Day 148 - Funkytown

It seems odd to be writing this just after saying how re-energised I am, but I've been in a bit of a funk lately.  I think part of that may be down to the fact that two of my biggest, most recent posts have been tributes to programmers that we have lost.  It's a blow to us all, to have these talents taken away, and it does put you in a bit of a down mood.

I've been perking myself up a bit through the medium of MAME.  When your mojo takes a hit, you can always rely on a good blast of arcade gaming to give it a shot in the arm.  I'm not saying they're necessarily better than the games I'm writing about for this book... just more immediate.

Something else I'm doing with old arcade games is making myself a big batch of ringtones.  I love messing around with stuff like that.  I first started out using bits of music tracks from my favourite artists, and then with bits of Commodore 64 tunes.  But it's much harder to make really good ringtones like that... they may be your favourite tunes, but they're not necessarily best-suited to the purpose.

Now, would any of these be good for texts?  No?
Well, there's another hundred or so to try.

Arcade sounds, on the other hand, are perfect.  Whether it's an "Insert Coin" sound effect or a game over jingle, there are a lot more sounds that are short, snappy and, well, ringtone-y.  So I've now got well over a hundred of the things that I can tailor to all manner of things.  I just find it great fun to play with things like that.

In other words, and connected to the start of my post, I've started reaching out to people who were connected to Gods that we have lost.  There's a number of people I would love to include in the book that sadly cannot speak for themselves, and while I'm able to write plenty about their games, I can't write much about the people themselves.  If I can include some personal tributes from those that knew or worked with them, it will be a nice touch, I feel.