Probably the most fun thing about SL is coming up with ideas of stuff to do. Putting all the parts together is great too, but it’s the designing & prototyping that rocks it for me. Trying different interfaces, discovering quirks & limitations and working around them with script tricks, all that. As such, there’s 12-15 “open projects” running around here right now. Need to organize ideas, make lists, and generally talk to myself out loud to keep them from leaking out of my head.

So that’s what this is. More post-it note to self than telephone to communicate with others. It fits, it works, and by opening it up for others to see it pushes me to get stuff done. Getting stuff done also rocks it.

On to the note-taking then. The project of the moment is a 16-track loop sampler. Really kinda amazed that I haven’t seen a loopbox in game yet, all the llPlaySound loop functions are begging for it - though I did finally find the virtual music studio (by… Octal Khan, i think), and it’s pretty spiff. Great layout, great sounds, and placed in a nicely done house. The Cubase SX screenshot on the monitor is bonus points.

(If anyone reading happens to know of a similar loopbox in-game, lemme know! Not like, “scoping out the competition” or whatever silliness, just want to play it.)

The nifty part about the loopbox I’m working on is that it’s all cartridge-based. The machine doesn’t have any samples of it’s own, they’re all contained in separate objects that anyone can make/sell/trade/whatever. Meaning nobody will have to be stuck with my constant abuse of delay pedals.

The impetus for making the sampler is 1) I like making music, especially repetitive zone-out type stuff, and 2) I know there are a lot of other folks who make music in SL, but there’s no way to make music *in* SL… I personally can’t tolerate those scripted jukeboxes, and streaming audio requires having a server & control over a parcel’s media URL. Meh.

So change the format, streamline it a bit, and poof - audio content becomes a more viable in-game “product” for musician types outside of stream-DJing parties, and the less musical folks can easily make their own live remixes of it. Sounds like rad all around to me, it should exist regardless whether I make it or not.

Anyway, the sampler. It has a lot of features already, but a lot of work to do yet. The main problem is volume levels - the sound can hardly reach the other end of a 512 m² parcel.

The reason is that all the sounds are being played out of tiny buttons (the pad triggers). With SL’s spatialization, tiny objects means tiny sounds. Only way to change that and keep the MPC-ish feel to it is… add some bigass speakers. Second only to duct tape as a universal fix to anything. However, it involves adding at least 1 prim (already at 30-ish), changing about 25 scripts, and writing a new one or two. It’ll take a while, but luckily it’s mostly just modifying the existing code.

Main issue is that there can only be one sound played per each script. meaning, could do like a stereo configuration, each speaker with 8 scripts watching for link messages for a specific sample, or 15-16 speakers with their own. Shooting for 2 with 8 scripts, but that might limit a couple of the features a bit… like fading - fades are handled in a while loop, and lock up any sample triggering (can’t shut off a sound that’s actively in a fade loop). That’s bad enough, but if it affects other sounds for being in the same object, it’ll kill the concept off completely. Meh, we’ll see.

All that brings up another potential issue too. Right now, 2 or more loopboxes can work in tandem, with one running as the master. Set up, say, 4 loopboxes with bigass speakers, and there won’t be as much physical space left for people who want to listen. Always something… But that’s what’s fun.