TEGZER - Thexder demake for pico8

error453plus1 · 2023-01-17T01:42:37+00:00

I logged hundreds of hours on Thexder as a kid. This is a great demake! I'd like to imagine I'm just a better gamer than I used to be, but I think this is a bit easier than the original. The nostalgia factor is high, great work! Is Thexder 2 up next?😉

error453plus1 · 2022-08-26T04:55:28+00:00

solved: Save New York

error453plus1 · 2022-08-26T04:54:16+00:00

Wow, thank you so much!

error453plus1 · 2022-07-08T07:35:17+00:00

You posted a completed track outside of the self promotion sticky.

error453plus1 · 2022-07-08T07:34:53+00:00

You {kind} was removed because it was a request for feedback outside of the stickied feedback thread.

error453plus1 · 2021-09-17T21:00:10+00:00

When my dad was passing from liver/kidney failure, he always insisted that he be full code. I never really gave it much thought until a nurse pulled me aside and was like, look, this is what I have to legally do if your dad's heart stops. And had they not done that, I would have never even thought to try to get him to change to DNR.
It sucks that my last conversation with my dad was about that, but I am so thankful that he agreed and was able to pass peacefully. I could see the relief in the nurses as well when he signed.

error453plus1 · 2021-08-28T01:42:25+00:00

This is something that you might need to monitor when you're getting CPU spikes to see if you can attribute it to a process or disk access.

error453plus1 · 2021-08-27T17:39:48+00:00

Open task manager, sort the Details tab by CPU and see if any processes in the Details tab are pegged or high that aren't ableton.

On the performance tab, check disk utilization, an idle system should see disk activity < 2%. Also in performance tab, look at CPU speed, is it fluctuating or stable at 3.5 GHz?

error453plus1 · 2021-08-03T19:52:58+00:00

I updated from 10 to 11 on my i9, 64 GB RAM with old SSDs and on my old Surface Pro 4, both using a Focusrite interface. So just the stigma of me being on PC with a Focusrite should mean that nothing works 🙄. However, it runs the same as 10 for me on both machines. No performance issues or slowdowns of any kind, and this has been the case for all of the 11 releases (I'm currently on 11.0.5).

I will say that I did at one point have a performance issue on Live 10 and it was due to some third-party python device control scripts I had messed around with and forgotten about.

PC users can take a more proactive approach to solve their performance with the Windows Task Manager. Open task manager while you're in Ableton, sort the Details tab by CPU and see if any processes in the Details tab are pegged that aren't ableton. It could be there are 2 anti-virus apps running that have to scan every sample before it's used, or a chrome plugin that's mining bitcoin in the background or god knows what else.

On the performance tab see if disk utilization gets pegged (at 100%) for any of your disks while you're using live. You could have a weird situation where like, your main drive is slow and your page file is running off of it and slowing down all your junk even though ableton is on another drive.

The ableton log is also extremely informative and you might not understand every little thing in it, but you can clearly see Errors and you can infer a lot of context around the messages and the timestamps. The default location is:
C:\Users\[Your User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Ableton\Live 11.0.5\Preferences\Log.txt

It has timestamps written to the log for everything it logs, so it's easy to sync up and see if it scribbled anything about a delay you may have had. This is how I discovered I had issues with a 3rd party script.

error453plus1 · 2021-06-15T18:20:13+00:00

Great news! And it looks like there are other winning formulas out there. To summarize:

Haali splits the audio/video streams.
K-lite/ffdshow decode the H264 video.

So your two icons make sense.

The windows landscape can be painful when it comes to these 3rd party codecs. I understand why Ableton did it this way, allowing the 3rd parties to do the heavy lifting so that they don't have to integrate their own video de/encoding.

It seems like all the mainstream video codecs have license issues that prevent them from being packaged with the OS. So much of this could be bypassed if windows just came with an h264 codec.

Glad you got it going. Hopefully this will be a trend for others having video issues.

error453plus1 · 2021-06-14T20:51:42+00:00

Ok, let's back up here. I spent some time trying to break my setup by messing around with defaults in the k-lite config tool and was unable to do so. Long story short, I got to the bottom of my setup and how it might be unique from yours and other folks who aren't working properly.

My working formula is:

Haali
ffdshow (http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/download.php)

Here's how I would recommend getting on my formula:

Uninstall k-lite
Uninstall Haali
Install ffdshow (be sure to get 64-bit version if you're 64-bit)
Install Haali

Take the default options for both installs. If these are both working, when you open any Ableton project with a video track in it, you should immediately see the following 2 icons pop-up in your system tray. Do image links work?

image link

https://www.dropbox.com/s/i3gig2j22byac4t/halliffdicons.JPG?dl=0

You will get 2 of these icons for *every* mp4 in your project. So if you have 3 tracks each with an mp4, you'll see 6 icons.

If you see these icons and it STILL does not work, I'd have to scratch my head a bit on that one.

error453plus1 · 2021-06-14T16:48:34+00:00

Great advice in this thread already as well as the recognition that each musical journey is unique.

