Loading with music...

[José Pereira]

O.K. It doesn't interest if today it's worth or not.

We know that, for example, in Yoomp or in some demos we can have music during disk loading together with bars, bouncing PMGs, number counters,...

But, from what I remember, was that 3 or 4 rows instruments, noises,... on the old C64 DELTA was an only for tape users? And it was then, back on those days, possible we go moving the joystick up and down and clicking move to the next row mixing instruments, noises,... in realtime during loading?

And then it just stop and clean when the loading is completed?

 

And is it in some way possible anything like that on A8?

From this lately xBios talking I think that I read somewhere we could have two of the four POKEY channels?

But if anything like the Delta loader be possible then it would only be worth to have if in a tape normal baud rate? Disk loading would be so quick that we wouldn't have time to choose, mix and play, try and fully appreciate?

 

Anyone here ever thought "How To on A8" back then or in the present each time there's Delta loading in Commy?

[Rybags]

C64 can do full music during disk load, SID isn't needed for serial activity there. Like Atari excess CPU use can be an issue though but some C64 loaders run near fullscreen graphics kernals and do the disk I/O during an inactive part - Atari can't do that although possibly something like a Happy board could run user code to do it.

 

Atari uses 2 Pokey voices for SIO which means they become kinda useless for sound. But digital sound could be played on them + 2 other voices can be used (mostly) as normal.

Again CPU use crops up which means digital sound realistically would be low qual. The other problem is a custom SIO + music means that turbo loading becomes harder. In theory you could detect ability to e.g. do 2x or maybe 3x SIO and have a custom loader which uses that.

 

Other problem is custom SIO loader means you're now dealing with real floppies or ATR images and the modern day move is towards using XEX types wherever possible since they're more space efficient and can be used with menu systems more readily than ATR images.

[José Pereira]

In case anyone ever want to try, at least doing it but not on loading (a sort of music/fx mixing):

DELTA Loading.zip

Edited April 5, 2013 by José Pereira

[high voltage]

These Atari game tapes have 'REAL' music whilst loading:

[sack-c0s]

I'm suprised deus ex machina didn't end up on the Atari - the sync up would've worked perfectly

 

[José Pereira]

Just thought in something like this but original:

Imagine that on the left row you have pre-defined (also possible load others we want? There almost all in SAP->RMT->save in .xex) many well known/best A8 songs from games and then in the other rows on the right side we could mix/create a new remix song and listen it in realtime like in this C64 Delta loading.

If it even was the possibility to save them it would be great (at least we have today the emulators sound saving possibility).

What crazy sound noisy we would get!... For sure some strange sounds from guys like me ...

But I really would like this but in A8 and not a P.C. utility that emulate and/or then save into A8 file format. Something like those old 2-bit and Polish programs but instead of creating new ones the intention is the possibility to remix all the others that already exist.

But, of course, it would only be fun but also acessible to all even 'no musicians' if the same as Delta listening all the mixes at the same time you're you step through the various rows Menus.

 

What do you think?

(@Emkay: Talking seriously what do you think we could achieve?

What mixing/noises could we have on the Menu right rows?)

[José Pereira]

Just thought in something like this but original:

Imagine that on the left row you have pre-defined (also possible load others we want? There almost all in SAP->RMT->save in .xex) many well known/best A8 songs from games and then in the other rows on the right side we could mix/create a new remix song and listen it in realtime like in this C64 Delta loading.

If it even was the possibility to save them it would be great (at least we have today the emulators sound saving possibility).

What crazy sound noisy we would get!... For sure some strange sounds from guys like me ...

But I really would like this but in A8 and not a P.C. utility that emulate and/or then save into A8 file format. Something like those old 2-bit and Polish programs but instead of creating new ones the intention is the possibility to remix all the others that already exist.

But, of course, it would only be fun but also acessible to all even 'no musicians' if the same as Delta listening all the mixes at the same time you're you step through the various rows Menus.

 

What do you think?

(@Emkay: Talking seriously what do you think we could achieve?

What mixing/noises could we have on the Menu right rows?

Wich Options for mixing and noises do we have with POKEY to put on these rows?)

Edited April 6, 2013 by José Pereira

[thorfdbg]

We know that, for example, in Yoomp or in some demos we can have music during disk loading together with bars, bouncing PMGs, number counters,...

