OLD CS1's Blog - Arranging "Monty on the Run" in a TI-99/4A ISR

RSS Bot · November 11, 2015

Vorticon asked me to provide the sound effects for his TI conversion of Jetpac. I started working on them and at the same time picked back up on Rasmus' challenge to arrange "Monty on the Run." I have been bouncing between Jetpac and Monty, as well as my A/Rexx script to manipulate ISR sound like binaries, and tonight I was playing with the Monty bass-line, over-laying it with a SIDPlay export () and I thought I would share part of my process for doing my conversions. It is nothing special but I enjoy it.

I am using SIDdump to dump the original SID to a text file using time sequence instead of frame numbering. I take those tones and bump them down an octave or two to match up with the 9919's idea of octave numbering and finagle the timing. 1/60s does not always match a SID frame so sometimes it is not possible to get exact timing, but close enough. (A quick related note on Jetpac sounds: the time resolution in the original ZX game is about double that of the TI ISR, so the sound effects are four, sometimes five, distinct tones in the space of two or three on the TI so I have to finagle that, too.)

I am using Rasmus' Sound List Ripper, for which he has admonished me for using in this capacity. It is not a tracker but it works for my purposes. With this and my A/Rexx tool, which is still very much a work-in-progress, I can do quite a lot very quickly.

In the video below (low quality on my old phone, but the sound is good,) you see (not clearly, heheheh) the SoundListRipper window open on the left, the VLC window playing the Monty on the Run music, and the Windows audio mixer at the bottom I am using to give the SLR more volume over VLC. At about 0:41 and 0:47 I mute VLC so you can hear the output of SLR, which is a very accurate simulation of the 9919's output. (Yes, I know I can control the volume and mute in VLC.) You will also hear where I mis-fired the SLR to start it too early.

http://atariage.com/forums/gallery/image/15796-monty-on-the-run-bass-line-work-in-progress/

(I had to put a link to the video in my gallery as you can upload FLVs to a gallery album but not to a blog entry. Bummer.)