Does the PC-Engine version of Snatcher not count?:Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
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Does the PC-Engine version of Snatcher not count?:Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
Ops, totally forgot about it. Yes it does, unfortunately the best songs on the game are Redbook on the PCE version (and the quality of the music on the PCE version is worse and half-assed at times).
Although it sounds like you didn't actually listen to much of the video, I wasn't posting overall music examples of stuff that just sounded good, it's showing some of the different kinds of sounds that PSG chips don't do. This is the mentality of people who can't appreciate PCE sound. A Mega Drive track can have SMS PSG front and center, but people who claim they hate SMS PSG (yet love NES PSG) will say it sounds good, but they'll hear a PCE track featuring a bunch of cool sounds and only focus on the one that reminds them of PSG.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
Soldier Blade is exactly the kind of soundtrack that PCE haters lable "NES". Batman also always fails to impress those people.
What do you mean by "this caliber"? It isn't that extrordinary composition-wise and is only special sound-wise if you judge strictly around what the MSX can do and exclude the kind of stuff it can't. I know in the past you gave examples of MSX WSG music that was supposed to be better than PCE because a tech spec said one aspect was superior, but actually listening to the tracks from each console, the PCE version sounded noticeably better.
Batman fails to impress because the music, despite all those fancy bass sounds, sounds flat, really really flat.
I meant by "this caliber" music that doesn't sound like it was composed with a gameboy in mind, which is what a lot of music on the PCE sounds like. Really the biggest offenders are the drums. If you put basic white noise drums on anything it'll sound PSG regardless of everything else. However, those MSX tracks are so "full" (it's hard to describe what I mean by "full", but if you can't hear it then I can't explain it either) that the *actual* psg drums they use are next to irrelevant. They are hidden behind the fullness of the songs so to speak.
Legend of Xanadu (the original specially) also manages to pull this off in some songs (track 20 is a great example). The Stage 4 song in Legendary Axe 2 does too.
These songs from LoX 2 are also far beyond PSG:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n18lJg4AnrM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbRTg60csz0
City Hunter is another game that avoids the basic PSG sound quite well. Fiend Hunter, despite the awesome drums, is as PSG sounding as it gets. Maybe it's not just drums, there's something else at play.
The tiles and sprites aren't stored in 4bit pixel format in the rom (stored in the original 2bit format). Since the game uses chr-ram and not chr-rom, you can't just stored converted tiles/sprites in 4bit format. Since the game code is manually writing to vram, instead of requesting a vrom 'bank' change. Thus, you need to hack the games tile update engine (cause 4bit tiles are double in size). That and you need to update the palette updating routine as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by azonicrider
The hacking would be done as if it were an NES rom, since it's running the core NES rom code. The video and sound are emulated on the fly, but I did add provisions to the emulation to allow extended capabilities to the "NES" through emulation (unused bits in the sprite table to get PCE sprite features. Additional regs as ports in unused NES mapped memory to enabling additional features too. As well as a few pseudo commands like 'dma' to access extended VRAM of PCE as if it were additional hidden banks of vram on the NES). I actually started upgrading MM1 with 4bit sprite color and native PCE sprite sizes for the game, but it requires hacking a the original game code; converting the meta-sprite builder of the game for larger and less PCE sprites, proved to be tedious. Warn you a head of time, you have to know the NES pretty good to pull off this hack.
I looked through your youtube videos; nice! I wanted to do a short 'demo' for PCE. I have a few different sound engines in mind, for the demo. Would you be interested in composing some stuff for it? I'm looking for people that have experience with type of sound setup and have a talent for exploiting new and interesting instrument sounds. This demo would primarily be to show off sound/music first, with a bit of traditional demo art and graphics in running in the back ground. Nothing too showy. My job is now finally slowing down, that I have some free time to start coding again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raijin
tomaitheous you know about game dev. Is it just a hobby or a past and/or current career?
I eventually want to be a game dev. I want to be the Canadian version of Locomalito; I love his style of mimicking past hardware platforms.
Do you have any screen shots of the progress?Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
I wouldn't mind normally. Depends on the software I'd have to use. The only 2 things I know of to produce PCE music is MML and Deflemask. I don't know MML, and Deflemask is way too cumbersome for my tastes. Perhaps if there was a nicely coded, stand alone PCE tracker of some sort, and using it was easy with self explanitory features. I'm also not exactly a pro when it comes to making original material. I stumble a lot due to my own inability to come up with nice melodies, but dammit, I'd at least give it a try.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
Your N163 cover of The Last Soul is one of the greatest covers I've heard Raijin. Expander too.
^ Holy Crap, Actraiser too. I sincerely hope you plan to do Level 2 sometime soon, that is one of my favorite Yuzo tunes and the SNES barely gets by with it.
He also totally nailed Boomer Kuwanger's theme.Quote:
Originally Posted by sheath
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-s7vJmwqjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qq8NYyffU70
SNES gets wrecked on this one.
I like the power/flexibility of MML, or rather the underlying engine... command string engine. But I like the structure of a tracker, since I'm old school (fast tracker 2 ftw!). I've written an MML-ish engine and script compiler, but I never use it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Raijin
Instead, I use a hybrid format of command string and tracker format, mixed. That is to say, the layout is like that of a tracker format - but each entry can be limitless in parameters unlike a trackers fixed format. I.e. You can do more FX and such in a single entry than a typical tracker entry/slot. The down side, I don't have a nice GUI what-you-hear-is-what-you-get. It's text based, like so:
It looks a little cumbersome, but I have since switched over to using macros to make the text look more readable. Gx5 is note G# at octave 5, D.5 is note D at octave 5. That's a single channel of notes (as if you looked at a column for a single channel in a tracker pattern). Each channel has a pattern play list. The 'return' function is for variable pattern lengths, for compression reasons, but it's not needed. I.e. you can fix all your patterns to be of one size; say like 64 entries. The commas separate the FX/parameters for that note entry (the 'prefix' command allows you to link up a bunch of parameters for that entry). Like D.5, VolSet. | $20. Play note D.5 with manual volume setting. But like I said, I have a more improved human readable version that uses macros to make it look like text/script rather than data define statements.Code:Lead1:
.db Prefix.,06, ArpSet.,$CC, KeySet.,$01, ArpMode., ArpNoteTrig., PortaSet.,$0e, PortaStep.
