Friktal: Exploring Infinity. A Surreal Soundscape Experience.
Hello TIG friends. I'm ready begin showing the world a very special project we have been working on for the last couple years. I invite you to join us on this journey into infinity.
What is Friktal?The dry, short answer -- Friktal is a game which invites players to explore and interact with 3D fractal worlds as they beat, morph, and flow to the user's music.
The not so dry answer -- Friktal is a portal to other dimensions. It is a small part of the answer to the question -- what is the nature of reality. Friktal is a key to unlock parts of your imagination which lay long dormant. Perhaps it is even a teacher to help open eyes to greater understanding of self and perceptions both internal and external. Friktal is seeing dragons in clouds and letting your mind move through those clouds in search of it's lair. Friktal is a toy, a tool, and a glimpse into the sheer freaking beauty of the universal language -- mathematics.
note:gifs suck to show this. see youtube videos@4k/60
Who am I?I'm Friken... a game developer, a dancer, an artist, a father, a burner, a hippie, and just another monkey spinning through space and time on this rock of ours.
Who are we?We are a family -- literally. SonOfaFrik, and NoidFrik are my real-world sons. I am a lucky man to have talented kids who have been involved in my game creation addiction their whole lives. Both are amazing musicians, have artistic eyes, and are vital to the direction, testing, audio, and engineering of this dream. They teach me something new daily.
The Journey of Friktal through Star DivingIt all started with StarDiver, a scifi game project (
stardiver.com) -- my MASSIVE undertaking and lifelong dream to bring StarFlight-like and StarControl-like gameplay of yesteryear to the modern generation of gaming. That project started some years before and is currently awaiting Friktal's completion so we can get back to it and finish the beast (seeing the struggle StarDock has with it's StarControl reboot.... imo the world still needs StarDiver!). It is relevant here as Friktal was birthed through the need for a bad-ass hyperspace travel effect. I wanted something really trans-dimensional feeling. 3d fractal effects seemed like a place to start. And This was the breakthrough video I posted when I first started playing with raymarched fractals. As soon as I saw the potential, I had to see what the math would do being driven by music... a the birth of a cymatic simulator took heart in what is now Friktal.
And the Geeky Techy Tidbits?Friktal uses a genius technique of rendering called raymarching. I'm DEFINITELY NOT the inventor of the technique, thanks to many who have blazed that path before me. What Friktal has brought is realtime exploration and manipulation of raymarched fractal worlds, controlling both movement within and morphing of the worlds in realtime. To further the experience, realtime audio data is sliced and diced in very unique ways to directly flow, beat, and morph the fractal mathmatics. I hope the world agrees that the audio code and mapping into the fractal math has created something really special.
Raymarching is a completely different way of thinking about 3d rendering than triangle geometry we all know and kinda-love for 3d games. Here is a great primer about raymarching, thanks adrian:
http://flafla2.github.io/2016/10/01/raymarching.html
note:gifs suck to show this. see youtube videos@4k/60
Current Project Status (updated 1/22/2019)Friktal is estimated to be three to four months away from release via Steam Early Access for both Windows Desktop and Virtual Reality (Oculus and Vive). We will be launching a crowd funding campaign between now and then to raise awareness and funding for the project. We have so many plans for this and really appreciate the community support.
Features Completed (updated 1/22/2019)- 20+ unique fractal setups to explore
- Capture and visualization of any windows audio source or included songs composed by SonOfaFrik (spotify, soundcloud, youtube, etc)
- Pause, fastforward, rewind time within the flowing fractal worlds without disrupting the flow of the music
- toggling of beat morphing, and music flowing into the fractal math.
