Udemy FMOD For Game Audio Course

 
Recently I completed Udemy's FMOD for Unity Course.  I can recommend it to anyone interested in learning about responsive audio in Unity.  It's 3 hours (took me about 7) and by the end you'll be triggering event and random sounds.

Link to course:

https://www.udemy.com/course/fmod-for-interactive-games/

VR Door and Key System

This week I've implemented a door and key system in my VR game...  you pick up a key, and then you're allowed to enter a door.  For the user interface, the colored key is displayed on your wrist (and disappears once used).

Pick up keys and open doors

Helios Mk2 update

I've finally started work on the follow up to the $20 synth...   The Helios Mk2  

It's still very early in development but it's starting to come together.  So far it has a keyboard with arpeggiator (plus MIDI so you can use a proper keyboard), a delay, but most importantly of all there's lots more synthesis options :-)

Performant Grass for VR

 

It's probably not the most enticing headlining you've ever read, but it might be of some interest for some! I first saw this effect used in Half Life 2, where they use a flat 2D image and then use code to have it always be positioned towards the camera (so you never see it's flat).   Actually thinking about it a little more, all of the enemies in Doom were created in this way. Where as in Half Life 2 they used it sparingly and effectively, I've gone completely over the top and just copied and pasted like there's no tomorrow.  I'll be a bit more subtle next time I promise.  Here you can see the position change a little clearer:

The images were created from DALL-E (using prompts like 'bush single branch with leaves flat 2d albedo texture on black background').  From here I adjusted the image in Affinity designer:

In unity you need to change the image type to 'Sprite 2D & UI', get the Alpha Source from 'Grey Scale', generate Mip Maps and change the max size to something like 256.  The Alpha source is important here, as that's what removes the black background.

The C# script is very simple:

public class LookAtPlayer : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GameObject player;
    // Start is called before the first frame update
    void Start()
    {
        
    }
    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        transform.LookAt(player.transform);
    }
}

We declare a public variable, which when back in Unity, we drag the main camera onto.  

And that's all there is to creating performant grass!

Further Adventures In VR

 I've been getting deeper into Unity VR, this time using the VR interaction toolkit asset to help create some different types of doors and lifts:

MIDI Keyboard plus Arpeggiator

 

Note: I forgot to add the resistor values to the image below but you can find them in the older article here.

Features;

Pot for tempo Pot for velocity Button with 5 Arp-modes Arp stop button Keyboard Octave Buttons with responsive LED brightness Switch to chose between keyboard and ARP mode.

The ARP mode is still a bit buggy (if you hold the ARP related buttons while also holding down the notes it can glitch) but hopefully I'll get around to making it better in the future.  

Code Here

Note: to upload code to the board, you'll need the switch set to the left (aka keyboard mode)

You'll need;

17x Push buttons (push to make type)
17x 10k Ohm resistor
2x 220 Ohm resistor
1x 270 Ohm resistor
1x LED
1x Arduino Nano
1x MIDI DIN Connector
2x Pots
1x on/off switch

(Part 4 of 4) Arduino Sampling Drum Pad - Converting Samples

 

Lets build some drum pads!

*********************************************************************************************

This is Part 4 of 4 in the guide to Making Arduino Sampling Drum Pads

Part 1: Breadboarding Drum Pads

Part 2: Case Construction Guide

Part 3: Making the Electronics

Part 4: Converting & Uploading Samples

*********************************************************************************************

SOFTWARE

Here's where we'll install all the software needed to upload our sounds to the drum pads.  It may seem a little long winded, but once you've got everything installed the process of converting samples isn't actually too hard. All the software is free, but most have donation pages should you want to donate.

Tip: Save time. I would suggest having lots of samples to batch process in one go.

Note: The software part of this guide is written for a Windows PC.  If you're using a Mac, you still should be able to follow along (all software used is available as Mac versions).  If you're using Linux, well, you should know what you're doing already anyway. 

Required Software / Get Set Up

************************************************************************

You'll need to download and install these on your PC;

Audacity 

Python 

Arduino IDE

Mozzi Library