sack-c0s

my C64 interrupt handling code is about 12/13 years old now (think it came from a commodore format article) although if I want ultra-stable I have another one I use which is nearer 5....

what I might suggest about 'mayonaise' is that its a smashing pumpkins song (from the album 'siamese dream'). As folks keep editing my version is still my interpretation and way of doing it underneath it all. Maybe going back to the original song and listening to it may be an idea if you haven't already, and doing your own take on it. Because you are channel limited on 8-bits its a case of grabbing the elements that leap out at you most and prioritising those for use in the tune and filling in anything else with the space you have left and in this case what is in the RMT cover of the song is what jumped out and grabbed me - maybe you'll hear the song differently and provide a different interpretation? I don't want to be harsh on Emkay because he's trying to push the envelope (pun intended) but for what its worth the chuck rock tune was alright in bits, but it did have a couple of bits which were really out of tune and actually painful to listen to on the mp3, but overall I really did like the dragon tune. I think its a tuning issue with the instruments somewhere down the line as previously suggested. I get the feeling with emkay its more about creating the instruments as opposed to the actual music and he might benefit from joining forces with someone who is driven by creating the tunes themselves. Not intending to be negative - I think he's more handing us the tools to do stuff than the tunes themselves. maybe he could post some info on how flexible the control is in terms of tuning along with his instrument sets so the more musically-driven can take them and add their input? IE which instruments are very rigid due to the way they're created, which ones do you have a lot of control of, etc. But I definately want folks to keep posting the mp3s because I will admit I have dismissed some tunes as awful then heard the mp3s from hardware and realised it actually sounds good. seeing as my machine is buried at the moment and the floppy drive is playing up its tricky for me to try everything myself. Keep throwing the ideas out - good or bad. often 2 or 3 bad ideas merge into a really good one. damn we need the atari equivalent of reSID

In many games the action will slow down in certain situations, like when there are a large number of enemies on the screen at once perhaps. Overclocking the CPU often takes away the slowdown. IIRC, if you overclock more than 50% then sprite attributes DMA becomes unreliable (resulting in graphical glitches) 1025732[/snapback] Ahh - fair point. It's just in a lot of 8-bit machines inevitably devlopers end up resorting to nasty tricks to push the machine which are cycle-timed and without delving too deeply into NES code I assumed the situation would be similar...

yep! thats why when i overclock a NES, the pitch of the sound gets slightly higher. 1023701[/snapback] so.. why overclock a NES (apart from 'because I can')? - the software is timed to the system to a varying extent so you wouldn't gain anything.

The NES actually used a custom soundchip which was combined with the CPU IIRC

IIRC the gameboy colour version of IK was written by the Rowland bros (who did creatures and mayhem in monsterland on the C64) and used the thalamus interactive sound enigne (there should be a soundengine demo ROM floating around the net someplace). Was produced around 2000/2001 or somwhere around that point and a bloody nice version to boot. Don't know much about the other versions though EDIT: It would be 2000 because it says on the box. D'oh!

Imagine PC World, a UK store which shifts boxes of PCs to unwitting and confused people. You want to check email? Have an all-singing media centre PC with everything. Oh - and here's the helpline number. Now imagine the bloke on the end of said helpline when they call up 20 mins later because they can't figure out where the big 3-pin plug marked '240V AC' goes. That's me, that is. I've hit every cliche apart from being outsourced (which happens in the next 2 months aparrently). going back to university in september though to study software engineering and hopefully create something. Got some projects going in my spare time (testing wierd stuff, writing games, 8-bit coding of course) - but work wipes me out. I'd love something where I can either do what I want to be doing during the working day or would settle for at least being able to have a job where i have energy left when i wander off home to do my own projects.

that's actually a damn nice game - I like the way it makes me feel like a newbie and I'm having to rediscover how to play tetris again because of the new shapes. If you asked me on my first attempt I'd have said it was a bad thing being set in my ways and being able to play the original subconciously but thinking about it and playing some more...

To be honest I'm not so sure about finishing or releasing the mobile version. That would be heading into the same territory as Apple (msuic) vs apple (computers) where 2 organisations using a trademark rightfully end up in the same busniess area and all hell breaks loose. This argument has been going on for 5 years now and still nobody has a clue so it's possibly best steered clear of.

