Free chiptine programs to make game music for homebrews?

[James Vontor]

I was wondering if there are any free programs to make chiptune music either new or maybe an old abandoned program from yesteryears.

 

I am thinking Midway early 90's arcade, Sega model 2 or model 3, Amiga, or maybe even Jaguar or Namco Tekken 1 arcade machine type chip tune music. What kind of programs do you recommend to make comparable chip tune music?

 

I can only find maybe C64 or NES level programs but I need much more than that. Something not a pain to set up too, but maybe that's asking too much lets do one at a time haha.

[Mikebloke]

Sounds like you need to check what system you want to emulate (as in, sound like) and find a relevant tracker for it. 

 

Beepbox.co is an interesting site I've been using randomly for the last few weeks, I even do it on my phone. Slightly impractical but a bit of fun when I have a few spare moments. 

[DragonGrafx-16]

DefleMask Tracker

[carlsson]

For that matter, about 90-95% of Amiga music is sample based, not generated as synthetic waveforms. Modern alternatives to Fast Tracker would be OpenMPT or MilkyTracker. For more FM/PSG like stuff like the arcade systems you mention, DefleMask as suggested above probably is a good choice. Personally I've tried to understand what is head and tails in Arkos Tracker 2 and Vortex Tracker, but those tend to relate more to earlier systems which you are lesser interested in.

[turboxray]

2 hours ago, carlsson said:

For that matter, about 90-95% of Amiga music is sample based, not generated as synthetic waveforms.

I mean fundamentally it's no different than typical PSG. It's a simple period base waveform output.. with the exception that the Amiga isn't limited to a looped 8 sample pulse square, etc. Meaning any mod influenced tracker will work for prototyping PSG style music.. and people have been doing it for years on trackers.

[carlsson]

Absolutely, me too. But if one wants to make real Amiga music, the program should handle instruments based on longer samples as well as PSG/FM based.

 

Of course I'm assuming that the music would come to use in some production, not just composed and played back for the sake of it. In the later case it is terrifyingly easy to go for chip music-esque solutions instead of something that would work on the original hardware.