U-235 SoundEngine released!

[sh3-rg]

When you've got musicians the calibre of 5o5, 2 tracks are sometimes enough :0)

 

Supporting >4 channels might be an impressive tick in a check box on a list of features, but game designers mostly just want the sound side of things to be as lightweight and efficient as possible and "sufficient" is usually good enough. Having the effects supported 100% is also more desirable than just a bit more of everything so that's what most will vote for before extending capabilities beyond what the musicians are already producing.

 

When I used 16+ channel trackers before on pretty restricted 20 year old hardware, the compromise on sound quality wasn't exactly massive but it gobbled up too much resources. I'd hate to think what would be left of the Jaguar playing 16+ channels of music plus in-game SFX. It wouldn't suit every game that's for sure :0)

[LinkoVitch]

When I get some time I do plan to add in support for other formats, just not got much time at the moment to do much of anything code related. All things in time I guess

 

sh3, I don't think you have pushed him adequately.. although I wouldn't be surprised if he did some win magic with a 0 channel mod! The guy is a musical wizzard (he deserves the extra 'z')

[Chilly Willy]

When you've got musicians the calibre of 5o5, 2 tracks are sometimes enough :0)

 

Supporting >4 channels might be an impressive tick in a check box on a list of features, but game designers mostly just want the sound side of things to be as lightweight and efficient as possible and "sufficient" is usually good enough. Having the effects supported 100% is also more desirable than just a bit more of everything so that's what most will vote for before extending capabilities beyond what the musicians are already producing.

 

When I used 16+ channel trackers before on pretty restricted 20 year old hardware, the compromise on sound quality wasn't exactly massive but it gobbled up too much resources. I'd hate to think what would be left of the Jaguar playing 16+ channels of music plus in-game SFX. It wouldn't suit every game that's for sure :0)

Yes, more than 16 channels is too much for older consoles... unless ALL you are doing is playing music. But 8 should be good, which is why that's what my MOD player code handles. Even with XM, it's pretty rare to need more than 12 channels unless the XM is meant as music for listening, not for games.

[Zerosquare]

There's a small bug in the U235 doc:

The sound engine can be copied into the DSP RAM with the following simple loop:

move.w #2048,d0

lea dspcode,a0

move.l #D_RAM,a1

.loop:

move.l (a0)+,(a1)+

dbra.w d0,.loop

#2048 should be #2047, as dbra stops on -1, not on 0

[LinkoVitch]

What's an extra long between friends

 

I'll patch that in the next release, ta.

[LinkoVitch]

NecroBUMP!

But actual news.. I have just released version 0.22 of the U-235 SE. Some minor fixes, I cannot remember all of which as it's been sat languishing on various disks and repo's for 4 (COUNT EM) 4 years!! wow! that's rubbish! I'm sorry, life and all that.

Anyway, some minor tweaks, one significant change which hopefully resolves an issue, is that when making a call to play a sample you need to divide the playback rate by 2, this frees up a much larger range of possible synthetic frequencies needed by the mod player in the higher octaves. It's very simple, if you want to play a sample at 12kHz, you simply send the play command with the frequency 6kHz. This is a loss of frequency resolution of 1 bit at the least significant end, so should have 0 noticeable effect

Anyone finds any issues please let me know here, via PM or email.

Now to get started on 0.23! (still got a huge growing list of things to do!)

Oh and the link: https://www.u-235.co.uk/soundengine-0-22-released/

[JagChris]

Feature request, multi tasking.

[LinkoVitch]

Feature request, multi tasking.

 

Not quite sure what you are asking for here? There is a small element of multi-tasking in the engine core as it is, it shares the CPU with the Sound Engine, Mod player, Random Number Generator and Joypad reader. All of which are pretty much modules in their own rights, and run in a prioritised fashion (RNG being the lowest).

 

There are plans to allow user code modules to be hooked in (always has been on the cards), but not gotten around to that yet, it's primary purpose is sound, and there is plenty of stuff I need to fix and optimise with that. Already started the optimisation of portions of the code whilst I ease back into it, but there is roughly 3100 lines of RISC ASM to sift through and keep working together (I've already broken it a couple of times with single line tweaks )

[Zerosquare]

Anyway, some minor tweaks, one significant change which hopefully resolves an issue, is that when making a call to play a sample you need to divide the playback rate by 2, this frees up a much larger range of possible synthetic frequencies needed by the mod player in the higher octaves. It's very simple, if you want to play a sample at 12kHz, you simply send the play command with the frequency 6kHz. This is a loss of frequency resolution of 1 bit at the least significant end, so should have 0 noticeable effect

Just wait until the "since I updated U-235, my music is one octave too high, and speech sounds like Donald Duck" posts

[LinkoVitch]

Just wait until the "since I updated U-235, my music is one octave too high, and speech sounds like Donald Duck" posts

 

It's all part of my plan, I have started a new life like Michael Jackson, but I couldn't afford an oxygen tent, so I got a Helium one instead, I am now trying to make everything else sound normal to me

[swapd0]

ADPCM samples to save memory and bandwidth.

[LinkoVitch]

Sample compression is already on the backlog of things to do Focusing on a bit of a code tidy, bug fixes and optimisations for the next release, although not likely to squash all bugs alas. This is beta afterall

[swapd0]

One question, the object file format that you've released it's in BSD? Can you include ELF object format? if it's compiled with rmac it easy.

[LinkoVitch]

I just checked and RMAC seems happy to create ELF objects, however they don't seem to work too well with RLN, I guess you are using some other tool for linking? I should be able to include both BSD and ELF format object files however, not like they are huge.

[ggn]

ld can link rmac elf object files no problems.

[swapd0]

I'm trying to use gcc 8.2.

[Zerosquare]

Sample compression is already on the backlog of things to do

Hey, it's been on mine too. Maybe we could join our efforts and not release it together

[42bs]

 

, but there is roughly 3100 lines of RISC ASM to sift through and keep working together (I've already broken it a couple of times with single line tweaks )

 

Assembly programmers rule: First make it work, then optimize, then make it work again

[LinkoVitch]

Hey, it's been on mine too. Maybe we could join our efforts and not release it together

 

I was thinking we should draw up a list of features that people want, and then split the list 50/50 between our two engines,

[LinkoVitch]

 

Assembly programmers rule: First make it work, then optimize, then make it work again

 

That's a pretty common rule, not forgetting whilst optimizing the code go though tutting at how badly written parts are that you are rewriting (that you wrote months/years ago)

[dilinger]

I'm trying to use gcc 8.2.

I'm using it as well. I have notice smaller size code than previous much older gcc versions (using the same compiling options) but there are also some weird 'nop' instruction usage here and there for no obvious reason(s).

I've used the version 9 too but this is a Work in Progress.

[LinkoVitch]

ld can link rmac elf object files no problems.

 

I'm using RLN with RMAC, not LD. I can include an ELF object file, but for my main Makefile and example code I'll stick to RLN / ALN I think. Other than people who are writing stuff with tools like GCC, I suspect there aren't many using LD?

[dilinger]

 

Other than people who are writing stuff with tools like GCC, I suspect there aren't many using LD?

I use vasm, vlink and gcc; everything with ELF format.

Talking about ELF, does the Jiffi tool source code is available? I would like to add the ELF format.

[LinkoVitch]

Well as of version 0.23 (not released just yet ) there will be an ELF binary object included in the release.

 

For questions about Jiffi, probably worth starting another thread and IIRC ask Cyrano Jones ?

[+CyranoJ]

JiFFi is all ggn