Pimp My Actual Spectrum

Posted on September 30, 2010 by evilpaul

Well who’d have thought it? My Pimp My Spectrum demo has actually been ported to run on a real Spectrum! Here’s the video of it being shown at the Sundown 2010 UK demoparty where it took second place in the Oldschool Demo competition:

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Posted in atebit, Computers, Demoscene | 1 Comment

64KVJ Preview

Posted on July 9, 2010 by evilpaul

Recently I’ve been playing around with writing some VJ software for the PC. I decided to do this after enjoying writing a handful of audio reactive sketches in Processing but then wanting to have something with more control. The other thing that Processing gave me was a desire to complete the project quickly without worrying too much about how well it was engineered. One thing that helped here was that I decided to fit the entire thing inside 64k – I guess you could even call this the spiritual suscessor to my 1KDJ program from last year. With only 64k to play with I didn’t have enough space to add things like giving the user the ability to load their own models, images or effects, or to reconfigure the way that the existing effects are set up. With these deliberate limitations in mind you can think of 64KVJ as a “fixed function” VJ program.

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Posted in atebit, Computers, Demoscene, Development, Music | 10 Comments

Game Developer Magazine

Posted on June 16, 2010 by evilpaul

Yay. Grab the May edition of Game Developer Magazine and turn to page 5. There you’ll see an editorial piece on the 2010 scene.org awards written by me :)

I’m really pleased that this has come about as I’ve been a fan of GD mag pretty much since I started working in the games industry back in 1997. The magazine is run by UBM, who also produce the mighty Gamasutra and the even mightier (and not just because I occasionally write for them!) GameSetWatch websites.

Posted in Demoscene | 2 Comments

Site update..

Posted on June 1, 2010 by evilpaul

Just a quick post this one.. I’ve updated the site to the latest version of WordPress. This seems have have got rid of the spam issues I was having. Presumably I’ll just have to wait for Google to re-index me before the last vestiges of the attack go away.

And to make the post slightly longer.. I’ll say that I really like WordPress! The update process (from my manky old version that hasn’t been updated for ages) was painless and the new version is so much nicer :)

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More Processing..

Posted on April 12, 2010 by evilpaul

I’ve still not got the Windows partition on my laptop fixed, so I’ve still got idle fingers that are being channelled into writing music visualisers with Processing. This one was created during Friday’s commute to and from work.

applet4.jpg
(click here to run the applet in a browser)
(click here to download the windows applet version)

Posted in Computers, Development, Music | 2 Comments

Processing

Posted on March 26, 2010 by evilpaul

I’ve recently being playing with Processing. It’s described as “an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions“, and it aims “..to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.”

So what does this mean to me? In short it means that I can quickly write some cool looking music visualisers and, because Processing is rather friendly, I can easily export them so that they run in your web browser! Below are three sketches that I’ve written in the past week or so of my Processing experiments. Click on the images to (fingers crossed!) run them. I say “fingers crossed” because the browser implmentation of Processing seems a bit flaky – sometimes I get errors, sometimes I get nothing and sometimes, if I’m lucky, the things even run perfectly. If you do get problems, please just keep trying!

applet1.jpg
(click here to run the applet in a browser)
(click here to download the windows applet version)

applet2.jpg
(click here to run the applet in a browser)
(click here to download the windows applet version)

applet3.jpg
(click here to run the applet in a browser)
(click here to download the windows applet version)

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Posted in Computers, Development, Music | 4 Comments

The 8th Annual Scene.org Awards

Posted on March 17, 2010 by evilpaul

My 64k intro from last year, Transform, has been nominated in the category of “Best 64k Intro” at this year’s Scene.org Awards. Yay! :)

transform.png

Edit: Hang on! Just the one nomination this year? We must be slipping… ;)

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decode_recode

Posted on March 8, 2010 by evilpaul

At the end of last year I visited the Decode: Digital Design Sensations exhibtion, held at the V&A in London. The event “showcases the latest developments in digital and interactive design, from small, screen-based, graphics to large-scale interactive installations”. There were certainly some great pieces at the event (such as the works by flight 404 and Matt Pyke, for example) but a lot of it really left me with the feeling that I could have done it. In fact, I began thinking that I should be doing it.

One of the pieces at the event was the exhibition’s digital signature itself, designed by Karsten Schmidt. The piece is written in the Processing language and the code is available for download. This means that the piece is open for remixing. Actually, both the author and the event’s organisers actively encourage you to remix the piece and submit your results for inclusion in their online gallery.

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Posted in atebit, Computers, Demoscene, Development | 2 Comments

Bite This!

Posted on February 12, 2010 by evilpaul

Whenever I’m writing a demo (or a game, or anything) I usually collect copious amounts of reference material. Some of this directly influences my work, some of it doesn’t. The stuff that isn’t of immediate use often gets lost and forgotten, and I find this a shame – sometimes, maybe months after discarding an idea, a use for it will pop into my head.

I’ve had it in mind for a while now to start a site where I can collect these pieces of inspiration together in one place, to create an archive that I can browse back through when I’m in need of a creative spark. And now, finally, I’ve created bitethis.org as a place to do just that. In case you were wondering, the name is slightly tongue in cheek – in rap parlance bite means to copy or steal someone’s style, particularly their lyrics.

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Best of the 2009 Demoscene

Posted on February 3, 2010 by evilpaul

I’ve been writing the odd small piece for GameSetWatch recently. This site is a weblog run by the staff of Think Services Game Group. No, I don’t recognise the name either. But I do know the names of two of their most important services: Gamasutra and Game Developer Magazine. Both of these stand out in the game development industry as excellent resources and I’ve been a fan for over a decade. It’s a real honour to now be writing for their “alt.videogame” site.

I’ve recently started a round up of the 2009 demoscene on GSW. This is quite a large topic so it’s been split up into several, smaller pieces. Here are the two articles that have been published so far:

Special: The Best Of The 2009 Demoscene, Part 1 – Demos

Special: The Best Of The 2009 Demoscene, Part 2 – 64k and 4k

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