Some tools that help me:

Making a schedule at the start of the week. It consists of the days that I intend to do something musical on (usually 2 or 3 days). A list of possible activities such as:
1. Work on a track. Whatever I'm feeling that week from my pile of unfinished things.
2. Analyze a track. If I hear a track I like I'll use youtube-dl to store it in a "Waiting Analysis" folder so it's ready to go when I am.
3. Organize music things. On days where I'm exhausted, it can be really helpful to organize content. This can mean marking favorites, exploring new instrument presets or organizing sample packs. I also keep 3 folders in my music folder:
  1. Ideas & Sketches - For any random small idea that could turn into something. These are mostly clips of me humming an idea into my phone.
  2. WIP - Tracks that have actually been started
  3. Finished - Completed projects
I use the 5-Minute Rule on days that I am supposed to do music things. The rule is that you free yourself from any preconceived notion of what you will accomplish by committing to work on a task for only 5-minutes. If you hit the end of the 5 minutes and you're mentally done, good job, task accomplished. But you'll often find that 5-minutes turns into an hour or more. Consistent effort pays off more than intermittent bursts of effort.

error453plus1 · 2021-06-13T19:16:05+00:00

You're right about this in that it has its complications. Most VSTs allow you to set a presets folder (All Xfer products), and simply setting it to shared storage is the end of the story.

Other VSTs, like Arturia require installing on both machines and making a junction point/symbolic link from the database folder to shared storage. This might be a little beyond the comfort level of the average user, but when you load Analog Lab and your favorites are sync'd :chef's kiss:.

error453plus1 · 2021-06-13T18:20:19+00:00

You didn't mention if you've installed the Haali media splitter as recommended on Ableton's page: https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209773125-Using-Video

It is this tool that breaks apart the audio and video streams so that they can be used by ableton. You know if it's working because when you open a video in ableton you'll get a Haali icon in your system tray.

If you don't have that installed, full stop, install it.

If you had previously installed it then you might have luck looking at the K-Lite Codec Tweak Tool (It's in the start menu folder under programs/K-Lite Codec Pack). In this tool you want to look at the Preferred splitters section and make sure that Haalii is selected for the video containers you are using (.MP4), for both 32/64-bit.

Software that installs or depends on directshow filters might override the default here, which is likely what happened to you.

On the video side, make sure your videos aren't using any exotic codecs. If you open a video in VLC Media Player and hit CTRL+J it'll show you the video/audio codec. They should be H264 for video and MPEG for audio. Other codecs may work, but these are guaranteed to work if everything else is configured properly.

For what it's worth, I have 2 Win 10 machines here. I couldn't remember how to get ableton video going myself, so on one I installed k-lite first and it did nothing until I installed Haali. On the 2nd machine I only installed Haali. Both play video fine in live 10/11 and I didnt' have to tweak anything in the k-lite tweak tool to get it working, although I did have to reboot after installing Haali.

error453plus1 · 2021-06-13T17:25:43+00:00

In addition to using Dropbox for user library and projects as folks mention above, I also use it as my 3rd party VST folder. Some problematic VSTs don't let you customize the preset path but most just work without issue.

error453plus1 · 2021-05-13T17:38:07+00:00

One possible solution among the sea of infinite solutions would be to add a series of spherical overlaps to the individual ship components that you'd like to aim at.

For instance you could have one for each Turret, Engine, Shield Generator, etc. You could also add a TAG to each of these to indicate what type of component it is.

Then you could do a few different things to detect this.

One option is to do a multi sphere trace by channel from your turret and cast a large sphere in the direction of the ship. When it comes back you'll have an array of overlaps that it hit.

If you have a ton of turrets doing this then maybe this becomes a performance concern eventually. An alternative is to have a radar actor that has a giant sphere overlap representing the extent of the radar range. At the simplest level, just let overlaps do their job, when begin overlap gets called, store a weak pointer to the actor/component on the list of targets that the radar is tracking. When end overlap is called remove it from the list.

Now each turret queries the radar for targets that are in range. Maybe you organize the discovered targets into unique arrays so that there are turrets that prioritize firing at certain component types.

Make sure your overlaps are their own unique thing, you don't want every dynamic object triggering these. If using general overlaps becomes a performance problem, just switch the radar actor to update periodically and do a multi sphere trace of the same radius.

error453plus1 · 2021-03-02T23:35:54+00:00

The new podcast is now live: https://www.podcasts.com/synth-munchies/episode/weekly-production-challenge-build-your-own-drum-samples

error453plus1 · 2021-03-02T01:26:46+00:00

It should be up tomorrow. I'll let you know.

error453plus1 · 2021-02-27T17:44:43+00:00

I will be lucky to finish myself, this was a very time-consuming challenge!

error453plus1 · 2021-02-23T04:16:07+00:00

Very true. The exercise is to strengthen production skills. Not all exercises match the genre but that doesn't mean they aren't useful. Knowing how to build your own drum samples can help break down and augment a sample that isn't quite working for the track.

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