Introductions

General Discussions
#1

Hi all!

I couldn’t see an introduction thread, so i made my own…

I started learning to program java about a week ago after i ordered some nice hefty books on the subject from Amazon. So expect me to have all sorts of annoying/obvious questions for all you enlightened ones in the near future.

I’m currently in my final year doing a Bachelor of Music with a composition major. I have written music for films and games and have finally decided to create my own projects… another RPGMMO wannabe…

Christopher

#2

welcome !

#3

Welcome.

Maybe start with something smaller…

#4

Don’t worry im not so naive as to think such a task doesn’t come without inherit difficulty. At the moment Im just going to try and work through the textbooks i purchased.

Programming Video Games for the evil genius,
Killer Game programming for Java,
& Teach yourself Java in 21 days for general coding advice.

So far so good! Challenging yet rewarding experience!

#5

Cool. What school? I got my Music Bachelors from UC Berkeley. Also doing some film scoring and composing and interested in game music issues. Began learning Java about 15 months ago. I like the language a lot. Am learning Java Sound, and just played my first Java-made square wave 30 minutes ago.

#6

I study at the Australian Institute of Music. ;D

There isnt much of a video game industry down here so getting work as a composer for a video game is slim to nothing. Thats why I want to make my own, then i can have a crappily programmed game with stomping sound design. 8)

Do java games typically just refer to .wav files within the programs folder?

You generated a square wave from scratch! That is awesome. I have only ever delved into Reaktor and MaxMSP when going down that road, however they are both very visual and do not require any hand written code.

What do you plan to do with your square wave? Are you building a synth?

#7

Cool, I’m in sydney too. I work at UTS. Apparently there are some game studios in Bondi and Crows Nest, but I haven’t met anyone from there.

I really want to do the next global game jam, it was on in january in sydney but I missed it :frowning:

#8

Yeah Sydney represent! Yes i know UTS, my girlfriend actually attends there studying medical science, kind of puts my pretend degree to shame…

Yes I do believe there is studios at crows nest and bondi, I have forgotten which ones. I work at EB games part time now, though I used to be a manager and I would get flown to conventions to meet the different developers. I do believe Dead Space was made here in aus…

What is the global game jam?

#9

Yeah JGO has no introduction pages so I missed it for first time and randomly went to topic :smiley:
btw, welcome~

#10

You were robbed!

In that case i give you a belated welcome right back. :wink:

#11

Cool, my cousin used to be a manager at EB as well. He liked the discounts. That’s pretty awesome that you got to meet the devs.

Total Annihilation was made/partly made in a studio in Australia too.

If you’re ever around UTS, drop me a mail and we can meet up sometime. I’m there most days.

#12

There is a way to load them in as an InputStream via getResourceAsStream(). That way, you can automatically include the WAVs in a jar file that someone can click and start. WAV’s are bulky, though. Folks here suggested I use OGG/VORBIS for compression. I’m in the process of learning how. I had about 90 seconds worth of sound and it took 3 minutes to download the game and play it as an Applet. Without the WAV files it takes less than 10 seconds. http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php/topic,23676.0.html

Nothing that ambitious. Just trying to understand Java Audio better. I just learned how to load a WAV into a SourceDataLine, instead of a Clip and saw that I could put in my own data instead of the WAV data, so I tried an experiment and put in square wave data and it played! (These objects are part of the javax.sound.sampled library.)

#13

What’s square wave data?

#14

At the risk of hijacking the thread…um…square waves are waves that toggle between two values. For example, at 16-bit resolution, the output of the loudest possible wave would have data values that go back and forth between 32767 and -32768 (range of a signed short int, which is represented in 16 bits). So you only need to create a byte stream with those two values. For a loud sine wave, the data values would follow a sine function and transition smoothly across that same range. Sines are definitely more involved if all you want to do is make a simple test sound. (lots of good java sound info here: http://jsresources.org/faq_audio.html – just discovered this site last week)

Anyway, Christopher, it’s nice to have some more sound-oriented folks on the site! Visuals always get top billing…

#15

Wow! global Jam looks fun!
oh well now I have time to train up for the next one ;D
I just DL’d GameSalad, so I am about to give that ago. See what the limitations are.

You dont happen to work in IT do you Keith?
My girlfriend Nat seems to think she may know of your presence. She is the girl kicking around with purple hair… I cant imagine there is too many…

#16

Ok dually noted. So if you make an internet applet one will need to download all the wav files associated with the program? If thats the case I see why it would slow the whole process down. Now to find a decent OGG/VORBIS converter…

Maybe you can help me with this one…

Most games have crappily crossfaded sections i.e explore music, battle music. I really like the idea of generative music, or music that generates based on the situation. If i were to make a load of 8 bar loops that fit say the categories of percussion, drums, melody. Would I be able to have one of each trigger at random depending on the current situation? Would Java trigger each simultaneously? Would they remain in sync?

#17

Yes sound is a neglected art form that people are thankfully finally starting to realize the importance of.

#18

Haha, no I wish. There must be a few Keiths around. I’m in the finance/economics faculty in the haymarket campus, near paddy’s mkts. I’ll look out for your girlfriend, though we probably won’t cross paths since I haven’t met any med science students or teachers at UTS yet

#19

I use GoldWave for converting my waves to OGG .Though it does not support batch conversion, I don’t have thousands of waves to convert anyway .
To play the oggs on my apps I use paulscode 3d sound library which is quite useful and easy to use .

You might want to check krasse’s work and mrbungle’s work on that, maybe you can get some ideas/code .

#20

All theoretically doable. I’m intrigued with the idea of “branching” composition but haven’t acted on it yet. Supposedly FMOD has implemented it in some form. We should discuss in depth on another thread in the Sound area.

Definitely check out Paul’s code. Many folks are recommending it. I am still on the fence, though, but only because I want to understand things myself (learning project) rather than simply use someone’s library. Also, his library does a LOT more than I need. But a lot of people speak well of it.

I’m getting busy again, and won’t be able to get back on this for maybe another two weeks. Dang. (Money coming in! I shouldn’t diss the situation.)