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Battlemorph reprint and soundtrack


Songbird

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57 minutes ago, ls650 said:

I like the idea of selling an SD for the JagGD with custom label and other physical items.

I like that too.  Having little SD cards for the Atari Jaguar.   How sheik and Nintendo Switch like!!  

 

And one day when my two year wait for a Game Drive wraps up and I get one I might think about that option. 

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9 hours ago, Songbird said:

Still working on a CD reprint for Battlemorph; in fact, we've been doing manual layout for the past few weeks since we don't have the original print files. No meaningful progress on a cartridge version, and FYI having a traditional cart would most likely not include music. Having said that, I'm also looking at other options for Battlemorph including a license for the Jaguar GD and/or a release on a SD card which would still include the manual, case, etc. So that means there are a number of possibilities here with relative retail prices:

 

CD reprint with case + instructions $$

SD card for Jaguar GD with case + instructions $$

Download for Jaguar GD $

Cart version $$$

 

The goal would be to offer a cheaper license for the download for people who just want to play, while of course the physical versions would cost more, with the cart version costing the most. Probably I should do another poll. :) In the meantime, feedback is welcome.

I'd missed the survey last year, but would throw in my interest here for a GD version. I would be tempted by the CD version as my original copy is scratched up badly and my CD barely works, but if GD is possible then I'd rather get some more use out of that. :)

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3 hours ago, cubanismo said:

While I'm still looking forward to the CD version, I also appreciate that there's thought going into alternate distribution options for >6mb content going forward. Some great ideas here.

That excites me as well and is my next project now that both 2/4MB and 6MB boards are completed, 16MB bank-switching is where I want to be (less the knob).

 

Sadly 16MB still wouldn't be enough for the CD music of Battlemorph, of course. I loved that music so much and at one point learned how to play one of the tracks on a synth back in the late 90s.

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Yeah, I don't have a GD or programming details yet, but I'm assuming there will probably be some way to distribute a CD image on a microSD card that can use the 16MB bank switched RAM on the cart as a sort of cache, similar to the RAM carts of Saturn, bit with the existing limitations of Jaguar cart memory timings.

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On 2/4/2021 at 5:28 AM, Clint Thompson said:

Sadly 16MB still wouldn't be enough for the CD music of Battlemorph, of course. I loved that music so much and at one point learned how to play one of the tracks on a synth back in the late 90s.

I wonder how small the music could be condensed to if it is switched to mono, the sample rate is lessened, and maybe some of the longer 2+ minute tracks shortened, and if needed, maybe a couple tracks removed entirely.  I bet there would be a way to cut it down a lot and have a good chunk of the music on cart. Kinda like the Tony Hawk games on N64.  Obviously there would be tradeoffs but I bet it could be done, heck, I have the audio tools and know how to do it.

 

As a proof of concept, here's one of the Battlemorph tracks. As an three and a half minute minute long full quality stereo uncompressed wav file its 40MB.  I cut out the last minute of the song, flipped it to mono and chose a much lower sample rate. The reduced version is 1MB.  There's a lot of repetition in this and other Battlemorph tracks, it doesn't seem that unreasonable to maybe cut the length even further, figuring out a good place to loop it with the beginning of the song so it sounds relatively seemless.  Could probably have it be a 50 second loop that still sounds pretty good, at which point this track would require far less memory than 1MB.

battlemorph music mono low bitrate.wav

 

Just for fun I found a logical loop point at 50 seconds into the track. I changed the track to a 50 second loop and even nudged the sample rate a little higher for better sound quality. The 50 second loop is half a megabyte. It would be about 300kb in the worse sample rate as the first track.

 

 

battlemorph music mono low bitrate shortened 2.wav

Edited by sirlynxalot
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2 hours ago, sirlynxalot said:

I wonder how small the music could be condensed to if it is switched to mono

You don't want to switch the music to mono.  That is how the underwater music changed without delay.  Above ground = left channel, under water = right channel.

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32 minutes ago, Stephen said:

You don't want to switch the music to mono.  That is how the underwater music changed without delay.  Above ground = left channel, under water = right channel.

Hm, mono halves the amount of memory that would be needed compared to stereo so it seems like the way to go when memory is as tight as it would be on a cart. The ability to switch music realtime might be another aspect to be compromised on...   Of course the real way to save a ton of memory would be to completely redo the music as midis or some kind of tracker music like .mod files, but that's 1000% more work than simply downsampling and trimming the existing music ;)

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Won't save as much size if you have to include both channels as separate tracks I suppose, but no need to use stereo tricks on the cart. Doesn't have the access time issues of the CD. Could encode it using ADPCM and decode on the DSP as well to maintain the low bitrate with stereo, but things are getting more and more complex here...

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...
On 2/3/2021 at 9:33 AM, doctorclu said:

I like that too.  Having little SD cards for the Atari Jaguar.   How sheik and Nintendo Switch like!!  

 

And one day when my two year wait for a Game Drive wraps up and I get one I might think about that option. 

Nintendo Switch like? That's a hard no!

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Having the game on SD card is definitely a great option! It’s how I’ve been buying physical releases for my ZX Spectrum Next, those releases come with a box and the game on a Micro SD card so I would be down to purchase a copy that way if possible if not I’ll buy the soundtrack & cd again or cart . 

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3 hours ago, Clint Thompson said:

I gather this means it's going to be a CD combo release only and not on cart and/or SD card? or is that still something being considered at some point?

Currently it's just a straight CD reprint, of course with the new option to buy the soundtrack too. I am still considering a SD card release or cartridge release down the road.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Pre-orders are open now for a late July release! Need at least 50 orders of the game CD and soundtrack CD to make this happen. All-in, game, and soundtrack have a pre-order discount through July 16. Choose from the following options:

Battlemorph all-in (game, soundtrack, overlay) $64.95
Battlemorph game CD $49.95
Battlemorph soundtrack CD $14.95
Battlemorph controller overlay $4.95

 

Thanks and enjoy! :)

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