RushJet1

Yes. Because I know how to do this now https://javatari.org/?cart=https://atariage.com/forums/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=820577

Yeah and that was just me making a track that kept similar tuning to the actual TIA. I later ported it to the TIA though

I halfway jokingly told Osman that I might have to really try at making a TIA version of the soundtrack if emulating bupboop isn't possible sand.bin

Just as an easy link to the first track: https://javatari.org/?cart=https://atariage.com/forums/applications/core/interface/file/attachment.php?id=803118

Three ways: 1) make percussion that does it, and retrigger the percussion every x steps as necessary. For example if your chords are 3 notes and your tempo is 5 frames per row, then you'd need a 15-length instrument of those three notes and you'd repeat them every 3 rows so they line up. You have a limit of 15 percussion instruments so this is kind of limiting, chord-wise, especially if you have other percussive instruments. 2) you can do this with instruments if you set the sustain start to something like 1 and the release to 4. It will play the "sustain" part in a loop until the note is no longer held. This is very limiting as there are 7 instruments max. 3) just use patterns, but you can re-use old patterns over and over. Patterns do not need to line up between channel 1 and channel 2, so you can have one channel be looping a shorter arpeggio pattern and be doing whatever on the other one. I did this for the empty space in one of my .ttt files a while back- it basically plays a 4-note pattern, then plays the same empty 60 rows pattern multiple times to save space. I might retool a program I wrote awhile ago to optimize .ttt files for repetition this way. If I ever need to.... edit: I would not recommend 1 or 2 because each frequency jump is not the same between notes. You basically have to make a new instrument or percussion for each individual chord as a result. I'll attach an example of the 3rd method. example.bin example.ttt

A couple of things: - Vertical movement is slower than horizontal movement. This is a result of the double-wide pixels I think, but you could change movement based on the ratio to make it feel closer. Basically make him move left/right a little slower to match the up/down speed (or increase the up/down speed, either way). - Bomberman returns to his default "facing the screen" pose every time you let go of the controller, but he should just continue facing the same direction you were just pushing. Probably set it to the first sprite in the animation of each direction so he doesn't look like he is taking a step but pausing. It is looking great so far though. The animations look good and the movement looks like it's properly moving you around boxes/you aren't getting stuck.

Thanks for the comments It's good to know it works on real hardware too- I'm just stuck in Emulationland hoping it's accurate.

update: 5bithief.bin

bomber2.bin Started on the 2nd level theme from Bomberman on Turbografx. Just a short wip demo to see if it would work.

atari.bin just in case you put the atariage logo in at some point haha

I made what I think is a reasonable 1-channel approximation of the bomb sound effect from the TG16 (shortened to sound more like the Super Bomberman 2 version because the echo is kind of unnecessary, especially with two channels). bse2x.bin

Either that or you can simplify the backgrounds to only use one green during the explosions, but use the more colorful background when it's not exploding, shouldn't be too noticeable.

Wouldn't the explosions just be background tiles that animate? I'm pretty sure that's what Bomberman 2 did on the NES.

I played the demo for a bit. As for collision, I'd recommend checking these points (in yellow): That way his head can be a little on top of the ones above since that's how the games usually handled it. Also enable diagonal movement because it feels a lot more stiff just doing up/down/left/right.

Updated again. Yeah I'm fine with you using this track (and others I might make in the future) in this game, that was the idea! I'll send you relevant files when I'm done (I can export to k65, mads, dasm, csv format with TIATracker). Edit: So far my file is PAL; is your game going to be NTSC or PAL? bomber.bin

bomber.bin Updated

I think you could go pretty far with this - the original NES games didn't have big bosses like the SNES ones did, but your game could totally do that because the Atari 7800 can scroll larger graphics around the screen with a background. If that doesn't load to the right time, the first boss is around 8:50. It's just a big mostly static character that floats around and occasionally uses an attack. Not super graphically intense, doesn't require very good AI or anything. I'd think this would be totally possible on the 7800.

Saw this on the Zeropage video and thought it looked cool, and wondered if I could reproduce the Bomberman theme somewhat on the TIA, here's my shot at it so far (dies after the 7th frame though) bomber.bin

Hmm, sell my copy for thousands or keep it for nostalgia's sake?

I think some of the 7800 sounding better than the 2600 boils down to competition. Games were under a lot of pressure to sound better in 1986 than in 1977-1983. During the 2600's first run, the competitors also had pretty rudimentary sound capabilities- even the PCs had just a beeper a lot of the time. Having more available RAM and ROM space didn't hurt, though.

You can do similar things with the SMS to make it sound nicer: Game gear is identical to SMS but with stereo.

My statement about the key of E specifically applies to "sound 6" on the 2600. Each sound/distortion has its own scale, though some are shared.

I think this was a decision made based on cost alone, not on aesthetics. They could have used a POKEY like the Atari 5200 if they wanted to avoid the "NES Sound" which wasn't really too prevalent back then anyway. They probably basically looked at it and were like "we have this thing we need to release cheap. Can it do sound?" and heard "yes" because of the 2600 support, and that was the end of the story. Adding extra chip support for cartridge-based sound was a shortsighted way to sell the console cheaper.

Many demos I've noticed stick to E minor with the C as a 7th etc because those are literally the keys available to the "6" sound that sound in tune. The first TIA track I wrote does this exclusively: You can do some stuff with the normal squares too but they're more shaky tuning-wise. It helps to vary it up and have more than one thing going on per channel, like perscussion or harmonies. You can even cover other tracks if you are smart about where they are transposed to so you avoid problem notes. popcorn2600.mp3 But there are definitely tracks that aren't possible on the TIA, whether due to frequency problems or polyphony... I will say that such extreme limitations make it fun to write music for occasionally.

Yes instead of the POKEY I would propose to make an enhanced version of what the 7800 has. Maybe double the channels, increase the bit depth of the pitch registers to include more actual notes, maybe add some extra sounds! Wait that's the POKEY