Finally! PianoGen v2.1

PianoGen is a software I'm currently developing. Please read the page about it HERE, or none of this will make any sense to you.

I don't even remember how long it's been since my last update, but a lot has

happened since, and I have been very busy. Since the last update, PianoGen was released on itch.io as a paid program, and it has amassed a number of sales—enough to motivate me to continue the development of this project. Although it might be very satisfying to make money solely by looking at a screen and pushing buttons in the right order, my ultimate goal for this project is to enable indie game developers to be relieved of the lengthy process of producing or acquiring original music for their games. If a developer wants to sell their game, they either have to have a license to use existing songs or commission an artist, both of which are very hard for a lonely indie dev.

PianoGen is currently priced at $5, which I believe is very reasonable for a tool that enables the developer to infinitely generate different songs to their heart's content. I do plan to eventually release a free version of the product at a later date. So, the end goal is to develop a tool that will benefit indie game devs like myself.

Anyway, enough of that. I should probably talk about what was improved since 1.0. First of all, the UI got a significant overhaul as I readied the software for consumer use (especially after 2.1—the UI is very refined). The melody generation was completely rebuilt to generate much more varied and complex songs. Although the playback didn't change much, I fixed some minor compression issues. Another addition is the bassline feature, which adds a bassline to the most fitting part of the song. The bassline algorithm isn't nearly as complex as the melody generation as of now—that's something I'll definitely improve in 2.2.

Another very important addition was the song length feature, which enables the user to determine the length of the song. This was very complex to implement because when you let the algorithm run on its own, it generates songs of whatever length it feels like. So, it was very hard to output a song with a precise length without cutting off whatever it generated. I had to at least add a ±1 second to the requested song length for my sake. I also refined the song speed feature and made it much simpler to use with three selections (slow, normal, fast).

Anyway, those are the most notable changes, I believe. 2.0 has been out for a few weeks, and 2.1 with some improvements should be out in about 30 hours. As I said, the ultimate goal is to help indie game devs, so if for any reason you can't or don't want to pay to use the software, please shoot me an email—I have spare software keys!

It's 2024; people don't even watch vlogs anymore. So to whomever still reads blogs (especially mine), thank you very much!