 

Anyone here ever thought "How To on A8" back then or in the present each time there's Delta loading in Commy?

 

The later Lucasfilms games had that. The bootstrap loader was entirely IRQ based, and thus loaded the games in the background. And, quite unnatural, the music was playing in the foreground. "The Eidolon" is such a game, it plays music while loading the mazes and figures from disk. It could actually even do that within the game - as said, the disk load routine is entirely running in the background.

 

As already said, only two of the four pokey voices are available then, as the other two are needed to create the SIO clocking. Nevertheless, the Lucasfilms games use the pokey modes 12 and 10, and the former has a lot of higher harmonics. With the "right" type of tunes, a single voice can play "almost" two notes at once. Can one really hear that "The Eidolon" has only two voices available? The music is very well picked to fit to the limitations of the hardware.

[sack-c0s]

To be fair I've heard some bloody good music from the C64 using 2 channels (to reserve the 3rd for effects) - It's more down to technique rather than technical aspects of the chip, so not really a limitation I'd be too dismissive of.

 

I'm guessing you'd need a patched version of whatever player you want to use to make sure it didn't trash the pokey channels being used for clocking the loading though

[xxl]

> I'm guessing you'd need a patched version of whatever player you want to use to make sure it didn't trash the pokey channels being used for clocking the loading though

 

a good example is the Delta Music Composer Player by Konop:

[high voltage]

I'm suprised deus ex machina didn't end up on the Atari - the sync up would've worked perfectly

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwJBsYJ16IE

 

These small UK companys didn't support A8, they probably never even heard of A8

[barnieg]

I think Deus Ex Machina was originally exclusive to the Spectrum which didn't help in this case. When I was in School the Atari 800XL was quite popular more so than the Amstrad CPC for example, but ports tended to be from the Commodore 64 and with limited time meant Atari specifics couldn't be coded and ended with degraded graphics because of the way Atari 8-bits handled the bitmap graphics.

 

It also didn't help that a lot of the games that were available for the Atari weren't as widely distributed and/or given shelf space, so games that were made didn't get bought! I still get surprised at the games that were available at the time

 

These small UK companys didn't support A8, they probably never even heard of A8

Edited April 8, 2013 by barnieg

[barnieg]

Was this anything like Frankie goes to Hollywood which was available on the Spectrum & Commodore 64? Meaning not quite like other games!

 

I'm suprised deus ex machina didn't end up on the Atari - the sync up would've worked perfectly

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwJBsYJ16IE

 

Just found this on the interwebs http://www.deusexmachina2.com/

Edited April 8, 2013 by barnieg

[Heaven/TQA]

delta music composer? is that good at all? or was it optimised for demos as Konop was part of Shadows? but is native tracker? and isn't Konop passed away, too?

[Wrathchild]

In these days of faster I/O devices for the A8, or cart releases, is there a need for music during loaders? Wouldn't most users prefer to fire up the title and get playing ASAP?

[xxl]

In these days of gfx (or sound or 16bit cpu) devices for the A8, is there a need for native gfx in games? Wouldn't most users prefer 320x240 in 1024 colours?

 

 

 

> delta music composer? is that good at all? or was it optimised for demos as Konop was part of Shadows? but is native tracker? and isn't Konop passed away, too?

 

DMC has recently been updated by Konop (including the ability to dynamically use of AUDCTL during I / O)

Edited April 8, 2013 by xxl

[TMR]

These small UK companys didn't support A8, they probably never even heard of A8

 

In Automata's case they didn't support the A8 but that's probably because they didn't consistently support anything past the Spectrum in the same way Red Rat was primarily an A8 house or Thalamus mostly did C64 stuff.

 

Lots of small UK companies like English, Mastertronic, Firebird, Zeppelin or Llamasoft (basically one man, it's not possible to get much smaller than that unless you find someone shorter!) tried to support the A8 and others released a couple of titles here and there as well. But actually selling Atari 8-bit games over shop counters in the UK was made more difficult because the market wasn't seen to be there; Shahid Ahmad has talked here previously about the problems he had getting Firebird to take Chimera despite it being a port of an existing product (which reduced publishing costs, no need to commission artwork) and the software distributors will probably have been one of the reasons behind their reluctance.

