Search options (Page 1 of 21)

Normally intro speech samples located in the temp game buffers (like, off-screen buffer), so it is an one-off deal, while the music plays every time in the main menu.

Three sample channels is a good thing, but I think we need to intermix simple timbres such as the regular square wave or pin-tone with samples of a long duration that lasts for a few rows - drum pieces, some instruments. The problem is that to get a clean square wave it either needs to be encoded for a long length (maybe a pattern even), or some kind of sample looping considered, which is cycle-expensive.

Great work everyone! Congrats to utz! The sampled sounds are so clean and punchy in this one.

I'm in. Got some older stuff finished for ya.

A small update:

- sweepsynth got wrap around options and expanded sweep speed range
- pulsesynth got a few extra oscillator mixing options, much similar to Phaser4

I expected the challenge to be the flexible channel layouts and PWM drums, but in fact yeah, I forgot I already handled such configurations. However, there is a less expected issue, both ulasyn and phaserF use a macro to calculate their filter tables. My assembler is certainly not up to parse that, so I guess, I'll have to offload table generation into the engine script. Anyways, seems to be doable.

Still, it is very impressive. I wouldn't say the sound quality is any bad, we've had worse, and it is certainly on a new level.

This one feels to be tough to make into 1tracker, but anyways, I'll try.

The cheapest I found locally as a DIY module is $7.7, and it is about the same at AliExpress, from China. Yeah, a bit on the expensive side, but luckily, it is easy to replace with the classic S series (a regular ESP32 with the Xtensa LX core), which is cheaper. The 1 euro is likely was a bulk order price for bare chips, not modules.

Anyways, I got a couple to try it out and see how fast they are for this application. There are two resource heavy things: LCD/TFT/OLED screen update, which is done via SPI (serial), and the VM/emulation core, which is going to be simpler than for a proper emulator, but still, lots of RAM fetches. It will define how fast the virtual Z80/6502 is going to be, and I guess it needs to be at the least a double-triple of the regular Spectrum speed to make the idea feasible, more the better.

Sure, I'll keep it reasonably powered, not too powerful - at least some challenge will be there.

The thing with VM is that any MCU and screen can be used. Arduboy and most of the crowd is tied to once picked type of MCU (particular revision even!) and screen (also of a specific revision!). It is only possible to change the components by modifying all the games in the wild. VM allows to untie the platform from the hardware. Basically it starts the life as a specification that can then be implemented in many different ways. If one MCU gets obsoleted, the VM itself can just be ported to a newer one, and all software will work - just like we're playing Spectrum games with emulators.

WiFi for uploading games and backing up the stuff is easy on the ESP8266 or ESP32 MCUs, they're made exactly for this purpose. If other MCU is picked, 8266 can just be added as a secondary chip to handle the task. It is also can be done for a particular implementation, and dropped in another.

Now the between-units connectivity, like a multiplay of sorts, is a whole different matter, I'm avoiding to get into it at the moment. I know it is doable with the ESPs as well, but the exchange rate isn't too fast, like 0.1 seconds lag at best.

To clarify, the point of picking an existing command set is the possibility of hooking up an existing C compiler (or a BASIC compiler, perhaps, like Boriel ZX Basic), which would make it much easier to use for those who aren't into the assembly code programming.

AVR is a good idea, but there are some minor hiccups with it. One is that it is a (modified) Harvard architecture system, with code and data split into separate spaces, and not intended to be self-modified. Another is that while I can easily re-target Z80 or 6502 C compiler to this design, modifying a modern gcc seem to be much more difficult. Another thing with Z80 is that it has the I/O space, but anything else will require to have memory mapped registers, and it makes the architecture less clean. Like, the regs has to have a reserved memory area.

I considered 6502 at first, because it is much easier to emulate, thus VM would be much faster. I believe it is a good pick, but I kinda felt that 1-bit stuff is more related to Z80.

Another crazy idea I had was to actually have a few VM cores to run different binaries within the same specs. Maybe it is actually a good idea, like, just imagine - you can pick Z80 or 6502 or AVR instruction set, and implement the same code for the otherwise same platform in either of the instructions. What a test bed for direct comparisons (sans the reduced T-states). Also enables a wide choice of the existing tool chains.

As for the sound system design, I can actually join a few approaches into the same setup. I drafted the 8x 1-bit system, but I can also just drop in 8 registers to auto reset each channel, it is very easy and will look just as clean.