Voxolotl! - AtariVox Voice Tracker

[+SmittyB]

I thought I'd cross-post this seeing as I doubt many 2600 developers check in on the 7800 programming forum that often.

 

A while ago I developed an editor for the 7800 for AtariVox phrases so that I could create speech without having to compile a ROM and flash it before being able to hear it and possibly find it in need of more editing. The problem with the 7800 version is that it A) Requires a 7800, B) Requires a 7800 flash cartridge, C) Requires copying the resulting speech data by eye.

I recently got a 2600-daptor II which opened the possibility of making an editor for Windows so that I could work entirely on PC and just save the speech data and directly import it into my projects. Naturally I did just that, and given that this lifts the 7800-specific restrictions I figured you 2600 developer lot might get some use out of it.

Have fun.

 

 

Voxolotl! - AtariVox Voice Tracker.zip

platforms.zip

[+Andrew Davie]

I'd love to be able to use this, as I am putting a lot of speech into my game.

I don't have access to Windows, alas!

 

[+Karl G]

17 hours ago, Andrew Davie said:

I'd love to be able to use this, as I am putting a lot of speech into my game.

I don't have access to Windows, alas!

 

I'd love to see a Mac version if possible, too. It looks like it uses Qt, so maybe it could be cross-platform eventually?

 

I tried it under Wine, and I got a dependency error. I then tried it under a Windows VM and confirmed that it happens there, too.

 

[+Andrew Davie]

Just now, Karl G said:

I'd love to see a Mac version if possible, too. It looks like it uses Qt, so maybe it could be cross-platform eventually?

 

I tried it under Wine, and I got a dependency error. I then tried it under a Windows VM and confirmed that it happens there, too.

 

 

Might be worth writing a cross-platform version. Python, maybe.

 

 

[+SmittyB]

Looking up that error it seems there's maybe another dll I should include that wasn't causing problems on my PC.

 

It is using QT because that's about the only way I could figure how to get a GUI doing roughly what I want. It's using the Windows API for the serial connection because I couldn't get the QT version working as simply sending a byte of data seems to require diving into a whole nest of conversions between mostly identical but incompatible data types. (I really hate strongly typed stuff).

 

If I could get it using the QT code for everything I wouldn't have a clue how to begin compiling a version for another platform.

[+Karl G]

Well, if you do end up making it cross platform eventually, I'm sure others like me would be happy to compile binaries for Mac and Linux.

 

Anyway, if you figure out what the missing DLL(s) are, I'm willing to try again on my Windows VM to confirm it at least launches. I imagine it's something that you have on your dev machine because you have Qt devel stuff installed, but isn't present on most Windows machines. Based on some spot research, I think it might be libEGL.dll that's missing.

[+SmittyB]

Thanks. I'll dig into this and maybe have another crack at the serial port code.

This sort of thing is why I've never done much development on PC, too many details to keep track of and not enough resources that I can understand to learn from. This is the first thing I've ever written that I've tried sharing with someone else so there's a lot I don't know about how to go about doing that.

[+Pat Brady]

5 hours ago, SmittyB said:

It is using QT because that's about the only way I could figure how to get a GUI doing roughly what I want. It's using the Windows API for the serial connection because I couldn't get the QT version working as simply sending a byte of data seems to require diving into a whole nest of conversions between mostly identical but incompatible data types. (I really hate strongly typed stuff).

 

In Qt, what is the type of your data and what function(s) are you trying to pass it to?

[+Andrew Davie]

4 hours ago, SmittyB said:

Thanks. I'll dig into this and maybe have another crack at the serial port code.

This sort of thing is why I've never done much development on PC, too many details to keep track of and not enough resources that I can understand to learn from. This is the first thing I've ever written that I've tried sharing with someone else so there's a lot I don't know about how to go about doing that.

Often if there's enough interest, then sharing your code can be beneficial. Others can jump onboard and fix/improve/extend. This is the sort of aplication where the hard part has already been tackled (making a start), and your code could inspire others to add more functionality. Anyway, I'm a big believer in open source and code sharing/collaboration. Something for you to think about.

Usually I just plonk my stuff on github - highly recommended - and then tell people where it is, and it goes from there.  Of course, some people are very protective and precious about their code - and that's perfectly OK, too.  

[+SmittyB]

@Karl G After some testing on my dying Surface tablet all it appears to need is a folder called 'platforms' with an additional DLL inside. I've attached a zip containing the folder and DLL to the first post.

 

@bizarrostormy It's been a few weeks since I started so I don't remember what I tried at the time.

 

@Andrew Davie I'm not against sharing the QT project, but I don't intend to do more than make this available and not touch it again until there's something I want to change as this was really to save me time and effort of which then hosting it somewhere and maintaining it would be a bit counterproductive.

[+Karl G]

It launches for me with the addition of the DLL in the subfolder, both in my Windows VM and via the Wine Windows emulator. I'll have to see if I can get either to talk to my AtariVox when I get a chance to test it. Thanks for making it available.