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Rob Hubbard Atari Music on c64


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Hmmm... most of those songs are somewhat prominent in the use of just pure tones.

 

The poly sounds, really the choice is among using sawtooth, different pulse wave, possibly noise for some very high or low freqs. In theory you could use timer IRQs and emulate low pitched poly perfectly at some CPU cost, though generally Atari uses mid-high range poly stuff for music.

As it is, SID will cover most of the useful frequencies which most Pokey tunes using 16-bit or 16 KHz mode for music.

 

But on the other hand... I should think they'd have trouble with stuff relying constantly on 4 voices (or are they using 2 SIDS?)

They would have trouble with anything that's heavy on Pokey filter usage (SID filtering is completely different).

They would have trouble with anything that's heavily reliant on poly type notes rather than pure tones.

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The title should be: From C64 to Atari converted Rob Hubbard music, played on C64 to sound like Atari. I wonder , if he's really using some adapting software, to run the code on the C64, or if it's just a "Module".

And, well 4 voices should be no problem for the C64. Doing sounds like in those Hubbard tunes takes approximately ... almost no ... cpu time. And the CPU had enough "power" to do the 4th channel in software.

Anyhow, a funny production ;)

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I would think it's just running the Atari code which in turn writes to Pokey shadow registers.

Then a translate routine to approximate on SID.

Chances are they're using stuff that was ripped to begin with, ie someone hacked the music from the original Atari games then put into standalone executables.

 

What could be tricky though... since SID has the ADSR you can't always have a note start straight up on a voice. Possibly there's a bit of AI going on to work out if the previous sound needs to be gated into release before putting the new one in.

 

 

OK, there's a thread on Lemon64 about it - I've asked the questions over there http://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=733915

Edited by Rybags
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Iv'e posted this on lemon64.com as reply to José Pereire post there but I think it would be of interest here too:

 

---

 

 

Hi.
The Pokey originals on Atari:


Though it seems that the Sanxion C64 to A8 game Extirpator wasn't done by Rob Hubbard but ported by someone that no one knows (I think that I read somewhere that rob said on an interview that he didn't remember ever did that song for A8 nor his permission).
And Ninja that is C64 from Rob is also said by him that he didn't do it.

 

During the Sidologie kickstarter I had a conversation with Chris Abbott from c64audio.com about including the Jet Set Willy Atari soundtrack. C64 Audio is handling the licensing of many C64 music tracks so he is in direct contact with several C64 composers.

When talking about other Rob Hubbard's Atari 8-bit tracks I said that the Atari versions of The Last V8, Thrust and Ninja were not done by Rob but then Chris replied that the Ninja soundtrack was done by Rob because his invoice book said so. Thus it seems his invoice book has a better memory than Rob :lol: Maybe the confusion lies in the fact that the Atari Ninja music is completely different than the C64 Ninja music (and both are completely different from the Atari ST Ninja music that was written by David Whittaker).

I've looked into the player code of Ninja and other Rob's Atari music and the Ninja music player is very similar to Rob's other Atari music including The Extirpator (all those players have similar code but not exactly the same). The music players of David Whittaker or Adam Gilmore are completely different from Rob's. So both Ninja and The Extirpator at least build upon Rob's Atari Pokey music player.

The ASMA comment about The Extirpator is only that Rob doesn't remember The Extirpator so it is still possible that his did the conversion but that he was never told the title of the game it ended up in.

One more thing, I said the player code of Rob Hubbard was very different from the player code of David Whittaker with one exception namely "BMX Simulator". That one has code that looks like Rob's player. As it seems that "BMX Simulator" is one of the first tunes David made for the Atari I asked Chris if he could confirm my suspicion that David borrowed the Atari player code from Rob before he later wrote his own player. Chris replied that Rob confirmed that David borrowed Rob's Atari 6502/Pokey player code in exchange for David's Z80/AY player code.

 

 

 

Speaking of unknown composers, another Atari 8-bit tune of which the author is unknown is Loco (

).

