Shifty Experiments

Funky Friday Episode II

This week, on Funky Friday, we delve deep into the cavernous catacombs of a creepy cathedral. We're actually going to do that a lot. Every week, in fact. The whole game is set in a cathedral. I just really wanted to use a lot of alliteration in that first sentence.

I'm trying to stick to screenshots for now, because I don't card-carrying Funkmasons around the world to get TOO excited for The Groov Cosmos. And I also don't want to spoil the solution to the devilishly complex puzzle pictured below! That was a joke. It's a really simple puzzle.

 Remember to follow me on Twitter or on Facebook to make sure you keep abreast of all The Groov Cosmos-related news. Because if future episodes of Funky Friday are at all as enthralling as this week's, you WON'T want to miss them.

Funky Friday Episode I

E3 SPECTACULAR ANNOUNCEMENT! Well not exactly; Funkmasonry Industries (ie. myself) isn't *quite* a big enough deal yet to make it to E3. However, I do have something to announce. Starting today, I'll be posting a short update about The Groov Cosmos every Friday. Let's kick things off with some new screenshots, fresh off the game-making presses.

These are two views of "Main Control," where you begin the journey that is The Groov Cosmos. Investigatory readers will note the second screenshot's similarity to a piece of concept art I posted a few months ago. Stay tuned for next week's episode of Funky Friday!

The Groov Cosmos: First Gameplay!

I finally have some actual gameplay footage to post!

My strategy so far has been to develop the framework and tools for a flexible 3D music game engine before trying to develop the actual content of the game, so that I can eventually focus on gameplay and music. Although I'm still not done with the engine, I've begun to work on some puzzle and action sequences.

In the final game there will be an environment to explore; each room is its own song, and might be a puzzle or a dual-stick shooter-style combat encounter. The video above shows some puzzle mechanics at work. The actual puzzle is going to be tweaked and probably won't be the first puzzle in the game, so don't worry if the solution doesn't seem to make any sense. The action scene I'm attaching below is also incredibly early but shows a very basic example of what combat will be like in The Groov Cosmos.

The Groov Cosmos: Real time audio effects

Here is a quick demonstration of some of the features of the music system I've been working on for "The Groov Cosmos."

The "wah-wah" sound of the guitar is being done in real time, and can oscillate along with the beat in a variety of ways (here it's set to a quarter note pulse). There is a triplet delay on the guitar and bullet synthesizer, which I turned the volume up on for demonstration purposes. Reverb levels can also also be tweaked in real time, with chorus hopefully soon to come. The setting of all of these effects can be applied independently to each instrumental voice in the song.

I slowed down the tempo of the song midway through the video to demonstrate how these effects adapt to the speed of the beat.

Hopefully this kind of stuff is interesting -- I'm hoping to be able to post some sort of combat footage in the near future!