TWO MORE TUNES today.
Also thought I'd show a little progression in the development of a tune.
Here's the 2600-ization of the title screen song from Wizards & Warriors:
2puck.zip
Tommy whipped that up for me a few weeks ago on a whim, I guess.
Here's the first draft of that: That's just the notes.
Here's the 2nd draft: 2puck.zip For this one, I made the lower notes (in the first measure, the 2nd, 4th, etc.) a little softer, I made the countermelody articulated, and I twe
WELL, WE'LL see if I'm really done.
But last night I finished the Four-Play song: FourPlaySong20060828.bin
Did:
-tweaked some of the slide-y runs (made them louder and shortened one of them)
-added some crescendos/decrescendos to the melody. Nothing real obvious, maybe too subtle, but I think it gives it a bit of shape.
-drums tweaked. Didn't mess with the 2nd drum beat (I think), but very slightly changed some of the drum breaks and added just the hi-hat back in to the part near
SO, SO CLOSE. So close to being done with the Four-Play tune. Here's what I've got now: FourPlaySong20060827.bin
Timed it for the first time just now and it clocks in at 2:20 - which is just about where I wanted it.
Working off of the to-do list I posted last time:
Did:
-finished the drum breaks
-wrote new beat to go with 2nd bassline
-figured out ending, wrote it, coded it
Still to do:
-tweak some of the slide-y runs
-add some crescendos/decrescendos to the melody
-drum twe
NOW I'M GETTING SOMEWHERE! Last night, after a relatively early soccer game, put in some more time on the Four-Play tune - and finished the evening fairly satisfied with what I'd done, unlike last time.
Latest: FourPlaySong20060824.bin
Did:
Reworked the main drum beat slightly; I think I'm pretty satisfied with it now.
Added/refined some of the drum breaks; satisfied with all of them except for the last one.
Also adjusted the volume of the 2nd bass-line, pretty happy with that no
WORKED ON THE Four-Play tune again last night: FourPlaySong20060821.bin
Made a little progress with parts of it and...ugh. Feel like I went mostly backwards.
My current music driver allows the use of 4 tones (AUDCx values) for notes (an additional four are assigned to the percussion track). I'm mostly using just three: square, lead, and saw. I am using the bass tone a little bit and I thought I could cut that part out and reclaim that 4th tone for an additional percussion sound.
BEEN CHECKIN' OUT NES tunes a little. The title tracks for 8 Eyes and Adventure Island III are pretty good.
Anyway, over the weekend made some progress - not as much as I'd hoped - on the Four-Play tune: FourPlaySong20060820.bin
Changed: volume of some notes in bass line; also played with the drum track a little. Didn't really do enough to count as "progress" but there it is.
New deadline is end of the month; you can all watch me panic as we get closer...
EDIT: ...And in ca
ON A COMPLETELY different note, I felt like compiling a list of which computers and consoles use what processors. Classic machines, specifically.
Please correct where I am in error and fill in the blanks in my knowledge.
6502
2600
5200
7800
Atari 400, 800, 800XL, etc.
XEGS
NES
C64, C128, etc.
Apple II, IIe, IIc
Z80
SMS
Colecovision
ZX Spectrum
MSX
Aquarius
CP1610
Intellivision
8048
Odyssey2
68A09
Vectrex
68000
Genesis
Atari ST
Amiga
Neo-Geo
Maci
INCH BY INCH - I'm getting there! I've been crazy busy the last three weeks trying to, essentially, remodel my bathroom. But I did block out some time this past weekend to work on the Four-Play tune and, though computer issues almost thwarted me - well, that and a little thing called Super Street Fighter II - I did manage to write the rest of the tune.
Now I just need to code it, write the drums, and polish it to a shine.
First, here's what my labor over the weekend produced:
An
WORKED ON THE Four-Play tune some more last night. The result:
FourPlaySong20060712.bin
Composed a few more measures here which I like pretty well, though I'll probably tweak them a bunch before I'm done.
Also did some volume tweaking: I was planning to leave this for final polishing, but very high (and very low) notes are much quieter, with the same AUDVx value, than middle-range notes and it sounded bad enough that I couldn't put it off any longer. Notably, in the harmony section the h
GOING THROUGH the forum/blog archives and I realized that I don't think I ever posted the most recent version of my Metroid VIP (Vaporware In Progress).
So anyway, here it is.
Metroid20060303.bin
I'm not sure how it is different from the last version I posted either here or in the forums, but this one has selectable songs (with SELECT) and decent scrolling - horizontal only, though.
The main next tasks for this are the vertical scrolling and adding enemies to the map (so they scroll
OK, ENOUGH tomfoolery with Gilgamesh.
I did a little more work on the "tune" last night. Well, to be more precise, since I last posted about the tune, I did some more work on paper laying out how the structure of the song and, last night, I started to impose that structure on the tune.
Here are the froots of my labors: tune20060710.bin
I didn't change the melody at all, I just added some drum breaks and some drums underneath the harmony part near the (current) end.
