VJ-80

TIC-80 VJing Tool.

Overview

VJ-80 collects together a range of visual effects, some of which are sound-responsive.
These effects can be cued live, to add visuals to music.

The TIC-80 has two VBANKs which become the screen content - the back bank is the Effect and the front bank is the Overlay. Both of these VBANKs have an optional Modifier.

The vj-80.tic file should be run on the FFT build of the TIC-80. The regular version will provide some fake FFT values, but they aren't currently realistic.

A configuration file sets up which effects, overlays, modifiers, palettes, and shortcuts are set up, so this can be customised for each gig.

Control

There are a lot of keyboard controls! Start TIC-80, load the .tic file, and start some music or other sound playing on your computer, before trying the following:

Shortcuts

SHIFT + 1 to SHIFT + 9 will trigger any preset combinations in the configuration.

TAB - toggles the on-screen effect info. Useful for debug, but also for learning, or if you get in a pickle!

Each line of a QWERTY keyboard controls one of the layers:

• q - p is for the back bank (Effect)
• 1 - 8 is for the back modifier
• a - ; is for the front bank (Overlay)
• z - , is for the front modifier

Level	Effect-	Effect+	Control Var-	Control Var+	Time Mode-	Time Mode+	Time-	Time+	Palette+	Palette-	Panic Reset
Back Modifier	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8			ALT + 1
Back Bank Effect	q	w	e	r	t	y	u	i	o	p	ALT + q
Front Bank Effect	a	s	d	f	g	h	j	k	l	;	ALT + a
Front Modifier	z	x	c	v	b	n	m	<			ALT + z

In each line, controls are grouped in 2 keys.

• The first two keys (i.e. q and w) will rotate through the various Effects.

• The next two (i.e. e and r) change a control variable, different for each option.

• The next two (i.e. t and y) change the time mode:

  • No time
  • Milliseconds from start
  • Beat
  • Bass (immediate)
  • Bass (sum)
  • Mids (immediate)
  • Mids (sum)
  • Treble (immediate)
  • Treble (sum)

• The next two (i.e. u and i) divide the time variable. This can go negative.

• The last key pair (i.e. o and p) change the palettes.

• The panic reset sets a layer back to the initial settings.

• HOME - Loudness increase (amplify the FFT response)

• END - Loudness decrease (reduce the FFT response)

• SHIFT + HOME - FFT Window increase [*]

• SHIFT + END - FFT Window decrease [*]

• INSERT - toggle clear-screen each frame vs no clear (Effect)

• DELETE - toggle clear-screen each frame vs no clear (Overlay)

• SHIFT + INSERT - Stutter - toggle: clear-screen only on the beat (Effect)

• SHIFT + DELETE - Stutter - toggle: clear-screen only on the beat (Overlay)

• PAGE UP - toggle the modifier order (add noise to the Effect, or the previous frame)

• PAGE DOWN - toggle the modifier order (add noise to the Overlay, or the previous frame)

• SHIFT + BACKSPACE - Dump state to Trace

There is no automatic beat detection (that's unlikely to be possible), but pressing SPACE four times will change the beat timing, so press it to beat match to the kickdrum of the music.

[*] These change the window of the immediate fft variables. At the start the immediate fft will be about 10 frames. the higher the window, the more the FFT is smoothed.

Customisation

This project is spread across multiple files to make it customisable, and, since we need to load lua files, requires the Pro version of TIC-80 to compile. It is possible to build Pro TIC-80 for free, but it can also be purchased for a low price, which supports the developer.

An external editor is highly recommended for working with large projects, rather than TIC-80's inbuilt one!

The ~/gig/ directory contains some configuration files. One of these should be required from the vj-80.lua file. You can copy one of the existing ones to make your own setup.

This file determines which effects/overlays/modifiers/palettes/shortcuts are included.

The FFT version of TIC will not load lua files, so we need to compile the code and output them as a tic file.

• Bundle into one file. This can be done with the Rift TIC-80 Bundler, by calling something like tic-80-bundler.exe --src path-to-src\vj-80.lua --dest path-to-dest\vj-80-bundled.lua
• Load the bundled file into Pro TIC-80, then save it as a tic file.
• Load that tic file into the FFT version of TIC-80.

Things to Maybe Do

• Add config for the Madtixx DJ set at Revision
• Nomenclature around Effect and Overlay to save confusion?
• Passing FFT values around as units rather than 0-255 might make them easier to reason with in effects.
• Get fuji_twist Effect working again.
• Keys when not at a full-size keyboard? (I think) some of the actions (shift+home, page up/down) don't trigger on a shorter keyboard?
• The timing modifier keys feel more important than the control modifier keys... i.e. I feel like switching (E and R) and (T and Y), so the timing modifiers are closer to the effect changer..?
• Sparse documentation for folks to plug in effects/overlays/modifiers/palettes.
• Check ps' snapshot trace thing still works (I'm sure it doesn't, but easily fixed)
• Wrap FFT code in an object.
• Make the Customisation instructions better.
• Clamp control vars to the same scale, and make sure we can't do things like make the font size negative (in text_bounce_up)
• Fix text_bounce_up hack.
• Mouse effects?
• Save to PMEM, so we can resume.
• Change default time state for each layer from 'no time' to 'beat'?