OldGuru Posted September 3, 2001 Share Posted September 3, 2001 I've been looking around for a background music for my game... Recently I came accross an archive that has many Atari games (and others) music in SAP format. I wrote a small C program to convert the SAP format to a bin file that after using 6502 disassembler can be included in our ASM files... Well it takes some manual work and time but the results are quite amazing... I put together a demo (that will be used in my game) that can be downloaded and run both on the emulator and the real 5200 console... As I'm working on my new 5200 programming web site, I'll include all the information regarding this matter in it for everybody to use... Moderator Edit: Ronens homepage is located here: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2j83t/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGuru Posted September 4, 2001 Author Share Posted September 4, 2001 Moderator Edit: The Atari SAP Music Archive is located here: http://asma.dspaudio.com/main.html If the music that you are looking for is in this archive, there is a good chance to use it in your program... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted October 21, 2001 Share Posted October 21, 2001 BUMP. OldGuru, that's pretty awesome music there for Castle Blast. It sounds closer to NES/Genesis music than Atari 8bit/5200 music! I'm currently going thru the archive that I downloaded, but I have a question. The music I want to use for my game -- is there any utility/tool for me to compose it into Pokey format? I am prepared to tediously transcribe the notes I want into Pokey values. some of the questions I have unanswered are: how do you imitate vibrato (your castle blast tune's main melody uses it)? Are there any good suggestions on how to emulate drum sounds (again, your CB demo has a nice sounding hihat or something)? For Koffi: Yellow Kopter, I very much want to use a piece from Beethoven's 6th symphony. It is EXACTLY what I imagine Koffi's music to sound like. I want to have 4-voice music on the title screen. Hoo-boy, if I can pull it off, it will be one INCREDIBLY ADDICTING title screen! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted October 21, 2001 Share Posted October 21, 2001 Oh my god, how the heck did I miss this posting the first time around?! This must have been when I was busy working too many hours for our last deadline.. There are so many games for which I *Loved* the music on the Atari 8-bit that I'm afraid I'm not going to get any work done on AtariAge for a few days. - Alternate Reality Music (all of it, especially the intros!) - Boulder Dash (I still have that tune rattling around in my head) - Demonstration Music - Tail of Beta Lyrae - M.U.L.E. - Realm of Impossibility - Archon - Rescue on Fractalus (short, but catchy) - Many, many more I'm forgetting I'm downloading the archive now, although it'll take a few minutes since I'm currently being terrorized with a lowly 28K connection (I move into my new apartment in a few weeks, I'm in corporate housing at the moment). No sleep for me tonight. Good thing it's not a school night. Thanks for bumping this up, Cafeman!! ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted October 21, 2001 Share Posted October 21, 2001 Miner has a cool rendition of My Darling Clementine at the end of the opening credits. It goes into this neat harmony at the end. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted October 21, 2001 Share Posted October 21, 2001 quote: Originally posted by Tempest: Miner has a cool rendition of My Darling Clementine at the end of the opening credits. It goes into this neat harmony at the end. I went through the SAP archives last night and there are quite a few games not represented in there just yet. Including some of the ones I was looking forward to hearing, like all the Alternate Reality music, Tail of Beta Lyrae, Realm of Impossibility, and others. I may just have to fire up an 8-bit emulator to hear some of these so I can get my fix. However, that doesn't mean I was disappointed. I spent a lot of time listening to tunes last night. It's amazing how accurate the sound reproduction is through the SAP Winamp plugin. And from the looks of the ASMA website, it's being updated frequently so I look forward to more games being added to the archive. ..Al Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGuru Posted October 22, 2001 Author Share Posted October 22, 2001 I've put some info about the extraction of these type of music... The utility I wrote (including its source files) is also available. Goto the bottom of the following page and look for Advanced music: Moderator Edit: Ronens page is located here: http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2j83t/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted October 22, 2001 Share Posted October 22, 2001 One thing I'm confused about -- exactly what IS the "SAP format" ?? This terminology is new to me! Is it an Atari-only thing, or common in music files on the net or in the recording industry, or what? All I know is I have a CD with Beethoven's Sixth Symphony on it. My solution is to either learn the notes by ear and transcribe them and then figure out the Pokey Register values for this music and type it in, then fine tune it. Of course, I will probably be able to buy the sheet music for this famous piece of music too, but I think I can learn it by ear pretty fast with my incredible transcribing abilites. Is there ANY shortcut to doing this? A music generator of notes to Atari computer binary Pokey format, for example? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanD Posted October 22, 2001 Share Posted October 22, 2001 I would be very surprised if there is not a utility or something from the old Antic and Analog magazines that would do this. If anyone has any idea I can see if I have the disk tho the .atr would probably be available online already. I did the same thing for an Antic 4 character displayer. I typed it out of Compute and used it until someone made a better one for me. I can flip thru some old magazines and see what I find but I think there is an index to these magazines somewhere. AlanD Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted October 22, 2001 Share Posted October 22, 2001 Alan, I've seen some articles and maybe some downloads (mostly in Basic though) at some Atarimagazines sites that I have bookmarked somewhere. How do you run those programs if you do find them? I guess via AtariWin800 emulator? I never got that one to work, I downloaded it but have had problems with it trying to run any ROM. (I tried to use it for 5200 games). