#it is easy to see the different 2D views perceived by each eye

[thetapelessworld]

XILS-lab creates KaoX a virtual instrument inspired by legendary FM synthesizer

XILS-lab creates KaoX a virtual instrument inspired by legendary FM synthesizer

XILS-lab is proud to announce availability of KaoX — a virtual instrument inspired by a legendary FM (Frequency Modulation) synthesizer, albeit bolstered by virtual analogue sound synthesis and additional chaotic algorithms in an advanced two-layer architecture allowing for a powerful sound creation tool to fuel DAW-driven synthesizer dreams with a much more easily understood signal path than its iconic FM forefather

To appreciate its iconic inspiration is to truly appreciate the power of KaoX, XILS-lab’s latest virtual instrument. Indeed, the early-Eighties synthesizer market was dominated by analogue synthesizers using analogue circuits and analogue signals to generate sounds electronically, which, when made available as programmable polysynths with patch storage, were costly with limited polyphony. Putting paid to that dominance, an Eighties-dominating 16-voice FM synthesizer changed course — changing the course of musical history in the process — by generating sounds via frequency modulation, a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. Mass manufactured using very-large- scale integration chips by a Japanese giant of a company who had licensed the technology from Stanford University, California — composer, musician, and professor John Chowning developed the digital implementation of FM synthesis while there, the world’s first commercially-successful digital synthesizer subsequently sold over 200,000 units within three years — around 20 times more than the most iconic analogue synthesizer of all time sold in its impressive decade-long lifespan — and its preset sounds soon became staples of the Eighties pop pantheon with E PIANO 1 purportedly ending up on 40% of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers throughout 1986. Therein lay the rub. Really complex menus and a lack of conventional controls meant that few learned to program the comparatively keenly-priced instrument in depth — despite FM synthesis lending itself to creating brighter, glassier sounds, as well as imitative acoustic sounds so much better than its instantly unfashionable analogue adversaries, programmable polyphonic or otherwise. Of course, fashions change with time and technology; the instrument in question has long since fallen out of favour. Although analogue synthesizers — somewhat ironically — are now more commonplace than they ever were with a perceived warmth of sound and appealing hands-on control working in their favour, the convenience of an ITB (in the box) workflow with DAW-driven virtual instruments and effect plug-ins has far from lost its appeal for today’s music-making masses. Time to revisit the wonderful world of FM synthesis with a modern-day twist? Knowingly, KaoX does just that. After all, as a virtual instrument- and effect plug-in-specialising software company, XILS-lab loves to create tools that inspire its users to create more imaginative music than they ever dreamed possible!

Put it this way: with KaoX, XILS-lab has created a virtual instrument inspired by that legendary FM synthesizer, albeit bolstered by virtual analogue sound synthesis and additional chaotic algorithms in an advanced two-layer architecture allowing for a powerful sound creation tool to fuel DAW-driven synthesizer dreams with a much more easily understood signal path than its iconic FM forefather since said signal path is easily understood through the use of illuminated modules in a GUI (Graphical User Interface) that is equally easy on the eye. KaoX’s knowing nod towards the preset-powered popularity of its iconic FM forefather is immediately obvious for all to see and hear in an easy-to-tweak simplified view allowing its UP (upper) and LO (lower) synthesizer layers — each with independent synthesis modules — to be combined in three different ways. Working in single mode, only the selected layer is active and heard, while both layers are active and heard in SPLIT and DOUBLE modes — the lower part of the keyboard playing the LO layer and the upper part of the keyboard playing the UP layer in the case of the former, while both the UP and LO layers are simultaneously played across the keyboard in the case of the latter. Limited controls are available in this simplified view, including TUNE, DRIFT, GLIDE, VIBRATO, FREQ (vibrato frequency), DEPTH (vibrato), W (wheel), TREMOLO, FREQ (tremolo frequency), and DEPTH (tremolo), plus CHORUS, DELAY, PHASER, and REVERB effects, enabling users to easily play presets and to tweak them accordingly — adding vibrato and tremolo or switching effects on and off, for instance.

