Yes, please test it in 0.29, as there were many fixes to many engines, and report if there are issues.
327 2018-01-08 02:48:02
Re: Compo: Di Halt 2018 Lite (15 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Wow, utz, that was Squat?! I thought it is one of your awesome engines.
Don't worry, AtariTufty, I earned my first ever last place this time too (in MP3), woohoo!
328 2018-01-07 00:58:14
Re: Compo: Di Halt 2018 Lite (15 replies, posted in Sinclair)
The results:
1. 7.88 D.S.F. by utz ^ irrlicht project
2. 7.55 Fase Cuatro by Shiru
3. 6.95 Headbanger by Shiru
4. 6.50 The Last Midnight by Tufty ^ 1-bit forum
Congratulations, utz!
329 2018-01-06 22:29:16
Re: Compo: Di Halt 2018 Lite (15 replies, posted in Sinclair)
I heard in the party's video stream that organizers were happy with quality of beeper entries this and past years, and only wish there were more entries.
330 2018-01-06 07:48:20
Re: 1tracker v0.47 (164 replies, posted in Sinclair)
New year, new update, v0.29.
Added Squeeker, Squeeker Plus, Vibra, nanobeep, Lyndon Sharp's engine from Super Dragon (Wham with sampled drums), Music Studio, ZX-3.
331 2018-01-03 20:31:26
Re: Compo: Di Halt 2018 Lite (15 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Just a day left before the deadline. Three entries so far. You still have a chance!
332 2018-01-03 05:03:13
Re: Questions about three engines. Could you identify them ? (14 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Interestingly, Super Dragon Slayer has not one, but two songs on the title screen, alternating after each game over.
The most fun part, as far as I understand the code, is that drum track pretty much independent from the tone channels, it is much shorter than the tone track, looped, and there is row counter that delays when the drum track starts to play relatively to the tone channels.
333 2017-12-31 14:27:17
Re: 1tracker v0.47 (164 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Added xtone too. Because with beeper engines we always have just one less than enough.
334 2017-12-30 22:07:42
Re: 1tracker v0.47 (164 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Actually, just thought to promote 0.28 to release. With 28 engines!
It got Quiet mode (for slower engines, you can enter notes without making sounds and related slowdowns), minor fixes, and more engines. Besides wtbeep, there is AntEater, povver, and quattropic now.
If you downloaded WIP build, redownload it, there were changes, including fixes in wtbeep.
335 2017-12-30 00:52:57
Re: 1tracker v0.47 (164 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Added wtbeep engine, added loop support to Pytha. No real version update, just these two engines and 0.28 WIP build (don't remember if I changed anything important).
336 2017-12-30 00:51:50
Re: new engine: wtbeep (21 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Added this engine to 1tracker.
Minor issues. It seems that you messed up exx' in the pattern reading a bit, so you can't just have an empty row, or skip first or first and second channels. Edited the code to make it work. Also, there is loud clicks in the third channel after notes, unlike the first two.
337 2017-12-25 10:32:44
Re: PCB for Beeper (and other chiptunes) musics (35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
garvalf wrote:
I see there is this project: https://playground.arduino.cc/Code/ArduZ80
Don't know if it's possible to use the other beeper engines on it!It's also possible to drive a real z80 from arduino: http://baltazarstudios.com/arduino-zilog-z80/
I looked into this before. Unfortunately, ArduZ80 is not usable at all. It is incomplete, misses hundreds of opcodes, even some widely used documented ones, does not have any time tracking (very important for beeper uses), and is written in C, so likely not fast enough even in such incomplete form.
Hooking up actual Z80 does not make much sense to the original purpose - a beeper sound card. Z80 emulation on Arduino was considered to make device more accessible, reduce number of components and eliminate need of having EPROM burner. Otherwise you can just design the device with actual Z80, it just adds a few more logic chips (~10 chips total), and you need to program the boot ROM.
338 2017-12-17 21:52:28
Re: PCB for Beeper (and other chiptunes) musics (35 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
Still hope we'll do a full blown Z80 emulation with AY format player on Arduino eventually.
339 2017-12-17 12:24:27
Topic: Compo: Di Halt 2018 Lite (15 replies, posted in Sinclair)
A smaller event with ZX beeper compo - Di Halt 2018 Lite. That's the little brother of the summer DI Halt. Deadline is around January 4th.
340 2017-12-13 13:58:14
Re: Anyone done anything with BBC micro:bit yet? (7 replies, posted in Other Platforms)
A 32-bit platform with horsepower of few dozens of Spectrums isn't really that interesting - it is too powerful. You can just play PCM audio on it, or tracker modules, or emulate whatever soundchip, all through 1-bit DAC.
As I never ever heard of it before seeing this post, I can imagine it going to be difficult to obtain as well. In general, it could be interesting to someone, but it falls to the same category as the fakebit VSTs and Arduino developments, just much less accessible than that.
341 2017-12-10 12:25:36
Re: Interesting classic engines to investigate (1 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Pi-R Squared has interesting sound. It may be the Savage engine (not too sure), considering there is Jas C. Brooke in the credits, but the noise sounds unusual. There is a scroller running along the music, too.
342 2017-12-08 05:34:39
Re: In-game (during gameplay) music (20 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Here is rough outline how the second approach could work. It needs to have IM2 interrupts and HALT before a new game frame. Does not matter if there is few TV frames per game frame, but more constant CPU load time is preferred, to avoid major variations of the sound bursts duration.
