abc2cvm 0.8 brings even more music to the ColecoVision

[PkK]

Today I released abc2cvm 0.8. It is a tool to bring music to the ColecoVision, focused on sheet music. It's input format is abc, used by many musicians to write down tunes and easy to read and write. It outputs music in a format suitable for use with libcvu.

 

You can download it at http://colecovision.eu/ColecoVision/development/abc2cvm.shtml

 

Here's the list of changes since the previous release:

 

-Basic support for multiple voices per tune.

-Basic support for repeats including variant endings.

-Fixed some unnecessary warnings triggered by uncommon bar lines.

-Fixed tune length message.

-Basic support for annotations.

-Added support for S header.

-Completed support for keys for major scales (Cb, C#, F#).

-Support for keys for some mixolydian scales (G Mix, D Mix, A Mix, E Mix, B Mix, C Mix and FMix).

-Completed support for keys for minor scales (F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, Bbm, Ebm, Abm).

-Added support for multiple tunes per file (X header).

-Basic support for appoggiatura.

-Basic dynamics support (p, mp, mf, f).

-Ignore clefs.

-Added warning for unimplemented duplets, triplets and quadruplets.

-Fixed support for shorthand note length notation.

-Added error message for numbers before pitch.

-Autoconf.

 

Philipp

[GroovyBee]

Any chance of adapting the code to output data suitable for Atari's TIA and POKEY chips?

[PkK]

Any chance of adapting the code to output data suitable for Atari's TIA and POKEY chips?

I have looked at some TIA documentation (and the wikipedia article on the POKEY). These chips should do (within their limitations, e.g. only two channels on the TIA and a smaller range of tones, which will be reproduced less accurately). The POKEY might well outperform the ColecoVision's chip.

However I see no need to change the output format for this (I might change it someday for reasons orthogonal to that).

All that would be needed would be to implement a variants of the function cvu_play_music() from libcvu for each chip. At least for the TIA this should be very straightforward.

 

Philipp

[GroovyBee]

Do you a version of the tool already compiled?

[PkK]

Do you a version of the tool already compiled?

 

Yes. For 64-bit Linux.

 

However it's just one file (main.cc), uses no exotic language constructs, no libraries except for the C and C++ standard library; it should be simple to compile with any C++ compiler.

 

Philipp