[WIP] DUMB Music Driver

[VinsCool]

A WIP music driver for the Atari 8-bit, written in 6502 Assembly, originally created to prove a point.

I've not yet found much use for this other than being a proof of concept really, so this is sitting in my computer in its unfinished state.

 

Sources: https://github.com/VinsCool/DUMB-Music-Driver

 

Don't get your expectations very high, it's barely functional, and there is no proper editor for the incomplete module format specifications.

If you are interested in the project, please let me know  

[Steril707]

Maybe you should explain a bit what this does and what's it useful for?

[VinsCool]

Well... that's the thing, it is not useful in the state this is right now, I honestly consider deleting everything, and start over for the 4th time.

Okay, I am a little too cynical, it's hard to feel competent, or rather good enough at making things to work.

 

More seriously, it's not that much different from RMT if that's the intended use for it, in fact, the setup for it was deliberately made to be very similar specifically for that reason.

It's a music driver, it plays music, and that's pretty much all there is to say, honestly.

It could be used right now, but it is sadly left in a state I am not happy with, and I have become burned out working on it.

There is extensive work to do for making it somewhat usable and thoroughly documented, but I have not been feeling motivated to work on it currently.

Also, if we think about it strictly in term of efficiency, it is unfortunately wasteful, bugged, and difficult to test due to the incomplete specifications.

 

Here's the last test run I made for it, if you are interested:

 

As you can see, it certainly does work, but the CPU and Memory usages are just way off.

There is no advantage over RMT, other than having proven a point regarding functionalities, which is also debatable.

This is prototype, and not a great one, mostly composed of terrible ASM code, dumb ideas, and spiteful motivation I just have lost over time.

[Mark2008]

@VinsCool

 

I read your post with interest, but ultimately well - not sure what is meant by music driver - I guess I will start with that as a question. Does that mean you can use it outside of mads assembly it interfaces with the os?

 

I have a game in progress, that I grabbed the music player from Antic magazine.

 

At one time I did use RMT, but I was using cc65 back then, and some had made available RMT via cc65 library and, I basically only used it...there was no need for me to do anything special.

 

Then, when I was writing a game in PL65, I didn't have that available as a choice, so I used some code from Antic Magazine Vol. 2 No. 8, Chris Chabris, Sound Beyond Sound.  I made one trivial modification to get the notes to sync correctly on the 3 sound channels. But it plays pure tones.

 

I could post links to the two songs...to compare the output of the cc65 effort w/RMT to the Antic magazine player.

 

But I think if I do that people will think I'm trying to get them to listen to the songs....so suffice to say, to my ears, the RMT song sounds like the jazzy mechanical tones that are probably in line with expectations, and the pure tone music player makes me cry.

 

my first thought about your player, is it'd probably be great to talk to a live person about their music player....I sure wouldn't mind having better music in my programs.

 

 Does your music player even come with a song I could borrow?  Lol.

 

THe other thing is I assume it is mads assembler?  pl65 supports assembler syntax directly but not, of course, mads assembler macros just the standard 6502 assembler mnemonics.  So the first thing I would need is a strategy on how to actually use it...