Hi there VCV friends. Here I am, stepping a little more out of the woodwork now that I’m a published developer.
You may have noticed my first forays into module development hitting the library recently. I decided to follow the trendsetters and create a thread here for pre-release testing modules before publishing.
The module I’m currently working on is a port of the monome norns script by Dan Derks, “less concepts.” With Dan’s blessing, I call it more.ideas. It uses elementary cellular automata to generate eight triggers (256 elementary rules → 8 available bits), a quantized V/oct output, and a selected trigger output (route out one of the eight bits to a main out).
It is a bit difficult to explain, but there are already some great pieces written on the idea of the module by Dan himself. As I work through my implementation (which will have a few alterations and tricks up its own sleeve) documentation will eventually update. 
You can have a look at the original less concepts announcement on the lines forum. There was a Max for Live port done as well, which you can check out here (scroll down for a video).
The original was based on Ezra Buchla’s script for the monome Teletype module.
Here’s a quick video of the first tests.
There are some things I’d like to clean up on the interface (like adding a label with the scale names) and so on, and eventually I’ll ask for beta testers. I am going to be busy with work and school come fall, so I’m hoping to get the bulk of development done on this over the coming weeks!
This looks interesting and with a more understandable user interface than Qwelk Chaos.
if you ever need testers, I would be happy to be one of them, I did a lot beta testing for several developers
Awesome! Less Concepts is a brilliant note generator. Really looking forward to this. Thank you.
I have some alpha builds of more.ideas available for those who are interested. I need to start working on proper documentation, but I believe playing around with it a little bit will make much of its use self-explanatory.
Particular things I’m looking for suggestions on:
Please let me know of bugs you think you find, too!
Also, please do let me know which things you like so that I don’t remove them as development continues!
I’m just playing a bit with your more.ideas it is working flawless here on Win10
I don’t understand the low and high knobs with their settings from 0 to 28, they somehow attenuate the v/oct out…
I would like to have additional outs for:
the v/oct out for the selected bit and a gate out for it too (that goes high when the selected bit changes
just my first thoughts
your modules are pretty interesting and well done and a great addition for the VCV community
Sorry to say, but here on OSX 10.13.6 I got a lot of crashes with this modul. In the moment I am not able to say what causes this behavior. Got crashes with just only this module loaded and playing around with different knobs, but also with a clock connected and some meters at the outputs to see whats going on. Here the last lines from the log after the last crash:
[167.170 info src/patch.cpp:86] Saving patch /Users/nik/Documents/Rack/autosave-v1.vcv
[167.171 info src/settings.cpp:189] Saving settings /Users/nik/Documents/Rack/settings-v1.json
[182.045 fatal src/main.cpp:45] Fatal signal 11. Stack trace:
8: 1 Rack 0x00000001071403cd _ZL18fatalSignalHandleri + 45
7: 2 libsystem_platform.dylib 0x00007fff7a1eef5a _sigtramp + 26
6: 3 ??? 0x0000000000000000 0x0 + 0
5: 4 plugin.dylib 0x000000000e841f78 _ZN10More_ideas7processERKN4rack6engine6Module11ProcessArgsE + 2552
4: 5 Rack 0x00000001071979be _ZN4rack6engineL18Engine_stepModulesEPNS0_6EngineEi + 462
3: 6 Rack 0x00000001071985ab _ZNSt3__114__thread_proxyINS_5tupleIJNS_10unique_ptrINS_15__thread_structENS_14default_deleteIS3_EEEEZN4rack6engine6Engine5startEvE3$_0EEEEEPvSC_ + 1419
2: 7 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff7a1f8661 _pthread_body + 340
1: 8 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff7a1f850d _pthread_body + 0
0: 9 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff7a1f7bf9 thread_start + 13
Also some knob combinations seem to have no reation with in the display and the resolution output signals
I develop on a Windows 10 machine, so I’ll have to go check out the builds on a Mac when I can. The crashes might be because the builds are being done on Azure pipelines and I haven’t used those specific builds myself. Thanks for sharing the trace, though. I don’t notice anything specific in there that jumps out at me as a bug.
Edit: I have been testing on a MacBook running 10.15.5, and I haven’t been able to reproduce a crash based on your patch description. Perhaps there is someone with more MacOS experience than me who might have some ideas.