Once program needs to perform HALT, it rather calls HALT_SE.
HALT_SE:
restore all registers required for sound/music generation
LOOP:
generate sound, needs to be the usual short loop
scf
BREAK=$
ccf
jp nc,LOOP
restore ccf opcode at BREAK
store back all registers, the point is to be able to smoothly resume sound generation during next call
ret
IM2 interrupt should just replace ccf at BREAK with nop, thus breaking the sound generation loop (could be any other way).
343 2017-12-06 05:52:43
Topic: In-game (during gameplay) music (20 replies, posted in Sinclair)
We're explored a lot in the area of stand alone beeper music, one that takes nearly all CPU time, but only scratched the surface of the music that plays along some action on the screen. Could be interesting to try this out too. Here is my thoughts.
Early ZX games often were attempting to play some music alongside the gameplay - for example, Antics or Manic Miner.
There is three methods to play beeper music during gameplay.
First is to just put a very short duration beep after each frame. Causes major slowdown to the game and staccato sounding music, but with relatively clean sound.
Second, very often employed to play sound effects, is to play short duration beeps and noises during leftover time of a TV frame, instead of HALT, sound loop stopped with a new interrupt. It introduces major 50 Hz buzz, but no slowdown. Requires to have enough leftover time, though.
Third, I think is the most obscure one, is applicable to games where frame time is evenly distributed around some nearly constant-time process (rendering usually), so they can call sound routine a number of times per frame with mostly constant pace. That likely would suit well for multicolor engines such as Nirvana. They can have a short sample buffer, prepared outside the raster, then read and output value from the buffer to #FE each N scanlines (very low sample rate, but may work for some cases).
The result in existing old games, I think, almost unversally could be described as 'annoying'. But I don't think that's just because of some general issue with the idea itself, rather with poor execution. Most games with in-game music use monophonic single beeps, single simplest timbre (square), combined with poor music (mostly crude renditions of classics), mostly without any pauses (constant beeps/buzz), no dynamics at all. If either or both of the issues (tech and composition) will be improved, the result should become much more pleasant.
i don't think polyphony is a must, as my practice (yet to be released) with PC Speaker shown that it is very well possible to pull quite impressive illusion of multiple voices with proper authoring tools (easy multiple-to-single channel voice management) and composing. Nice to have anyways, if possible.
Timbre/tone control would help greatly, especially pseudo volume control - it would bring the dynamics, and timbre control would help with sound variety. Noise generator would improve the percussion too, even though PC Speaker experience shows that even square tone alone is enough to make a good rythm parts.
Proper composition of new original music, with good variety and dynamics, is of course would bring the greatest improvement to the matter.
344 2017-12-03 01:01:26
Topic: Interesting classic engines to investigate (1 replies, posted in Sinclair)
To avoid mixing up the stuff in the next gen engine thread or scattering it around, collecting all info here:
There is a few games with seemingly unique engines that weren't used anywhere else. What they has in common is the strong vibrato on the tone channel, which I think is underexplored area in modern engines.
Saboteur and Sigma 7 engines has one tone channel and noise drums, Sigma 7 also has phasing effects going on the tone channel.
Galaxy Force has two channels of tone and noise drums. The second channel sounds somewhat like ZX-10.
Another game that seemingly has the same weird and rare engine as Galaxy Force - Count Duckula. The same year, but seems that it has totally different authors.
Another unique sounding engine that does not seem to be used anywhere else is in the game Transmutter.
345 2017-12-01 00:20:03
Re: next gen engine ideas (135 replies, posted in Sinclair)
I thought we had one, but I wasn't able to locate, and this one has my post with mention of Galaxy Force and few other interesting old engines. Better to split it to a separate thread anyways.
346 2017-11-23 12:27:01
Re: next gen engine ideas (135 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Another game that seemingly has the same weird and rare engine as Galaxy Force - Count Duckula. The same year, but seems that it has totally different authors.
347 2017-09-20 20:15:54
Re: Questions about three engines. Could you identify them ? (14 replies, posted in Sinclair)
I was totally sure 3 was Wham. It sounds exactly like Wham, pure square, the carrier hiss, the echo trick at the beginning. Then the drums kick in, typical LS ones. Maybe it is the third version of his engine? Going to investigate.
Edit: more likely that's the first LS engine, or maybe an engine that inspired Lyndon to make his own (music credited for Barry Leitch). Main sound loop looks very similar to Wham, but with some changes in registers usage.
348 2017-09-11 17:13:11
Re: bintracker 0.1.1 (51 replies, posted in Sinclair)
I'm on Windows 7 x64.
Tried it few more times, there was no crash, but the app remains in the processes. Maybe this help to locate the issue.
349 2017-09-10 16:14:37
Re: bintracker 0.1.1 (51 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Great stuff, more the merrier, especially with new ideas on tracker internal architectures and UI design.
One bug report so far - when I closed program, Windows error occured, 'the program was stopped, close it?' (not sure how it is in english, I'm on localized Windows).
350 2017-09-10 16:03:42
Re: new engine: Squat (7 replies, posted in Sinclair)
Yes, import function is part of each engine script, frontend only provides file selection dialog. I just reused the same import function over and over again, as it was designed for Phaser3.