Here is a little program I’ve been playing around with (inspired by the theme Evolution, which didn’t make it again):

• Random Art Evolver (Flash)

This program generates random images based on a code (which is shown at the bottom) and mutates them. When you click on one of the images, you’ll see it in full size at the right and all images will start to evolve from that point on. If none of those get any better, you can restart the same code by clicking on the large image.

Once you have found an image you want to use for something, you could capture the screen and save it somewhere as a bitmap, but the idea is to simply save the code and use a function to generate the image at any time.

The library is for haXe, it generates a BitmapData from a given String. It shouldn’t be too hard to port it to as3 as well.

Enjoy!

Who wants a wallpaper made out of thumbnails from all the LD games?

This here python script (and png for the LD logo) will generate them in various sizes for you.

example output:

Once all the jam entries roll in, I’ll run it and make a post with wallpapers in various sizes for download.

It also dumps a non-resized-for-wallpaper grid.png and an xml file containing each game’s author, game id, title, etc. that maybe someday I will have a good use for.  You can quickly customize it or update for future LDs by changing the variables at the top of the file.

It requires this Python module which you may have to download and install.

EDIT:  whoops, I had a stupid bug in the part that was supposed to center the thumbnails within their grid cells and instead right-aligned ‘em.  It’s fixed if you download now.

Here is the script I’m using to create a time-lapse video of my desktop, with webcam video superimposed in the corner and an audio track. Works for me in Debian Linux with uvccapture, scrot, and ffmpeg installed. Hopefully this is helpful for others. Note that I had to hard code the location of the script at one point because I am a bash bonehead. You will probably have to change that to match the location on your system.


#!/bin/bash
#
# Timelapse video creator.
#
# Uses the following tools: uvccapture, scrot, ffmpeg.
#
# Start recording with 'timelapse start' (continues until killed),
# compile captured frames in to a video with 'timelapse compile'.

interval=5 # delay between frames (will probably longer due to processing time)

arg=$1

if [ $arg ]; then
if [ $arg = "frame.jpg" ]; then
counter=`cat counter`
counter=`expr $counter + 1`
echo got video for frame $counter
scrot screen.png
echo got screenshot for frame $counter
composite -gravity southwest frame.jpg screen.png composite.png
convert -quality 100 -resize 800x composite.png `printf "%04d" $counter`.jpg
echo processed frame $counter
echo $counter > counter
elif [ $arg = "compile" ]; then
ffmpeg -shortest -qscale 3 -ab 192k -r 10 -i %04d.jpg -i music.mp3 video.mp4
elif [ $arg = "start" ]; then
uvccapture -oframe.jpg -x320 -y240 -q100 -c/home/win/scripts/timelapse -t$interval
fi
else
echo "timelapse "
fi


Finally, my time lapse tool (Chronolapse) is ready for some serious testing.

Windows users can grab the exe here: http://code.google.com/p/chronolapse/downloads/list

Linux/Mac: I haven’t done any work on your versions yet, but everything but the webcam ‘should’ work. You’re next!

When you find bugs, please either comment here or send me an email to the address specified in the manual.

Since the mini LD started, I’ve been filling my time with diablo, TF2, C&C3, amusement parks, and other non-coding activities. However, I have been sneaking in coding time here and there, and am making progress on my tool, despite being well outside the ‘deadline’. I posted a gui shot to IRC, but forgot to put it here, until now!

People’s biggest complaint seems to be that it is rather dense. Well screw those people. Seriously though, it is a semi-heavy tool, but I’m hoping I’ve put it together logically. I’ll be writing instructions on how to use each part and I’d like to think that, with a little tool-tip help, each section is pretty self explanatory.

Since I haven’t really discussed it here yet, my tool, codenamed Chronolapse, creates time lapses. Right now the only working webcam library I have is windows only, but that might be addressed later. The goal is to make it a snap to make time lapses like the one below. Here is an overview featurelist:

• Synched Screenshots and Webcam Captures (can do either one or both)
• Simple ‘Annotation’ – show messages like status etc on your timelapse
• Picture in Picture – example: put your webcam shots in the corner of your screenshots
• Video – convert your images to video for you

I decided to make each of these features a seperate entity to give the user as much freedom and functionality as possible. It will add a little bit of time on the backend as you go through each ‘phase’, but it really enhances the value of the tool. Here is a picture in picture example: First, you capture your images. Instead of allowing you to pick PIP at the beginning, it just saves the two different sets of pictures. After you’re finished capturing, you can run it through the PIP section, selecting size and position (and sources). This gives you a new folder of pictures with the PIP effect. Now, if you want to go back and change where you put the PIP, it is as simple as tweaking the settings and re-doing the PIP. If PIP was built into the capture, you couldn’t change it at all. It also means you can use any program you want to do any of the steps, and CL will fill in the rest. You can capture with CL and create video with virtualdub, or capture with something else and add PIP with CL, etc etc etc. You have da powah!

Example Goal Timelapse – This wasn’t made with CL; it required 4 different tools to put it all together, plus the youtube annotation. Being able to make this using just one program (well, need to add sound separately) is the end-result goal of CL.

My LD 12 Timelapse

gotta be honest here, I started two days ago so I’ll submit what I have so far.

I’ll finish it off some other time and upload it here <3