pouët.net

plain javascript and webgl. no wasm, no plugins, no emulator.

please the cookie thing — aardbei, 1st 64k @ ambience 2000
https://jasper2-0.github.io/ptct-webgl/
the original ·
source

lost vegas — threestate, 3rd 64k @ ambience 2000
https://jasper2-0.github.io/lost-vegas-webgl/
the original ·
source

both rebuilt from the binaries, effect by effect. ptct's textures were
supersampled at 4x with a rebuilt custom ATG, and where appropriate geometry
was re-tessellated at 4x. PTCT's soundtrack was rendered using Jürgen Wothke's WebIXS
?quality=original for the faithful build, original presentation and all.

then there's this:

iXalance — tbl's 1998 dos-demo loader, in javascript
https://jasper2-0.github.io/ixalance-js/
source

It runs the original 1997 386 binaries
instruction by instruction — interpreter, x87 and a jit in a worker, ft2
in an audioworklet. jizz, stash and astral blur straight from the unmodified
.ixa containers.

(jizz and stash spend their first ~2.5 billion instructions making their
graphics and music. that decrunch bar is the intro working, not the tab dying.
give it a minute.)

all of it still belongs to aardbei, threestate and tbl. re notes are in the
repos. enjoy.

Cool. Thumbs up (and cookies) to you! :]

Wow! Nice stuff!!! Jizz and Stash never gets old!

Why is the question :)

So cool!

why not is the answer, it's really cool to be able to rediscover these (I loved Lost Vegas so much!)

I approve of this message

qhy github and not codeberge or others?

codeberge wouldn't be possible due to their stance on llm usage...

oh no

Makes me wonder if there's a connection to Ixalance by The Black Lotus and the synth used in Jizz and Stash. The demo songs were made by a TBL member at least.

No connection, they’re two different synths

Do you have more information? How do you know, etc.

Thank you! 🙏

vegas found!

wait, what? no jarig rob??

ok, there is no direct connection between the two synths, as they were created at different points in time by different people. They share a similar approach though. With regards to more information, some of this is pieced together from interviews / module info / etc, things I know first hand from being there and talking to other dutch sceners.

Probe wrote the synth that's used to generate samples for the Jizz and Stash soundtracks on his amiga; he tells so in his AMP interview. You can even download the .xm's from AMP, this is in 1997 or even before.

In 1998 Nix and Balance release iXalance, the original jizz/stash ixa's still used Probe's synth code. During this time a number of TBL members worked at a software development company in the Netherlands called Shortcut, trying to commercialise Ixalance into a platform to compete with Flash / Shockwave Director They ended up doing a screensaver for Heineken (the dutch beer brand). It used to be up on Pouet at one point; sort of similar to the Afri Cola demo that Farb Rausch did a few years later.

As part of those efforts a new synth was developed (Either by Nix or Balance, this is where I've heard different stories over time), specifically created for Crystal Score to create soundtracks for productions by Shortcut. Shortcut released the IXSPlayer that Jürgen Wothke reverse engineered. IXS uses impulse tracker as its module format as that was the primary tracker that Crystal Score worked in. The approach was the same as probe's synths; use the synth to generate samples into the sample slots of a module, when done, play module.

During this time the tbl-members brought in other dutch sceners to work at shortcut such as Ile / Aardbei and xotrack / Solar (there probably were others as well, but Ile and Xo being employed there I know for sure). This is also why almost all dutch 64kb texgen's share the same approach; it was people from different groups at the same company sharing an office.

In order to promote iXalance as a platform, Shortcut developed Gizmozone.com, a portal tailored to screensavers, in 1999-2000. So in late 1999 / early 2000 we have Balance and Crystal Score at Shortcut, and the synth in development for their screensaver work.

I heard through the grapevine that the basic deal was that the Aardbei guys could work on Please the Cookie Thing on company time if it could later be released as a screensaver for GizmoZone, so that’s how a 'TBL' synth ended up in an Aardbei production. There are 3 versions of PTCT; party version without particles at the end, PTCT final with particles and the ‘GizmoZone Screensaver’ edition, which was the intro stuffed into a windows screensaver binary.

I can burn some tokens to see if it's possible to reverse engineer the IXS synth beyond what Jürgen did so we can get a better understanding of what kind of synth it was that Crystal Score used (my money is on it involving FM synthesis).

But I think the quality of the sound design is very much down to Crystal Score's abilities, not necessarily the synth; I mean; listen to what the guy can achieve with 33 instances of Native Instruments' FM8!

That's pretty interesting, thanks for the write-up!

Thanks indeed!

Really cool to see lost vegas running on my phone, and I love those scene history bits.

So just for clarity. Crystal Score made the synth that generates the samples and Balance made the it player.