the real reward is the tinscansos we gained along the way
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advent diary day 24:
though putting at the end was a great idea towards format representation in the art, i gotta admit i was pretty sure mix battle art wasn't going to get in after all, what with the OHB for battle art and all... well still, i had fun, but i was looking forward to having a good excuse for spending a day learning Lunar Magic! perhaps there'll be future major battle opportunities : )
this concludes my 2022 completionism run...! two years in a row, both extremely fun months of work learning and creating. i said it in the battle thread already, but this is my favorite event of the year. i love participating and i love the exploration it represents.
last year on the final day i did a little roundup of all the formats that were new to me (11 of them!), so this year i will do the same thing. turns out it's also 11!
= cool format, would enjoy doing again
= ok format, would perhaps do again but ambivalent
= please no not again
1. svg - - although i'm not particularly interested in any of the visual formats, svg seems pretty neat. it seems like there's a lot you can do in Inkscape, and it wasn't too hard to figure out. i did have fun with the prompt.
2. ascii - - i'm not really interested in doing this again because it's pretty time-consuming and the character options are limited, but i didn't hate it.
3. jummbox - - i'd been wanting to try this one. it's easy to get the hang of, there's a lot of options for modulating parameters (!!), and the volume and pitch slides are cool and intuitive. nice tool. if there keep being more OHBs i will join 'em.
4. zxbeep - - not only did i really enjoy zx spectrum, i've already made another tune in the format (soon to debut) and it increased my enjoyment of 1-bit music. yes, i will gladly do this format again.
5. adlib - - 18 channels is a delightful amount to work with. even in OpenMPT, where you don't have an option to use 4-operator FM *or* parameter control via effects column, i felt like there were ample sound design options. this one was probably my favorite entry this year.
6. tic80 - - this was a not-so-gentle reminder that i don't really enjoy programming. even what i made ate up most of my day, lol. i really hope to never touch this again unless it's the music/sfx editor, which i didn't have the energy to mess with.
7. ahx - - working with hivelytracker was just too frustrating. AHX itself is pretty cool.
8. bytebeat - - other than as a generator for wacky samples, i'm just... not interested in this. the itch this is supposed to scratch doesn't exist for me. kudos to those who write tools for this. i'd probably only ever use a converter.
9. klystrack - - honestly this program was *nearly* as frustrating to use as hivelytracker was for AHX, but it at least gets some points for the generator, sample and DSP options. i'm not sure what would drive me to use it again, but ah.. maybe.
10. baby-k - - simple and easy to work with. not a lot to worry about.
11. c64 - - it might be worth trying to plunge into GoatTracker if i tried this one again, because a combo of my ineptitude + deflemask being janky gave me rough export troubles, but wow! the chip itself is super cool!
11.5 - - i hadn't entered the actual deflemask format before but i had at least used it a couple times so i knew what was up. i also did one ym2151 ohb a while back but this was my first real shot at it and was one of my favs
and there you have it! that's a wrap on this year's advent calendar! huge props to our presumed 10(!!!) completionists, thanks to kleeder for hosting and everyone for participating, learning, and helping one another... merry christmas to all <3
