Friday, October 12, 2007
Greetings.
Music hasn't really been the main focus of my creativity lately, partly because there has been other projects taking my time, and partly because my Windows box crashed, leaving me without Renoise to track my music, and I'm currently too lazy to reinstall it.
Among some of the projects that has been taking my time, I can list developing and maintaining a web solution for the town I live in, coding another Java ME game, exploring possibilities with MIDI creation on Linux, getting a drivers license and moving into a new apartment.
One of the more crazy projects is perhaps that I'm trying to learn machine code for the Amstrad CPC464. In other words; Assembly for the Z80. But it's in very early stages, so I'll probably write about it in my next newsletter. Meanwhile, here's a little info about some of the other projects I've been working on.
LuBlu Entertainment present: "Ukko's Escape"
Yes, I know I said that the next game by LuBlu Entertainment was going to be the graphical adventure game Fading Shades for the Windows platform, but that's not what happened. Instead we got hooked on Java ME development again, and coded another game for your mobile phone.
Ukko's Escape is a kind of sequel to our first Java ME game. In Sort'em you were working in The Underground Ball Factories (TUBF), controlling The Sorter machine. But TUBF placed their ball factory in a cave that just happen to be the home of Ukko, and he is very displeased about having a ball factory in his home. That's why he has tried sabotaging the work at the factory, for example by distracting the employee working The Sorter machine. This hasn't resulted in anything Ukko had hoped for though, so now there's only one option left: Ukko must escape the cave.
The game is another simple addictive OneThumb game, which is available at Clickgamer already and will be available for free at Gamejump soon. Read more about the game here, and be sure to download your free ad-wrapped copy from Gamejump soon. :-)
Music for Java ME games - Converting modules to MIDI
I have discovered a nice tool called Timidity that does an excellent job converting modules into MIDI files. I've used Timidity for playing back MIDI files on Linux for quite some time, and now I've found out it can also be used to convert MOD and XM files into MIDI files – and does a real good job at it. I'm very surprised Timidity hasn't come up in my many searches for a MOD to MID converter. Check it out yourself, by downloading this example I've done, containing the XM file, the converted MIDI file and an MP3 file of the Timidity MIDI-playback.
Being able to convert modules to MIDI like that gives me a great platform for doing music for mobile games, and I'm still very hooked on Java ME so that couldn't be better. It merely requires the modules to be tracked a certain way, so that the MIDI file size is kept on a minimum. It's also a great way to have music ready in MOD format for when the game is to be ported to other platforms.
The future of Fading Shades
Fading Shades is in a typical phase where it's stuck in a 90%-complete-stage. When we do finish it sometime in the future, it won't be released under the LuBlu Entertainment label either. We have decided to use the LuBlu Entertainment label strictly for mobile games. So Fading Shades will be a game by BlueAngel.dk and Dewfall Productions.
Meanwhile we must urge you not to have too high expectations of this game. It is merely an amateur 800x600 graphical adventure game in same style as the first Myst game, only a lot less professional, and it will be released as freeware to all the adventure game- and Adventure Game Studio fans.
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