 

In the case of Deus Ex Machina the reason for not porting it elsewhere was probably more financial than anything else; it cost significantly more than the average 8-bit game to produce since there were actual celebrities who'd been on telly an' everything providing voice work, studio time was required to record them and so on (there are out-takes as well, i think they're in the WOS archive). But, despite some excellent reviews on the Spectrum and C64, it didn't sell and part of that problem was, again, the distributors; it wouldn't fit into a neat little genre slot and wasn't really aimed at kids so so Automata basically had to rely on word of mouth and mail order to shift units, not a way to reach the widest possible audience.

 

Was this anything like Frankie goes to Hollywood which was available on the Spectrum & Commodore 64? Meaning not quite like other games!

 

Sort of, although it's not as rigid a game and would probably be more comparable to the indie-developed "art games" we see these days whilst Frankie has a more traditional structure; it has a couple of messages to deliver in the dialogue and an experience to... well, experience, but you're guaranteed to finish the entire game every time because there's no way to "die" before the soundtrack gets to that point in the life cycle. It's worth at least experiencing once from end to end.

[sack-c0s]

...or just get stoned and listen to the audio tape.

[Heaven/TQA]

where can I find the latest DLT Composer? at the ftps I have found only files based 2004.

[Heaven/TQA]

I read xBios with google translate... 2 questions.

 

how can I use RMT tracks while loading? Do I need a special RMT Player ASM file?

where can I find the new player source code?

while loading... only 2 channels free?

 

maybe someone can do an example...

 

same goes with depacking while loading...

 

which PACKER do I need to use so xBios can load & depack it on the fly?

[xxl]

> where can I find the latest DLT Composer? at the ftps I have found only files based 2004.

 

PM sent

 

> how can I use RMT tracks while loading? Do I need a special RMT Player ASM file?

> where can I find the new player source code?

 

yes, 2 channels but player is not stable yet :/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqWlWRRZy7U

 

use DLT instead

 

 

> which PACKER do I need to use so xBios can load & depack it on the fly?

 

I'm prefer inflater http://atariarea.kra...sm/inflate.html

 

> maybe someone can do an example

 

appendix

 

two ways: compressed data are part of main file like this one (chkxex this file), or standalone compressed file (.df7)

 

In short, the decompressor fetch data from a file ( jsr xBIOS_GET_BYTE ) instead of memory ( lda (inputPointer), y )

 

---

in the example I used illegal OS function calls so only XL OS.

 

lda #15

jsr $ef9c ; graphics 15

tutorial-inflate-onfly.obx

tutorial.atr

Edited August 12, 2013 by xxl

[bfollett]

Phil Price (Creator of Alternate Reality) makes mention of some of the issues he encountered playing music during disk access in Alternate Reality. Read the last couple of lines of post #49 in the following thread.

 

http://atariage.com/...25#entry2798776

 

Bob

Edited August 12, 2013 by bfollett

[xxl]

> But it made the 9600 baud speed of floppy disks

 

hmm, maybe wrong use of AUDCTL makes a lot o IO errors

 

in my tests standard floppy speed is no problem

 

[Philip Price]

When I did Alternate Reality I did have music playing when doing certain disk loading (Mainly encounters). The Disk IO takes two of the four channels, on the other two I would play a tune. But either there was crosstalk or some other unexpected effect and some of the disk IO would fail. Some, but not all. I still left it in, because I felt some music helped distract the how much time it takes to load even a little bit of data from floppy. So I had a slightly longer disk IO(do to 1 or 2 I/o failures), but gained music. A trade I accepted.

 

Also since I did not have perfect (and early on any) documentation of hardware, there could be a state engine type issue I caused with the other channels by whatever I was doing with AMP on the two channels that should be free to do sound.

 

I don't remember if Atari OS does sound in sequence or in parallel with the disk I/o (i.e. the beep beep beep). In AR I was trying to do it in 'parallel' with the two free channels. (It did not always fail[otherwise I would have not used it, it mostly succeeded), but the failure rate was higher than normal)

 

Phil

Edited August 12, 2013 by Philip Price

[Heaven/TQA]

> But it made the 9600 baud speed of floppy disks

 

hmm, maybe wrong use of AUDCTL makes a lot o IO errors

 

in my tests standard floppy speed is no problem

 

 

Xxl can you post the source code?