Oh yeah, you mean those recommendations about potential uses? I thought it’d be neat to use my docs to give pointers to new users how the various pieces of the kit can fit together, but I’m also trying not to constrain people’s understanding what it means or how it should be used, especially since it has a social aspect.
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I could reproduce a crash on a Linux VM. I’ll look into the issue. Logs indicate that readTodaysFortune() is our suspect, if anyone got a hunch what’s wrong (warning: very rude cowgirl coding in there)
Too lazy to take the time to craft a real song today, but I wanted to at least make a patch with the very first fortune, so I quickly threw together a 10 minutes patch to give you a few ideas of things you can try out with Arcane.
Today the arcana was The Devil, the tempo was 72 BPM, and the scale A harmonic minor. I’ll post how it sounds tomorrow, after a new fortune is drawn.
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And today’s oracle is up! It’s 158 BPM, almost the upper bound. The scale can be read as C# major, or other modes (oracles do not specify where the scale starts). The major arcana is The Magician (I just realized I misspelled it on the LCD, it will be corrected).
Here’s how the patch I quickly threw together yesterday sounds today:
Of course, making a patch that changes every day is only one of the many possible ways to use Arcane.
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I rigged up a Linux VM, and figured out the problem. The crash should be gone now! (Tagging @the1andonlydrno )
(There was a stray fclose() closing a non-existent file. Other OSes cope, but Linux crashes on this).
Here’s a new build: https://aria.dog/upload/2020/01/Arcane-Beta-Linux-20200128.zip
Since there isn’t any other bug report and not many downloads of the beta builds, I guess I’ll submit it to the library soon.
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works perfect, thanks a lot
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Well, I guess everyone who wanted to try out Arcane did, so I guess I’ll have to push it to the library to get people to use it, heh.
Also, is this new Darius design too complex? Existing patches won’t be broken (or at least I don’t think they should be).
1.2.0: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/AriaSalvatrice/AriaVCVModules/master/doc/darius.gif
In development:
Trying to keep the module squarely in the “beginner-friendly, easy to learn hard to master” category, despite everyone asking me to ruin it by adding all the kitchen sink features other modules already provide, lol.
Features are not implemented yet, I prefer to work visual design first, code second.
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Looks good!
Looks good to me. Still simple. And trust me: I don’t know what half the modules in my collection do, but I can figure that new Darius out with no trouble.
Here comes the 1.3.0 Beta 2 - a few modifications to Arcane, and many to Darius. Be sure to check the docs and to try them out both!
The documentation for Arcane is a few posts above, but you’ll always find the most recent version on GitHub.
I’ll submit it to the library in a day or two I think.
I’ve accidentally left two debug outputs at the bottom of the device. Just ignore them, they’re not sending anything of value. I’ll remove them before I submit.
Regarding Darius, I’d like any tester to please exercise the quality of its random numbers - especially on non-Windows OSes. To allow it to be deterministic, I had to roll my own wrapper around a PRNG. If my current implementation is bad, I need to know ASAP, or else fixing it later would mean breaking people’s patches down the line.
(BTW - don’t create any Darius beta patch you don’t want to break, I make zero promises they will still play in a few days)
Hi, thanks for implementing my feature request on external randoms. Did some tesing on Darius using external randoms. Seems to work fine at the first glance. One thing I detected is that it seems that you do not check for ext rnd connected but just checking the value and if its 0 you do your own seeding. Since 0 is a valid seed you should check for ext rnd input connected instead of if interpreting a value of 0 as not connected. Regards Dieter
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That’s by design! I am explicitly interpreting 0 as requesting a random seed, because it allows you to create call-and-response phrases that way. Same seed for the call, 0 for a randomized response.
My thinking is that you’re probably gonna be driving the random input either via a sequencer (in which case you can just not dial 0), something like a Turing Machine / Marbles letting you pick the range, or via S&H’d noise (in which case, the chances of getting 0.000000 are perfectly negligible).
Normally, it’d go into my music thread, but I think since I want to encourage people to try out the beta, here’s a quick little sketch using both Arcane and the revised Darius.
Everything you hear in this song is not only aleatoric, it’s also entirely ephemeral: tomorrow, a different arcana of the Tarot will be drawn, and this song will sound different, yet similar. And if you download Arcane today, you will have to work with the exact same raw material I did, yet your interpretation will be unmistakably yours.
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Hi, Ok, but a bit unusual design. Maybe a gate input for ‘ignore ext rnd’ would be a clearer and in my opinion also more usable. Another request is for randomization. Trigger inputs for the randomize buttons would be great. Also the randomization should start with the ext rnd seed if connected. Maybe buttons might always use internal seed and trg inputs use ext rnd if connected. Just an idea. Anyway, had a view very nice hours building a patch around Darius and I fell in Love with this thing. Very clever idea and easy to use. Great job, thx for this great module.
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I think that after this revision, the module is pretty much done! I’d rather not add a ton more features until it grows into a monster full of potential everyone feels too intimidated to learn.
This is what I say in the revised doc, on features vs. simple opinionated modules:
Darius has a simple panel, few advanced features, and is impossible to truly tame - by design. It is meant to be easy to learn, suprising to use, and fun to master. Many of its apparent limitations can be overcome with a bit of creative patching. It works wonderfully with stoermelder PackOne’s CV-MAP and 8FACE to give you CV control over the knobs and add multiple preset banks.
Maybe one day I’ll revisit it, but until then, maybe another developer with a different approach will want to run with the idea and take it in a new direction? (And if anyone does, just… don’t bother to reuse my amateur code, lol, you’d get results faster doing it from scratch).
Anyway, I had a pair of friends off the forums play with Arcane and the new Darius today, caught a small bug in each. Since I know they work enough for everyone I won’t wait longer and just submit it to the library. I think people will be more inclined to check out Arcane after it magically appears in their collection.
Also:
Per the recommendations of this thread, I’ll start making one Announcements thread per new module/release, and a less structure thread in the Plugins & Modules category for general support & discussion. (Or maybe a mod wants to move this one in plugins, to use it for that purpose?)
Too much hullabaloo splitting, count me out 
. But feel free to announce away in a new thread or link to this one.
Just trying to do as the Romans do, haha.
1.3.0 submitted to the library! I hope people will try Arcane once it appears in their rack. I don’t really know how to introduce it in a way that will make people want to try it without framing an official interpretation of the “rules of the game”… Think it’s complex enough I should do a video showing one possible way to use it?
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I think these are very cool & think they’d make a great focus for a patch challenge. I would definitely benefit from a video demoing them - particularly Aleister. Thanks for making such an inventive contribution!
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They’ve just been added in the library btw! Drafting an announcement topic with a demo video and demo patch as we speak 
Edit: New thread is here! Following the recommendations from the meta thread, I will make one new annoucement per major update, please take the conversation to the new thread!
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