Alternatively, activating an advanced settings view brings the wonderful world of KaoX into full view, allowing more adventurous users access to the virtual instrument’s internal modules to tweak or change any parameter therein, aided by contextual help windows, while active modules are helpfully illuminated. FM synthesis options are available on each of the two available layers with eight operators grouped in two banks with independent pitch — perfect for creating chorus-like FM sounds or punchy stereo patches — and two outputs (O1 and O2). Each FM OPERATOR features one LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator), one envelope, WHEEL and VEL (velocity aftertouch) access, two user-definable external modulators (assignable to any KaoX modulation source), KEYB (keyboard follower) 2D pad, RATIO or FIXED frequency selection, and a lowpass filter. Furthermore, virtual analogue synthesis options are also available on each of the two available layers with two continuous waveform analogue oscillators (ANALOG OSCILLATOR 1 and ANALOG OSCILLATOR 2), two zero-delay-like analogue filters (FILTER 1 and FILTER 2), four D-ADSR envelopes, and four VCA outputs for bringing a depth and warmth to the sound creation table. That said, KaoX also allows its users to create sounds that they had never thought possible, thanks to two chaotic oscillators (CHAOS OSCILLATOR 1 and CHAOS OSCILLATOR 2) and two chaotic ring modulators (CHAOX 1 and CHAOX 2). And as if that was not enough to keep committed sound creators seriously satisfied, KaoX comes complete with a flexible four-track step SEQUENCER, where each track can be assigned to the UP or LO layer with independent sustain and gating or used as a modulation source. Sound-wise, KaoX comes packed with 500-plus presets programmed by world-class sound designers Mikael Adle, Soundsdivine, Status, Nori Ubukata, Tom Wolfe, Xenos, Yuli-Yolo, Zensound, and many more — more than enough to point anyone of any ability in the general direction of where they might musically want to go. Getting there is made much easier with its integrated single-window preset manager making finding the right patch for the task, managing presets and sound banks, as well as creating custom tags, an efficient easy-going experience that could barely be dreamt of back in the early Eighties. Today the time has clearly come to revisit the wonderful world of FM synthesis with a modern-day twist and appreciate the power of KaoX, XILS- lab’s latest virtual instrument par excellence — from France with love... and all without the need for very-large-scale integration chip mass manufacture! KaoX is available to purchase as an iLok (2 and 3 dongle hardware or software) protected plug-in priced at an introductory promo price of €99.00 EUR until May 15, 2021 — rising thereafter to an MSRP (Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price) of €179.00 EUR — directly from XILS-lab via the dedicated KaoX webpage (https://www.xils-lab.com/products/kaox-p-168.html), which also includes more in-depth information. KaoX can be directly downloaded as a multi-format AAX, AU, and VST (Mac OS X 10.8 and later) and AAX and VST (Windows 7, 8, and 10) plug-in from here: https://www.xils-lab.com/products/kaox-p-168/download.html Listen to several KaoS-showcasing demo tracks providing the soundtrack to XILS-labs’ latest teaser video here: https://youtu.be/qeZJvGe6a4Y

https://www.xils-lab.com/products/kaox-p-168.html

[aurelliocheek]

20 Years HandyGames: Townsmen VR

Adapting an established genre for Virtual Reality.

HandyGames has always embraced new technology and platforms. When virtual reality got mass media attention with the release of the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive in 2016, we had already been developing and releasing games for Google Cardboard and Samsung Gear VR. When we were thinking about bigger projects that would take full advantage of the new technology, we came back to our Townsmen series. Townsmen had seen great success on mobile, and its 7th instalment was making its way to PC and consoles. Townsmen VR started as an experiment to combine this medieval city building game with the new VR technology. What are the main aspects?

City building games:

Simulation of population, supply chains and resource management

Interaction on a strategy level (building placement, taxes, trading, research)

Focus on resource management

Zoomed out bird’s eye perspective with free camera movement for a good overview

Virtual Reality:

Simulation of a place that feels real, with fun and playful experiences

Interaction on a direct level (touching, grabbing and throwing objects)

First-person perspective with restricted movement due to mºtion sickness issues

We wanted to combine the simulation and resource management elements of the genre with the direct interaction and playful experiences possible in virtual reality.

Freedom of Movement In order to achieve this, we needed controls that allowed players free movement to gain different perspectives in the game without making them feel motion sick.

