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It's on the back burner till I get time to finish it, I had to remove the videos as they were posted on a YouTube account associated with my commercial work.
More videos this year sometime along with a working editor, when time permits of course.
Watch this space!
I saw this one, yeah. Great work! It's surreal to see this, really
So not all Hubbard's songs can be converted? Is that because your converter doesn't support all his players, or something else?
I'm really looking forward to see more of this. Keep us posted!
The core of Rob's replay is pretty much the same. By the core I mean the part that decodes the notes and triggers them. Later songs start to differ, International Karate was able to transpose patterns to save memory. Ace II uses arpeggio tables but I haven't set about looking at the changes in the later replays just yet.
Basically each intrument can have a number of effects applied to them, a bit like routing the sound through different patches. There is a Pulse patch, octave arpeggio patch, skydive patch etc.
These different fx were changed slightly with each tune, basically just tweaking the parameters.
Its possible to collate all these tweaks and make a new replay (which is what Ive started) which would play all Rob's tunes. The instruments could then be represented on screen like an effects chain in Ableton from left to right. Some of the fx shared parameters with each other as they used the same byte in memory. This could be represented by 'syncing' pairs of fx modules together in the chain.
I realise this is pretty crazy stuff, it all started as a learning excersise when I decided to use the dissasembled Monty On the Run source to see how SID tunes worked. I was mainly interested in the drums, but one thing lead to another and I have what I have now.
I'm more interested in the techniques that were used. I'm getting into sound synthesis and I've gone back about as far as I can with VGM syth's and started tinkering around to see how thing's were done back then. I grew up with these games and these sounds so they are pretty close to my heart.
I will keep plugging away at it, I'm thinking about making a retro style game for iPhone/Android etc and this would be nice to do the music with.
Based on that dissasembly I've created a C version of Rob's Replay and hooked it up to a SID emulator. I then put the replay into a clone of ProTracker and then wrote a ripper that will rip quite a lot of Rob's tunes and even those not written by Rob himself (but using his replay)
I've not got everything playing properly just yet but quite a few are mostly there.
Check it out:
Another video here of the editor/ripper loading some demoscene songs that used Rob's replay.
logikstate wrote:I left it in this way cos Crazy Comets plays ok.
Looking at my code, it seems ive translated that bit of the 6502 wrong and I've still not completely figured it out... I probably need to single step it in VICE or something like that.
I've done a SID register -> MIDI converter for chipsounds, in which i just hacked VICE to spew out the register writes with exact timing (http://ploguechipsounds.blogspot.com/20 … m-all.html) Then i import it in my app and convert.
so please believe me if i say i understand the situation
Its really hard to make a converter that works for each possible case with a fixed set of rules.
Its easy to lose some data along the way. Rob's stuff is intricate.
For sure, pretty much all the songs in the video are using the same basic replay. Rob tweaked some of the parameters on some of the fx though. I've not been through each replay with a fine toothcomb though, hence at least 1fx on Comets not working and Thing on a spring fx not working. The toms in Monty sound a bit off too, they were working fine so thats probably due to the same bug that is causing Commando to not work properly.
Not sure how much time I have for this now, it was fun in the Christmas break but I'm slowly getting drawn into "proper work". i.e "stuff that pays money"
erm... its just using the Protracker SDL port - possibly with a view to making an editor for Rob's replay.
the dude has managed to reverse rob hubbard's replay and make it readable as notedata already...
I have note data and fx, im just not rendering everything at the moment. This really is a couple of hours work (read:hack) to drop it into PT.
Hum
Is it me or the translation is wrong. listen to commando for the most obvious out of place spikes.
Interresting development nonetheless. I guess it depends on the SID playing core used as well.
I have a bug where if I comment one line in on the note trigger either the drums dont work in CC but Commando sounds fine and vice versa.
I left it in this way cos Crazy Comets plays ok.
Looking at my code, it seems ive translated that bit of the 6502 wrong and I've still not completely figured it out... I probably need to single step it in VICE or something like that.
akira^8GB wrote:And what is the advantage of the Rob Hubbard player compared to any of the more modern solutions already available?
Same reason Deadman used Tim Follin's driver for a few tracks I guess. All custom drivers have their little quirks that make them unmistakable. Hubbard's one is interesting because it's in the generation before wave tables became the norm. So the instruments are defined more like a patch on a keyboard than the way we usually do them these days. Also, as much as people try to emulate it, only Hubbard's player sounds like Hubbard's player. There's something about the gating of that bass sound (heard in Crazy Comets & Commando) , the portamento fx slide in Monty on the Run's intro, and those Tom sounds are total trademark Rob Hubbard. While you could log the settings to the sounds only Hubbard's player in it's pre-hard restart glory is going to have those little instrument breakups where sounds don't play exactly right each time. Thinking about it, some of those are to do with how the note data is stored in the driver, it'll be interesting to see if he handles those.
Sorry, I went off on a driver rant there.
I started this about 3 years ago, I took a documented replay and converted it to C and hooked it up to a SID engine. This was mainly for my own amusement as I wanted to know how SID replays worked, so job done and It's sat on my HD for a few years. I've recently ressurected it as I was researching how to do drum synthesis and I got to thinking that Crazy Comets had drums, and they werent digi drums.... so I fixed up the replay to fix that and see how they worked.
A bit more tinkering and I had a ripper that could detect a good few tunes, not all of them work mind. So then I got to thinking... Hubbard Replay + Editor = Hubbard Editor... So on new years eve I did a bit of drunken coding and dropped it into 8bitbubsys Protracker.
To be perfectly honest, there is no real point to this other than to disect the tunes to see how they worked... I'm not really sure where I'm going with this... If I fix it to make all tunes work then it requires a rewrite of the C64 replay and as I understand it, things have moved on since the Hubbard days
But still, I think its kinda neat and I shall probably keep pushing it further when I have a bit of free time here and there. If there is any interest please let me know, it will give me a bit of encouragement to get it done.
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ChipMusic.org / Forums / Posts by logikstate