Printable View
PCE has potential in its sound, and if you're going to put effort into the sound engine, a lot of fun can happen... I cannot wait until Tomaitheous has his PCE tracker done :)
When it comes to making of music, Alianger should be listened, he is quite good at music :)
My god.Quote:
Originally Posted by vintagegamecrazy
do you think i have hurt PCE feellings?..no, wait PCEngine is a person, ok PCEngine i dont hate you, forgive me please, i just need more time to get to know you better, what do you say?
PD:what is the meaning of 'fanboy'?
Ill need a dictionary.
Maybe it was worse in my eyes because of what I had come to expect of the Genesis. I mean, awesome titles had come out around that time. But even if I try to push that aside, Bloodlines just feels.. meh. The controls don't feel castlevania-y. The movement and animation are unfamiliar. The attention to detail seems.. generic when coming from RoB and SCIV. It's not something I can directly put my finger, but accumulation of a lot of little things. CV3 was just awesome. I'm sorry to admit that I actually didn't get to play this BITD (although a friend had it), but sometime after 2000. I was very impressed. The graphics were great, the music was great, the level design and pacing was great, and best of all the controls were... well, that of a real CV game. Maybe someday I'll forgive Bloodlines and happily enjoy playing through it, but until that day comes....Quote:
I don't really see how Bloodlines is worse than Castlevania 3. It certainly looks better, sounds a bit better too (Konami did a pretty bad job with the sound engine though), and it is more fun to play. CV3 had alternate paths and characters, which was awesome, but the level design is way more frustrating than in any of the later games.
Oh, my point wasn't the number of channels that NES - but rather the instruments sounds it was limited to outputting and the specific limits of each channel. It has two square wave channels. It can only output 3 types of square waves (the fourth is inverted, but an inverted wave sound exactly like its non inverted form). The 3 channel is triangle only and has no volume control. The 4th is LFSR noise generation only for limited percussion (usually drum/snare/hi-hat). The 5th channel is 1bit DPCM and no volume control and only a handful of frequency options. You can play samples on it that don't need fast frequency response changes from sample point to sample point (SMB3 uses it for some samples like the steal drum).Quote:
"Nes with a few more channels" isn't too far from the truth because the Nes only had 4 voice channels that were set to specific behaviors while the pc-engine had 6 that were also programmable (if I can trust wiki on this) into anything the Nes could do. This turns it into a more flexible Nes.
The PCE audio unit is nothing like that. Each channel holds a sample in PCM format. Each channel has its own DAC, which passes through its attached mono volume control, and then again through stereo pan volume control, then through master volume pan control. Each channel individually can be turn into a direct write DAC. You can write PCM sample data directly to any or all of the 6 channels. Just like the channel 6 of the Genesis FM unit, but on any channel. Channels 5 and 6 independently can be switched into LFSR noise
generation mode for percussion sounds/fx. Alternatively, you can reset the waveform pointer of any channel to do SYNC effects. All registers updates take effect immediately. The each channel runs on a period system from a 3.58mhz clock (when in buffer mode). Sample point to point frequencies of a buffer mode can and do reach higher than 100khz easily. The PCE has a 7khz general purpose TIMER that can be used to drive samples or update volume/pitch/pan/sync/etc (7khz arpeggio's are dangerous <_<; ). (There's also a 15.7khz timer interrupt from the display).
The PCE is much more than a upgraded or more flexable NES system. It's a totally different design. Most games don't take advantage of the audio hardware. If the PCE was popular in Europe, you'd see some really amazing audio examples (yes, it's my belief that Euro scene creates some of the most impressive sound out of the more limited systems, C64, Atari 8bit computers, SMS, and others).
Anyway, here's an example of some waveforms that Air Zonk uses (well, had in its waveform bank).
http://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/509.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/510.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/511.png
http://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/512.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/513.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/514.png
http://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/515.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/516.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/517.png
http://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/518.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/519.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/520.png
http://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/521.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/522.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/523.png
http://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/524.pnghttp://pcedev.net//pce_info/audio/channels/526.png
See waveform #3? That's what NES lead channels use. A standard square waveform with duty cycles. That one's a 50% duty cycle. The reason why NES and older chips use them it because; 1) they're easy to produce and 2) because a square waveform produces the loudest sound. You can do high frequency (cycle frequency, not sample frequency) sound output with a low frequency driver. A lot of PCE game designers just used square wave, saw wave, and sine wave samples. Some games only use square wave like it was an NES with 5 lead channels and a percussion channel.
Anyway, you can update the channel waveform at any time. You can create filter effects and such by doing this. Bloody Wolf cycles through waveforms to create more complex instruments, but I don't know of any other game that does that, let alone as a filter effect.
Alternatively, each channel can play 5bit linear PCM or 9bit non linear PCM per channel. Because the volume is LOG, you can pair channels in direct write mode for 10bit linear PCM or 3 channel for 14bit linear PCM. And lastly, you can write to the sample port while in buffer mode and it will XOR(iirc) the sample written and the current sample from the buffer, allowing for some interesting effects.
I'm a fan of chiptunes more than anything (I include Genesis FM into chiptune category), but I do have a MOD player for the PCE. Yes, realtime sample frequency scaling and all. IMO, it's not worth the 35% CPU resource when you can get rich and interesting sounds via other methods.
