Blog for Ray Noolness Gebhardt at GarageGames.com

Free Music Pack!

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2007-08-30T03:10:03+00:00

Nool Music Pack 1 is now free! You can use it in any kind of game, demo or multimedia production you want. You just have to credit me in your product and let me know what product you are using it in. Of course you can give me a free copy of your product if you want, but it's not a requirement in any way, so don't feel obligated to do so. You can send me an email at ray@noolness.com in order to tell me about your new product using my pack, or to request music to be made on a contract basis.

Click here to get your free music pack today!

Have a nice memorial day weekend if you celebrate it.

Nool Music Pack 1 Released!

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2007-08-10T23:48:38+00:00

Nool Music Pack 1 - Buy It Now!

After a huge amount of work Nool Music Pack 1 has finally been released! You can buy the pack in my store here. If you want to preview the music, I have some low quality mp3's of the tracks you can listen to here. The last track has a clip of each song as a 192kbs MP3. The pack includes the music in MP3, OGG, 16 Bit WAV and 24 Bit WAV (yes I know that's a bit excessive, but I thought you guys deserve the original studio masters of the pack) formats.

If you are interested in any custom game music contact me at ray@noolness.com.

New Website in a Blog Format

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2007-07-31T13:43:46+00:00

I have been planning on reworking my website into a blog format, and finally I got around to doing it. I added a bit of new content like a few YouTube videos, and migrated all the existing stuff on my website into WordPress. I am going to be posting on my blog frequently, so check back every so often (or add my site to your RSS reader). It's so much easier to manage things now that I have redesigned the site...once again.

Speaking of new stuff, I will soon have a web based store up and running. The first product that's going to be up there is my new music pack. The pack has actually been done for a while, but I needed a way to sell it. The music pack should be released in the next couple of weeks, after the store is ready to go.

And once again if you find anything interesting or helpful on my site, remember it's completely ad supported. So if you see any ads on the right side of the screen for products that you find even the slightest bit interesting give them a click. I get paid for Google ads based on how many users click on the ads, not how many users view them.

Check out my new website.

GID 22 - BeatBlock

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2007-07-15T16:06:20+00:00

For those of you who don't like to read...

Get BeatBlock here.

(If you like anything on my site, be sure to click on some of my ads. Each click gets me some money, and I just so happen to like money.)

Watch videos of each level:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Bea4k9ovJc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDRdlfva_3o

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahXhLm8eQQw

I just finished up a little game for GID 22. For those of you that don't know what GID is, it's short for Game in a Day. Basically you have a bunch of game developers get together and make a game in 24 hours, spread over a weekend. It's a great way to have a bit of fun and improve your prototyping skills at the same time. The website for Game in a Day is www.gameinaday.net.

Well anyway my game is called BeatBlock and it uses beat detection to spawn blocks and to control their movement. I used the new TGB 1.5 plus some custom C++ code to create the game. You control a little block with the cursor keys and try the avoid the evil killer blocks of doom. Each level is really just a song, and when the song is over the next level begins. Once you beat a level, you will start at the beginning of the new level whenever you die. There are three levels in total, and if you can beat them all you win the game.

It probably took about 12 hours to complete this game. The thing that consumed the majority of my development time was getting the beat detection just right. I had a lot of issues to overcome, most of which had to do with getting the timing to work correctly. I used a debug sound that played whenever a beat was detected. When I got it working correctly, it sounded like that debug sound was part of the music. I had almost given up on the game at that point, and I decided to try one more thing before giving up. It just goes to show you, never give up. The music I used in the game was just some stuff I had written a while ago.

I am nearly done my music pack and I will be releasing it soon. All of the songs are completed, I just have to tweak them a bit. So at this point it's just a matter of figuring out how to sell the music (where I can publish the songs). Hopefully I will be able to get the pack out there by the end of the month. If you need any music written for a game or for any other purpose, just contact me at ray@noolness.com.

Until we meet again, live long and prosper. ;)

Free Music / New Website

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2007-06-26T18:35:04+00:00

I have been pretty busy working on a lot of different things. One of those things was the full redesign of my website. It took a whole day to create the site and get all of the content into it, but I think it was well worth it. A few things still need to be tweaked, and I have a ton of stuff I still want to put up there, but it's a lot better than my site was before. I also added Google ads to the page. I am usually against ads, but each click pays quite well. There are a few useful tools, a couple stupid little demos, a few of my references and lots of music on the site. If you want to check it out, it's at www.noolness.com.

