sangsara.net

Tag: Fictional Games

  • RetroVista

    RetroVista

    Picture a (pixel) perfect world

    App URL: retrovista.sangsara.net

    My previous app Window Box was designed to be a second screen companion, showing views of the real world while you work. RetroVista brings you to more perfect places: the kind of pixel-art landscapes you might have grown up with, fully animated and sounding like a lost cartridge from 1989.

    Hit “Start”, watch the console boot up, and find yourself down by the coast, or in the mountains, or a desert, a forest, the arctic, a city, or an alien planet. Each scene is procedurally generated, so no two are alike. Waves crash, clouds drift, birds flock, and trees sway. You can even enable Live Time and Weather and it’ll match the conditions where you are.

    Alongside the vintage graphics, the sound is authentic too. Each console’s audio chip is synthesized in software, so pick the NES and you get its bright pulse waves, the Game Boy and its thin, warm beeps, or the Super Nintendo and its lush instruments. The Master System, Commodore 64, PICO-8, and a 1-bit mode are in there too.

    Scenes produce rain, wind, surf, and thunder sound effects along with gentle, procedurally generated music that’s never the same twice. The tunes weave in and out of silence, slowly evolving, so you can leave them playing for hours.

    Completing the experience are a realistic CRT filter, a handy clock, and a shuffle mode that brings you a new world every so often. Add it to your phone’s Home Screen as a progressive web app and it’ll even work offline.

    Made for your second screen, and your inner child.

    NEW in v3.0!

    • RetroVista Express: Hop on a train and tour the world in Orient Express style. This new mode takes you through the countryside and special versions of all previous scenes with parallax scrolling and a special dining car mode (in place of opening the window).
    • Tap mode: Activate this in all other worlds and interact with the scenery and inhabitants! You can even knock thrice on the window to call your special friend.
    • An absolute avalanche of other improvements and expansions on existing functionality. Oh, and a new logo and start screen.

    NEW in v2.0!

    • RetroVista pays homage to Window Box by ripping it off — you can now shut the window and appreciate the local flora of each scene. Outdoor sounds get muffled, the rain stays out and runs down the glass, all that good stuff is here. “W” acts as the shortcut key.
    • The Game Boy Advance joins its older siblings, with a new backlit LCD filter effect too.
    • Tokyo has been added as a new city, with loads of detail. Our previous City scene has been renamed New York, and looks more the part with smokestacks and water towers.
    • Plus: occasional gusts of wind blow debris around in all scenes, many smaller improvements, and a very special surprise for those who love curling up by the window.

    Changelog:

    3.0.0 – Express train and Tap mode. The biggest update yet. Details in the post above.

    2.1.0 – Tokyo: Trees now line the streets and occasionally bloom as cherry blossoms.

    2.0.5–8 – Tokyo: atmospheric sounds, new event animations, fix for window audio bleed.

    2.0.1–4 – Added window frames for Forest/Mountains and Arctic, tweaks to sfx.

    2.0.0 – Window Box, Tokyo, and GBA. Massive update, details above.

    1.5.0 – City jazz!

    • Every City scene now plays chiptune jazz: swung rhythm, 7th chords over ii-V-I changes, a walking bass and soft brushes on the noise channel

    1.4.10 – Foggy worlds no longer play a low buzzing drone

    1.4.9 – Power savings

    • The screen draws at 20 frames a second instead of 30, which saves power and keeps rain and snow in step with the rest of the animation
    • Sound runs at a lower sample rate (22.05 kHz) with no audible difference, for about half the audio processing cost
    • The screen skips redrawing when nothing has changed

    1.4.8 – Audio behavior

    • The speaker button in the top-left corner now stops and starts sound instead of muting it.
    • Music and sound keep playing when you leave the app or lock the phone

    1.4.7 – Raindrop sfx and visitor animation fixes

    1.4.6 – Master System improvements

    • Master System now plays by the real console’s screen limits: 32 of its 64 colors on screen, in two palettes of 16, with each 8×8 tile using one palette

    1.4.5 – Further C64 optimizations

    1.4.4 – C64 multicolor mode and colors

    • C64 now plays by the real machine’s multicolor bitmap limits: pixels twice as wide as tall, one background color for the whole screen, and only three more colors in each 4×8 cell

