Monthly Archives: July 2014

Sample Tank Search

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SampleTank has a built in sound search, but it can become quite slow once you have loaded many libraries into the plugin. This page provides a database-style search for the following SampleTank libraries: SampleTank sounds database
Old slower search: SampleTank sounds database

SampleTank 2.5
Expansion Tanks Concert
Grand Piano
Film Orchestra
Film Orchestra 2
Bonus Sounds/Expansion Tanks
Bonus Sounds/Instrument and Vocal Licks
Bonus Sounds/Miroslav Orchestra Performances
Bonus Sounds/Sonik Capsules
Miroslav Philharmonik
Sonic Tanks
Sonik Synth
SR Sound Libraries Capsules
Best of Sonic Strings

Demon’s Run Vassal Mod

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DemonsRunBox[1]

A recreation of Yaquinto’s board game Demon’s Run for the Vassal game engine. I received this ‘album’ game in my early teens, at the same time as my brother received Attack of the Mutants, another album game from Yaquinto. DR was considerably harder than AotM, and was played only once or twice. We recently rescued the game from mould and obscurity in the basement and played a game. I really enjoyed the idea of snatching buoys from the event horizon of black holes, hopefully without my ship being ripped apart. From the rules: 

“A game of the Starcup Challenge Racing Series”, Demon’s Run is a simulation of the most demanding and deadly race in the Starcup Challenge Racing Series. A course constructed in a savage area of turbulent space studded with rotating black holes, fluctuating intense radiation zones, space-time disruption fields and randomly moving hunter-killer mines that will test your piloting skill and courage to the fullest. Set within this field are a series of Buoys that must be recovered to score victory points. Some of the Buoys are in fixed positions, others move randomly. The most valuable of all are the Astaroth, Belial and Lucifer Buoys which are locked in tight orbit in the intense radiation zones surrounding the monstrous Hell2 and Hell3 black holes. Players must design their ships’ maximum function levels in each category of ship operation and must pilot the ship through the treacherous course in the quest of Buoys. Players must always be aware of the course obstacles, the positions of the other racers, and the remaining fuel supply of their ship. Demon’s Run is a game that is played in a delicate balance between success and disaster. It is not some simple couple hundred laps around an oval track. Demon’s Run is a wide eyed, full power leap into the mouth of Hell!

 
Vassal module

You should own a copy of the game to use this module.

DemonsRun

Vampyre Vassal Module

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A conversion of TSR‘s mini-game Vampyre for the Vassal game engine. In the 1980′s TSR published a series of ‘minigames’, cheap impulse-buy  dice and counter games with paper maps. Our family had ‘Revolt on Antares’and ‘Vampyre’. Vampyre was quick to learn and easy to play, and we loved pitting Harker and Van Helsing against swarms of rats, werewolves, and other creatures of the night througout Transylvania in search of Dracula’s coffins. Often our holy water and silver bullets were unable to fend off the servants of the master, and we were bitten. Secretly I always relished becoming a werewolf – then I could attack my brother! If we were successful in finding the coffins, the game continued in the catacombs and towers of Dracula’s castle, hunting down the Count and his brides.

Vassal module

You should own this game if you wish to use the module.

Harker Werewolf SilverBullet Rats Coffin Dracula

Transylvania_colorcorrected_16 color

Convert Rockbox bookmarks to Reaper time markers

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While listening to many long audio files from the Ambient Brothers jam sessions, I wanted to keep track of the best sections for later editing. I came up with this quick and dirty method Autohotkey script for transferring Rockbox bookmarks  into a Reaper audio project.

Unfortunately most mp3 players don’t have options for bookmarking, and I have installed the Rockbox replacement firmware on my player, which has very good bookmarking features. Rockbox has many features that are an improvement over the built-in firmware, so I highly recommend it.

As I listen through a jam, I can simply make a bookmark at the start and end of the best sections. These bookmarks are stored in a plain text bookmark file, which looks something like this:

1;1419197;0;0;72436;0;0;/MUSIC/Ninjam/;20080522_2344.ninjam.mp3
1;60716417;0;0;3209055;0;0;/MUSIC/Ninjam/;20080522_2344.ninjam.mp3
1;60086404;0;0;3165363;0;0;/MUSIC/Ninjam/;20080522_2344.ninjam.mp3
1;49452868;0;0;2556431;0;0;/MUSIC/Ninjam/;20080522_2344.ninjam.mp3
1;44347593;0;0;2275225;0;0;/MUSIC/Ninjam/;20080522_2344.ninjam.mp3

We are interested in the 5th field (eg, the value ’72436′ in the first bookmark), which indicates where our bookmark is placed in terms of the number of milliseconds from the beginning of the file .

The script reads each bookmark line from the bookmark file, reads the millisecond value and converts this value to seconds. Autohotkey then  switches to Reaper and sends the  ‘Jump to Time’ Ctrl+J key combination and pastes the bookmark time value, creating a marker in the project timeline. This is repeated for all bookmarks in the file.

The setup procedure:

If you don’t already have Autohotkey, download and install it.

Before beginning, create a hotkey in Reaper for  “View: Time Unit for Ruler: Seconds” and set it to Alt+T. This will allow Autohotkey to change the Reaper time unit to seconds before sending the bookmarks.

Load the matching audio file into a Reaper project, and leave Reaper open.
<Depending on the script version, may also create hotkey for loading file instead – did this actually work?>

Drag your Rockbox bookmark file onto the Autohotkey script.

The script should do everything else automatically. You should now have matching bookmarks in your reaper project!

Autohotkey script: <SCRIPT>

I also had a method for automatically cutting out selected sections of the jams  in Reaper and saving them as mp3 – I’ll have to locate that macro.