One math thing that I’m finding I’m doing a lot of with the theramin is mapping positional data to a set range of integers. The midi library uses a range from 0 to 127 for pitch. So I need to map the distance value between the controller and the pitch rod to that number.

One technique is to convert the value of range 1 into a percent and then multiplying the maximum of range 2 by that percent to get your new value (and then rounding to an integer). Because I already know that its only going to work inside the trigger box, I compare the current distance from the rod with the maximum distance to get a percentage.

But if one range uses negative numbers and the other uses positive numbers then that becomes a bit harder to do. So another technique you can use is a mapping algorithm.

I found a pretty great forum thread where people are sharing different algorithms they use for remapping:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/re-map-a-number-from-one-range-to-another.119437/

Generating music by pressing buttons is one thing but I thought it might be cool to be able to play music by waving your hands in the air. I’ve always wanted to play the theremin so I figured, “why not make it in VR?”

Right now I have the controls working based on trigger volumes and basic distance measurements between the rods and controllers. It uses the midi library to generate the tone which I can change to any instrument in the midi library (currently only from editor).

Does it work?

The volume control works really well but the pitch control is a bit more tricky to get smooth. I’ll post my first “performance” soon!

There are a lot of games that have music-like vocalizations from characters in place of speech. I am exploring what could be possible using the MIDI system plus a handy script I found to create a Typewriter effect in the UI. In the end I had to write my own code to make it play nice with the MIDI library but the link above would work for most typical situations I think.

How it works?

As the typewriter is typing out the text, each time it starts a new word, it picks a random note from a provided range to start a chord from. Then it increases using a 4, 3, 5 semi-tone pattern to create the major chord, repeating this pattern if there are more than 3 letters in the word. When it finds a space, it picks a new random starting note.

What’s Next?

I would like to experiment with different instruments as well as different expressions such as volume and pitch bending to create emphasis and inflection in the generated vocalizations.

So I started falling down a rabbit hole of VR music generation and so far I’ve been able to load in a MIDI library and link it up to the buttons I already have.

With some really janky hacks I just finished implementing a sensitivity system so you can hit the button softer or harder to have the note play louder or softer.

Next up is fixing the damn buttons because they are REALLY not great. I need a better button system that can detect harder/faster presses. Basically they need to make it better, do it faster, harder better faster stronger.

While looking for some brick models to use I found these great stone and brick models for free on Turbosquid!

The exciting world of game development continues as I create today for your viewing pleasure: a piece of plywood.

For texture mapping, I created the following image which I can tile on the y-axis. Help yourself if you want it!

Did more coding work on my meditation stations and had to remind myself how to broadcasting messages. The reason for this is because part of the meditation station is actually attached to the player, allowing me to detect where the hands are positioned, where as the other is attached to the station, allowing me to make sure the player is standing in the right spot.

I hope to be able to show a video of the full effect soon.

So I’ve been working on a few different ways to dynamically turn on particle effects based on user interaction. Right now I’m working on a particle effect that turns on when you walk into a specific area.

I found a handy script to increase bounciness beyond 1.0 which the author called a “Power Bounce” but we can call it a “Super Bounce”. It works really well.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class HeadButt : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float str = 0.21f;
    public AudioClip HeadButtAudio;

    // Start is called before the first frame update
    void Start(){}

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update(){}

    void OnCollisionEnter(Collision col)
    {

        Debug.Log("Hit!");
        
        if (col.gameObject.tag == "buttable")
        {
            Rigidbody rb = col.gameObject.GetComponent<Rigidbody>();
            rb.AddForce(rb.velocity * str, ForceMode.Impulse);
        }

        SFXPlayer.Instance.PlaySFX(HeadButtAudio, transform.position, new SFXPlayer.PlayParameters()
        {
            Pitch = Random.Range(0.9f, 1.1f),
            SourceID = -1,
            Volume = 1.0f
        }, 0.0f);

    }
}

The only thing left to do at a later date would be to try to accelerometer values from the headset and link that to the str (strength) parameter in the script.