Thanks for the feedback, too. I believe documentation will make it clearer what the display is showing. By way of a short explanation, it uses the seed number translated to binary as the center pixels on the top row. The rule number in binary is used as a cellular automaton rule to generate the following rows of pixels recursively. In other words, the patterns you see in the visual are just a larger view of how the 8 binary outputs are going to wander as time goes on. A visual that is very repetitive and sparse is going to give outputs that are also repetitive and sparse. Again, this is probably clearer with documentation and/or experience with the less_concepts module this is based on. 
Yet another excellent and very powerful sequencer in huge VCV family! Thanx a lot, it’s a great fun to play with it (especially with PD Arrayed steps feeded into Seed input). Just a little request for design - please, make all legends bigger (mainly I ask for scales 
After playing around more this morning, with still crash after crash… In the log always the same
[53.316 fatal src/main.cpp:45] Fatal signal 11. Stack trace:
8: 1 Rack 0x00000001073c73cd _ZL18fatalSignalHandleri + 45
7: 2 libsystem_platform.dylib 0x00007fff7a1eef5a _sigtramp + 26
6: 3 Rack 0x000000010785a217 GlobalIsTargetPlatformNative + 46767
5: 4 plugin.dylib 0x000000000eac8f78 _ZN10More_ideas7processERKN4rack6engine6Module11ProcessArgsE + 2552
4: 5 Rack 0x000000010741e9be _ZN4rack6engineL18Engine_stepModulesEPNS0_6EngineEi + 462
3: 6 Rack 0x000000010741f5ab _ZNSt3__114__thread_proxyINS_5tupleIJNS_10unique_ptrINS_15__thread_structENS_14default_deleteIS3_EEEEZN4rack6engine6Engine5startEvE3$_0EEEEEPvSC_ + 1419
2: 7 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff7a1f8661 _pthread_body + 340
1: 8 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff7a1f850d _pthread_body + 0
0: 9 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff7a1f7bf9 thread_start + 13
All logs write the same: ZN10More_ideas7processERKN4rack6engine6Module11ProcessArgsE + 2552
Your module crashes mostly when turning the rule or the seed knobs. When connect a BOG LLFO to one of the CV inputs the crashes were faster appearing.
When using the randomizer mostly the module stops sending out any CV information, sometimes it stops all out signals?
Surround code and terminal output with ``` on its own line. I’ve edited your previous posts for you.
Here is the test setup:
Here the patch:
more crashes.vcv (5.7 KB)
Connect the LLFO to the rule or the seed knobs or turn them manually and VCV crashes
Like this:
text
text
text
?
yes now I know what you want 
Thank you for the updated patch and description. I will debug this soon. As a first thought, the input values might be clamping their range incorrectly.
Hi,
I downloaded the macOS alpha build 54 and installed to /Users/alan/Documents/Rack/plugins-v1/IggyLabsModules but the plugin does not load as it’s not trusted…
I’m running macOS Catalina version 10.15.6 (19G73).
I normally build using the Rack SDK. Do you have a repo anywhere? I can try and build it for you on my Mac and see what happens.
Thanks, Alan.
Not sure if this would help, but have you tried deleting the autosave-v1.vcv file in your Rack folder, then launching Rack and trying out the plugin?
Sure, thanks! The branch is here: https://github.com/IggyLabs/IggyLabsModules/tree/dev-more-ideas.
One other thing I haven’t implemented yet but might help the issue is subsampling parameter modulations. Right now audio rate modulation of rules and seeds will mean doing lots of recalculations to get the display rendered since it computes the entire grid on changing rule or seed.
OK. Builds OK for me when I use the Rack SDK locally on my Mac, with a couple of warnings…
$ make -j16 install
…
In file included from src/view/table.cpp:9:
In file included from src/view/../dsp/osc/wavetable.cpp:6:
src/view/../dsp/osc/../../dsp/osc/earlevel/WaveUtils.cpp:100:31: warning: comparison of integers of different signs: 'int' and 'unsigned int' [-Wsign-compare]
for (int idx = 1; idx <= maxHarmonic; idx++) {
~~~ ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~
src/view/../dsp/osc/../../dsp/osc/earlevel/WaveUtils.cpp:113:28: warning: comparison of integers of different signs: 'int' and 'unsigned int' [-Wsign-compare]
maxHarmonic = temp >= maxHarmonic ? maxHarmonic - 1 : temp;
~~~~ ^ ~~~~~~~~~~~
2 warnings generated.
…
Made a patch (attached). No idea what I’m doing but looks real fun!
more-ideas-test-1.vcv (8.2 KB)
