BrokenSpares
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LONDON

After working on it for some time, I thought you may be interested to know I've now completed writing a visual/music GBA ROM.

It is called Splat! and after listening to some thoughtful comments from chipmusic.org users about using ROMs for their art, I've tried my best to make it a visually interactive musical experience rather than some cheesy attention-grabbing music player without compromising my initial idea of what the music should sound like. End users get to control (to an extent) the visuals and music for this ROM.

It is tricky to know how much control to give away for your own creation. I probably could have given away more control to the user but...I just wasn't comfortable doing that to be honest.

https://brokenspares.wordpress.com/2012 … ten-splat/

Above is the link to my Wordpress page that has the ROM available to download.
(I know I should supply a direct link, but I've been awake for almost 19 hours, and I've just uploaded it to Wordpress, cut me some slack!)

Please do let me know what you think.

Also, ff anyone can point me towards any books to help with GB ROM creation, that would be appreciated too. (I basically want to know if I can use the 4 channels of the GB with the 2 Direct Sound channels simultaneously)

Right, and now bed...

DataFix
Offline
orange county, CA

i was just having a really stressful day and playing this just took all the stress away. the track is very mellow and chill, i like that. and just moving the "splat" around made me feel like i was using an interactive stress ball. haha. maybe that's just me on my stressful day though, who knows. the additional sounds are neat. i'm sure someone with a full right brain function can get really creative with this.
enjoyed it.

Last edited by DataFix (Nov 27, 2012 12:51 am)

Toastypinecone
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Dude this is way cool!

wedanced
Offline
San Francisco

this is a cool one man. i like it a lot. really shows off those sample capabilities too smile

9-Heart
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Yup, pretty neat.

Last edited by 9-Heart (Nov 27, 2012 5:11 pm)

_-_-
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Any chance I (we?) could have a look at the source?
I'm interested in how you handle the audio playback.

Reminds me of Oval a bit.

Last edited by _-_- (Nov 27, 2012 11:03 pm)

Lushbob
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This is actually really nice. I enjoyed messing around with it and ended up spending about 20 minutes with it. Really relaxing.
Although, when I press the A button I get a kind of faint beeping sound, then when I press it again I get really loud static, loud beeping and a popping noise, then really high-pitched, fast beeps. Is it meant to sound like this? It just seems to contrast the music so much that I thought it might be some sort of error.

BrokenSpares
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LONDON

Thanks for the kind words everybody. Really glad you like it. smile I was a bit afraid it would just be universally dismissed as a pointless exercise for some reason, the chiptune community is too friendly to ever do that!

@_-_-: I will upload the source code either late today or early tomorrow. The audio playback was tricky tbh. It took me a while just to figure out how to use Direct Sound A+B. Using them together was annoyingly tricky. Also, Oval?? Any tracks you can recommend listening to?

@Lushbob: That is definitely an error...one I thought I got rid off to be honest. I'll have to look at the code and see...sorry about that. I'll see if I can fix it.

9-Heart
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BtW. that Splat-color-thingy which is moving reminds me of that VJ Software for the GBA => http://www.pikilipita.com/pikilipita-advance/
I want more visual stuff on the GBA! The best would be some Glitch-stuff like GlitchNES or Shitwave (on GameBoy) ♫

BrokenSpares
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LONDON

Hi. So I've updated the ROM to v1.1 now on Box.com so that it removes the terrifying pop and glitchy sound. It was literally adding a single line of code in C to prevent it from happening. Just re-download the Splat!.gba file as before to get it glitch-free (in a good way).

https://www.box.com/s/udtm7gxe398d7ucvc7vb

I've also added my source code and original .mp3 used for the recording for the main piece of music entitled "Marie's Theme" It was written on a bass guitar using harmonics, mostly.

https://www.box.com/s/oak6in801tuwd1323dwa

I cannot thank you guys enough for liking the ROM I created. It's really good to know all that time and effort I put in wasn't wasted!!  I would invite you to download the latest version (as it removed the bug that was present before).

nordloef
Offline
sweden
9-Heart wrote:

BtW. that Splat-color-thingy which is moving reminds me of that VJ Software for the GBA => http://www.pikilipita.com/pikilipita-advance/
I want more visual stuff on the GBA! The best would be some Glitch-stuff like GlitchNES or Shitwave (on GameBoy) ♫

I've used a GBA with video out running GlitchNES for visuals on several shows. Just use GlitchNes with PocketNES.

Goughy
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The Wild Wintery North

Just a thought, but would you be able to make this so that you could utilize your own music (aka, through VisualBoy, import a tune and play via that)? Don't hate if it's not possible and say that I'm stupid, cause idk much about this stuff.

BrokenSpares
Offline
LONDON

Hi Goughy,

It's definitely possible.

I wrote another GBA game which is also on my WordPress website that shows this working.
I used the first full song I ever wrote, split it into 2 versions, then used the separate audio files in this GBA game. My code gets a bit sloppy towards the end of each song; it's because I didn't terminate the sounds properly, but it IS possible and you are NOT stupid.

There is an eBook on Amazon “Programming The Nintendo Game Boy Advance” by Jonathan Harbour I would strongly suggest you look at getting. It is the single best resource for programming for the GBA. That is the only resource I used to create the two GBA games I've written.

Hope that helps.