It is credited to W.E M.U.S.I.C. A bit of googling revealed that WE MUSIC is formed by Antony Crowther and Ben Daglish. But the disassembled code of the Loco music looks very different from the other Atari tunes Ben Daglish did (and different from the player code of Rob Hubbard, Adam Gilmore and David Whittaker). And the instruments also sound very different from Ben's other Atari tunes (Ben Daglish Atari tunes have simplistic instrument sounds while the Loco tune instruments sound much better). So to me it seems unlikely that Ben Daglish did that tune. And Tony Crowther was more a C64 game programmer and did nothing on the Atari so it seems also unlikely that he did the tune. Also the C64 music by Ben Daglish is completely different than the Atari version.
Unfortunately Chris Abbott didn't know more about the Atari Loco music so a mystery remains unless someone here on this forum knows a little more.

Sorry for the long post. Hopefully we can have some day 100% certainty of the authors of these tunes.

 

Robert

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The title should be: From C64 to Atari converted Rob Hubbard music, played on C64 to sound like Atari. I wonder , if he's really using some adapting software, to run the code on the C64, or if it's just a "Module".

Not really, the tunes are all tailored for the A8 and in one case an exclusive. And yes, that's a wrapper around Hubbard's A8 code to translate it from POKEY to SID, it isn't just a "module" and the data hasn't been ripped and pushed into Hubbard's C64 driver either (i was going to do JSW that way, using the resourced version of Monty On The Run's routine and sounds but didn't find the time).

 

Essentially, it's doing what it says on the tin; the Youtube video is his, check his channel because there are routines playing Commodore 264 and Atari ST YM sound via SID too, along routines playing OPL-based coin-op soundtracks on the SFX Sound Expander and his own driver that uses the same hardware and SID for twelve channels. Some of that is using platform agnostic data (the ST and coin-op stuff) but others are similar wrapper code.

 

And, well 4 voices should be no problem for the C64. Doing sounds like in those Hubbard tunes takes approximately ... almost no ... cpu time. And the CPU had enough "power" to do the 4th channel in software.

There's not a fourth channel on these tunes (two 8-bit and one 16-bit voice), but generating it in software wouldn't have left anywhere near the time required for the full screen colour scroll seen in that demo anyway.

Edited by TMR
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Unfortunately Chris Abbott didn't know more about the Atari Loco music so a mystery remains unless someone here on this forum knows a little more.

Perhaps a long shot, but Loco is credited to PAL Developments, i.e. Russell Knight and Anthony J. Wilson.

 

At least for the game Protector (1989), Wilson got some music credits:

http://demozoo.org/music/133559/

 

However he doesn't seem to have any music credits on e.g. Atarimania nor Moby Games so it might be a dead end, in particular as Ben Daglish himself is credited for music on e.g. Rampage (1987).

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  • 1 year later...

When talking about other Rob Hubbard's Atari 8-bit tracks I said that the Atari versions of The Last V8, Thrust and Ninja were not done by Rob but then Chris replied that the Ninja soundtrack was done by Rob because his invoice book said so. Thus it seems his invoice book has a better memory than Rob :lol:

 

...

 

As it seems that "BMX Simulator" is one of the first tunes David made for the Atari I asked Chris if he could confirm my suspicion that David borrowed the Atari player code from Rob before he later wrote his own player. Chris replied that Rob confirmed that David borrowed Rob's Atari 6502/Pokey player code in exchange for David's Z80/AY player code.

 

 

Chris Abbott (of C64audio.com and running a KickStarter to produce a book about Rob Hubbard's musical career) wrote a blog post about Rob Hubbard on Atari. Here Chris confirms that "Ninja" was Rob Hubbard's first tune done on the Pokey:

For a short while, Rob was king of the 8-bit fighting game themes! His debut on the A8 platform was "Ninja": written concurrently with the C64 version, but the Atari A8's hollow, echoey, quite hard-edged sound complements the echoey feel of the game. It even makes the room feel bigger!

 

 

 

Second, in another blog about Rob Hubbard on the YM, Chris also confirms that Rob gave his Pokey music driver to David Whittaker in exchange for David's Z-80 YM driver:

In October '86, David Whittaker and Rob joined forces and swapped drivers: David got Rob's Atari 8-bit driver, and Rob got David's Z80 one: which is why subsequent Rob Hubbard pieces on the ZX Spectrum 128's AY chip sound more Whittakery than you'd expect.

 

For those interested Rob Hubbard's music history (including Pokey, YM and his years at EA) will be extensively covered in the Rob Hubbard book that is part of the Project Hubbard KickStarter along with various remixes and unreleased tunes.

 

Robert

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