experimental ROM export for furnace tracker

[+Dave C]

@ZippyOasys it's my intention to make it work with batari but I haven't gone so far as to make it plug-and-play - I admit to still being down a bit of a rabbit hole on how to best compress the data right now... there's a couple of demo songs floating around that I'm trying to get under 4K ROM and it's maddeningly close

[+karri]

Hi @Dave C,

 

I noticed that for some reason the 2600 compiled version is considerably faster than the original in Furnace Tracker.

tia_BoogieWoogie.fur

 

The version compiled and run under Stella har weird speed.

 

Could it be that if different channels have notes at different times the tune speeds up?

[+Dave C]

@karri thanks for sharing this - I will take a look - actually wondering if this song has a different tempo? I think the branch I have public doesn’t compute tempo correctly (it turns out all the songs I had been testing with were just slightly off). So many details… as soon as I think I’m swimming I find out I’m just treading water..

[+karri]

I will probably go with ragtime. It has a slower, steady tempo on both channels.

[+karri]

Entertainer by Scott Joplin from 100 years ago.

The tune is a bit too long for the Player. But works with the MiniPlayer

 

 

tia_entertainer.fur MiniPlayer_PAL.a26 MiniPlayer_NTSC.a26

[+Dave C]

Hi @karri sorry for the delay there was a bug in the timing and the code was dropping frames. Specifically if there is an update to an AUDCx or AUDVx register that needs to be held for 1 frame the C code wasn't encoding it correctly and the ASM was not decoding it correctly (I've gone back and forth on having this complicated encoding logic, but it does save quite a bit of space)

 I'll have the new code up shortly but meanwhile check these out (...the timing is much closer... but now I suspect we're adding a frame somewhere).

MiniPlayer_NTSC.a26 MiniPlayer_PAL.a26

[+karri]

Sounds the same as in Furnace Tracker. This tool is the best music creation tool for the 2600/7800 I have seen.

 

Thanks for creating the rom export.

[+karri]

I realized that there is a few easy ways to make good sonding music for the TIA. Funky Afternoon written by me and my son.

1) Use percussions

2) Keep the melody as a single note!!! So important. It is easier to fool the ear when you have no reference.

3) If you create the melody without the instrument notation after each tune you can re-use your sections for a different instrument. In this tune I change the melody instrument half way in the music and re-use the same notes.

 

This track was created by first writing funky percussions. Then we listened to the rhythm and started to hum some kind of melody. And the last step was to pick up a guitar and play the melody on top of the soundtrack. From guitar fingering it was easy to type in the actual melody in Furnace Tracker.

[+karri]

PS. I just checked your github. It is nice to see the progress.

[+Dave C]

Thanks @karri yes I have been doing some work… hope to make a “formal update” this weekend (holiday in US so i have some time blocked off)

 

* new more better default compression

* options to output in formats that use less ram / simpler to decode, use in batari basic, games