Asteroids Deluxe - Weird Sound

[fultonbot]

Warning, this is really trivial, but it fascinates me.
I've been playing a lot of Asteroids Deluxe on my Acarde1Up Centipede Legacy (yes, the screen is far too bright, but I still enjoy the game) but I've noticed something odd about one of the sounds.
When you destroy all the parts of a Killer Satellite, the sound that comes out is kind of "sad".  I would have expected something more upbeat when you destroy all the parts of this difficult enemy.
Since it's an emulated game, I sked my brother, who loved Asteroids Deluxe in the arcade, and he confirmed that the sound was the same, and that he has always been bewildered about it too.
I watched a couple youtube.com videos of the coin-up and I heard it there as well.

 

Here is the sound I recorded while playing:

 
It sounds like I failed something.

 

It bothered me so much that I recorded it and reversed it to see if it sounded better...

 

 
And it does, it sounds like an achievement and not like I did something wrong in the game.

 

This made me wonder if the original designers meant for it to sound like the reversed verse but somehow the sound data got mixed-up.
So then I went and found the source code on GitHub and located the portion of the code dedicated to playing sounds (DASOUN.MAC) with sound table data for the "Diamonds" (the only thing that looks close to the Killer Satellite) 
DASOUN.MAC
 

 

DI2:	REP
	STB 2,50,1,70		;DIAMOND SOUND FREQ
	MEND
DI3:	REP 7
	STB 10,0A8,0,1		;DIAMOND SOUND VOL
	STB 10,0A0,0,1
	MEND

 

Since the machine used a Pokey, I think it would probably be fairly easy to replicate the sound code in 7800 BASIC/Assembly (my current obsession) and then play around with the data to see how easy it would be to reverse the sound and thus how easy it might have been, in theory, for an engineer to create the wrong sound (if indeed that is happened).

 

But before I do any of that, does anyone know if the sound in game was inserted as desired?
Did they mean to have a "sad" sound when you do something so seemingly triumphant?
 

 

[Keatah]

Eh, to me it sounds like a power-down thing, a machine going out of action or something.

[fultonbot]

4 hours ago, Keatah said:

Eh, to me it sounds like a power-down thing, a machine going out of action or something.

So the power-down of the Killer Satellite as it's destroyed?  I'll take that.  

[Chris+++]

I don't think it's meant to be a sad sound from the perspective of the player, but rather, a "defeated" sound from the standpoint of the enemies. Logg presumably felt that the player should hear some indication that all slices of the deadly pie chart have been destroyed, so he went with a sort of "Ohh, you got me" death rattle from the adversary.

 

 

[fultonbot]

3 hours ago, Chris+++ said:

I don't think it's meant to be a sad sound from the perspective of the player, but rather, a "defeated" sound from the standpoint of the enemies. Logg presumably felt that the player should hear some indication that all slices of the deadly pie chart have been destroyed, so he went with a sort of "Ohh, you got me" death rattle from the adversary.

 

 

Oh this us great info!  Where did you hear it?

[Chris+++]

39 minutes ago, fultonbot said:

Oh this us great info!  Where did you hear it?

 

It's just the way in which I've always interpreted it, frankly.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's into minutiae like this. 

 

(I'm looking forward to listening to the new episode, by the way. I've just downloaded it. The Horror of Junior High indeed! Unwelcome images from my '80s schooling appear in the air...and make me want to punch something.)

 

 

Edited September 12, 2022 by Chris+++

[fultonbot]

2 hours ago, Chris+++ said:

 

It's just the way in which I've always interpreted it, frankly.

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's into minutiae like this. 

 

(I'm looking forward to listening to the new episode, by the way. I've just downloaded it. The Horror of Junior High indeed! Unwelcome images from my '80s schooling appear in the air...and make me want to punch something.)

 

 

A listener! Hello!
|Ah yeah, see I'm working on this for a possible upcoming episode!
I might try to recreate the sounds in Pokey and see if I can make one I like.

I hope you like the Jr. High One...

[davyK]

Yep - that sound is the intended one - I get it on my Dx cabinet too.