Alright, here is a simple Synthesizer for your Zune HD. It's still pretty rough and the current version has a single sound however the final version should have enough for you. If your into dubstep this should be plenty to satisfy your *cough* tastes...
This app gives you all you need to make a simple loop quickly. Try it out and give some feedback, I'm interested in what you think of this.
Also, for all the musically inclined: I need 10-12 different sounds to make this work. I'm not that great with music so if anyone that has more knowledge than a llama is interested shoot me a PM.
Other than that, enjoy and give me feedback, I'm a bit busy, but should have time now and again to improve this.
Side note: I have some graphics and code for a Guitar App I was writing that went wrong (I got bored). If you are interested, contact me (PM, email etc).
Donation's optional, but appreciated.
Last edited by runewake2; 01-06-2012 at 07:12 PM.
Reason: Added donation button
New stuff:
A BPM radial menu that allows you to change how fast things play. This app now doubles as a metronome now.
Fixes:
Increased the size of the bounding boxes around the nodes, this should make turning them on/off easier.
Fixed a bug that would cause sounds to play even if the Synth was paused.
Fixed the alignment of the boxes, they should now center properly.
Note: To use the radial menu just slide side to side, don't try actually spinning it. It won't work.
Note 2.0: I haven't updated the mediafire file... yet.
Update 2:
New to version 3:
11 unique sounds to choose from.
Added some background code to make adding new sounds as easy as possible.
Fixes:
Added some minor code changes to make things blend easier. (This could be made into a standard windows app in under 30 minutes... i think)
Broken Stuff:
Remember how I said that I fixed the alignment of the boxes? Yeah, I lied.
Downloads:
See OP for download locations. Both will be updated shortly.
that was me being honest... how am I being a dick?
this is not a synth and that is a fact
again, thanks for the effort. I hope it gets better with time ;]
Quote:
Originally Posted by runewake2
Alright, here is a simple Synthesizer for your Zune HD. It's still pretty rough and the current version has a single sound however the final version should have enough for you.
This is 3 hours work btw. With an extra hour after I woke up to fix things that were bad. I wrote this from 11pm to 2am.
Seeing as similar apps for Windows Phone are selling for about $2 (granted with more features and likely better sounds) I'd say this is "not bad".
To be honest this app spawned from my own bordem, I am writing 3 other apps (One for PC/XBox, One for PC/XBox/Zune/WP7 and One for WP7). As I was doing some research about my WP7 app I came across a well rated music creating software similar to this one. To put it to the test I made this. The number of tracks or length of the song is not limited, I specifically coded it so it wasn't. The only thing holding me back from letting you play or compose a full song is that XNA's sound player is terribad. OK, slight exaggeration. It is bad at playing a lot of things at once.
To remedy this I am looking into implementing FMod (A sound system used by a lot of popular games). This should enable you to compose elaborate songs, as well as the addition of a scroll bar which is almost done (btw).
Also, some better WAV files might be nice. If you are willing to provide shpongled, be my guest.
Finally: The way the "synth" was composed was that you load SoundEffect objects and store them in a list. Then you pass the list to the Synth and it creates itself. This should mean that (once I release the source) you can easily customize this to make whatever you want.
PS. Shpongled, if all you got was base then you downloaded version 1. Try the 3rd version (the one I made after I woke up). You can change the BPM and has a few other sounds including a clap, whip, hat and a few other odd sounds I had lying around.
EDIT: Ah, my bad, the updates were not appearing on the skydrive download link. Only the first version. Sorry about that.
Last edited by runewake2; 12-30-2011 at 07:55 PM.
Reason: whoops
we are all very thank you for your time and effort for being one of the few people still creating ZuneHD Apps.
Thank you so much
No problem, I've been a bit busy with other for profit ventures and as a poor college kid those take priority.
Good news: I have a working prototype of "Geomatrix" ready and working. Granted it is still extremely simple (a single hex atm) but I should have a level editor and other obsticles to avoid soon enough. I am (hopefully) going to release this to four platforms (WP7, Zune, XBox and PC). While the zune version will be free it will also likely have fewer extra features as well.
Geomatrix is being designed on a brand new version of ZNA that incorperates a whole lot of new things I learned after reading some books. If you are lucky an On-Zune level editor may be included. If not, I'll see what I can do to get it working with liberate.
Enough of that: This project will be updated once I get something better working. Right now I need a way to play more sounds, faster. After 8 the Zune just turns over and says "no more" which is kind of lame. I am hoping to get this done soon... but am a bit behind on one of my apps for WP7 (A Gluten Free Shopping app), My knowledge of silverlight is a bit limited and it has slowed me down a lot. Either way, I'll keep the updates to my apps coming as long as there is interest.
I've also been looking into optimization for XNA and their a few things I never bothered to use or just was too lazy to do. As such I may be redoing a few of my older (slower) apps. Specifically the Magic Life counter - aka Planeswalker - (again) and Particle Field.
My final goal is to release some apps that are actually useful instead of simple time wasters. We'll see what happens there.
That's what I was thinking. I just need to figure out what the Zune offers for saving and since I hate using the default windows controls it will be coded in full C#. Granted I'm going to need to bump it all down to XNA 3.1 as I'm writing it in 4.0. Still, it's going to be cool.
Alright, I added your sounds (some of them at least) to Version 4. That version is now available on SkyDrive.
Also, I added a file called ZuneSynth-Source this contains all the resources (images and sounds) as well as the code and VS2008 project. I will be releasing a PDF within an hour or so (link in OP) with instructions for customizing the sound and look of the Synth. I tried to make the customizable parts as simple as possible.
For example: adding a sound can be done with a single line of code, or 3 if you want to follow the way I did it.
Changing the color of the active and inactive nodes can also be done very easily.
How to do this will be detailed in the PDF.
EDIT: Finally finished PDF (it's 10 pages...) it includes all you needed to know to be able to add new sounds, remove my sounds, change images or node colors.
runewake you are my hero. i havent tried this yet because i rarely go on my pc, but i think i will have to make an extra effort to do so, just to get this app on my zune.
now i will make some suggestions, but i have very little programming knowledge (but i have a programming course next semester so i hope to change that) so feel free to just disregard it if it is totally impossible.
going back to the problem of not running too many sounds at once, is it possible to combine sounds into one so there are less actions going at the same time?
i dont know if it already does this, but can you have it play songs from the zunes library in the background and then play different sounds ontop of it?
addressing the problem if lack of sound files, i think the drum machine app was on here before it went on the marketplace, so if the source is there you can probably pull a bunch of sounds from it. if not, the dev may be willing to send you some.
Zune Synth
