Bosca Ceoil v2.0

boscalogo

I’ve very happy to announce a brand new version of my beginner’s music making tool Bosca Ceoil! This is version 2.0, the first major update since it was released in 2013. This new version of the tool is a significant update, and adds lots of features and improvements. Head to boscaceoil.net to download it!

If you’re totally new to Bosca Ceoil, the new site should tell you everything you need to know about what it is and what it can do. If you’ve used it before, here’s what’s changed:

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Midi and XM Support

A major problem that Bosca always had is that it was kind of a dead end: if you made a song with it, you could save it as a .ceol, or export it as a .wav – but that was that.

So one of the most important things that’s new is support for exporting as a midi file! Midi files are supported by lots of popular music applications, so this means that it’s now possible to, for example, use Bosca to compose the actual notes, and then later import the song into something like FLStudio so you can add VST instruments.

Also, in addition to midis, Bosca can now also export .XM files and .MML files, thanks to contributions by Rob Hunter!

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Resizable Window

I made Bosca Ceoil the same way I make games – with a fixed resolution, running at 60FPS. Which is great for games, but not so good for an app that you might want to leave running in the background while you work on other stuff, say.

The new version of Bosca has a proper resizeable window, so you can see a lot more of the song you’re composing. It’s something it should have had all along, and it makes it infinitely nicer to work with!

It’s also gotten some major performance boosts with caching and CPU throttling, and is generally just much happier about running in the background than it used to be.

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Nicer GUI

Bosca’s GUI has had a makeover. Things are generally brighter, clearer and more responsive!

Web Version

Thanks for Chris Kim, you can now use Bosca right in your web browser, without downloading anything! Try it here!

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Built in Tutorial

At long last, Bosca has a built in tutorial, with nice, clear little pop up windows! This is something I’m really happy about – Bosca’s a beginner’s tool, and this does a lot to make it that bit more accessible.

Bosca Ceoil is a completely free, open source project, and I’m very grateful to the contributions others have made to it – especially Chris Kim for his flash web port, Rob Hunter for writing the .XM and .MML exporters, and Damien L, who forked Bosca back to Air 2.6 so that it could be used on Linux. Thank you so much for your help!

Hope you enjoy the new version!

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Elizascript

drunkbot

So, here’s a little thing I’ve just finished! It’s called Elizascript, and it’s an online tool for making tiny chatbots! Try it! There’s a Quick Start Guide on the website, or you could just ask Liz for help:

[Elizascript]

The chatbot in the screenshot above is by Holly Gramazio, and you can comfort it yourself here!

[chatbot’s morning after]

Very big thanks to Stephen as usual, who pushed me into getting this done and answered lots of annoying questions and listened to me whine a lot about hating Javascript. Lots of the tricky website stuff in the background is straight from his project, Puzzlescript, which itself was a big inspiration for this.

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Outer Space

Hey everyone! I have lots of big annoucements about VVVVVV today, so let’s get to it!

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VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition

Let’s start with what I consider the really important thing – inspired by things like Knytt Stories and DROD: Architect’s Edition, I’m releasing a special build of VVVVVV on Windows, Mac and Linux today. It’s called VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition, and it’s completely free. This version of the game only includes the player levels and the level editor – which means that, from now on, the tools to make and play VVVVVV player levels are completely free.

[VVVVVV: Make and Play Edition]

People have done some really incredible things with the VVVVVV editor. I want to share that work as far and wide as I can!

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Lots of new VVVVVV ports

VVVVVV is now available on iPhone, iPad, Android, and OUYA!

These ports have been quite a long time coming! Actually, I originally started the iPhone port before I started Super Hexagon, way back in 2012. So it feels very, very good to finally have it finished, and released. This is something I felt I really had to take on myself – VVVVVV’s important to me, and it was really important to me that this be done right. I wanted the game to be as good as it could be on mobile. I feel very good about how it’s turned out!

You can get it from here:

[VVVVVV for iOS]

[VVVVVV for Android]

[VVVVVV for OUYA]

Nicalis have been working on a Vita port as well – this should be coming out sometime this summmer!

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Super Gravitron

Surprise! Today I’m also releasing another game on iOS and Android: Super Gravitron. It’s a little minigame that you might remember from the end of VVVVVV!

It’s acting as sort of a demo, but mostly I just think it happens to work really well as it’s own thing on mobile. And it’s completely free! Get it here:

[Super Gravitron for iOS]

[Super Gravitron for Android]

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Version 2.2

Thanks to Ethan Lee, VVVVVV on desktop has finally gotten an update! Version 2.2 fixes a bunch of long standing bugs (for example, player level warp lines) and makes the 2.1 changes official (like player maps, coloured text in player levels, editor direct mode, etc).

If you’re on steam, this update also adds achievements! They’re the same ones that VVVVVV always had, except now they’re recognised by steam. If you’ve already got them, log into today and you should get awarded a bunch of them at once, which is extremely satisfying!

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MMMMMM

Finally – remember that amazing Metal Medley of VVVVVV music by @FamilyJules7x? Yeah, both Souleye and I were seriously impressed!

Introducing: MMMMMM! A complete Metal cover of the VVVVVV soundtrack! You can pick it up today directly from Souleye!

The soundtrack comes with a mod, which you can install in your player level directory to play the game with the metal soundtrack instead of the original one!

That’s all, everyone! Thanks for playing!

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Bosca Ceoil

UPDATE: This blog post is for an old version of Bosca Ceoil, and is out of date! Bosca Ceoil v2.0 is available from here: boscaceoil.net

bc

I made a thing! It’s a simple music creation tool, called Bosca Ceoil (pronouced “bus-ka kyo-al”, Irish for “Music Box/Accordion”).

I made this because I find other music programs really confusing and distracting. Too many panels, buttons and knobs! I wanted something really simple, something designed to work the way I tend to create stuff – a process that I suppose I could best describe as: make something super simple, and keep tweaking it until it starts to get good.

Bosca Ceoil is all about looping, and designed that way at its heart. Songs are built up from lots of tiny 16 note patterns – the intended workflow is that you loop over these single patterns until you have something you like, then you start making variations. If you approach it this way, you’ll find it’s pretty decent at doing that – but it’s not very good at other things, like say, long melody lines. It is what it is! I made it for myself, and the way I work, but hopefully some of you out there will find it useful too. It’s free, and open source under the FreeBSD licence. If anyone wants to port it/fork it, go for it! It’s on github here.

[Download for Windows (v1.1)]
[Download for Mac (v1.1)]
(for Linux, more info here)

[Download AIR Installer (v1.1)]
[download adobe air]

It’s a pretty simple program, and only takes about five minutes to learn how to use. Here’s a tutorial to get you started!

(if Bosca Ceoil is too much of a mouthful, feel free to just call it Bosca)

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