So I mentioned a couple weeks ago in the Ideas/Inspiration I might pick up porting Temple Run as a project...

Originally I thought I would try to use Mode7 or something, but in the end ended up making a near-complete 3d engine to work it So if I can keep the speed and figure out how to do textures as well, I might release the 3d engine as a separate useable library. The engine is really quite nice, it's all based off of a Point() routine that takes x,y,z, and a pointer and writes the x' y' values to the 4 bytes pointed to (also within the routine cameraX, cameraY, and vanishing point are controllable).


Well, it's now in a playable-enough state that I decided to make an official thread, along with a download and screenie, of course. It's still wireframe, making things kinda hard to see and some of the collisions may be glitchy, which is why I'm enlisting your help in fine-tuning it.

You are the black square (sprite coming soon!). There are no turns (yet), only holes, walls, and things to duck under. Use 2nd to jump, Alpha to duck. There is still a lot of work to do, but it's pretty cool as is already (at least I think so)

Edit: And I need a clipped line routine

Temple Run.

After looking around a bit, it actually looks pretty simple.  The hardest part would be the graphics, but I'm guessing it could be some sort of raycaster?
Then with trees and stuff added on..

I might take this up...going on vacation this week but once the summer's over, we'll see

All you really need to do is match the chord to the solo part- remember, the rule of thumb is first and last note ending on a note in that chord.

So if you said, I'll have the first chord be D major for 1 measure, you could write a melody that goes D E G A (quarter notes) and that fits.

For example, in Bach's famous cello suites, you can visibly see and easily hear that a lot of the notes fall into very obvious chord patterns.

However, chords and chord progressions aren't as visibly important in solo writing compared to writing for multiple parts, so it can seem relatively arbitrary at first. Try just experimenting on your own and see what can come up.

Is that the latest download available on ticalc? That bug should have been removed in that release

Yay featured (Do ticalc staff ignore flash apps? I think Embers deserves a feature more than this does )

On a side note I got sad because I noticed the ticalc screen shows the version with pickupables, which don't exist in the download :'(

Is your raycasting pixel-based? (Did you use the 2d map as the data for the rays cast?)

Sure.

So, let's say you want to write something in D major. There are two ways to approach music writing: the first being outlining the chords to fit the melody, and the other fitting the melody to the chords. Both ways are fine. I'll start with what I favor, which is writing the chords first.

So in a major scale, there are 7 notes, hence there are 7 chords you can use. The convention for naming these chords: roman numerals I-VII, uppercase means major, lower case means minor. So in order, they are
I ii iii IV V vi vii^o
The seventh chord is diminished, don't worry about what that means, I'll get into it later. But try playing each chords' triad (aka arpeggio). A major triad/chord is major because the 2nd note is 4 half-steps higher than the root, or first note (this distance, or interval is called a major third). A minor third is a distance of 3 half steps. A major triad is built out of (with respect to the root note) a root, a major third, and a fifth.
I: D F# A D (sounds major)
ii: E G B E (minor)
iii: F# A C# F (minor)
IV: G B D G
V: A C# E A
vi: B D F# B
vii^o C# E G C# (notice this one sounds different- it's root, minor third, diminished fifth)

So let's write a phrase to match a I chord in D major. The basic 'rules' are that the first and last note of the chord duration must be "in" the chord, or one of the 3 notes that make up the triad. If we took the first 4 notes of your solo, D A B C# and made it D A B D that would 'fit' in the I chord structure. (As a side note, DABC# does fit into a chord, which is the I7 chord or major seventh, but we'll get into that later)

Try playing D A B D in unison with any other measure that follows the same rules (first, last note part of chord I, other notes part of key) and you'll notice it sounds surprisingly good.

Now that you can write a melody line to a chord, we'll move onto chord progressions. Chord progressions are just patterns of chords put together. One of the most common is I-IV-V-I. You can write any of your own progressions, though some flow more smoothly than others.

So, try writing two lines that, for one measure each follow the chord progression I IV V I. The second line can just be whole notes if you want, but you'll notice immediately that there is now a much stronger structure and resonance to the piece.

Now, matching chords to a prewritten melody can be a bit more difficult just because there are a lot of other types of chords and stuff that you (and I) don't know about. But we can try, and once we've got the chord progression from the melody, we can begin to write other lines that follow the same progression. Often pieces are developed using both methods; chord-first offering a stronger structure, and melody-first offering more variations and freedom.

Anyway let's take Twinkle Twinkle and figure out the chord progression.
D D A A B B A
G G F# F# E E D
A A G G F# F# E x2
D D A A B B A
G G F# F# E E D
So let's see... It is in D major judging by the ending on D and the F#. The first line looks to be a I chord. Then..IV chord (G and D both lying in the G-B-D triad)..Next..V chord (A, E lying in the A-C#-E triad) for 2 lines. Then back to I and IV for the end. Notice that matching a chord to a melody is quite flexible. We could've said that only the G-G in the last line is a IV chord and the rest is a I chord. Either way works with what information we do have. Try writing another line that follows the first progression and matching it with Twinkle. Then try using a different chord progression and see how the sound changes.

Once you get the hang of writing with chord progressions, try making up chord progressions of your own. Each chord doesn't have to last the same amount of time as the others, and mix up minor and major chords from the 7 options you have available. Or just mess around with all the variations one set can give you. Half of popular music these days only uses 4 different ones; those being I,IV,V,vi (there was another thread about that somewhere).

Note that there are also much more than these 7 chords, there are chords for the 3 variations of minor scales if you wanna write in minor, augmented, diminished, and about 50000 types of seventh chords as well as something called neopolitan.