New Total Anarchy Screenshots:

I'm assuming that Blogger will enlarge these images if you click on them. Here's hoping!

Some New(ish) Tracks

New Songs:

At Large (Remastered Version:)

Step Dubber - Featured on Sunshine 99FM in Total Anarchy.

Aeolia

I Want It (Dubstep/Garage Remix:)

Trance 2010 - 30 Minute Trance Mix

Featuring: Pulse Disruptor, Generika, I Want It (Original), Stereo Dimension, Electro Pirates and Shakedown.

Volume Two is now called 'At Large' and will be out shortly.

Had second thoughts just before I threw Volume Two at the internet and decided to refine it a little more and give it a more creative name.

Proved me wrong!

This promotional image has proved me wrong all right. Apple iMacs can play video games after all!

These four 'youths' are obviously as amazed as I am. Those raster graphics, multiple colours and that side scrolling action really make Photoshop look like last year's iGame.

And I bet it only cost a few thousand quid.

Mac OS might be playing GTAIV and Fallout3 by 2030!

I'm remaking Neon!

It's going to be even more eye punishing than the first one.

And it's free.

What rules the Google?

This graph generated by Trends shows the public interest in the club genres over the past 5 years. Drum and Bass seems to rule the waves right up until a couple of months ago when Dubstep storms into the lead.

Interestingly, Electro House seems to have just reached it's peak in popularity. What's the next big 4 on the floor genre going to be? Bassline's interest seems to have peaked about a year ago, but it was never huge, and never very good so I'm not going to miss it dearly.

Dubstep, according to Trends, seems to have been invented on the cusp of 2006. As if, on the 1st of January, all of Bristol's clubs started playing it.

Some more Tending revealed that Trance Music has been steadily declining in popularity since the early naughties.

O Rly?

It's Hot.

I'm from the UK so hot days are no commodity.

The British are unused to heat and the media refers to a warm day as a 'Heat Wave', a hot day as a 'Severe Weather Warning' and an actual heat wave as 'Global Warming has arrived!'

For some reason, this is where everyone goes when it's hot.

I think that after 10 months of complaining about the cold weather, it's nice to complain about the heat for a change. I've put my arctic coat back on the peg, worked out which T-Shirts I have which are safe to publicly wear and have started living off those Ice Pop things that cost about 6p in the corner shop.

Time to see what the game is doing.

You may or may not be aware that I'm half way through making a game called 'Total Anarchy.'

In a nutshell it's a fan remake of GTA with semi-3D graphics, set in the close future and in Britain.

I've been making it for 2 and a half years, with months of dead space where I do nothing to it. There are some weeks however, where I must get really enthusiastic about it and add a billion features in and fix all the bugs.

I'm not having one of those weeks. It's too hot.

Anyway, here are some new-ish screen captures of game play.

Under attack by the fuzz, but it's okay - you just found some dropped money!

This shows the 3D yet 2D graphics. The car actually used to be a 3D model too.

Just think that's important to add, is all.

Yes. You can run down pedestrians into the path of automated police turrets while committing a drive by shooting.

It looks ever so pretty at night. The lamps are 3D models and the light they cast is all 3D too. It's 3D madness, except the game is still primarily 2D.

Evolution of my music.

This took some deep digging of old unused hard disks. While I didn't really start making electronic music until the early 2000s, I was still using a clapped out Windows 98 loaded up with sequencing software originally designed for the playstation one.

It's no use, whatever I say I am a newcomer to the activity. You can't compare to people like Aphex Twin who had to write their own software on 80s hardware. Jean Michelle Jarre who had nothing to work with except 70s analogue equipent. Leon Theremin in the 1920s had to invent his own musical instruments before he could really get going!

Anyway, this is 6 years or so of the development of 'my sound.' It's a pretentious self-obsessed activity making videos like these, but then again, so is writing blogs. Or using twitter.

I've also uploaded a visualisation video of the last song you hear on the video above. 'I Want It.'

Volume Two

Possible Cover of Volume Two.

I say 'possible' but it's the one I'm definately going to use. It fits continuity with Volume One and it has a few dozen 1980s synth equipment displayed in a blurry haze behind the neon text.

It's retro-futuristic! If that makes any sense at all.

Volume Two is going to be a big fat mish mash of all the styles I've been working on since the last release. These include the standard House and Jungle numbers, plus some new Ambient and Groove material. Some lesser common styles we may hear include Chiptunes, Acid House, Italo Disco and possibly even some Dubstep. That's if I can work out what the hell Dubstep is meant to actually sound like.

New Game Maker Showcase!

Let's begin with something shiny, fast and 3D!

Game Maker is a shareware software package aimed at a beginner audience. Most of the users are casual, young and unskilled hobbyists who make their little Pokémon, Mario, Halo (or GTA) clones and then either move on to something more expensive, complicated and respected. Most likely they'll decide that programming is not for them and it's a lot more fun to play games than to design them.

So, Game Maker has this reputation for being a mundane and basic piece of kit, only capible of churning out 2D platformers and other games that would have been bargain bin fodder in the early eighties. The fact is, Game Maker is a fully functional package, capible of being used to make high quality and professional games. Advanced and loyal users have produced unique games that have made it as commercial titles that win awards and such.

The video below is a collection of finished and unfinished game maker projects, all produced by myself. I haven't used any extentions or Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) in any of the products shown. I'm by no means an expert at coding, or even an expert at game maker. I've been learning to use the software for about 4-5 years now. The scripts I wrote were not particularly complicated and a lot of the time it's all down to effective presentation.

Here we go, I also composed and produced the music that goes along with it. It's available for free on my music myspace: http://myspace.com/fionnsamazingmusic

Here we go!

Well, I have to admit it. The idea of rambling on about nothing in particular, in the misguided hope that there are people on the internet who think very highly about what you have to say, seems like something I'm more than ready to have a crack at.

I'll periodically update this thing with my various creations. I'll provide links to my tracks, updates on the progress of my programming projects and maybe even share some lovely photography.

If something ruddy amazing happens, I'll be sure to post it here - because I know that everybody wants to hear it from me!