cellsDS - Lua extensible grid sequencer @ glitchDS

cellsDS - Lua extensible grid sequencer

Posted on September 17th, 2008 admin 24 comments

Announcing cellsDS: A free flexible, programmable grid-based music sequencer for the Nintendo DS. cellsDS is six sequencers in one, with each sequencer being controlled by a user definable Lua script. It is the peculiar anti-social stepchild of the Tenori-On and Monome.

Download it from the download page.

Features include:

* Dead simple user interface.

* Ability to create your own unique sequencer rules using the Lua programming language. CellsDS comes with a developer’s guide and example scripts to get you started.

* 175 sounds are included. With a little work, you can add your own sounds.

* Ability to customize the scale. (All you microtonal nerds will be pleased.)

* Coming soon… Wifi-Midi support.

There are some limitations to the Lua scripts that you can write due to performance issues. Please refer to the Developer’s Guide (included in the distribution) for more details. In short, cellsDS sequencers need to perform briskly - which might rule out things such as doing expensive cellular-automaton calculations.

A special thanks to all of the beta testers for their ideas and support. Please report any bugs to the forums.

Cheers,

- Bret

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24 responses to “cellsDS - Lua extensible grid sequencer”
- oscillateur September 18th, 2008 at 01:32
  
  Sounds very cool, I’ll try this soon :).
- n/a September 18th, 2008 at 01:37
  
  Great App! I really like the direction you are going with it. Keep up the excellent work!
  
  About the “Lua Scrpts”, would the app located at the website below be useful in creating scripts for cellDS, on the go?
  
  http://microlua.risike.com/
- admin September 18th, 2008 at 09:01
  
  I don’t think that microlua will be very helpful without a lot of work, unless you’re just using it as a text editor. You would need to write a Lua script that loaded up your cellsDS plug-in .lua script and called the call-back methods. It would also need to implement functions such as set_cell( ) which your plug-in would probably call. It’s an interesting thought!
- sssidney September 18th, 2008 at 09:45
  
  Both glitchds and cellsds are great apps! Any chance you are going to open source them? I’m just learning DS programming and one of your apps would be a great learning example.
- aaron September 18th, 2008 at 14:55
  
  kicka**!
- Matthew September 18th, 2008 at 22:03
  
  Now I feel guilty for not sending in any feedback. I still had fun playing around with cellDS so thanks!
- admin September 18th, 2008 at 22:05
  
  No worries Matthew! I’m sure you would have contacted me if your DS melted into a pile of plastic. Ha ha ha. With beta testing, sometimes no news is good news!
- A128 September 19th, 2008 at 11:37
  
  The best non game applications so far
  
  did you used your own Lua port?
- admin September 19th, 2008 at 11:42
  
  @A128: Thanks! I used Micha Faw’s Lua library for the DS. Here’s the site that got me started: http://radiofree1653.dyndns.org/log/?q=node/61
- Biff September 20th, 2008 at 01:28
  
  You know, I was trolling some ds homebrew sites and I saw this listed, and I said to myself “I’ll bet this is from the GlitchDS guy”.
  
  I’m glad I was right.
  
  I can’t wait.
- Biff September 20th, 2008 at 02:16
  
  After five minutes with this I love it, but I can’t save!
  
  This is (roughly) what displays on my top screen when I go to save:
  
  In call to function: save snapshot; engine 0;script /cellsDS/scripts/step sequencer.lua;error /cellsDS/scripts/step sequencer.lua:196 attempt to index global file’ (a nil value)
  
  No idea what that means…but good program nonetheless!
  
  I’m running this off of a CycloDS (newwest firmware I believe), and I copied the folder in it’s entirety to my microsd.
- Kiliam September 20th, 2008 at 03:14
  
  Great app! I love the personal touch to all of your little children. Cellsds and Glitchds are the perfect balance between experimentation and systematic music composing. This was just what the homebrew nds music scene needs. Glitchds is a great rhythm base to any setup with its glitchy and organic beats, cells, however, has got potential to even become a key synthesizer. With people making their own scripts and sound adding becoming easier (which im sure it will once you learn it) this will become a major breakthrough and something that defines music making on the NDS.
  
  Thank you for giving us this free-of-charge! You are a great artist and i hope you get the recognition you deserve from sharing all of this. I would easily buy a bundle of these apps for 30 bucks. So, lets all get together and donate loads and loads of cash! Brown cash.
- n/a September 20th, 2008 at 14:38
  
  @ Biff
  
  I experienced the same problem that you had when I tried to save for the first time. What caused the error for me was that I tried to use an ‘ (apostrophe) in the name of my save. I guess certain text-characters are not supported in save names. My suggestion to you (and to everyone that has experienced the same problem), is to only use letters when naming your saves.
  
  If my card info is needed, I am using akRPG w/ the latest akAIO OS.
  
  Anyway, great programs Bret and thank you for sharing them w/ us all!
- chao September 20th, 2008 at 20:55
  
  Best.Brew. EVER. I converted the pixel mode to a musical paint _>.
- 0xtob September 21st, 2008 at 13:08
  
  Wow, this looks *great*! Awesome idea! I’ll definitely try to write a sequencer plugin. Also, huge kudos for releasing a detailed manual and developer documentation. This is always a sign of quality software.
  
  PS: I’m also looking into Lua for the DS actually, hoping to get enough performance out of it for what I want to do Have you applied any tweaks to improve performance?
- admin September 21st, 2008 at 19:57
  
  Hi Tob,
  
  I don’t know of any tweaks to improve performance. If you know of any, please let me know. The slowest thing that I ran in to was iterating over multi-dimensional arrays. I tried to keep the calls between C and Lua to a minimum. I also tried to keep drawing to a minimum. If you have any ideas, I’m all ears!
- pseud0nym0us September 22nd, 2008 at 14:58
  
  great piece of brew. got all three apps. now i can be my own aphex twin, haha. thanx for the goodies.
- robman84 September 29th, 2008 at 14:07
  
  Staggering, as always Bret. Thank you so much.
- Justin Wong September 30th, 2008 at 17:41
  
  I can’t seem to get it to work on my M3 DS Real. It gets stuck on the screen, “DLDI Compatible” and doesn’t move. Both GlitchDS and RepeaterDS work fine on my card.
- frank October 14th, 2008 at 13:40
  
  Will be checking this out soon.
  THANKS A MILLION.
- a big frank October 25th, 2008 at 19:16
  
  Could it possible get loop flags (on&off) for play_note and play_frequency? Then we could implement looping tricks for single samples and things like using wavecycles to create our own ‘touchscreen’ synths. i would find this very useful
- A128 December 19th, 2008 at 11:14
  
  Still my fav. nds application.
  
  Thanks.
- muck December 19th, 2008 at 17:08
  
  cant safe my trackz!!! what can i do???
- robman84 May 7th, 2009 at 13:46
  
  Hi Bret
  
  Still love CellDS. Now there’s a bunch of Tenori-on “inspired” apps for the iPhone I was wondering if you were considering some form of port of CellDS to the iPhone? I have tried a fair few of these new apps and they are so basic compared to CellDS it makes me want to weep.
  
  I can’t code, and have limited talent with graphics, but if there’s anything I could do to help with such a project let me know.
  
  All the best
  
  Rob
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