sack-c0s

well I've used them on the commodore 64 in place of an atari-style stick, and on the VCS - so i assume it's fine.

'[giving away] ONE OCEAN A DEPTHS AWAY A WEEK FOR ONE FULL YEAR.' so... that would be 51 copies then? the 51 he didn't get I presume...

nice - now this I really do like Can't wait to hear what it's like when you've finished.

to be honest I barely use filters on the C64 either seeing as all the 64s i own have 8580-SID chips (very little filtering occurs) and the filter effects are very unpredictable from machine to machine. at the end of the day everything is a tradeoff and I would rather have the extra channel.

it's actually all 8-bit sounds. Odie/cosine has been playing with RMT and has shown me a thing or two to show that you can still sound damn good using only 8-bit sounds and no filters (now all I have to do is try and sound as good as he does I find the SID-like sounds hard to tweak and control so I tend not to use them. eventually I might have some kind of breakthrough but until then... glad some folks liked it anyhow.

Couple of quick tunes here - Ideally I'd have liked to polish them up more, do a couple more covers and put them into a music demo and release it today, but time is against me so I thought i'd post regardless. The teen spirit cover needs work methinks, but I'm pretty happy with heart shaped box... covers.zip

First entries have arrived ... Come on guys! I'm knackered man - it's been a long week! 4 patterns in and a few instruments sorted though

I've got some free time this weekend and I've been out of the loop for a while, so let's have a bash then

I nkow - but what made me think it'd work is the really strong bassline it has. I'll give it a shot this weekend and see how it works out

I think even martin Galway struggled to get that one up standard on the C64 - but it's a damn nice tune (and his conversion is pretty good as it happens). I'd like to see how it works out on the pokey though. Currently listening to Rasmus - In the Shadows and pondering a cover of that...

yeah - I was very impressed by them - musically great, but I'm not certain about the practicality of using them in demos. all good stuff though

Anyone know what the ZX spectrum demos were like? I'd like to know how my demo would've compared if I'd finished it on time...

Aren't most of the hard tunes modifications of the original C64 playroutines? In which case I'll have to admit defeat on this one because that's Drax original songdata note perfect Seriously though - I think my bassline sounds a bit rough compared to the HARD version. Oh well - with the mass of good atari tunes out there it's a tough job getting through them all to see which ones have and haven't been covered - but I try and keep it original.

wierd isn't it? I haven't seen any cool tunes posted here for a while then I check up today to find 2 f'kin *awesome* tunes waiting for me nice one

That is really damn nice - I like it. sadly I've had a serious case of real life and have been working like hell to get ready for a job interview (Tomorrow) so sadly 8-bit things like the forever compo and RMT have had to take a backseat. I wanted to have something done for the Atari and spectrum - but time ran out for me. oh well... I'll pick up the pace again in a couple of days when this is over and done with

sounding pretty good (little scratchy under emulation, but I'm assuming like all sound stuff it sounds much better on the hardware) what are the tech details of this? how much rastertime are you using to do this?

That's the refresh rate, which isn't the same. Frame rate is how many diffrent frames are actually put up during that timespan. And when you get too much onscreen the frame rate drops. On any system. Console games tend to express this as slowdown, pulling the game down to get all the frames in. PC games tend to start skipping frames to keep the gameplay moving at full-speed. Haven't really noticed any framedropping on 8/16-bit games though - generally if a game frame takes more than a video frame they cut back on enemies/bullets/objects so it fits again, so still running at the full refresh rate. so framerate is constant - it's the amount of objects that changes depending on machine power

if we most do this... The sega has the faster CPU and a Z80 dedicated to driving the sound hardware, whilst the SNES has the slower 65816 and a custom SPC for controlling the ound hardware. however - the graphics hardware on the SNES seems (but i can't swear to this as gosepel truth) to produce higher reoslutions, more colours and more overlay layers. it also has rotating/scalling effects and a few DMA tricks up its sleeve which take the load off the cpu, so although it's a slower chip it's well supported by the custom chip. the sound chip has more channels and is capable of a few DSP effects like reverb, although from a homebrew point of view is a bitch to code for. as far as framerate is concerned in the 8/16-bit era it was pretty much customary to run at full refresh rate, so they'd both run at 60hz NTSC or 50hz PAL. Even ignoring the games I'd pick the SNES/super famicom over the genesis/megadrive. factor in games and the sega doesn't have a chance. on the 8-bit front the master system does bury the NES in a hole technically speaking though.

after a bit of a drunken fumble (ooh-err) I think I've found a compromise between crappy bassnotes and crappy high notes. Initially I was playing with the 15khz option to get standard notes (distortion A) low enough to be useful as bass notes. fine, added an arpeggio. fine. then comes a backing line. sounds alright compared to the original MP3 I was working from. but the lead was a pain in the ass. So I tried converting to stereo, and putting the higher pitch on the right hand chip (with it's own 15khz turned off), added some extra channels to fatten everything up and not leave the lead channel sounding lonely. And I think it's a pretty decent compromise actually. just next time I'll try it with something that isn't phillip glass (although to be fair Rob Hubbard did actually make it sound pretty damn good for Delta). now to try and do something decent with it... koyaanisqatsi.zip

yeah - I actually had it on the Commodore 16. was never any good at it though...

who said that?

i'd have to agree there on the basis the 64 barely even *has* an OS:) but if I wanted a cool OS I'd have to go with the Acorn/BBC OS (i love the idea of having an assembler in the basic), but for enough OS to be comfortable, and to be banked out when not needed I think the Atari one would do better.

I accidentally started world war 3 on a C64 IRC channel with this suggestion, but stay with me on this one.. If I had to choose the perfect 8-bit machine to code for off the top of my head it would pretty much be a C64/Atari 8-bit hybrid, pretty much a 50/50 split, with the odd bit taken from elsewhere. I'd have to ask for: * Z80 CPU (clocked to around 4mhz to bring it up to around the same theoretical speed as a 2mhz 6502) * 6581 SID (But with more controllable filters if you please) * VIC-II style sprites, with c64 style bitmap modes with the A8 Colour Depth (not sure of how that'd work from a technical standpoint as each attribute block would then be 32 bits) * A8-style Display lists (Giving DLIs, mode changes and address control like the A8 has) * NES/Gameboy style scrolling (wrapping screen memory, meaning only new data need be shifted). again not sure how you could have display lists AND this. only really needed on the X axis, as the Y axis could be handled in display list construction * STA WSYNC is a godsend, that would be needed * Acorn/BBC speed disk drives at the end of the day I do like the A8 and the 64 for their little quirks and differences. although I am growing to hate the sinclair spectrum right now...

...for music. For game sounds, the POKEY's four channels with identical capabilities is a clear winner. Three channels with filters, a large selection of waveforms and the option of ring modulation versus four channels... i stand by my original statement. =-) and the SID being able to actually *hit* a note at 10 paces goes down nicely too

Purists will disagree with me, but I prefer PC all the way. even on the C64 side of things I use GoatTracker under windows (which is a nice editor, pretty accurate given that more time has been invested in accurate SID emulation than its Atari counterpart, but the RMT editor layout blows it away in terms of ease of use). I'd like to see RMT continue, but possibly with a little native-side tool for making the odd tweak so you can get the bulk of the work done under windows and optimise slightly on the hardware itself.