Purpose
This goal of this project is to develop an OpenGL visualization plugin for XMMS and the Beep Media Player, and possibly Audacious, Beep Media Player X, and XMMS2. It is specifically designed for Unix-like operating systems and provides a rich language for rendering music as continually deforming, abstract images. It also implements a backwards compatability layer for supporting Milkdrop presets so that the project can leverage the readily available work of the Winamp community.
Details
Having fond memories of the many nights I spent during my college years listening to electronic music while gazing at the wonderous Milkdrop plugin for Winamp, I decided to search for a similar program under *nix (as FreeBSD has been my operation system of choice for going on four years now). Much to my dismay, I came across only one open-source attempt at emulating Milkdrop, this being projectM. While this is a very nice program (and I strongly suggest you all to check it out), there are a few issues that did not suit my likings:
- It is written in procedural C instead of object-oriented C++
- It merely emulates Milkdrop's functionality, but does not attempt to extend it
- I did not feel like disecting and familarizing myself with the over 25,000 lines of code
These facts, coupled with my itch to code up my own visualization as I saw fit, motivated me to create my project, which I've dubbed Lichtspiel. In German, this is literally "light play", but it is also an antiquated word for movie theater. Hence, the name conveys entertainment, manipulation of colors, and my nostaglic feelings for its predecesor.
This project is still very much in development and although I believe it to be quite stable, I am hesitant to make the source code available until I am certain the code base has stablized and provides most of the features I set out to implement. So, please stay tuned!
Screen shots from Lichtspiel v0.1.0
click on a photo to enlarge
