Software

For WFS content creation, the Game of Life developed our own software, called WFSCollider, which is free to download! ( github ). It runs on all mayor platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux).

It can be seen as a DAW for WFS Synthesis composition. Its features include:

• Graphical timeline, trajectory and position interfaces.
• Modular audio plugin system, which allows you to patch audio generators and processing together in chains (Unit-Lib).
• 1-click to add real-time control over any parameter through OSC/Midi.
• Open source and scripting/coding friendly: for example in place code modification of many parts of the system.

By default it starts in a preview mode, which allows you to preview your WFS piece in stereo, which you can than later import into the system. It also supports a multichannel preview.

Installing WFS Software

Installation on Windows, Mac Os and Linux:

In the past, we had a WFSCollider app installer for MacOS, however, it is now easier to run WFSCollider within a normal SuperCollider environment. There is a Supercollider ‘Quark’ for the WFS library, which makes this relatively easy.

To run WFSCollider on any platform:

1. Install supercollider: https://supercollider.github.io/
2. Install sc3plugins: http://supercollider.github.io/sc3-plugins/
   (this provides a .zip file, you can find instructions where to place the files under the same link)

3. (Optional): if you do not have git installed, you will need to install this as well, since Git is required for installing Quarks within supercollider.

   You can find the installation instructions for git here: https://git-scm.com/downloads

   Installing git in MacOS:

   Apple does not provide git by default, and their xcode tools are an enourmous download, so by far the easiest way is to user a program called Homebrew:

   • Install homebrew, see https://brew.sh/
   • Install git:

           brew install git
     

4. Open Supercollider, open the menu Language > Quarks. (you can also write Quarks.gui; in an empty document and hit shift+enter to evaluate). Quarks are a package management system within Supercollider.

Next, install the WFSCollider-Class-Library quark, by clicking the [+] next to it, you may have to refresh the list first to see it.

(Installing the WFSCollider-Class-Library will also install the dependency-quarks:
Xml, NetLib, PopupTreeMenu, Unit-Lib, VectorSpace, Xml, wslib, Mathlib)

If you don’t see any quarks, but only an error on Windows and Mac OS, please check step 3 https://git-scm.com/downloads

4. Once the Quark is installed, click the “Recompile Class Library” button.
Next, in the main supercollider window, type:

WFS.startup;

and hit SHIFT + ENTER keys to start.

It will take some time (a few minutes) to boot the very first time to generate some optimized code (panners). Subsequent boots will be much faster. On my own Windows test machine, I found it to work with my ASIO driver (using an RME Babyface interface), the default motherboard audio did not work, but that has been a source of trouble with other programs as well so it may be a quirk of that audio chip.

The full manual:

Working-with-WFSCollider-v2.2.4

Some general tips when first starting:

• If you save your score in the same folder as the soundfiles, the paths will be stored relative, and you can just copy your whole folder to the big WFS WFSSoundFiles folder without requiring any changes to the paths.
• You can splice events by clicking the vertical | symbol in the UScore window, this will splice the currently selected events at the location of the playbar.
• There are undo/redo arrows in most windows <- ->.
• Static point sources (the default) cannot change position while playing, use any “position filter” to turn the source into a dynamic panner.
• There is a mixer in the score editor, that allows you to control levels of all events within your score all at once. You can find this mixer under View.
• You can make folders of events, a folder will also have it’s own slider in the mixer.
• Examples of using code and scores can be found here: https://github.com/GameOfLife/WFSCollider-Class-Library/tree/master/Examples

If you want to run WFS distributed over multiple computers, this is easiest to achieve on Linux, since you will want to use PTP protocol to synchronize your computer clocks (PTP is not available for Mac OS). You will also want to use the Supernova version of the Supercollider server, since this provides the necessary accuracy on the server.

You can reach us on casper@gameoflife.nl