Best Music & Sound: 2018 Atari Awards

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

2018 Atari Awards

Celebrating the best in Atari 2600 Homebrew

BEST MUSIC & SOUND

 

Best Music & Sound:

Selection should be based on the quality and creativity of the audible elements for a completed game during the year. Games completed in a previous year are not eligible. Re-releases or updates to a previous version of the game are ineligible. Hacks and Demos are not eligible for this category and are only eligible in their specific category.

 

Voting:

 

Please select one of the choices for this category. The winner and runners up will be revealed LIVE during the 2018 Atari Awards Presentation Ceremony on ZeroPage Homebrew's Twitch channel on February 23rd, 2019 at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT!

 

Nominees:

 

Apollyon (bB) by Fehér János Zoltán aka MemberAtarian

Asteroid Rescue (bB) by Ross Adkin aka TidusRenegade

Beeware (bB) by Fehér János Zoltán aka MemberAtarian

Fear of the Dark (bB) by Fehér János Zoltán aka MemberAtarian

Gizzle Wap and the Terrible Blizzard of Firn, The (bB) by Jeff Smith aka Mountain King

Mappy by Mike Haas aka iesposta and Darrell Spice Jr.

Plague (bB) by Fehér János Zoltán aka MemberAtarian

Space Game (bB) by Karl Garrison aka Karl G & Maggie Vogel

Stripes of Terror by Krzysztof Kluczek, Michał Żuchowski, & Mariusz Górski

Sword of Surtr (bB) by Jeff Stermer aka ultima

 

Download (Binaries/Instructions/Packaging): https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21AG3wc7MKI7gPQis&id=EBF48A1964E7EEB5%21528&cid=EBF48A1964E7EEB5

 

Edited January 24, 2019 by cimmerian

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

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[EmuDan]

My vote goes to Mappy for music and sound, because it's spot-on, despite the slow-down I'm getting with the emulator. On a faster machine or real 2600, it would be awesome. I also really liked the music in Stripes of Terror, and I found Beeware to be a fun little game that should've been nominated in a few more categories.

[+nanochess]

I voted for Mappy, but I think this really should be separated between CDF games and non-coprocessor games, because Stripes of Terror did a great job.

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

THE POLLS ARE CLOSED!!!

 

Thank you so much to everyone in the AtariAge community for participating in the 2018 Atari Awards! The final voting totals have been recorded as of 12:00:00AM PT February 19, 2019.

 

See everyone this Saturday, February 23, 2019, at 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 8PM GMT for the LIVE award presentations on ZeroPage Homebrew's Twitch channel!

 

ZeroPage Homebrew Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

_{Note: Although it appears you are still able to vote, due to polling software in place, no more votes past the cutoff date will be counted.}

[iesposta]

I would like to formally thank ZeroPageHomebrew for the awards show idea.

ZeroPageHomebrew Twitch stream has so far only done Atari 2600 Homebrew games.

So for that reason it makes sense this only awarded Atari 2600 homebrew games.

 

For the music sound in Mappy, I need to thank a few more people:
David P. Crane for the Pitfall II “DPC” hardware that allows 1 sound channel to make 3 in-tune sounds.
Chris Walton, Darrel Spice, Jr., Supercat, batari (Fred), any anyone else involved with the evolution of the DPC chip into DPC+ and currently the CDF method of sound and music (which has barely been utilized yet!).

SpiceWare for teaching me how to get the note data into the Stay Frosty 2 and Mappy programs! As well as how to create different “sound envelopes” that make the 3-channel music sound like different instruments and/or like the arcade game sounds.

For the game sound effects, I must thank Dintar816 (although I have only messaged him a few times, and don’t know much more about him).

I had inquired as to how he made Pac-Man 4K and Pac-Man 8K sound so close to the arcade, and how it seemed not possible.

His reply was that in a sound program, selecting one “Atari 2600 frame time” duration of sound, then matching that tiny slice of sound to what the TIA can do, and it builds up a sound in a frame-by-frame way.

Much easier explained than to actually get something that sounds correct, it took about a year of trying until I started getting good results.

For the trampoline “bounce” sound, that method completely failed, partly because there are 2-channels in that sound and I only had 1-channel to use. So I came up with that “boing” trampoline bounce on my own - which sounds nothing like the arcade Mappy trampoline, but worked out very well. (Thank goodness it came out well because to change such a main “nostalgic sound” could have been a disaster!)

 

Thanks again for voting, and I look forward to next years Award Show!

 

I know ZeroPageHomebrew has plans this year to add ColecoVision.
Hopefully 8-bit Atari Home Computers (I’m sending him AtariBlast! on cart.)
Additionally he has a Vectrex.

Those could all possibly go into next year’s awards show.

 

Michael