pimputin

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 12:41:41 +0000

T�m�n ohjelman on tarkoitus olla helppo ja hauska tapa tuottaa erilaisia ��ni�. Systeemi toimii n�in:

* soittaja liikkuu pelaajana maailmassa. * maailmassa on erilaisia asioita, joitain itsest��n liikkuvia, joitain poimittavia, joitain esteit� (tai n�iden yhdistelmi�). * erilaiset esineet vastaavat erilaisia ��ni�. * pelaaja voi poimia esineit� ja j�tt�� niit� eri paikkoihin. * pelaaja voi soittaa mukanaan olevia esineit� eri korkeuksilta. * useimmat esineet pit�v�t my�s ��nt�, kun niihin t�rm�t��n. * rytmej� saa aikaan j�tt�m�ll� vakiorataa kulkevan olion (esim. juna) tielle erilaisia esineit�.

Saatavilla: http://sange.fi/~atehwa/pimputin/ // Dopaa: http://sange.fi/~atehwa/pimputin.tar.gz

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!!! PIMPUTIN(1)

!!! NAME

pimputin - an interactive composition program

!!! SYNOPSIS

!!! DESCRIPTION

'''pimputin''' gives you a world with objects interacting in different ways. Many of the objects correspond to specific sounds, and play the sound when collided / explicitly played. The player may arrange the objects so as to produce sequences.

Try it out with no arguments. You'll discover soon enough how each object behaves. You're the white "@" in the top left corner.

'''pimputin''' treats non-option arguments as directories of samples. Each ordinary file in the directories is treated as a sample, and may be dropped by the sample-dropping gnome. If there are no samples, the gnome never drops anything (boring!). If you don't have sounds of your own, try out /usr/share/sounds/.

!!! OPTIONS

-D ''objects'': ''objects'' is a string of characters corresponding to different objects in the world. A "daemon" adds new objects to the world, picking at random from this string. If you want to increase the probability of a specific object, include it multiple times. Default: "&&&=^#Oxe*"

-p ''probability'': roughly sets how eagerly the object daemon adds new objects. Bigger values mean more objects. Default: 10

-s ''step'': sets the length of walls made by wall-creating "bugs" in the beginning. Walls will lie on a grid with cell width & height equal to ''step'' - 1. Default: 5

-r ''rank'': sets the number of generations after which the wall-creating "bugs" die. Note that even if you don't set this, they will eventually clutter the screen enough to die anyway. Default: 9

-S ''sampleratio'': the sample-dropping gnome (violet "@") will drop samples randomly every ''sampleratio''+1'th time it stops. Default: 0

!!! CONTROLS

The player is controlled by keypresses. You can move with arrow keys; pick up / drop things with space bar (also, you can drop stuff onto other stuff with "a").

One of your holdings is always "active", the one to be dropped if you drop stuff. You can change the active item by numbers 1--8, and you can play the active holding with the lower part of the keyboard. "Z" = lower C, "X" = D, "C" = E, etc., and sharp / flat notes are on the next row: "S" = lower C#, etc.

You can make the game objects go faster by pressing "+" and slower by pressing "-".

Hitting ESC quits the game.

!!! SEE ALSO

python(1), esd(1), sox(1)

!!! BUGS

Playing through '''esd''' causes many problems. The latency is too big, and the sound gets messed up a lot if you play too many sounds at a time. Also, the latency varies a lot, which destroys rhythm timings. It would be trivial to port '''pimputin''' to use '''arts'''. Both have the problem that streaming samples through sockets wastes resources.

You have to start '''esd''' yourself.

Most really-unexpected exceptions are never caught; for example an interrupted select() will bring the program down. Also, '''pimputin''' does not support proper screen redrawing (yet).