devblog / friday 031221 (Patreon)

Rolling through the week with the same energy as a CGI tumbleweed across the parking lot of a foreclosed Walmart in a cheap and lazily-made post-apocalyptic Netflix series. How did yours go, friends? Fatigued but resolute, 65LABS is here once again to give you your weekly update.

We began with the 65LABS AGM, to try and get a perspective on all things 65 and make sure the PN65C (Plan for a New 65 Century) is still broadly pointed in the right direction.

As we steer this unwieldy juggernaut of generative confusion down the cyberhighway of the future, we are beginning to see the public launch of V2 and the release of the V1 Archive as something like an End of Season One for Wreckage Systems. The Wreckage Library is far from empty - the uncatalogued musical debris is still piled high - but as this project evolves, and as we digest and reflect upon the results of the Data Harvesting (please do GIVE US YOUR OPINIONS if you haven’t yet), it feels like the launch of V2 into the world would be a good moment to restructure things here on the back channel a little. Expect a much fuller explanation (as well as the results of all the collected data) in due course. You didn't miss us announcing release dates for any of this yet - we haven't. We had been quietly aiming for the end of the year, but it is suddenly December and it is clear now it will take us a little longer than that. So.... More on the Wreckage masterplan soon.  In the meantime:

THIS WEEK

- Bug hunting. With a huge thanks to the beta testers of the V1 Archive, we are happy to report that we have now moved on from some annoying problems and are now into the final phase where we will wrap up the credits and fix the small amount of writing in it. Technically speaking, it is now as stable as anything 65LABS has ever made, which is to say… who really knows how it will last. But it’s working right now.

- There has finally been some time to work on new V2 systems. So…new system one: Pianoblivion. It sounds like a piano slipping off the edge of a mountain and embracing the tumbling calamity it finds itself in, gathering up wild, 8bit percussion as it plummets.

- New system two: UPHILL. Another piano-centric slice of tension. This one occasionally splits open like a tear in the fabric of time and space and lets loads of fourth dimensional rhythmical glitch flood out all over your ears.

- A couple of weeks ago we mentioned a bug with the log history that you can see on the stream maxing out and getting stuck. This should be fixed as well, although that’s kind of hard to confirm that without letting the stream run for several weeks and pile up new historical data…

- The three above fixes are LIVE NOW in a new build, V.2.1.3 Tune into the SECRET STREAM LINK to check it out. This went up this morning, replacing V.2.0.1.2 and removing the superfluous zero in the versioning number. Not sure if changing the numbering system once it is underway will appease or annoy those of you who pay attention to this kind of thing.

- We put out the changeover mix from our November shows! It’s been three days now and we haven’t been sued, which could be put down to the fact that almost nobody has noticed this friendly little corner of the internet we all hang out in, but we are rather choosing to believe it is because all of the artists involved are big fans of 65 and have decided to give us a pass. If you missed it, you can check it HERE or over at the unofficial the65republic.com site, which appears to be gaining plenty of new fans over on the 65LABS Discord Server, thanks to its exhaustive 65 bootleg archive.

- Ate some banging curry after the AGM at the (covid-safe) end of year 65 Office Party.

THINGS TO COME

- The time has come to get our heads down and work up the remaining new systems needed for V2. The more there are, the harder it gets to make new ones that have enough of a distinct personality to earn a place. The count is now 57. We’re getting close…

That's all for now. Good luck out there. Mask up, stay safe, always eat curry where possible, get boosted, never trust a tory. See you on the other side.