Basically,
OVER THE WEEKEND I FINISHED entering all the notes for the Battle With Gilgamesh tune.
All that's left is tweaking a few notes, adding percussion, and adding volume changes.
Here's a MIDI of the original tune, so you can hear how close (or not) we got.
You can hear that the 2600 version is a little too fast. But that's OK, I think, since then you don't have as much time to hear the odd out-of-tune note.
DID A LITTLE WORK DURING my lunch break today on The Battle of Gilgamesh. Some of the notes are wildly out of tune but either a) they aren't that out of tune or b) it's so fast - in any case, it doesn't sound so bad to me.
I'll attach the music also so you can see what I'm working from here.
EDIT: I suppose a few notes on the music are in order. First, notice that there are 16th-note triplets in there. The version of my music driver I'm using doesn't allow for triplets, so they ar
WAS TOO LAZY AND/OR distracted to get much work done on the tune mentioned below, but I did get a little done on another 2600 tune.
This one is not for anything in particular, Tommy just asked me to code it about six months ago for fun and, while he was over Monday night, we coded the first four measures:
It is a 2600-izing of a tune called The Battle of Gilgamesh or something similar, from Final Fantasy V (I think).
A FEW WEEKS AGO I finally got off my rear and worked up a rough draft of some music I promised I'd write. I got the go-ahead for the concept and I thought I'd post it here - I don't think anyone has ever blogged or posted (in the forum) the development of music for the 2600, and I thought it'd be fun.
Here's the rough draft: tune20060624.bin
The concept I had was something "plinky," with two different voices: one high, one low.
The drums are almost pure filler, and will probably be
AFTER MAKING BIG plans earlier this year I've done a whole lot of nothing so far.
Hmmm...strike that. Looking back through my blog, I've done more than I thought. Mostly I just haven't managed to produce a game.
I was going to use this blog entry as a data dump for everything I've half-assed over the last couple of months - and don't worry, I still will use it for that purpose! - but I think I will change gears and use it as a sort of retrospective of the year so far. Maybe help me
SO...
I was thinking the other day: Say you want two completely independent, non-flickering sprites on the screen. What's the widest they can be (in pixels)?
Using a variant of Zach's fancy 52-pixel technique, I figure you can get as wide as 10 pixels for each.
Anyone think of a way to get wider?
WANT TO GET 'em all!
I am trying to pick which homebrews to pick up from the AA store...
Here's my long list:
A8
Beef Drop
2600
Venture
Thrust+
Synthcart
Fall Down
Oystron
FlapPing
Jammed
Marble Craze
Power Off!
Hunchy II
Crazy Balloon
Star Fire
Strat-O-Gems
Dark Mage
Dreamcast:
Feet of Fury
Tunes:
Cabana EP+
Unfortunately, funds aren't unlimited. So I've got to narrow it down.
So, shorter list:
Beef Drop
Venture
Thrust+
Cabana EP+
Power Off!
THOUGHT I'D WRITE A BIT about what I'm planning to do for the 2006 Minigame Compo.
A 4K port of Squish 'Em, an early 8bit game. (Yes, I was planning this before I read this. )
Screenshots:
Typical screenshot:
Bigger enemies! Plus falling brick!
Your goal: the suitcase full of cash.
About to Squish 'Em!
Squished!
Ooh, now he pops back up and is angry! (White and unSquishable.)
It's a pretty fun game; I enjoyed it a bunch 20+ years ago (and last night, for that ma
FOLLOWING ON THE DISCUSSION in Manuel's blog, I thought I'd try to present and, possibly, collect some ideas for a possible re-written Combat game. Like Zach said, doing for Combat what Gunfight did for Outlaw.So, my initial list of desireable/possible features for a rewritten tank game:1- or 2-playersAsymmetrical terrain/mazeScrolling terrainMultiple projectilesMultiple vehicle types (beyond tanks & airplanes)PowerupsMultiple terrain types (walls, water, etc.)Any other thoughts or comments
AND, OF COURSE, it was my own buggy code all along. :roll:I have to run pretty quick, so I'll fill in the details later, but basically I committed the classic boneheaded ASM mistake: I forgot a '#' in front of a constant:
lda GameFlags
ora PLAYERCONTROL_BIT|SCROLLPF_BIT
sta GameFlags
Can't believe it.
Well, mystery solved anyway.Will post fixed binary and source later.
EDIT: Fixed source and binary attached. RR20060301.zip
And a big thanks to Eckhard to sending me
HAD A LOT OF FUN at the show this past weekend. Well, this past Saturday, anyway; I wasn't able to make it on Sunday.David Galloway (djmips) and I had a table (graciously donated by NWCGE) and, between the two of us, we had two 2600s, a Vectrex (first time I'd ever seen one; that thing is really cool!), my AtariVox, my MemCard, a bunch of homebrews (all of ours plus Hunchy II, Thrust+, Jammed, and...that might be it), and a Cuttle Cart that we used to load up a bunch of my demos and David's Foo
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