Monthly Archives: March 2010

html5 audio problems

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For my last few sketches now I’ve used HTML5′s built in “<audio>” tag to handle embedded streaming of my audio files, rather than using a Flash component. It’s a convoluted solution right now, due to a lack of ubiquitous support — I need to post Ogg Vorbis files for Firefox and Chrome, MP3s for Safari, and then a Flash-based MP3 fallback for other browsers — but it’s worked pretty well for the most part.

Unfortunately, it came a little unstuck today, when I checked my web server logs and saw that there’d been more than 100 downloads of my latest sketch — far more than I expected from seven minutes of abstract wank. I did some testing, and saw that every time I opened the page, it was downloading the entire track, rather than downloading just the headers. As it turns out, it looks like the transparent proxy at the office is to blame; I guess it has problems with partial content downloads.

For now, I’m just gonna fall back to ye olde Flash player for my audio posts — it’s not pretty, or elegant, but it works, and it doesn’t have these kinds of problems. I’ll keep an eye on HTML5 though, and on the office proxy. Here’s hoping for a future where I can post just a single audio file and have it streamed seamlessly everywhere without a need for plugins!

sketchbook: ambient exploration

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After that Tunestorm bit I’ve been keen to try something different and experiment more with ambient sounds, and this sketch is definitely ambient! There’s no rhythm or melody — just a simple held chord, evolving over time. You won’t walk away humming it, but if you’re after something relaxing, it might fit the bill.

It’s essentially a seven-minute filter sweep, but there’s a tonne of little variations bubbling away inside that sound, so I gave it the time I thought it needed to explore the how the sound changes with every step of that filter. I had it running through my VM1 analogue delay pedal, too, so I turned some knobs on that for good measure as well.


mp3 | vorbis | 7:25

the misadventures of p.b. winterbottom

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Can you believe it’s been nearly a month since the last post I made that didn’t have an MP3 attached? I blame the convenience of Twitter, which lets me dispense with random thoughts and witticisms without all that harrowing long-form writing business. Nevertheless, I’m back, and with a perfect topic — a delicious little Xbox Live Arcade game called The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom.

Winterbottom, as it will hereon be known, is a time-travelling puzzle platformer, so comparisons to Braid spring to mind immediately. Really, though, it’s more like The Incredible Machine games, or Bill’s Tomato Game, an old Amiga game that I’m sure no-one’s played. In Winterbottom, you record yourself performing actions, and then watch as clones of your character are brought to life to play through your recordings.

The aim is to collect pies — a very worthy goal — and there’s often a limited time that they must all be collected within, so completing a level often involves setting up complex, choreographed sequences, where clones run around flipping switches, jumping on levers, or even kicking the player or each other, so that you can get to every last pie in time.

Winterbottom started life as a student project at the University of Southern California, and it’s a perfect example of the kind of game that there’s now a place for in the market thanks to the likes of XBLA, PSN, and WiiWare. It’s 2D through-and-through, though like World of Goo and Braid it has a highly developed art-style, taking its black-and-white cues from early silent movies. The sound design is similarly silent-era, with honky-tonk piano tunes and few sound effects.

It’s definitely not as cerebral as Braid, and I don’t think it’s quite as fun as World of Goo, but it’s unique, it’s beautifully presented, and it’s refreshingly challenging — some of its levels are really quite taxing. Unless you’re easily frustrated by precision platforming, I’d highly recommend it.