    1.4.3 – NES hardware rules, sound behavior

    • NES emulation improved across all scenes to obey the real console’s color limits
    • iPhone and iPad: sound now plays with the silent switch on (it pauses other audio, like a music app)

    1.4.2 – Version numbering

    • The splash footer shows the version number

    1.4.1 – Cricket adjustment

    • Crickets go quiet in the rain, sing at one pitch per world (a second cricket joins now and then), softer, and in spells with long quiet stretches between

    1.4 – Visitor and city sounds

    • City: trains clack along the rail and sound their horn as they cross, ferries give one long low blast and tugs two short toots, and planes swell overhead, only while they’re on screen
    • City: a car horn down the street now and then (rarer at night) and, very rarely, a far-off siren
    • Visitors everywhere get voices, timed to what they do on screen: the elk bugles when it stops, ducks quack, the hawk cries, the barn owl screeches, owls hoot from the trees, the heron croaks as it takes off, boars grunt while they root, gulls cry, dolphins splash back in, the coyote howls, tumbleweeds swish, the saucer warbles and zips off, the whale blows with each spout and sings, the arctic fox yips before it pounces

    1.3.2 – NES colors

    • NES: shades the palette lacks, like a night sky’s navy, are dithered from two colors instead of snapping to the nearest one, so Arctic and Mountains nights no longer go flat teal

    1.3.1 – City storms

    • The city keeps running in storms: ferries, tugs and trains carry on, and planes come in low under the cloud with their lights on

    1.3 – Visitors

    • Visitors: incidental animations in every scene, by day, by night and in the rain (storms stay empty)
      • City: ferries, tugs, planes and trains on a waterfront rail
      • Mountains: elk, ducks, hawks and barn owls
      • Arctic: Arctic foxes, polar bears and whales
      • Coast: sailboats, dolphins, gulls, crabs and turtle hatchlings
      • Forest: deer with fawns, rabbits, boars with piglets, herons and owls
      • Desert: tumbleweeds, camel caravans, vultures, roadrunners, a howling coyote and fennec foxes
      • Alien: saucers, sky jellyfish, slimes, six-legged grazers and crystal spores
    • Visitors respect depth: nearer land hides them, and they’re scaled for their distance
    • Butterflies and fireflies in the forest
    • Night sky: shooting stars, satellites, the odd comet and meteor shower, peeking through on cloudy nights
    • City skies are dimmed by light pollution
    • Crescent moons are lit from below, with their horns up
    • Animations step at a low frame rate, like the rest of the art
    • Fixes: forest walkers no longer wade the stream, streams dim at night, desert mesas no longer hover, sailboats no longer clip the distant island

    1.2 – Music and resolution

    • Three resolution modes: Authentic (default), Chunky and Hi-Res
    • Occasional drums, with kits that suit each world
    • Musical phrases now come home to the root chord
    • Rain and storms are rare in the desert

    1.1 – Coast waves

    • The waterline moves: waves run up the beach, drain back and leave a wet sheen
    • Surf sounds are synced to each visible wave

    1.0.1 – Polish

    • Toolbar fades after 30 seconds untouched
    • Coast palms stay on dry sand
    • New description and social preview image