We did this by implementing movement that feels a bit like climbing a ladder or crawling like a baby. You grab anywhere and then pull yourself towards that point. You can rotate your view by grabbing with both hands and turn them around the up axis. You can also zoom in and out by moving your hands closer together or further apart, just like the two-finger pinch-zoom on a smartphone.

With all these options together, you have a great degree of freedom to go everywhere on the map, get a big overview or zoom in to interact with smaller details. Against our initial assumptions, this also solves the motion sickness issue. Motion sickness is usually caused by your body experiencing a disconnection between the movement your eyes see and the movement you perceive through your sense of balance. But the movement caused by these controls is so closely tied to the movement of your hands that your brain seems to be easily tricked to believe that everything is fine.

Visible storages not only show players the stored resources without having to open additional UI elements but also allow them to grab resources or put them back by hand and enabling more direct interactions that way.

Direct Interaction In Townsmen VR, we wanted to allow the player to interact with almost anything in the world to deepen the immersion into a virtual world. Touching objects, buildings and people will trigger a visual and audio response as well as controller vibrations to give it a more realistic feel. But most things can also be picked up to allow meaningful interactions: Grab workers and place them next to a workplace and they will forget what they have previously done and take care of the new job. We also decided to always represent the town’s resources as physical objects players can pick up, throw around or bring to a place where they are needed. We also put these resources in open storages, so you can always see how much you have and pick them up by hand if you think your workers are taking too long.

All of this has a big impact on the overall game design. There had to be restrictions, so workers are still needed, and not everything can be done by the player. While you can shorten transportation times by carrying workers and resources by hand, the actual work at the workplace always has to be done by the workers. Only they can wield their tiny hammers, saws and axes.

We opted against central storages like a warehouse in favour of giving each building its own storage for the matching resource. Otherwise, who would need a woodcutter building if you can just drag a worker next to a tree to make them cut it down?

To counterbalance players who micromanage everything by helping with transportation, we adapted the life simulation of our townsmen. So while they always get a little hungrier and thirstier over time, the main part of these needs gets increased during their work times that can’t be sped up. So if you rush things, they need more food and drinks over time in return.

We made some exceptions whenever fulfilling our players’ expectations was worth it. Players can catch fish by grabbing them out of the water, merge clouds to produce rain and even lightning or shoot any resource from a catapult that was initially only meant to hurl stones.

Players can observe a monk reading through a stack of books to see the research progress.

User Interfaces Another interesting difference between virtual reality and “classic” games is UI.

While navigating menus in classic games is usually more straightforward and simpler than the in-game controls of the same game, for VR the opposite is true: In-game interactions are very close to real-life interactions. At the same time, every UI element adds another layer of abstraction between the player and the game world. You also have to integrate these elements somewhere into the 3D world and not just permanently stick them in front of the player’s face. Reading texts is a bit harder, and it is also easy to miss and press the wrong button when pointing with a ray coming from a finger. This is why we wanted to keep the time spent in menus as little and optional as possible. By default, the most relevant information is visible directly in the world, without any additional UI being necessary.

If you want to build, trade or research, you have to open menus. But the last step always involves you dragging a 3D object from the UI into the game world instead of pressing a button.

If you picked the wrong building, you could just release it before dragging it to its target, and it will cancel the construction. This step not only bridges the gap between the 2D UI and the 3D world, but it also makes additional confirmation dialogues obsolete.

Trading and research are also only partially happening in menus. Most of it happens visually in the simulated world, with workers taking resources to and from a marketplace to trade or monks doing research by reading through a stack of books.

Conclusion We are confident we created a great Townsmen spin-off for VR by focusing less on the complexity of the genre and turning it more towards new ways for direct player interaction. All of this would not have been possible without our previous experiences in releasing smaller VR games. But the most helpful tools were the long prototype phase and player feedback that made it clear which approach works best in the context of our design goals.

Philipp Nägelsbach Game Designer

Philipp Nägelsbach has been working at HandyGames for over 10 years and in different fields including Publishing, Producing and Game Design on almost 30 shipped games. He has been part of Townsmen VR from the first prototypes to the final stage, contributing to game and level design as well as some additional work on programming and tools.

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