Possible to play Soundtracker-like Mods on ATARI 2600 ?

[Lord-Chaos]

The biggest advantage of Soundtracker/Protracker Music-Modules on the AMIGA was,that they did not take much memory instead of fully digitalized music.

 

Soundtracker-players have been ported to almost all 8 Bit systems , also for the ATARI 800 XL.

 

The advantage is,that you have a few samples + the patterns and the program changes/mixes the samples in real-time.The AMIGA has its custom chips for this , a program for ATARI 800 XL must do it itself.

 

This should be possible with the ATARI 2600 , too.You only need one sample and data for the music.

 

Anyone tried this ?

 

Another possibility is to let the computer create own waveforms.There´s a program called "Softsynth" for the ATARI 800 and something similar could be possible with ATARI 2600.

 

And it should be possible to create a speech-program like "S.A.M." on the ATARI 2600 (SAM was available for ATARI 800 etc.).

This is a phonetic speech program , so it builds words of very small samples.This should be possible on an ATARI 2600,too.

 

Anyone tried this before ?

 

BTW : Everything that works on the 2600 will work on 7800 or 5200 even better , and because the 7800 sound chip is so bad (compared to the graphics) , digitized sound + Soundtracker mods /speech would be nice for games.

 

Thimo

[Paul Slocum]

I've written a fairly comprehensive music driver for the 2600, and it is slowly being improved by adding features and reducing the size. Thomas has been helping me optimize the code. Currently the driver and music data for a pretty long song can fit into 2k-3k. And I'm planning on writing a song editor and maybe a Windows player for it sometime in the future.

 

http://www.mindspring.com/~paul-slocum/sequencer.html

 

However, I don't think it would be feasible to write a mod player for the 2600 since it has such limited pitch and only 2 voices. The 2600 is capable of pretty good music, but the music has to be written specifically for the 2600 accounting for its limitations.

 

While you can do some digitized sound on the 2600, it's not very practical since you have to blank the screen. But I am planning on doing a blank screen 2600 demo that plays a song with digitized drums.

 

-Paul

[Lord-Chaos]

However, I don't think it would be feasible to write a mod player for the 2600 since it has such limited pitch and only 2 voices.  The 2600 is capable of pretty good music, but the music has to be written specifically for the 2600 accounting for its limitations.

 

While you can do some digitized sound on the 2600, it's not very practical since you have to blank the screen.  But I am planning on doing a blank screen 2600 demo that plays a song with digitized drums.

 

-Paul

 

AFAIK everything with a soundchip can do something similar to a Soundtracker or something similar to SAM.

This is even possible on a speaker-only PC or a Beeper-only Sinclair Spectrum.

 

Only 1 sample is required and the computer calculates the right pitch in realtime (computers like AMIGA have hardware for this).

 

But if the 2600 cannot display any graphics , this is quite bad.Softsynth on the ATARI 800 also did not allow to display graphics,but it was possible to change this and display some Graphics 3 lines.But the sound-quality become worse.

 

But this may be a good idea for a demo.

 

So this may be better idea for ATARI 7800 , if it´s possible to create big games (128K or more) , it´s possible to have better sound.Soundtracker MOD for title , should be almost possible to convert MODs from the ATARI 800 1:1. And Digis for ingame.

 

I don´t understand why ATARI did not use the Pokey for the 7800.Or something better.But even the ATARI ST has no better soundchip than the ATARI 800.

 

Thimo

[Paul Slocum]

AFAIK everything with a soundchip can do something similar to a Soundtracker or something similar to SAM.

This is even possible on a speaker-only PC or a Beeper-only Sinclair Spectrum.

 

You're right -- it probably would be possible, but since you have to blank the screen it's just not very useful. Pitfall II did it, but it had the help of the DPC chip.

 

I don´t understand why ATARI did not use the Pokey for the 7800.Or something better.

 

I don't either. It was certainly one of Atari's dumbest moves. I've been reading some about the Pokey lately and have been considering writing my own music driver for it. The Pokey is a pretty good chip and while I think the SID overall is better, I think the POKEY has some advantages that weren't properly exploited.

 

-Paul

[Lord-Chaos]

AFAIK everything with a soundchip can do something similar to a Soundtracker or something similar to SAM.

This is even possible on a speaker-only PC or a Beeper-only Sinclair Spectrum.

