Monkey Wishlist thread

[Rovastar]

Ok to get the ball rolling here are a few things that I would like to see in Monkey.

Presets for Monkey

Rather than using the predefined movement for MOnkey I would like to see more configurable movement/options for us.

I can see 2 obvious movements for MOnkey.

Speed (speed through tunnel)
Rotation (The rotaion around centre of screen)

Now if we have the normal MilkDrop option (user defined variables names and sound options (bass, treb_att, etc) we can get different movement.

If you also include all the menu otions (hair, fog, wire, etc) we can create new styles for monkey.

Eg

Even a simple movement like

Speed = if(above(bass+bass_att,3.5),0.1*(bass+bass_att),0.05);
Rot = 0.1*sin(time)
Hair_a = if(above(bass,2),1,0)
Hair_l = bass_att;

can make some interesting movement.

The potentail with advance sound detection can do more still.

eg using the beat techinques like here for say speed or rotation could get some interesting results.

Directories for textures

Additional selectable directories for the Monkey jpgs.

Additional texture options

Allowing multiple a and b textures rather than set names. Or a prefix for the 'a' and 'b' textures.

Selectable a and b textures while running Monkey. Rather than just 'r' to randomise. Maybe using the number keys for the textures. 00-80 'a' textures 81-99 'b' textures.

Fog

The strength/brightness of the fog (if possible) and ability to change the colour on the fly. Again preset options for this.

Ok that is all for now. I probably have many more in my crazy head but for now that is it.

[Krash]

The one thing that I'd like to see in monkey is less predictability in the movement. The camera will always follow the exact same tunnel. The tunnel sometimes merges with others, but the camera always follows the same one. What I'd like to see, would be that every time (or every 3rd time, or whatever) that the currently followed tunnel merged with one or more other tunnels, that the camera would switch which tunnel it was following randomly. Some smoothing would be required to avoid sudden changes in direction.

Other ideas (for features, rather than customisability), could include real-time morphing of the tunnel - possibly in response to the music, though that could be hard to get it looking nice.

The ability to make the camera fly in reverse would be cool, but from what I can tell about the way monkey works, it's not possible.

Have the camera rotate around the other two axes (pitch and yaw) would also be nifty (albeit disorienting), but would require buffering of the section of tunnels which has just been past. Point of view calculations would prevent any extra triangles being rendered (behind the camera), but the data for all those triangles would still need to be kept, so the performance would drop.

That's about all I can think of at the moment. Despite Rovastar's enthusiasm, I don't really see any potential in monkey for user-defined presets as in milkdrop. It's a pretty thing to watch, and the sense of speed is great, but it seems like it's probably too hard-wired to be very customisable.

- Krash

[Rovastar]

I disagree Krash. I do not see why it would be difficult to tweak to code to allow presets for it.

E.g. IF you change the song the speed of the movement through the tunnel changes instantly. Or if you change the beat detection or the speed through the tunnel it changes instantly too. Or turn hair on/off on a key press. You are not

FOr me if you can do anything at a keypress in real time you then you can in can this realtime from a mini script as in the presets.

I am not expecting as customizable as MD but all that I have said above is doable IMHO.

MAybe Ryan can tell us if it is possible or not.

[ryan]

Maybe OpenGL support?

[Tomato Face]

I'd love to see those hairs moving, kind of like the grass in Neverwinter Nights. And not necessarily in time to the music, only if you could make it look natural.

[ben718]

Bubbles

Long time Geiss vis lover, keep rockin' Ryan.

Hopefully an easy feature, or else I wouldn't suggest it, but the tunnel could easily be seen to be underwater. Bubbles would be cool.

And as long as we're a submarine traveling through a tunnel (esp. with the new dark feature), why not roving spotlights coming from our POV and the like? It seems like the scene is always lit from the same spot currently.

Have a nice day, thanks for reading.

[sportemberke]

Oh, Monkey is very cool. To be the best one out there, it should have animated textures . But really, Rovastar's texture pack shows something about this... Just let the milkdrop engine or such generate the textures.

Have fun...
sportemberke

[Mike Lee Toris]

Wish List

Hi!

First of all: Gosh!

Ryan did it again! Collapsing my brain with brilliant effects... Arg!

After seing first possibilities, I thought a little bit like Krash: Vibrating the mesh of the main tunnel in response of the music. Animated textures will be great (cpu computation or inside the graphic card?)

Or, coz pulsing wave are missing ;-), could be possible to have the good old wave pulsing by following the path of the camera. Or may be some options like in Geiss plugin responding to the bass beat (a option) and blow some light torpedos through the tunnel!

May be key options could be linked to beat or bass detection? This could give hairs/wireframe/darkness appears/disappears into the rythme.

Great job, Ryan!!!
Regards.

[Val_Parthen]

I would like to see a better "title" feature. Like in Milkdrop, when you hit 't' and it comes in all wavey and nice.

[JawaSpot]

<minor, and prolly easy to do>i'd like to exit by clicking with the mouse button (like in MilkDrop) instead of hitting Esc.</minor>
another thing that would be cool is to be able to have the fov change with the beat detection, so at every beat you become fisheyed or something..

oh, and i agree with mr. tomato, hairs that wave in the "breeze(?)" would be cool, whether they are swinging to the beat or not.

[this niblet]

It would be nice to have a stand-alone version of monkey to use as my desktop background like drempels. I'm sure that the music response isn't absolutely necessary for running the same effect.

Oh also - I want to keep the render style the same without locking the scene. Colors and texture changing makes it cooler, but I don't like it when suddenly it goes to wireframes, no texture, and flat shading.

[Morbid-o]

I'd like to see some sort of pulsating meshes on the tunnel walls..the could seem almost alive with music...

i like the underwater idea, and for that matter what is 'undergroundness'? it doesn't seem to make a difference on my computer...