Best Music tracker for A8 in-game music and sound effects?

[Sheddy]

Suppose I want to create some good in-game music, but also have sound effects too...at the same time.

 

Is it possible to have both music and sound effects controlled by replay routines of something like Raster Music Tracker or Theta Music Composer?

 

I see the Raster Music Tracker instructions mention how to play one song, but is there a way to set off simple sound effects "songs" (on different channels of course) ?

 

Theta Music Composer - I can't understand the Polish instructions. Does anyone have an English translation or know if it can do what I'm asking?

 

Maybe the best way is to create a separate sound effect program from the music player? (But it seems a shame to re-invent the wheel)

 

Any advice appreciated, as there's no way I can make an in-game music and sound effect player as good as the above programs which musicians can work with.

[Wrathchild]

There's going to be a balance there, how many channels to use

for the music versus how many to use for effects.

 

With 2&2 you should be OK although that would just give you

8-bit frequencies for the music. The music channels can typically

be made sound like more instruments, eg. by interspercing

drums and cymbal sounds in the bass line.

 

I think you would need 2 voices for the effects, e.g. a pulsing ambient

sound on one channel. Shots and explosions on the other. Or perhaps

one voice each for player and ememy.

 

The routines are normally interlinked. E.g. often you can change

a byte or two in a SID or SAP file and then hear the effects rather

than the tune.

 

Regards,

Mark

[Sheddy]

Thanks Mark,

 

Guess I'll just have to plow through some of the code in the player routines. Of course you are right, the routines must be linked, it is just a matter of figuring out exactly how. I expect the playing of an "instrument" (which could be a sound effect) in, say, RMT can be done through other means than the usual song sequencer with the right variables/registers set. Or, possibly, if the position in the song can be determined, write the data into the song real time...ah, but then it has to be cleaned up again afterwards.

 

Yes, how many channels to use...a bit tricky...some musicians would want to have 8 for just music! (Stero Pokey), so they certainly wouldn't like to get by with just 2 channels of the normal 4. I think the amount of channels given to the music will have to be at least 2 and then override any sound effects when it needs to have 3 or even 4 - dynamically. that'll take some figuring out though.