scatter

20 HP · modulation

Four ghosts chase what you patch in. X and Y are a point in a maze of lit dots; four ghosts go after it through the maze, each its own way, and each one's place in the maze is a CV out. One moving point becomes four lines that belong together.

The SCATTER panel: black, with four figures under sheets in gold dots, their heads in a row under the name. Across the upper half a maze of small round windows of bare circuit board, a big one in each corner and a slot in the middle. The jacks X and Y at the top corners, AHEAD and HUNT, SHY and FLANK down the sides beside the maze, POWER and RESET below them, EAT and CAUGHT at the foot. Under the maze the knobs SPEED and SCATTER, the POWER button, MAZE and SPREAD, and SCATTER's out at the foot. scatter at the top, daylight noise at the bottom.

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

The maze, the ghosts and their lights are SCATTER's own. The drums, the sequencer and the voices playing its outs are made in the page as you listen.

example patches

The maze, the ghosts, the dots and every out here are SCATTER's engine as it's designed, running in your browser. The drums, the sequencer, the voices and the hand on MAZE are a stand-in for the rest of a rack.

The maze

A maze of lit dots, nineteen across and eleven down. Where you put X and Y is the player: it snaps to the nearest corridor and runs there through the maze, fast when it's far and slowing as it arrives, eating the dots it passes. Hold a voltage and it stands still; move it and it runs.

X and Y: the player across and up the maze, 0 to 10 V. Leave Y empty and it follows X half a second late.
MAZE: open to tight. Turned up, thirteen doors shut a pair at a time and the corridors get long.
EAT: a trigger for every dot, so a run through fresh corridor is a roll.

The ghosts

Four ghosts move through the maze a tile at a time, gliding between tiles. At every junction each takes the turn that brings it nearest the spot it's going for, and never turns straight back, so each out glides in straight runs and turns at the corners.

HUNT goes for the player.
AHEAD goes for a spot ahead of where the player is heading.
FLANK goes for the far side: the line from HUNT to just ahead of the player, doubled.
SHY goes for the player from far off, and turns away to its corner when it gets close.
SPEED: from a tile every two seconds to as quick as the player, when they all but track it.
SPREAD: how far apart those spots are. At 0 all four go for the player as one line; at full, for its reflections across the maze.
Each ghost's out is where it is, 0 to 10 V: up the maze counts most, across it a little. The four corners are four different voltages.

Chase and scatter

Every sixteen seconds the chase breaks off and each ghost goes to its own corner and circles there. Four corners, four voltages: a chord, held while they go round, until the chase starts again.

SCATTER (the knob): how much of the time they scatter, from never to always.
SCATTER (the out): high while they do.

Fright, and getting caught

The big dots in the corners set off fright: for a few seconds every ghost turns blue, slows and wanders at random, and one the player runs into is eaten and glides home to the middle. Stand still outside fright and a ghost will reach you: everyone goes home, the four outs land on one note, and the chase starts over. Clear the board and it fills again a level up, the ghosts a little faster.

POWER: the button, and a trigger in. Fright, now.
CAUGHT: a gate when a ghost gets the player.
RESET: a trigger in. Every ghost home, every dot back, the first level.