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.

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!

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 "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!

This video is EXTREMELY early. All it is meant to show is it will look like to be flying around shooting at stuff in The Groov Cosmos. Well, it doesn't even show that, as the camera is horrible and not at all what it will look like. So...just focus on what the ship looks like.

By the way, you may notice that the music is similar to the music from the last video, but decidedly worse sounding. This is because it's being played by the in-game music system, which is still nowhere near final quality but is coming along nicely.

Something I have gotten a lot of work done on is the "Scene Designer" tool that I've been developing to help me create the visuals for Cosmos. I've finally gotten it into a fully functional (if a little buggy) state, which means I no longer have to journey into the absurdly long text file in a potentially fruitless attempt to remove a stray light or add an architectural structure. The fact that I can now create a scene from start to finish using a visual, real-time system has made a huge difference for my ability to just think creatively and quickly prototype new ideas. Here are a couple of screenshots that show some of the progress I've been making:

I hope people are enjoying hearing about the process behind creating this game -- it's a very new and exciting experience for me to be building a game like this!

What you're looking at in this video is a procedurally modeled environment that will be like many that the player encounters early on in The Groov Cosmos. The video also demonstrates the deferred shading system that allows for many dynamic lights in the environment, which I hope to use to create a dance club-like setting that will enhance many of the battles the player will fight.

Also, an important note: this isn't exactly a game "announcement." Part of the reason I haven't posted anything for so long is because I'm very unsure about how long it will actually take me to complete this game. It might be a year, or it might be 10 years. Seriously. I hope to one day release it, but it might have to be put on the back burner as I exit school for the treacheries of the real world.

Thanks again for making Groov such a big success guys! It's nice to finally post something about my new project, and I'll try to keep posting updates as I make progress.

In the summer of 2009, underground rapper Vice Verse turned to the beat-making team at Funkmasonry Industries to produce his latest album, Cookinville, and the end product is now available for free download at Funkmasonry.com!

Download the album now or keep reading for more information, including a full track listing.