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted October 23, 2001 Share Posted October 23, 2001 The SAP player is basically a limited emulator of the Atari 800. It only emulates the 6502 and the POKEY. Most Atari computer games set up a periodic interrupt that happens once per frame or so. This interrupt executes a routine that writes new data to the POKEY registers, if nessessary. In this routine you can also increase or decrease the frequency devider value in every frame to simulate a vibrato effect, or create a volume envelope like in the C64. The SAP files basically countain these routines ripped from the games, plus some information for the player, like how often the routine has to be called or which game the routine was taken from. The exact SAP format can be found in the DOC directory of the sound archive, that you can download from the link that OldGuru mentioned above. I'm pretty sure that most of Beethoven's music can be found in MIDI format somewhere on the net. There might also be a free- or shareware version of a notation program available that lets you view MIDI files in sheet form. There were several music editors for the Atari 800 available. For example there was the "Antic Music Processor" in issue 12/88 and 06/89. I think you can download it in an emulator friendly format from the antic archive website or something similar. However I wasn't able to find any information about the file format of the AMP, so this program might not be too much of a help to you. There probably were better tools in the Atari demo scene anyway. And a note to OldGuru: As you probably have noticed yourself, the files in the SAP archive have been taken from PAL games, where the frame rate is 50 Hz. If you use one of these songs in your game, how do you prevent it from running too fast on your NTSC 5200? Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted October 23, 2001 Share Posted October 23, 2001 Thanks for the replies. About Beethoven MP3's .. yeah, I actually did track one down with the allegro from the 6th ... I hated it, it's cheap instruments samples and monotone timing smacked of a Worlitzer organ in the mall. Ugh! Nothing like an orchestra! Last night I figured out most of what I needed on my guitar, so I guess I'll be attempting to do it from scratch. It turns out ole Beethoven isn't too hard to figure out! However, I bet I will have a challenge trying to emulate the vibrato and envelope sounds to get the 5200 to sound more like an instrument than a computer. Once I get something I'll surely share it here, or in a worst case scenario, I'll give up and use one of those SAP tunes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGuru Posted October 23, 2001 Author Share Posted October 23, 2001 quote: As you probably have noticed yourself, the files in the SAP archive have been taken from PAL games, where the frame rate is 50 Hz. If you use one of these songs in your game, how do you prevent it from running too fast on your NTSC 5200? This is correct. Basically, I have not done anything to address that issue. The music is just a bit quicker than the original peice but, still it sounds great when coming out of the TV speakers... OldGuru. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Cafeman Posted October 23, 2001 Share Posted October 23, 2001 OldGuru, what game is the music from originally? (the one you are using for Castle Blast). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGuru Posted October 23, 2001 Author Share Posted October 23, 2001 quotewhat game is the music from originally? (the one you are using for Castle Blast). It is Winter Games - Decathlon. I'm also using one of the Compy (can't remember the full name) peices as well. OldGuru. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Callipygous Posted October 25, 2001 Share Posted October 25, 2001 quote"Antic Music Processor" in issue 12/88 and 06/89 Author Steven Lashower gives the interesting story of this program: Lashower's Atari Stuff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted October 29, 2001 Share Posted October 29, 2001 we @ taquart and most polish coders use - CMC - Chaos Music Composer - MPT - Music Pro tracker (d not know exactly the name) - TMC - Theta Music Composer by Taquart cmc uses 3 channels where 1 channel is a combined one mpt uses 4 channels + 1 digi channel for samples theta uses 4-8 channels + stereo + 2 digi channels depends on 1 or 2 pokeys installed in the system we all use one of these from above because the sound you can produce is great and the replay-routines are written by demo-coders so they do not take much time... best are the digi-musics where you have 4bit digi-drums in your music. not good for ingame music but excellent for title-screens... ;=) Heaven/Taquart http://www.s-direktnet.de/homepages/k_nadj/main.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eckhard Stolberg Posted October 29, 2001 Share Posted October 29, 2001 Looks like CMC might be a good choice for the ingame music on a cartridge based game, as the sound files probably don't get too big and since the replay routines probably don't take too much processing time. I was able to find a disk image for the CMC program from the links you provided in the 7800 board that runs in emulators, but I'm still looking for some commented source code for the player routine. Do you by any chance have a well commented source code for a CMC player, that you could share with us? Thanks, Eckhard Stolberg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted October 30, 2001 Share Posted October 30, 2001 well... my sources are on real 5,25 disks somewhere and i can not access our ftp server... in the meantime check this: http://xlent.nostalgia.pl/XLent.html where you find music, grafix tools... if you download the chaos music composer (cmc) there should be an source on the disks if you download theta music composer you just exit the loading menu and enter the dos 2.5 menu. if you take a look into the directory you recognize that there are sources in ASM format for the player. BUT most polish users use QuickAss. But Quick ass is 99,9% compatible to our Xasm on ms dos for PC. hopes this helps a little bit. you also find grafics tools... i am still searching for the sources... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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