  • Week 3.23

    • This post is delayed on account of the Lunar New Year weekend; hope you had a good one if you celebrate!
    • After two years of restrictions and fear (not to mention peace and quiet), we returned to the old chaos with a few family gatherings and house visits. Unfortunately, one of my favorite parts of the whole thing, a large reunion dinner on the Eve with some of our most senior relatives, was still off the table on account of their mounting health issues. I wonder if we’ll ever get a chance to see everyone on that side of the family all together again.
    • I brought my GR III out to capture some of these moments, and fortunately Ricoh released their previously mentioned new Diary Edition model just the day before, which meant the firmware update for older models to get their new Negative film-inspired “Image Control” mode was also released. After some experimentation, I’ve settled on these settings: Saturation +1, High Key +2, Contrast +1, Shadow Exposure -1. Am looking forward to using it for more everyday snaps in 2023.
    • While hanging around with some relatives in the afternoon of Day 1, a few of us downloaded the Dimensional personality test app and began answering its slew of profiling questions to compare our toxic traits, love languages, and all that. It co-opts a bunch of well-known existing frameworks like the MBTI and so on into one gigantic pile of traits. Does that constitute a unique and proprietary offering? I don’t know, but it’s fun enough and free. Be warned, completing all available questions can take over an hour.
    • Speaking of apps, my advance pick for 2023’s game of the year launched this week on Apple Arcade: Pocket Card Jockey Ride On. It’s a remake of the Nintendo 3DS eShop exclusive now fixed up with better graphics and subtle gameplay tweaks. If you never played the original, do yourself a favor and give it a try. It’s an addictive solitaire-based game; the main downside (for me) is it’s time-based and needs some concentration and so isn’t something you can play while in a noisy environment.
    • My Mastodon use has fallen off a little. I actually prefer Twitter’s algorithmic timeline to a chronological one because I tend to follow too many people to keep up, and need some help sifting out the “best” content from the rest. Mastodon is beginning to give me the uncomfortable feeling of a full inbox, but perhaps I should simply follow fewer people.
    • The general rule around here is to avoid talking about work — although it is usually such a big cost center for my time — but we had a new colleague relocate from Shanghai, and it was nice welcoming them to town and having a couple of impromptu beers on a weekday night.
    • Last episode, I mentioned seeing some Tezos NFT art at Singapore Art Week. Well I came across one of the pieces for sale (entitled D-909 Groove Arcade) and decided to go through the trouble of creating a Tezos wallet and getting some funds in so I could buy it. It’s one edition out of 167, and so was only like USD$20, but I’m super happy to have it. Can art be absolutely adorable and funky at the same time? Provably yes!
    D-909 Groove Arcade
    • I also continued generating non-existent videogame screenshots using Midjourney, expanding the fictional timeline to include modern-day remakes of old games. I should spend more time pushing this idea further but so far I’ve only done it in spare moments or when I should really be doing something else.
    Civilization: Flat Earth
    Duck Hunt Remake, PS4 (2018)
    Drone Hunt, NES (1984)
    Theme Hospital: COVID Edition
    Need For Speed: Self-Driving Edition
    • Everything But The Girl is back after what feels like decades, and the video for their new single is an incredible piece of choreography and one-take execution. I could only think of the immense pressure on each person not to fuck up. Dimensional seems to concur, reporting that my main motivation is Security.

  • Week 2.23

    We kind of started planning our trip to Japan later this year, but there’s still a lot to figure out in terms of what to do, and where to spend our time. It seems a lot of the popular hotels and destinations are selling out fast, if not already sold out, because of the resumption of travel out of China. I’m going to use this as a test of two new collaboration features in iOS and macOS: shared Safari Tab Groups, and the new Freeform whiteboarding app. In theory this should allow us to gather links to interesting ideas and plot them out together across our devices over several days.

    On Friday afternoon, I was excited to see an article saying that one of the best bowls of ramen I’ve ever had was finally coming to Singapore. In fact, it was their opening day, and we decided to just go down right after work to try and get a seat. After about 20 minutes of queuing (which was nothing compared to the maybe three hours we spent in line for the main restaurant in Tokyo), we got into Nakiryu at Plaza Singapura, and were sorely disappointed. For starters, their signature Szechuan-style Tan Tan/Dan Dan noodles were sold out. We ordered shio and shoyu ramen instead, and they were roundly mediocre. The service was also spotty and uncoordinated.

    It’s a pattern that the local franchisee Japan Food Holdings (who’ve done the same thing with Afuri and others) seems to be repeating: bring in a brand people are excited for, then do nothing to capture the original taste and quality. I suspect if you did a side-by-side comparison of the ramen from several of their brands, you’d find they’re just selling the same product under different names. Sadly, they’ve probably got the connections to get these deals and as long as the money flows in, the original companies don’t care how badly it’s done outside of Japan.

