last one

the fewer, the faster

20 HP

A four-note bass line marched by a fleet of fifty-five. Every shot that lands takes one out, and the fewer there are, the faster they march: patch the snare into SHOT and the band speeds up as it plays.

The LAST ONE panel: black, with a ruined plain in gold dots across its lower half. The top half is a field of small square windows of bare circuit board, fifteen across and twelve down, with a row of small lozenge windows over it under the name. Under the field, four small windows shaped like bunkers of bricks stand two either side of the SHOT button. SHOT and AGAIN at the top corners, AIM, NOTES, WAVE and BOMBS down the sides, DRUM and MARCH either side of the big MARCH knob, the outs below with NOTE at the foot; a ring of white dashes or ticks round most jacks. last one at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

Turn a knob: drag it or tap either side of it, roll the wheel over it or use the arrow keys; a double click puts it back. SHOT is a button: press it to fire by hand. The patches step on by themselves until you touch anything.

What you hear is a rack played by LAST ONE: a drum machine whose snare (or hats) is shooting, a driven bass on NOTE and STEP, and a burst, a whine, a whistle and a crash on the rest. It's all made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The fleet, the march, the shots, the saucer, the bombs and every out here are LAST ONE's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums and the voices are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The march

Fifty-five march across a field of fifteen by twelve, and every step plays the next of four notes. Their pace is how many are left: half of them march twice as fast as all of them, the last one fifty-five times as fast. At each edge they drop a row, and the notes step down a scale with them; if they reach the ground, you're overrun.

MARCH: the whole fleet's pace, and so every pace after it. With nothing in DRUM, a step every two seconds fully left, every half second at noon, sixteen a second fully right. Its jack adds to it.
DRUM, a clock in: the march keeps to it. A step every sixteen clocks fully left, every four at noon, every clock fully right, and as they fall the pace snaps down a ladder of divisions: beats, dotted eighths, eighths, sixteenths, on into a buzz.
NOTES: the four notes' shape, blending as you turn. One note four times fully left, the four falling steps at noon, fourths and an octave drop at three o'clock, and fully right a tritone, a semitone under and a ninth over.

Shots

SHOT, the jack and the button: a trigger or a press is a shot. One that lands takes the lowest in a column, so the fleet is eaten from below and has further to fall.
AIM: the chance a shot lands. Never fully left, half the time at ten o'clock, every time from one o'clock; past that a shot goes on through and takes the ones above it too, a whole column fully right.
The saucer crosses the top now and then while eight or more are left. A shot that lands under it hits it instead, and the march jumps to a new key, up a fifth or down an octave, until the wave ends.

Waves

BOMBS: how often they fire back. A bomb knocks a brick out of a shelter; once all four are gone, a bomb that gets through stops the march dead for a turn of the four notes, and your shots go nowhere.
WAVE: how much harder each new wave comes in, lower down and faster, until the eighth starts the cycle again. Fully left every wave is the first.
AGAIN, a trigger in: a full fleet, the first wave, the shelters whole. With a clock in DRUM the march waits for the next clock and counts from it, so the drum machine's reset keeps it on the bar.

What comes out

NOTE and STEP: the march, 1 V an octave and a gate high for half of each step.
HIT: a trigger on every shot that lands. BOMB: a trigger as a bomb falls.
FLEET: how many are left, 8 V for all fifty-five down to nothing. Into a filter, upside down, the band brightens as they fall.
SAUCER: high while the saucer crosses. OVERRUN: high from the moment they land until the next wave comes in.

Specs

Format

Width: 20 HP
Controls: 5 knobs (MARCH's big), a lit button

Inputs

SHOT, AGAIN: triggers, rising past 1 V
DRUM: clock, rising past 1 V
MARCH: CV, ±5 V, added to the knob

Outputs

NOTE: 1 V/oct
STEP, OVERRUN: gates, 0/5 V
Triggers: HIT, BOMB: 5 ms, 0/5 V
SAUCER: gate, 0/5 V
FLEET: CV, 0 to 8 V