Ow, ow, ow! My bat-like ears were really picking up those high-freq notes…
Yeah, probably the freqs were getting too high (Nyquist limit) and getting aliased down to lower freqs.
Sorry, I checked and it turned out that I played the older version: Raiden II. I like the Raiden II music better than the newer version
I have not much clue about the technical stuff but that was fun to hear! The reproduction of all those high frequency sounds by my simple little HP computer speaker is amazingly good btw.
Ah, yes, Raiden II sounds like its music came from a classic FM chip. Probably the popular Yamaha one which was standard on sound cards (Adlib, Sound Blaster, etc) for a long time.
… google …
Oh, not quite. The Adlib chip was a YM3812, but Raiden used a YM2151. Pretty close though. The PC version probably used the Adlib anyway since that’s what would have been available.
I don’t have a FM synthesizer, but a friend offered their Volca FM for cheap and it’s vaguely tempting. I like the sound of traditional analog synths better overall though. To me, frequency modulated digital synthesis sounds like the texture of plastic, the musical equivalent of paintings made only with pastel colors, like visiting a display home where every piece of furniture is brand new and every last detail is staged to make the house look lived-in despite being completely devoid of life. There’s something nice at times about the artificial clean-ness, but most of the time I prefer the scratchy dirty rawness of a subtractive analog synth.
While FM synths meticulously build up sounds one sine wave at a time, producing a very clean sound with a tidy spectral graph, what I used is nothing like that. The subtractive analog synth approach is to belch out all the colors simultaneously into a giant spectral rainbow from one horizon to the other, but filter out some of it before it hits the canvas.
Mathematically, square waves are the sum of an infinite series of sine waves at harmonic intervals. You can think of it kind of like the ripples caused by throwing a rock into a still lake. But of course that’s too simple, so most synthesizers provide lots of ways to make the canvas quite a bit dirtier than just a single square wave. It’s harmonics on top of harmonics as far as the eye can see, interference patterns, like a bunch of people throwing rocks into the same lake all at once. This makes really massive sounds which totally fill the sonic space. Then filters contain the mess, somewhat, by dynamically changing the shape of the lake. This cuts out some frequencies while amplifying others. It’s messy and fun. 
Good FM can be really good though. For example, “Cave Bouncer” by my friend tenfour:
That requires more precision than I generally care for though. I typically paint the broad strokes and then get bored and move on.
It was y Intel Pentium 233MMX, Creative 24x CDROM drive, (crappy) Creative desktop speakers, 32mB EDO RAM, VooDoo something VGA Card….I couldn’t find the PC version of this Raiden II. Sounded a bit different.
I don’t know, was it the speaker I used didn’t have basses, or I already forgetting how it really sounded. Will try to get the .exe file of the original game in my stash later.
My first “real” active speaker was Altec Lansing ACS495 bought it secondhand for ~USD 60 in 1999. And it has been my only desktop speaker until today, sounds so much better than my bluetooth UE Megaboom.
Once I get the file, you can try to install it. Extracting the MID should be simple enough.
I think my dog hates the high pitch sounds. He howled at some parts then hide under the workbench
It’s funny you mention that. I almost said something about it in the video, something along the lines of “Warning: Cover your dog’s ears”. Normally I cut off the extra-high frequencies, but in this case I was having fun playing with Nyquist aliasing.
It probably sounded different because the PC had a different FM chip than the arcade machine. It likely didn’t use MIDI, but rather some sort of tracker-like music format. In either case though, the music files are a sequence of instructions, which notes to play at which times with which instruments, not actual audio. It’s like sheet music. Getting sound out of it depends on what sort of instruments those instructions are sent to.
Older gaming systems did this sort of thing a lot because they lacked the storage space and processing power to deal with raw audio like wav or mp3 files. So they’d add a hardware synth chip and offload the sound generation to it.
Raiden III seems to take the more modern approach of playing pre-recorded audio files. I’d like to know what instruments they used though, because it has a very crisp and precise analog-modeling synth sound to it and they clearly used a fair amount of automation on the knobs. For example, this track is a blatant example of going wild with a digital resonant lowpass filter.
I wonder how close I can get the microbrute to that sound. I could probably duplicate it almost exactly with a microkorg, which might even be what the original composer used, but it’s a pain to build patches on. It’d be an interesting experiment though.
way beyond my scope of field. I do the gaming, you make the music then.
FYI, I was (again) totally wrong about the game. Checked my old drive. It was the Mountain King’s Demonstar! No wonder the music sounds different. But these games have very similar layouts and music style. Perhaps Demonstar was made as the PC version of Raiden I/II/III which weren’t exist. I went to the bookstore next to my highschool to play Raiden then several years later, during my college time, did competition every saturday nights with the boys. Most boys date the girls, while we nerds, just play arcade games.
It’s a free shareware: Demonstar
- Clemence
LOL, third time’s a charm.
I didn’t play Demonstar, but I played its predecessor called Raptor. Although Demonstar’s composer invented a midi-like music format for FM synthesis (.imf), Demonstar didn’t use it. Instead, Demonstar used .mod tracker music like an Amiga. It’s a sample-based method where you have short pre-recorded instruments, typically just a single note, and then play them back at different speeds to get different pitches. It was popular for a while as a way to get closer to CD-quality audio without using anywhere near as much space as a CD. To this day, some people I know still hold a weekly one-hour compo where they each write a MOD tracker song with the same set of samples, then vote on whose was the best. And, almost every time, Coda wins. Dammit, Coda. Why you gotta be so fantastic? Dude is seriously amazing.
I’ll upload some of my old MOD music eventually, but I haven’t put any online yet. Most of it was pretty terrible.
Incidentally, the Demonstar guy also did the music for the original DOOM game. Good stuff.
