A8 music

[Wrathchild]

I reversed engineered some sound routines during my uni days

(over 10 years ago!) and have just resurrected the code and tidied

it up a bit so that it can be compiled with CA65/LD65.

 

Also, I wrote a C program (for gcc or visual c etc) that will

take the original data and output the tune's structure into

a more readable format. Check out the files 'parse_??.c'

 

The tunes are Draconus and Storm. The latter I wanted to

use to see if david Whittaker's engine could be used to

do the Speedball tune.

 

For Speedball, the parse code extracts the instructions

from the C64 SID data. Therefore I can be reworked

by mapping the instruments etc to A8 instruments.

 

However this is little beyond me at the moment and so

if anyone wants to take up the mantle then please do!

Maybe the base and drums from channel 1 should be

put on one of the 8-bit channels for the A8? Also, the

arpeggio support may need to be added.

 

Also, the C64 extract method could be used to 'explain'

other C64 titles for porting to the A8. Although the SID player

can let you play C64 tunes on the A8 the overheads are high.

So re-using existing players is still a good idea.

 

One question though. These tunes are built as songs built

from patterns of variable length and also the note length

is set within the pattern. To me this is different from how

you see a tune in a editor such as RMT, but does RMT save

the tune data in a format similar to this.

 

I like this macro method of writing a song, and actually it

could make it easy for some people to write tunes this way?

 

Finally, those with musical knowledge may wish to correct any

incorrect naming/terminology in the listings, e.g. do I use words

like vibrato trill etc correctly?

 

Thanks & best wishes,

 

Mark

draconus.zip

speedball.zip

storm.zip

[andy_bernstein]

Dear Wrathchild,

 

I'm looking at Draconus right now. I have a bunch of SID's to convert to XL/XE so I'll take a close look.

 

BTW- thank you for the Bard's Tale introduction. Any chance you might finish the conversion ?

 

AB.

[Wrathchild]

Hi,

 

Good luck with the SIDs, shouldn't be to tricky to recode the

parse program to work for different engines, e.g. Rob Hubbard.

Just mapping those effects to the A8 is the hard bit

 

Not looked at BT for while (same is true for World Class Leaderboard)

but do intend getting back to them at some point. The last thing I did

was to write (yet another) little C program to decode all of the C64

still graphics for the top left window, e.g. characters, buildings, monsters.

A bit a work involved in getting the colours right on the A8, but

should be OK. I'll put a little preview together (as with Barbarian)

and post it up soon.

 

Regards,

Mark

[samurai]

Are you able to convert sid music data to txt format, which RMT imports ?

IT WOULD BE GREAT.

[Wrathchild]

Are you able to convert sid music data to txt format, which RMT imports ?

Its not answered if RMT uses this kind of format? It might.

If a mapping can be produce then I guess we could write

a convertor. When a human reads the C64 output you can

often make out the intructions for the instruments (because

you heard them too). Hence you can substitute it with an

A8 equivalent. Once a collection of these is made then a

stock A8 instrument library can be defined which every

song would then use (or draw upon, i.e. include those mapped).

 

You still have to understand each original C64 playback routine,

which typically requires its disassembly etc, although there can

be quite a lot of commonality between routines.

 

Regards,

Mark

 

Ps. Anyone have a disassembly of the Last Ninja 3 intro

player routine (Reyn Ouwehand) before I do one?

 

Ps2. Can I get a relocated Atari SIDplayer as the LN3 tune has

Load: $5900-$CE65, Init: $CE50, Play: $CDD0