most everything else. I remember all my favorite video games as generally falling into an age range between 1987-1993 (US publishing date). Nothing else seemed interesting anymore; I even stopped going to the arcade. All I needed was the box with the internet on it. These things sadly tell me a lot about my life, in retrospect, but perhaps not as much as a simple innocuous statement that my subconscious made to a simple shop owner. It thought I was still only 21.

---

---

The subconscious mind says, "Forget the outside world, the corrupt politics, and everything else that sucks, and just withdraw" -- I now realize that I probably get some of that antisocial behavior from my parents; but unlike my dad, who reaches out to nature for his zen, I've reached out to the cold embrace of technology. I've lost years of my life to it. The subconscious mind is simply waiting. It's still in there, waiting like a lost child for when it's safe to return, and for when I can take my life back.

I think it simply longs for the past because it seems closer to better times than the future does.

Did you like the game? It was one of my favorites as a kid. Interestingly, this group "Kralizec" (now defunct -- their games cannot be legitimately acquired anymore) made a fan game that looks like it could've been an incredibly respectable game in the series in its own right, without seeming to be too much like its predecessors.

https://youtu.be/CVJER5ILgRI

There are some weird parts which I wish I could put my finger on. Nostalgia abounds, but very very hard to place. For example, the concept of switching characters through the telephone booth was lifted from a relatively obscure game called "Psychic 5". Even the font feels familiar. I'm sure there are a bunch of references like these in this game I'm simply not well-versed enough in the world of MSX to recognize; Kinda a shame -- I might have to go and try to appreciate the world of MSX somehow after seeing stuff like this and Konami MSX compilations...

my nice computer chair (well, at least I thought it was nice...) broke down real good today. A bolt sheared off inside a socket which I probably can't get to without taking apart the upholstered part of the chair, and the entire back and armrest assembly was held on by 4 simple bolts.

So, I grabbed an old vinyl chair which was torn up and reupholstered it with some checkerboard pattern duct tape. Hopefully this should last long enough until I either decide to try to fix the problem, or throw the damn thing out and get a new chair.

Seeing as how I don't have any hex key bits for a power drill (or even if there is one lying around..), this may end up being an annoying project.

Yo.

I use dropbox for work and stuff; as you guys may or may not know, it's a cloud-syncing application that lets you keep files across multiple computers. Howeverrrrr, I am also using the free version so that I don't have to pay a monthly subscription. And! I'm about to run out of space.

I will probably try to find some way to increase the space using some other perk from them, but in the meantime, is there anyone out there who doesn't have dropbox yet that could (pretty please) sign up with my referral link? Just one referral should net me enough space for the app to stop nagging. It would be much appreciated :3

http://db.tt/Z4FaWBEP

If not, no big deal, either. I'll find some way to free up some space on the thing -- Even though I only use Dropbox for work, there's a lot of old projects and dupe files on there which can probably be moved to a more traditional backup medium.

Heyyyyy. I'm trying to help out my buddy  lynx-foxx a bit by plugging his journal and stuff. He draws pretty good and is in a bit of a bind (doing a lot of his internet from public locations, unfortunately!), so I kinda wanna help get him the cash to get him a ticket out of bumfuck nowhere so he has better prospects, etc etc.

SO, if you guys like butts and other things (pokemans, midnas, butts, and also butts), maybe check out this journal for prices and information:

https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/3470198/

I have now reached level 28

http://openmpt.org/openmpt-1-20-01-00-released

Some nice things which may get you interested in Modplug Tracker again:

* There's a user manual again (for all of you who were confused and put off by it!)
* MIDI CC's can be mapped to interface shortcuts (this is really useful if you prefer to work using a MIDI keyboard, like most people who didn't grow up with trackers do)
* MIDI routing: I/O so you can directly interface MPT with other devices or DAW's, like a big boy. Transposer / Auto-Arpeggiator plugins now work as a result
* Automatic sample tuning system (if you rip samples from various sources, this may be useful)
* 1 zillion bugfixes, and vst crash stability has improved


Sooooo, go give it a shot, make something interesting.

Hey everyone!!!!!! I just wanna do some random catching up with everyone here. I've been doing fine lately, though I haven't had much time to get a lot done on the creative front. Since I started doing warehousing as a means of reliable income, I've apparently lost nearly 30 lbs (!) This is really surprising to me, since I feel mostly the same. I'm excited about it, though, and it's kinda boosting my self-esteem.....

I feel like very soon now, I'll be able to get back into my groove and show you guys some really exciting stuff. In the meantime, though!!!!!! About my other job..... Brian (my boss) has recently let loose a few things you may have seen over on Reddit with regards to a radically liberal game developer philosophy. The latest twist on this is an awesome little thing called the Infinity Bundle.

How does the Infinity Bundle work? Well, basically, you pay one price, and then you get all our games. Forever. Yeah, no joke; every game we've made and ever will make as Subsoap will pretty much be available in this bundle. It's one of those super limited time offers; I've been thinking of it as a way for people to "buy-in" to our core userbase as lifetime fans. It's also apparently going to be serving as a means to seed current and future projects, sooooo there's that. With Faerie Solitaire 2 coming out very soon, Ninja Pool coming shortly after that, and FaeSaga on the horizon, I'm very excited about diving into this gamedev stuff for keeps, should it all go according to plan.....

Oops, did I just say "diving"...?