I wonder if this green eyelashes are hackable?
https://m.banggood.com/Fashionable-Sparkle-Interactive-LED-Light-Up-Waterproof-Eyelashes-for-Party-Pub-Club-Bar-p-1170806.html
I don’t know about hackable eyelashes, but I got a hackable keyboard in the mail… and of course the first thing I did was to put one of my old demoscene effects on it — water, a wavepool simulation.
I also remapped it to be a little closer to how I normally type.
This is the Model-01 from keyboard.io. I got a PVT/prototype unit, but full production should begin in the next month or so, if anyone wants one.
Both the water effect and the layout are works in progress. First drafts, really. But they’ll get better over time.
Now that is WAY cool! 
:+1:
LONG Edit:
The layout is something I would have to get used to, but I’ve never really gotten used to the standard keyboard layout. :person_facepalming: I got a “C” in my high-school typing class. The “ergo” keyboard layout makes me want to tear my hair out because I can’t find the keys I want without staring at the keyboard even when I’m almost certain it is a better way. Typing is something I’ve never been good at but anything that makes it more amusing gets my vote. I thought your design was cool and original when I saw the new layout pictured, but the video really brings it to life in ways that a picture simply can’t show… I love what you are bringing to the lighting world in every form. The water effect with the multicolored lighting flowing through that keyboard in a fantastically natural unnatural way is so cool to watch. I don’t quite know how to describe it other than to say it’s gorgeous!
Everyone reading this needs to click on that video to see what you are bringing to life.
How’s the build quality? Seems quite ergonomic (perhaps too much) but I don’t think anyone should skimp on anything you might use for many hours at a time.
I first thought it was this one, but glad it’s not.
Oh, the build quality is great. No complaints there.
The annoying thing is the physical layout. It definitely isn’t trivial to jump in after using traditional layouts. On a traditional layout, each column is slanted like \ . However, on this keyboard, at least on the left hand, the columns are slanted like / instead. This feels like each key on the bottom row has been moved one key to the left, and each top-row key moved one key to the right. For example, v is between d and f instead of being between f and g.
Normally I use a touchpad under the space bar, even on desktop systems, to click and throw the mouse cursor around quickly without moving my hands off the keyboard. This isn’t remotely possible on this layout. Fortunately, it can emulate a mouse and has some keys to move the cursor, click, and scroll. So that helps, and I patched the mouse code yesterday to make it better, but it’s still not as nice as a touchpad.
And there are no arrow keys. They’re available if I hold Fn, but I still miss having dedicated keys for that.
And it’s awkward to hit chords like Ctrl-Alt-Arrows or Hyper-Shift-Arrows. I’m trying to get a “oneshot” plugin to work, to make that easier — tap the modifiers one at a time and it’ll act as if they’re all being held simultaneously. But it’s still buggy. There’s still a month or two before the regular production run starts, IIRC.
The nice parts are that it’s gorgeous and well-made and completely open-source. After typing on it for a week, the mirrored-column-slant thing is easier to deal with. And after I added some code, I now literally have rainbows splashing out from my fingertips on each keypress.
So it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Mostly good, but I don’t know if I’ll stick with it long-term.
Thanks for the quick review. I feel like it’ll be hard to purchase a keyboard without trying it out in person, but I’ll keep keyboardio in mind.
I miss my old MS ergonomic keyboard though.
google microsoft ergonomic keyboard 4000
Hah, I never did like the MS Ergo keyboard… but then, I never really liked MS either. For a long time they were quite explicitly “the enemy”.
That has gotten better over the past decade, and now the opposition mostly seems to come from the inside, high-level architects steering the whole ecosystem in unhealthy directions. But I’ve already complained enough about Poettering.
Anyway, the last split keyboard I had was this one. It was pretty nice, but a bit large and the switches only lasted a few years before they started to have issues. Maybe I could revive it with some effort, and get it working via USB instead of PS/2, but I’d rather just use something newer.
One of the nicest things about it was the arrow keys on both sides.
I’ve had so much issue with the nerves in my arms and hands over the years I’ve always wondered why the keyboard wasn’t more of a ball. Sure would seem to make the most sense to start with the hands, wrists in a zero relaxed position. But then, I’ve never gone much over 80 wpm so I guess it’s irrelevant.
Having just gotten my first smart phone last week, I’m still on a steep learning curve. lol Hunt and peck was never a favorite way of communicating, although I can no longer let the fingers fly and keep up with speed of thought regardless. Getting old sucks in a lot of ways…
Really, the ergo keyboards have a lot less influence on typing health than other factors. RSI is primarily a matter of insufficient blood flow for sustained periods of time, which is generally due to being inactive and tense. This can be avoided by being more active and more relaxed. What helps is a relaxed position, changing position regularly, and frequent light cardio.
The keyboard itself is mostly just a matter of preference, assuming it’s not a particularly bad one. It doesn’t make as much difference as the typist’s environment and habits.
As for smartphone keyboards, it can help to use something which has a both predictive text model and optional swipe-style input. Bonus if both work at the same time. There are several which qualify, but IIRC the first to do both well was SwiftKey.
I still miss stylus-based PDAs and fitaly-style keyboards. They’re much more precise, and I found fitaly much faster, but a narrow-tip stylus usually requires an older type of touchscreen which is easier to scratch… or a significantly more expensive type of touchscreen like a drawing tablet.
Anyway, the butterfly keyboard is neat but also really funky, and mine has multiple hardware issues including a half-broken Fn key… so it’s not ideal. I get by easier with a traditional compact keyboard, like a “70%” size or “60%” with arrows.
TK, when did you start using dvorak?
I think it’s a better way to type, but I’m just wondering how much time it would need getting used to, and if it’s worth the time.