Short: Create tunes by drawing on the screen. (Beta vers) Author: Ridwan Hughes (fox@ridhughz.demon.co.uk) Uploader: Ridwan Hughes (fox@ridhughz.demon.co.uk) Type: mus/misc -= Bugz Beta 1 =- A couple of years ago I saw a section of The Net (BBC2, UK) which showed someone who was intrested in things like Zoetropes etc., the very first animated cartoons etc., and he had also created a program on a computer in 1990 that allowed you paint music onto the screen with a mouse and 4 bugs would walk round the screen and play music to different pitches and different sounds when they walked over the coloured in squares. I have re-created a virtual copy of this program in AmosPro, the only thing it really requires is 020+ speed for the flashing anims when the bugs step on the coloured in squares, otherwise press [space] for turning off the flashing anims. It needs 1mb chip ram Amigas to run, and should run on A500+'s and A600's easily, but no flashing anims. This is a beta, as in it isn't fully finished, but it works very well, you can save/load your tunes, change the anims used for the 8 different loadable sounds, change the pitch of each colour and the particular sound played and select which raw/8svx sounds you want played. 400k of sound samples are included in this archive. You will need the Assign command available, either in c: or in the directory where Bugz is run from, because the program creates the assign Bugz: in the directory where it is run, this is necessary for loading the flashing anims etc., and the initial default sound settings. Controlling: When on the main screen, pressing the key: P=Prefs L=Load tune S=Save tune Q=Quit -=Slow down bugs +=Speed up bugs Space=Turn on/off the flashing anims Click on the top of the screen to select which colour is drawn onto the screen. (The top right options do not yet work, it is a beta) When on the prefs screen, clicking on: -The very top strip changes that particular colour to either `just make a sound' or `bounce clockwise' or `bounce anti-clockwise' or `bounce directly back'. -The slider bars below the top colours control the pitch of the sound played when the bugs step on that colour. -The numbers below the slider bars will select which sound out of the 8 available that that particular colour will play. -The colours below the numbers will allow you to hear the sound selected for that colour, and at the pitch selected. -The flashing anims to change which anim is used with that particular sound. -The name to the right of the flashing anim to load a new sound sample, currently limited to samples up to 25600 bytes long. To get back to the main screen, click both left and right mouse buttons at the same time, and not anywhere which might change a setting (like the very bottom left of the screen for instance). Saving+Loading: When loading a tune, the program automatically scans the picture loaded into it's memory bank, and also loads in the sound samples required for the particular tune, also the colour settings - type, pitch, anim played, are all changed accordingly. You can click on the .BugPIC or .BugSND extention files, it doesn't matter because the proper files are automatically loaded. When saving a tune, you can either click on the .BugPIC or .BugSND extention files to save over that one, or type in the filename without the extention. The sounds used, the pitch, type of bounce and anim played are all automatically saved with the files for future loading. Limitations: -Only coded for PAL systems so far, also no gfx card support (I dont have one). -The speed of the bugs depend on the screenrate, which with the PAL setup, means that they're be going 50dps (dots per second), or 25dps, or 12.5dps etc., and when running in NTSC (the screen won't go to NTSC size, but will still be able to run), they're be going 60dps, or 30dps, or 15dps etc. So tunes created on a PAL system won't sound proper on an NTSC system, and vice versa. -Only 8 different samples can be used in making your tune. -Sample sizes are limited to 25600 bytes in size. -Sometimes the flashing anims aren't played smoothly enough when they're played at the top or bottom of the screen, I've worked very hard on stopping the flickering-out-of-existance bug, but it's still there, so just create your tunes in the middle of the screen. Have fun. Rid. Email: Ridwan Hughes IRC : Darwin on Europe side of EFnet, apparently now called IRCnet. WWW : http://www.ridhughz.demon.co.uk/