Play That Funky Music

So a couple music related things happened last month: taking my media server seriously and making some music of my own.

The media server, which started on Plex was mostly just a way to get some use out of my dad’s old chromebook since I didn’t want to just take it in for recycling. However, it had an incredibly small amount of storage (not even 200 GB) since it was bought to be a machine exclusively used for web browsing and email. Also I was a bit annoyed about having to use a google operating system. However, it worked for a while. I was able to get all my cds and the music I owned digitally into the server after installing Crostini. It was pretty nice to have a place to listen to music without any popups or suggested songs, plus I was listening to music I liked only. I used it ocassionally for when I wanted to lock in on something and was afraid having Deezer up would distract me. I later switched to Jellyfin to try things out and not have to worry about suddenly having to pay for features I had been enjoying at some point down the line since Jellyfin is open source and completely free. And since I had a disk reader, I began paying attention to where cds would be on sale. I picked up Linkin Park, the Cranberries, and Evanescence cds and added them to my collection with was really fun. Now I get the extra fun of shifting through cds wherever they pop up and seeing if I can find gold. I also get the opportunity to try picking up a cd on a whim and seeing if I’ve struck gold, which sounds really fun. At some point, I hope to replace Deezer and Spotify with this since even buying just two cds a month (or more if from thrift stores) would be cheaper. Plus, if I supplement with Bandcamp purchases, I can both try out new music and get stuff I already know I like!

Next, I also tried making some music of my own. For the pirate game I’m working on, I wanted to try and make a sea shanty. So I downloaded and figured out getting my VSTs to work with wine and reaper. I felt intimidated by Reaper at first and still kinda do, but I managed to learn enough of it to do what I needed. I had some fun singing and after some trouble, managed to figure out what I wanted it to sound like. That track is still in the works, but I’m happy I got back to making music. Especially since I haven’t seriously attempted to make music since early college.

Pirate Game Progress

Speaking of the pirate game, I’ve made a bit more progress on it. I’ve nearly finished with the design of one of the characters, I just need to tweak her colors a bit more. The main character I started designing is the character based on lust since she was the first one I started concepting. After all there’s a lot of things I knew I wanted to avoid with her design and overall character. For example, proiritizing sex appeal over all else including any sense of historical or cultural grounding.

Separately, I worked on making a 3D base for all the characters. Making a base not only helps me keep the overall look in mind as well as make them all cohesive, but it also allows me to keep player metrics in mind. Player metrics are things like how far a player can jump or their height. Neither of these are super important in a strategy game, especially not the one I’m making. However, I need to keep the width and depth of a character within a certain rang so that they will fit comfortably in the center of their tile. So in making everyone from a base, I can make sure no one’s too big for their tile and still have something to build off of for burlier or chubbier characters. This also means that everyone can share a base rig. Not having to rig every character completely from scratch each time is a huge time saver. Don’t get me wrong, rigging is a pretty fun time, but doing stuff from scratch each time means that things are more error prone as well. After all, it just takes one time of parenting something wrong to get a character that later malfunctions in baffling ways, or worse, multiple characters all acting up in different but inconcievable ways.

Wrap Up and A Bit of April

The social things slowed down a bit this month, which was ok since I got to veg out a little. Plus I now have a new dev friend so that’s a victory. Plus the beginning of April brought me a new passion: shaders. I made a post about it on bluesky but essentially I am so mad I waited so long to try it out because of being told how hard and scary they were. They aren’t. Like things usually aren’t once you get over the intimidation factor. On my third attempt at a shader I found a kind of flow and wacked it out in like 5 minutes. The shader itself that is. Still working on getting it working on more complex objects like cameras and Naninovel’s layered sprites. Hopefully that’ll come in April.