And speaking of music, I have released three EP's on my website for anyone to listen to. The only restrictions are you can't use the music in any game, demo, product or make money off of the music in any shape or form (like selling it) without getting permission from me. But otherwise enjoy the music however you wish. You can get to the EP's at the following url's:

music mode enabled
This EP jumps around a bit style wise, but it's the most "traditional" sounding of the different EP's I have on my website. It has guitars, synthesizer, and even a bit of guitar synthesizer work using my Roland GI20 GK.
Listen to music mode enabled.

immutable
All of the songs on this EP are using unusual tunings. Most of them are TET-31 (which means you take an octave and divide it 31 equally separated notes).
Listen to immutable.

8x8
This EP was created using the QuadraSID VST plugin. The plugin emulates the sound of the SID chip that was inside the Commodore 64.
Listen to 8x8.

I am currently working on a music pack, and I have completed about seven songs so far. I am not sure what the current song count or pricing will be on the pack as of yet, but if you are interested in publishing it let me know. Also if you are interested in contracting me for any custom music for you game, contact me at ray@noolness.com.

Happy Thanksgiving

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2006-11-23T17:18:58+00:00

I just wanted to wish everyone in the GarageGames community a very happy Thanksgiving. Make sure all of you take the day off and spend some time with your family and friends.

And of course every blog post requires a mandatory image of some sort, so here are a couple screenshots of a game I am prototyping:

NoolPreview for 3D Studio Max / TGEA

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2006-11-05T23:11:51+00:00

I haven't posted a blog for quite a while, so I thought I would write one up. I have been working on a new tool for 3D Studio Max that allows you to create shadergen textures for TGEA, and preview them quickly. The first component of the tool is a custom 3D Studio Max material plug-in that exposes every single parameter that shadergen provides. This includes all 4 stages and all the texture animation features.

In addition there is a button in the material user interface that will update the viewport preview of the material. The preview only supports a few parameters of the shadergen materials, but it's better than nothing.

I also created a custom mod of TGEA that allows you to preview your model and material. By pressing a single button your model and materials will be exported and loaded into a minimal mission in TGEA. This allows you to see what your model and material look like in engine very easily.

I am thinking about making an enhanced version of this material tool and selling it, so let me know what you think.

If you want to try out the early alpha of this tool you can download it below. It requires some changes to the DTS exporter so here are links to updated versions of the exporter for 3D Studio Max.

For 3D Studio Max 9 32-bit download:
Download Now

For 3D Studio Max 9 64-bit download:
Download Now

For 3D Studio Max 6/7/8 download:
Download Now

And finally here is a link to the NoolPreview alpha:
Download Now

To use it just copy the files into your 3d Studio Max script folder.

How many people have shader based video cards?

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2006-06-27T15:57:28+00:00

I have been wondering how many people have shader based cards for a while. I know that at some point, all computers will be able to run shaders. It might take a bit longer than usual to hit that mark, because there is no company that is making the killer app for shaders. For example Id Software really got people buying video cards when they released Quake 3, which is the first game I remember, that required a video card in order to play it.

So now I started to wonder, is there enough people with shader based cards at this point, that you could get away with making a shader only game? Whether you have a shader based card or not, could you reply to this thread? You can just state that your card will or will not run shaders, or you can state the hardware you have too. I am just a little curious, and if you don't ask, you shall never know.

NDA

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2006-02-08T21:34:28+00:00

Since I am now an associate, I might as well post a blog. Below is a screenshot from one of the projects I am working on. I had to censor out the parts in the image that are under NDA.

I know what you are thinking. That is some really cool stuff that I am up to. Just wait until you see some of the things I have coming up.

Wednesday Aug 31 21:29

Ray Noolness Gebhardt — 2005-08-31T21:29:19+00:00

Fonzie's Motorsport 360

I got bored this weekend, so I made a joke game to make my sister laugh.

I know people just look at .plans to look at pictures, so there you go.