I occasionally toy with the idea of doing 'Bounces' ( http://www.mameworld.net/retroview/c64/bounces.htm ) - it's techinchally acheivable, 2 players and a ball and I had a lot of fun playing the C64 version

You don't need to be a C64 guy to know that 1005768[/snapback] Yeah - reason I didn't do Thalamusik is because the A8 already has a version by hubbard himself

I guess, Reaxion "A8" is too new, to be recognized, when it comes to the best games in 1990-2005. 1007142[/snapback] Oh - it got recognised alright...

producer, quality assurance, even legal support when the need arises Typical you lot would complete the bloody game because I can't actually do it!

I just spent most of my night playing Geometry wars - retro evolved which when you work it out costs around the same as 2 pints of beer. if you can't afford so much off-the-shelf software you can always pad your collection out legitimately with live arcade...

Yeah - I know it's a .SID instead of anything Atari format but it's for a flicky-like game I'm coding for the C64 (when I sort out a couple of technical issues I'm having at the mo - awkward bugger of a game because all the sprites end up on the same lines and I want paralax which rules out softsprites). Was also a (failed?) attempt at doing Follin-esque 2 channel drums. But the first tune (Bonus stage probably I think) borrows the opening from 'I'm not okay'' by my chemical romance - should I port it across to the Atari and finish the whole song in this style? sprogs.sid.zip

I actually have a small loop of 'I'm not okay' done in a vaguely bubble-bobble-esque style on the C64 already which I might be using for a game - i'll dig that out later....

I'd forgotten about it since - mostly because the song got overplayed quite seriously at the time and I got sick of hearing it everywhere I went. listening to it even more would just drive me crazy There's a couple of things that would be good to try I reckon - Girl anachronism by the dresden dolls would be interesting. The 'NES covers' thread on somethingawful.com also gave me some ideas as well - they were tossed off (ooh-err!) quickly and don't always follow the rules of the system they're supposed to come from but they provide ideas and a basis to work from (like the SOAD covers there). failing that my last.fm profile shhows what I've been listening to, so anything in there that seems a good idea I could give a go...

other programmers must be the audience. which means we've got a tough crowd to please

on the SID you generally use the square (pluse) wave - but the SID gives fine control over the duty-cycle of the wave so sweeps are used a lot to give sounds with a lot of different textures. if any of you folks use an apple mac then get SIDplay on there - it have live register viewing and a speed option so you can slow the music down and watch the registers. has been a help for me at times. I've always thought martin galways music does suit the atari very well because it has bass sounds that are very sharp and have a lot of punch to them and a lot of the time he uses bass sounds like that to compensate fot the lack of drums.

Hiya, nice one I got your message yesterday but my brain was dead after a nights work - I'll have a looksie see if I have some music for you tomorrow or thursday

Yes, you select a graphic mode and then the VIC-II will display without any display list or CPU intervention. The VIC can generate raster interrupts though, so if you want to do screen splitting you can tell the VIC to cause an interrupt at any rasterline you wish (unlike DLI you can have raster interrupts in the middle of a character line). 992705[/snapback] ???? Are you sure?? I thought c64 can only generate raster interrupts at beginning of a certain rasterline.... 993500[/snapback] that's true... you have to manually wait until the middle of the line

Mayhem in monsterland. As i said ages back in another thread it might have to take a hit in terms of colours (on the happy levels at least) but the biggest bit of technichal trickery so far as the 64 version is concerned is the scrolling - which is an A8 strength.

Hiyas cybernoid, Nice tune there - for some reason when I listen to it I can imagine playing a rastan-like platform adventure game. I really need to wake up my work-killed brain and get back into doing some music...

Well my thoughts have turned to mastering again (which will no doubt cheer up TMR ) Did such a thing exist? or failing that can anyone suggest any tips or tricks for reliably speeding up a tape load? 10 mins is a bloody long time to be writing a loading tune for...

the c64 description seems right to me, although the scrolling limitations can be overcome with hacks likes VSP and FLD and the colour limitations can be surpassed using FLI. it's all to do with how the scroll registers work at a hardware level - they trigger and start a new line of character blocks *precisely* when the Y scroll bits match the lower 3 bits of the line number, so you can delay them (across a line for VSP, or down lines for FLD) or force them to happen every line so each lines has its own colour data (for FLI). but pretty much right, yeah.