- GPU optimizations for 100+fps@1080p on low-mid range gpus. 60-100+fps@4k on high end gpus (gtx1070+)
- playing and fractal overlay of youtube videos inside Friktal
- Numerous graphical effects including Anti-aliasing, Depth of Field blur, volumetric fog, blooms, rimlighting, and sdcreenspace reflections... all optimized to 60+ fps on target gpus/resolutions
- ASCII rendering modes for my personal dialup BBS days nostalgia
- Saving and Loading of any place you find within infinity
Features Targeted for Initial Early Access Release- Menu and UI System
- Gamification of the fractal math -- more about this in further posts
- User manipulation of the fractal formulas in an 'any age' and 'no math needed' way
- User creation and saving of new fractal worlds to explore
Features Targeted before 1.0 Release- Online, in-game sharing and browsing of user created fractal setups and saved locations worth visiting
- Online voting system of favorite fractals / places
- Integration with Spotify and Soundcloud to video other players flythroughs and fractal setups to specific songs
- Online voting of song flythroughs -- Controller dancing is a thing!
- Social sharing features, youtube video capture/posting
- Advanced screenshot capture of higher than native resolution for large scale prints. Think multiples of screen rez. 2/4/8/10x
Where else is Friktal going?- Headed back to Burningman. In 2018 an early version was porjected at the burn in Playa Alchemist's 13 story metal pyramid
- Using motion capture suits for live dancer's bodies to directly move and interact with the fractal world while it is projected all around them
- Brainwave input into the fractal math using EEG equipment
- Borrowing a page from SoundSelf (amazing project) for a meditation targeted Friktal product
- Scripting system for live performance
- midi controller integration and mapping for live control systems
- DJ/VJ targeted version with Spout output
- ?? Ideas ??
What Early Testers Say About Friktal"It's like being in the psychedelic larynx of a cosmic opera singer"
"At times it really feels like a window into alternate dimensions and perceptions of reality. Like I'm a human voyeur watching an inter-dimensional orgy. "
"This is proof humanity has hit AI singularity and our new god is talking to me through the music-driven fractal math"
"What the @%$#$ did I just see.... I'm in awe while feeling a little uncomfortable... maybe I just saw something my reality isn't ready for"
"My brain just level up'd"
"Well done. You found a way to record my brain on drugs and let me go explore my poor life decisions in gorgeous detail."
"I enjoy seeing a dragon in the randomness of a cloud but in Friktal the dragon is dancing while auroras pulse from the reflections the sun makes on his scales."
"Realtalk. Weed's legal in some places now. It's time for a new genre of games for us stoners. Long live Friktal."
"I'm a crusty old techie. I never in my wildest dreams thought it would be possible, in my lifetime, to visually explore fractal math in such a visceral and breathtakingly beautiful way. And in realtime -- controller in hand -- to go where I will through a gateway to far off realms is if to directly explain what infinity is all about."
"I've played a lot of VR games and had kind of written it off until resolutions and FOV are a couple generations improved. I gladly dusted off my Oculus to try Friktal. Wow. It is BY FAR the most surreal, goosebump enducing, vr experience to date. Well Done!"
Videos of Friktal in Action** please note that Friktal is a worst use case for online video compression as nearly every pixel of a 4k image changes value in every frame. This means video compression really takes a bite out of it. The live gameplay is even more crisp than the still images while running at silky smooth framerates and motion.
Friktal Demo of newest modes and features (Jan/23/2018)
DevStream of newest features added: Youtube video underlay and Matrix / ASCII art realtime rendering of the fractal:
https://youtu.be/kKQTnLS6OB0?t=453Cymatics sim as frequency waves flow through the fractal math:
https://youtu.be/dcXnMIM2N0c?t=343Boom Boom Thump Thump:
https://youtu.be/OR6UJiQQuT8?t=16Rings of Saturn:
https://youtu.be/9u8-E5CHwxs?t=11Cybertron's Mind:
https://youtu.be/9u8-E5CHwxs?t=318Widow's Web Of Lies:
https://youtu.be/j2xhpWSWgBs?t=4Flashback:
https://youtu.be/j2xhpWSWgBs?t=1162Pods Stuck in Timne:
https://youtu.be/j2xhpWSWgBs?t=2574
Want to Get Involved?Join us on discord at:
https://discord.gg/gCjTAFR*We will be posting preview builds there
Thanks for taking a look!
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