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Vision and Sound From the Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo
jones_supa writes "Ville 'viznut' Heikkilä presents us with an interesting project. 'As demonstrated by the video, IBNIZ (Ideally Bare Numeric Impression giZmo) is a virtual machine and a programming language that generates video and audio from very short strings of code. Technically, it is a two-stack machine somewhat similar to Forth, but with the major exception that the stack is cyclical and also used at an output buffer.' The main goal of IBNIZ is to provide a new platform for the demoscene. Something that would have the potential to displace MS-DOS as the primary platform for sub-256-byte productions."
That's very cute. That's the most obscure programming language I've ever seen not created as a joke. They can generate mediocre techno with about 20 characters of code.
The simplicity of the code you can write in this language seems to be mostly due to the cyclic nature, which is something other beat-oriented computer-music languages also have: once you have "repeat" as a built-in thing, anything built on regular repetitions is easy to program. But it adapts it in a way that feels more low-level and demo-scene-ish by tying it to a cyclical "stack" in a bastard-son-of-Forth sort of way. Will have to play around with it a bit.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I wrote something similar to IBNIZ, yet vastly simpler, a composing software called glitched (needs pygame 1.9.1). The forth variant I use has no subroutines or recursion and is not even turing complete and the stack has only 256 fields. However, it is compatible with that of several other implementations (see README). Like IBNIZ, it has live editing and stack visualisation.
It is important to note that sound made with this kind of tools is not limited to chiptunes. There is a video of an older version of glitched, doing Karplus-Strong-string synthesis.
(Apologies in advance to the users of a totally unrelated glitch library, which is also written in python. I have met one of it's developers last night and we agreed insane troll logic dictates a merger of our two projects to rectify the namespace collision. I may have to bring that up again when he is sober.)
Okay, I can appreciate the novelty factor, as this is very much one of those things guys like me would toy around with, maybe for an evening or two. I don't see a demoscene rising out of this, at best a few dozen guys circle-jerking on Facebook about it. To say it could display MS-DOS as a "platform" is to completely ignore the fundamental tenets of the demoscene. Rotozooming tunnel-mapped munching squares are what you do when you're learning to code graphics effects, and this IBNIZ tool abstracts the real math away in favour of random-looking gibberish. Just because typing "7KJHBB&*@#$B" yields a spinning bitmap doesn't teach the user anything about how to actually spin a bitmap on an algorithmic level, nor the problem-solving methodology involved in building far more impressive effects upon those foundations.
It used to be that demo coding was a precursor to game programming, at least in the Amiga and DOS days. Now with all these abstract graphics and sound APIs, it's a bit less so, though there is still plenty of opportunity for new demo sceners to cut their teeth on DirectX demos, focusing on graphical polish and synced A/V interplay rather than the vicissitudes of software rendering. IBNIZ really misses the boat for all of that, it's more like a Winamp visualizer with its own crappy digital monosynth, and who's going to bother with that illegible syntax ?
Sorry but I don't see the technical merit in a virtual machine that basically shifts garbage around. You could accomplish the same by feeding random noise into your TV's composite input.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Beneres? Niko fuerto tipomagico - te musica-gizmo. Novello proboscis - molto molto kin agrophos. Vo, tidiaka mit functioni moronico. Te facilos action-pumpo! Zo, nea shopping, nea collo, te "musica-gizmo"!
Before IBNIZ, viznut was using a C compiler to, well, discover minimal music. You should read his paper regarding algorithmic composition using small programs. und check out my repository of formulas for C programs that generate sound.
People without easy access to compilers (I met a gal a few days ago who had old OS X and no 99$ to spare for a dev account) should still check out a track from the repository as wave file to get an impression of the style.
I also wrote a program generating a crude chiptunes version of the IT crowd melody (of course, the melody is not algorithmically generated, but rather encoded in the source, feel free to consider that cheating).
Otherwise, a SPORE creature save file is a better "demo". (note, must install interpreter...)
this is enlightening http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlrs2Vorw2Y more music should be made in this manner, not the self-serving bullshit dominating the radio waves today...