I hope I didn't imply that it couldn't. The PCE is definitely capable of warmer/sharper sounds because the 2612 only have a sine wave for a waveform type (unlike the 2151 and others), but the Genesis has the PSG to help with that :)Quote:
I didn't hear much that couldn't be reproduced on a MD without too much hassle :)
Not to mention the interesting (and pleasing) complex waveforms the FM chip can already generate.
That I would like to see :D None of the bomberman games use stream samples. But the GB/C only has 2 square lead channels, noise channel, and a 4bit PCM channel with only 4 volume levels (100%,50%,25%,mute). The GB/C, except for stereo(hard left/right) and a higher capable pitch, doesn't really match up to the NES audio system.Quote:
And some of the Bomberman music could even be done on a Gameboy.
I'm from Ohio, and the only place I ever saw a TG16 for sale was Elder Bearmans (department store). I could find the Master System in Hills department stores, Toys R Us, Meijers, and others.
I always wanted to get a TG16, but never got around to it. I'll have to hunt one down.
Tom, what EU SMS games to you consider to have good sound for the system?
Also, don't forget about adjusting that Rayxanber 3 sound effect!
The PSG certainly is useful peice of hardware to include, particularly for flute like tones. I was actually a bit surprised to see how often the PSG was used in Genesis games. (and even 32x games)Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
I cannot imagine doing music on MD without PSG.... those lovely 3 tone channels, perfect for background chords :D
I can definitely see how being there and comparing them at the time would give one a different perspective, personally I didn't play either Bloodlines or Rondo of Blood until just a few years ago and I had an overall positive impression of both. All of the games have their strengths, and I'm not one of the purists who thinks that even the controls should stay exactly the same throughout the series because frankly I never liked them to begin with. For me C:sOTN was a huge upgrade in many ways. Too bad they just milked the formula instead of improving it later on.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
Yes, I understood the gist of it from reading the wiki article and I did know the NES pretty well too. But thanks anyway for going into such heavy detail about it, it's always interesting to learn more about these systems as I'm (like you) a big fan of chip-based music. And I'm not trying to tell you that MD is superior, I just happen to like the way it sounds a tiny bit more than the other chip-based consoles.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
I agree (for the most part) about the Euro chiptune scene, I've just recently discovered some amazing sounding games for the NES such as silver surfer (Follin brothers).
"The PCE is definitely capable of warmer/sharper sounds because the 2612 only have a sine wave for a waveform type (unlike the 2151 and others), but the Genesis has the PSG to help with that :)"
Yeah Genesis games were often made to sound colder, I suppose that's why its sound chip is not very popular :P
The 2612 itself can sound very close to PSG though, so much that I could only tell the difference when a saw or triangle wave is used (Edit: Or the noise channel). And I disagree about sharpness, I think that's where it has somewhat of an edge because it has more clarity and more "oomph" than the competition, even those great sounding games that you've introduced me to. However if it weren't for the PSG and PCM capabilites of the MD, I would say that PCE or even NES sounds more dynamic and pleasing to my ears unless I'm really in the mood for FM.
I'm not about to get into GB tracking again, but I'll gladly direct you to some impressive examples. It's pretty crazy what you can do with a Gameboy and either LsDJ or Nanoloop.Quote:
Originally Posted by tomaitheous
LSDJ:
http://8bitcollective.com/music/CCIVORY/MACHINE/
http://8bitcollective.com/music/Rand...ctrowrestling/
NL:
http://8bitcollective.com/music/litt...xygen+(NL2.3)/
Or for actual game music check out Trip World, Action Man, Azure Dreams, and any Sunsoft title.
The Bomberman music is very minimalistic and as you said not that impressive technically, but it is interesting music :)
I always used to think that the "ring" sound in the Sonic games were PSG. I was wrong. But yeah, PSG adds so much (IMO) to the Genesis music. It gives it an extra sense of clarity that probably wouldn't be there is it were FM-only.
From what I've heard the Master System game that does the most complicted audio is The Flash (which is made by Probe I believe), the music certainly is pretty good for some of the levels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Redifer
The Flash is probably the best example. A few more notable ones:
Alien 3
Road Rash
Battlemaniacs
Micro Machines
Asterix and the Great Rescue
The Smurfs
And yet a few more if you count in the Game Gear:
Arena
Devilish
Perhaps more?
Several of those games you mention (including Flash) have that distinctive C64-eque Codemaster style music, and indeed Micro Machines was a Codemasters game.
I do particularly like that music style, especially that "bubbley" kind of sound. However I think the NES has some even better examples of this (Basicly any Codemansters -Camerica- game, like Mig 29, Super Robin Hood, Dizzy, Linus SpaceHead, etc)
You mean the arpeggio or whatever it is called where it is hitting a high and a low note in rapid succession? That is a very Euro sound. Kind of a pathetic attempt to sound like a chord. It's like trying to interlace sound, except failing. I think it is a law in Europe that you have to like it, though. It can be OK at times, I suppose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alvatron
I live in Ohio to...Got a boxed TG16 & CD add on with about 15 hucards and 5cd it your looking. PM me!
I remember that stage when I was a kid where the videogame market opened up and you could suddenly commonly come across games made outside of the UK, before you'd only find European designed games, Japanese arcade games ported by UK developers and Sega's Master System games.
The thing that struck me the most was how awful all the US made games sounded, really crude and amateurish in comparison to what I was used to.
The Japanese games often had good music though, they were really great at making a melody even in the early days.
What were the best early examples of US made games with impressive music?