 

You're right -- it probably would be possible, but since you have to blank the screen it's just not very useful. Pitfall II did it, but it had the help of the DPC chip.

 

Was there digitzed sound in Pitfall 2 ? I don´t have this game for the VCS , only for the Coleco and computers.

 

I don´t understand why ATARI did not use the Pokey for the 7800.Or something better.

 

I don't either. It was certainly one of Atari's dumbest moves. I've been reading some about the Pokey lately and have been considering writing my own music driver for it. The Pokey is a pretty good chip and while I think the SID overall is better, I think the POKEY has some advantages that weren't properly exploited.

 

-Paul

 

Yes.I think the POKEY is a little bit older than the SID (although Commodore already used the SID in the ancient Commodore 610) and there were may more programmers who made the well-known SID sounds.

Since most of the games converted from the C64 to the ATARI have no music (Spellbound , Arkanoid etc. - music is missing) it´s difficult to compare.There are just a lot more SID pieces than Pokey pieces and in BASIC the POKEY isn´t really the best.

But if you look at games - most of the very old games have quite bad music on the C64 , the ATARI´s music in these games is often better.After 1985 the SID music improved , because of guys like Rob hubbard , Martin Galway and more.They never did Pokey music , although

there´s a XL version of Warhawk (Hubbard) which was quite good,one of Last V8 (Hubbard) which was very bad and one of International Karate,which is quite good.I don´t think Hubbard did them himself.

 

Good programmers managed to get incredible sound on the poor Spectrum Beeper or the Amstrad CPCs AY soundchip or the ATARI ST´s poor soundchip.

 

BTW concerning the ATARI 7800 : Is it difficult to create carts with extra chips like the POKEY in Ballblazer ? I like the 7800 , its graphics is better than C64 or maybe even NES , but the problem is the soundchip.

A video game system made in 1984 should have a better soundchip than the other consoles.

 

Thimo

[Paul Slocum]

But if you look at games - most of the very old games have quite bad music on the C64 , the ATARI´s music in these games is often better.

 

Exactly. The SID has a lot more to work with and it is simpler to program fancy stuff than on the POKEY. So I think all the best music programmers focused on the SID and the POKEY was never as developed. But there are some Hubbard POKEY songs in the SAP archive, and they're quite good.

 

BTW concerning the ATARI 7800 : Is it difficult to create carts with extra chips like the POKEY in Ballblazer ? I like the 7800 , its graphics is better than C64 or maybe even NES , but the problem is the soundchip.

 

I've seen POKEY 7800 boards before and I remember them being really simple (mainly just a PROM and the POKEY) but I could be wrong. You might ask on the 7800 forum. Best Electronics does sell POKEY chips for $5.

 

-Paul

[Lord-Chaos]

But if you look at games - most of the very old games have quite bad music on the C64 , the ATARI´s music in these games is often better.

 

Exactly. The SID has a lot more to work with and it is simpler to program fancy stuff than on the POKEY. So I think all the best music programmers focused on the SID and the POKEY was never as developed. But there are some Hubbard POKEY songs in the SAP archive, and they're quite good.

 

I've seen POKEY 7800 boards before and I remember them being really simple (mainly just a PROM and the POKEY) but I could be wrong. You might ask on the 7800 forum. Best Electronics does sell POKEY chips for $5.

 

-Paul

 

The problem with the ATARI was,that most of the bigger companies did not support this system after 1985.So most of the great C64 games with great SID pieces were never programmed for the ATARI.

Most of the C64 users claim that the ATARI´s hardware was too weak , but the fact is that companies did not develop programs because of commercial reasons.Some of the Polish demos have really awesome music (and graphics) , but they were released long after the commercial 8-Bit era.

 

POKEY chips :

 

Ballblazers are quite easy to find in Europe as most of the 7800 games.So it´s possible to get cheap POKEY chips if it´s possible to use them from a 7800 Ballblazer game.

 

Thimo

[Paul Slocum]

Ballblazers are quite easy to find in Europe as most of the 7800 games.So it´s possible to get cheap POKEY chips if it´s possible to use them from a 7800 Ballblazer game.

 

If you can get cheap Ballblazer carts, I think you can re-use the board by just removing the ROM and replacing it with an EPROM.

 

-Paul