CHARLIE by notb

Charlie is teaching his music brain to compose sequences. Move him around with the arrow keys and interact with Z and X.
When he starts the machine for the first time, it will make a random sound or maybe nothing at all. To hear the sound of this brain again he can press the green PLAY button in the upper left. To reward the machine for playing something sort of musical, he can press the red LEARN button. This will modify the brain and a new sound will play, usually similar to the first but not always. If the new sound is still "musical," he can press LEARN again to get more creative. To save this brain to the cartdata, he can press the gray SAVE button. To randomly reset the brain's concept of music, he can press the blue RESET button.
Charlie has come to understand the relationship between time and music and has decided to control the sound's speed and length directly. He can do this by changing the HEART (low for fast) and HOURGLASS (low for short) values in the upper right. The SPIRAL value is a chaos control that affects the randomness of the brain's impulses.
If the brain is not making musical sounds, he can modify any node directly by moving on top of it, pushing the value up or down with the buttons. If he presses both buttons on a node, it will change randomly. The weights of the nodes and edges are represented by color patterns. The first column of nodes are input nodes associated with instruments, pitches, envelopes, and volumes respectively. Modify them and press play to get a new sound from the machine using the current brain, without changing any connections. The middle columns are learning nodes. Modify them and press learn for chaotic, unpredictable behavior. The right column are output nodes mirroring the input nodes. Modify these and press learn to train the brain to produce those outputs when given the current inputs. (left column)
The brain is answering a simple question, "what note should come next?" The input (left) being the 'current' note and the output (right) being the next note. When Charlie presses play, the brain answers that question for what is currently on the left, producing an output. It takes that output, and puts it back in as input, and repeats to generate a sequence of notes. The sequence of notes that it has generated are visualized at the bottom of the screen and highlighted as they are played. If Charlie moves on top of it he can access a control to add and remove sequences.
Good luck have fun! The genres could be puzzle and rhythm.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=H0rnM0liGZk
| HTML5 (web) | https://notb.itch.io/charlie |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/charlie |
Ratings
| Overall | 300th | 3.466⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 565th | 2.828⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 12th | 4.317⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 455th | 3.357⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 160th | 3.7⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 24th | 4⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 255th | 2.932⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 72th | 3.667⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 25🗳️ | 20🗨️ |
The concept of the game is awesome - I'm a sucker for music building games. You were able to accomplish a lot with 48 hours, and I could spend some serious time going through it. Super impressed I loved all your write up too! It made me connect just a little deeper and think about it as a little world, instead of just a music creation game.
10/10 would make crap music again.
For a while I thought mouse input wasn't working, but it was.
The backs and graphics are cool and doing the job.
I did succeed with making some "music" but anyways I'd like this to be a bit less confusing. The "neural music engine" itself is worth exploring and playing around, but it lacks feedback loops and overall UX to see how you can affect it. It doesn't mean less crazy or random stuff but a bit more clarity so players could reveal full potential of Charlie :)
I'd like to see more experimental stuff like this on gamejams. Highest rates from me and best wishes!
That said, I had absolutely no idea what to do or how to do it. Like, at all. I could change the node values, but I didn't know what effect it was having on the music, or even how to tell which node I should even be rewarding. I wanted to teach a machine how to make music, I really did. But I was completely and utterly in the dark the whole time and I think the experience was completely ruined for me because of it.