Cthugha is a
music visualization computer program. It was written in the mid-1990s by
Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt, originally for the
PC, and was later
ported to other platforms. It was freely distributed.
History
Cthugha was started by Australian coder Kevin "Zaph" Burfitt
in September 1993 under
DOS for the PC, but not released to the public until version 2.0 in March 1994. It wasn't until release 5.1p in October 1994 that popularity of the program took off; this coinciding with the relatively new availability of cheap sound-cards for PCs, such as the
Soundblaster.
Cthugha was released for
Linux ("Cthugha-L") in May 1995, and for the
Macintosh ("MaCthugha") in January 1996
Cthugha was used as the
video wall background for the
Australian children's TV game show
Challenger
Challenger, Challengers, or The Challengers may refer to:
Entertainment
Comics and manga
* Challenger (character), comic book character
* ''Challengers'' (manga), manga by Hinako Takanaga
Film and TV
* ''The Challengers'' (TV series), a 1979 ...
, hosted by
Zoe Sheridan
Zoe Sheridan (born in Adelaide, 1968) is an Australian television presenter, radio announcer and voice over artist.
Sheridan was a co-host of the Hot 30 Countdown on Brisbane radio from 1995 to 1998. She moved to Sydney in 1998 for a regular slo ...
during the late 90s.
Burfitt stopped work on Cthugha in January 2001, and there were various attempts by others to carry on the project, but by that time there were so many clones of the software that there was little enthusiasm. Cthugha may have been the forerunner – either in inspiration, or possibly even as
source-code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...
– of the numerous and varied "
visualisation" plugins for
mp3 players and media players on many computer architectures.
In 1998, it was ported to the
Winamp music player.
Usage
''Cthugha'' uses a
sound card's CD, line or microphone input.
Reaction
The oscilloscope patterns of ''Cthugha'' have been described as "weird"
[Australian PC Review, October 1994] and "hypnotic".
[HotWired 3.03 (page 156), March 1995]
See also
*
Cthugha
This is a compendium of the lesser known Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft.
__NOTOC__
Overview
In Joseph S. Pulver's novel ''Nightmare's Disciple'' several new Great Old Ones and Elder Gods are named. The novel mentions ' ...
- The mythical demon the software was named after.
References
{{Reflist, 30em
External links
The Official Cthugha pageCthugha development page
1994 software
Freeware
Audio software
Music visualization software