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Cart #snowman-5 | 2019-01-01 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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This is a little animation/transcription of Walking in the Air from "The Snowman," an animated film from 1982 that I must have first seen in about 1987 or so. I recently watched this film again and it left a really strong impression on me, and I felt I had to make this little PICO-8 cart celebrating it.

Update 1-1-19:
Happy New Year! I made a few more improvements to the karaoke animation so the text scrolls more smoothly, the currently sung line is highlighted by a drop shadow as the ball slides across it. After more testing it looks like the code for tracking elapsed ticks is working great on all platforms. (except if you navigate away from PICO-8, there seem to be issues but it appears to affect other carts too not just mine?)

Update 12-31-18:
I added a karaoke style animation above the syllables of the words, and scroll the text so it is easy to sing along with. This was a little tricky to get working. I used stat(24) and stat(26) and associated ticks values with syllables, but it does not perfectly advance in lockstep to the 30 fps update so I had to fudge things a bit. But it now seems to be working well on Windows and on Mac, we'll see how well it does on web.

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I've never seen that movie but I like this :)

If I may offer a word: I would recommend decreasing the volume slightly, because it gets distorted a bit when both melody lines are playing at the same time (unless you are intentionally going for that effect). It's something that I didn't notice when I first started using PICO-8's tracker...you have to watch the combined volumes of things or it will distort, and there's no visual indicator of it; you just have to manually listen and make sure it's not there.


Well done! I've never seen the movie, but I know the Nightwish cover of this song. If you've never heard, you should. Here it is live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9icKP1b44TA


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This is lovely - my absolute favourite Christmas cartoon.
We watch this EVERY year, on either Xmas morning or eve - without fail every year since it came out...
(...and yes, for those that did the math, I'm knocking the door of "40") :D
Thank you for creating this @gradualgames - wishing you a Merry Christmas + a Happy New Year!


@kittenm4ster: I noticed the distortion as well and considered changing it; however I do not notice this distortion on all builds of PICO-8 just the windows build; so I wasn't sure if it was my error or just a quirk of the implementation or library on a given OS?

@eriban: Thanks for the link; I think I've actually seen this before! I love metal.

@Liquidream: Glad you liked it! Thanks! Merry Christmas & Happy New Year to you too sir!


@gradualgames hmmm maybe it is not quite consistent across platforms then. I do hear the distortion on both web (Chrome for Android) and Linux though, if that helps.


@kittenm4ster: I updated the cart with some reduced volumes; I think you are right it sounds a lot better! I actually went through this volume reducing process as I learned famitracker over the past few years as well; it seems best to use volumes pretty low most of the time and only use higher volumes for very brief, crisp attacks of certain instruments (in general) or for surprising sound effects in a game perhaps.


Updated the cart with a karaoke style animation, with a small snowball that animates above the syllable currently being sung. Enjoy!

Note: I've ironed this out pretty well on Mac and Windows. It may still be finicky at times on web, but I've only seen it mess up when navigating away from the tab and then back.


Probably last update for now. The karaoke animation is further improved so the text is masked above and below and scrolls nicely. The current line is highlighted by a drop shadow. Finally, I added some comments to the interesting bits of code concerning how the ball is tracked to the elapsed patterns/ticks of the song! Upon further testing it appears to be working well on all platforms.


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Thank you for the cart. I've watched The Snowman most Christmases since I was a child. I missed it this year for whatever reason. Your animation transported me right to the feelings this movie gives me. Really needed something like this. :)

Guess I better go watch The Snowman now.


Thank you jellifroots! Glad you enjoyed it :)



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