.db _F.4
.db Arp_Key.
.db _F.4
.db F.4, VolSlideDown. | $40
.db _C.5
.db _C.5
.db _C.5
.db Arp_Key.
.db ArpStep.
.db ArpStep.
.db F.4, VolSlideDown. | $80
.db F.4, VolSlideDown. | $40
.db C.5, VolSlideDown. | $60
.db _F.4
.db _F.5
.db Prefix2., FineSlideVolDown.,$20, PortaStepDown. ;;Combo1 | VolSub | PortaSlideDown, $0e, $0e
.db _Dx5
.db F.5, VolSet. | $40
.db _Dx5
.db _Dx5
.db _C.5
.db _C.5
.db _C.5
.db Arp_Key.
.db ArpStep.
.db ArpStep.
.db _F.4
.db _F.4
.db _Dx5
.db _F.4
.db _F.5
.db Prefix2., FineSlideVolDown.,$20, PortaStepDown. ;;Combo1 | VolSub | PortaSlideDown, $0e, $0e
.db _D.5
.db F.5, VolSet. | $40
.db _D.5
.db D.5, VolSlideDown. | $80
.db _Ax4
.db _Ax4
.db _Ax4
.db Arp_Key.
.db ArpStep.
.db ArpStep.
.db RestLoop.,4
.db Prefix4., ArpMode., ArpDisable., PortaSet.,$09, Ax5,Porta | PortaNote, DirVolSet., $20
.db PortaStep.
.db PortaStep.
.db F.5, VolSet. | $60
.db Gx5, VolSet. | $20
.db Ax5, VolSet. | $60
.db F.5, VolSet. | $20
.db Gx5, VolSet. | $60
.db Dx5, VolSet. | $20
.db D.5, VolSet. | $20
.db Dx5, VolSet. | $60
.db Gx5, VolSet. | $20
.db D.5, VolSet. | $60
.db Prefix3., PortaSet.,$09, Dx5,Porta | PortaNote, DirVolSet., $20
.db PortaStep.
.db D.5, VolSet. | $20
.db Rest.
.db Return.
I used milky tracker to prototype the stuff I wanted, then manually wrote the text entries. The sound engine used for this:
Was modeled after milkytracker (the FX and how they react). But milky tracker is quite limited for making PCE music. Or rather, anything more complicated for instrument sounds. I like the idea of using multiple envelopes to control many aspects of sound (pitch, vibrato, tremolo, hard-sync, pan, waveform corruption, waveform updating, etc). Especially for 'macro' instruments. Those type of instruments that need macros on a per-note basis, etc.
I had originally worked on a XM to PCE converter/player:
But decided against it, since XM doesn't really play to the strengths of the PCE sound chip.
Hobby. And yeah, here's a video:Quote:
Originally Posted by azonicrider
that includes sprite size upgrades. Creating larger sprite cells breaks the game, so I have to hack the game engine and hook my own sprite routine for it (cause the game uses meta-sprite tables to build out 8x8 cells into larger objects). I did that to help remove flicker. But if all that needs to be done is color upgrades, that's much easier to hack (i.e. won't break much in game).
Thats an awesome Mega Man sprite, i like it much better than the Rockman Mega World one.
I'm actually not that familiar with many trackers. Famitracker was my first tracker, and I have to say, for a tracker, I don't have a single complaint about it. It's very simple and straightforward to use, including all of the expansion sound. After that, I started using VGM Music Maker. I've only been making chiptunes since 2011, and those two trackers are the only ones I actively use. I am interested in other chips too, and I've tried Deflemask, but really, It's just too much. Too many bugs, too cumbersome like I said. It's just really breaks my pace of tracking too often. I also have Open MPT. I don't use it at all, I just have it for playing modules.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
As for MML, I'm simply not interested in learning it. I probably could with time, but I don't feel the need to bother.
Really though, if there was some trackers for specific hardware out there, I'd give it a shot. PCE, C64, even SNES. I just like the idea of trackers built specifically for the intended hardware because you get all of the things the specific hardware is capable of, not just a mess like I feel Deflemask is.
Its strange how they got some of those instruments so similar to the SNES version.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamahl
But yes, Genesis version remains on top.
That looks awesome, I love how his sprite looks when he gets hit.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
Though I think if I was gonna port a Mega Man to the PCE, I'd write it from the ground up. Trying to work with the old source code just doesn't sound fun. But that means you gotta recreate all the physics, boss patterns, etc. and those aren't easily available.
Oh, and about my covers. People seem to like my cover of Boomer Kuwanger a lot. There's always some nitpick I have with my old covers such as that one though. In that video, the Orchestra Hit samples are way off pitch, and the PSG is a bit off as well. I'd probably want to adjust the volume balance as well. Still, it's one of my best old covers, I guess.
About it sounding similar to the original, it was actually pretty easy to get some of them to sound similar due to the nature of the track, having this synth beep and big synthy bass. FM typically has no problems with that kind of stuff. I also thickened the lead instruments with PSG, which was pretty effective. Also, I used Combat Cars drums, transforming the track into something different instead of following what the original does.
Anyway, I appreciate the nice words. I think I have improved a lot since then, or at least, I hope so.