    ===

    SEA Focus NFTs: Art by @ykhaamelz, music by @discokid909

    Singapore Art Week is back and we attended two events: SEA Focus and the creatively named Art SG. The former’s at Keppel Distripark where the Singapore Art Museum’s temporary spot is, and features a little NFT art corner sponsored by Tezos. In contrast to the other exhibits, I found the work in there refreshingly playful, modern, vibey.

    Art SG

    At Art SG (a large and mostly serious gallery fair over two floors at Marina Bay Sands), I also found myself reacting more to the digital or digitally inspired work. There was a large print of a CloneX pfp, attributed to Murakami, mounted on a wall that I saw from across the hall and made a beeline towards. The Pace gallery (which I only happen to know because of their collaborations with Art Blocks) space featured teamLab’s NFT project, and a James Turrell projection. The teamLab one is cool: anyone can download and run the artwork (an app) on their PC or Mac. These are regarded as authentic and valid copies of the work. However, one can also own an NFT of the work (there are only 7), and these collectors can change the text seen in the art for everyone else. Oh, and they’re $200,000 each.

    Unknown work at Art SG (forgot to take notes!)

    Elsewhere, I saw a work that was a white flag printed with a surrender message that I’d read before but didn’t know where. I googled the text but nothing came up. Later, I found a tweet from early 2022 referencing it: an on-chain exchange between two MEV… “searchers”? The tweets only have between a couple hundred and a couple thousand likes, so it’s probably not a widely known thing. But I definitely saw and remembered it from last year, which means I’ve spent too much time spectating in a very small fringe community. And my time spent appreciating generative art has definitely ruined traditional abstract art for me.

    The Field #290

    Speaking of which, I was excited to add an edition of The Field by Beer van Geer to my collection this week. It’s an interesting (animated) work in that all 369 pieces are different views of the same “territory”, starting at random points, zoom levels, and rendered with different palettes, but viewers of any section can move away from those starting points and explore. As I understand it, the field itself was created from noise data created by aggregating hundreds of images from the artist’s body of work, trying to derive a sort of pattern map or artistic fingerprint from their ouevre. Isn’t that so much more exciting than static paint on canvas??

    ===

    Ricoh announced a new special edition of the GR III compact camera, called the “Diary Edition”. Yeah it sounds like one of those translated-from-Japanese names that sounds slightly awkward in English, but I like it. As a name, you can’t get much clearer about the concept of a camera that you’re meant to carry around to intentionally document everyday life, and it even comes with a new “negative film” look that will also come to older GR III models via a firmware update. Whether or not this behavior is one that users will actually embrace when they already have smartphones, I don’t know. I suspect not, outside for a few glorious weirdos. But the atmosphere and quality of these photos could hardly be more different than your smartphone snaps, unless you go the film route.

    As a new colorway, I also love the look of the Diary Edition.

    Here are a couple of photos I took with my GR III on the way to the art fair:

    ===

    • We watched a couple of spy TV shows, of which Jack Ryan’s season 2 was the undisputed best. We’ll start on season 3 soon.
    • Miyachi’s second album, Crows, is out. I heard it through once and it’s a bop. I don’t know what he’s rapping about but I’m sure it’s slightly problematic.
    • I finished Arcade Spirits but can’t recommend it if you’ve got many great games in your Switch backlog. To recap, it’s a Western visual novel about running a video game arcade. Some of the background art is basic and not very polished. I was struck several times by the thought that a game creator today could create far better generic bar/beach/arcade interior background art in seconds using AI. And they probably will/are already. So as an artifact of our pre-AI phase, Arcade Spirits stands out as a bit lacking in the production quality department.

    Here’s a tweet showing a game prototype someone purportedly threw together using AI tools to create the graphics, icons, and voice acting!

    • Quite coincidentally, I started experimenting with Midjourney prompts on Monday trying to get the EGA/VGA PC game look of the Sierra games I played in the 80s and 90s. I found a good solution and started using it to visualize screenshots of #fictionalgames from the golden era of PC games, ones that never existed, or that might be made today with modern concepts.
    Police Quest 5: Capitol Invasion
    Quest For Glory 6: So You Want To Be A Private Military Contractor
    Where in the Bahamas is Carmen Sandiego?
    Leisure Suit Harvey: In the Land of the Casting Agents
    Command & Conquer 2022