1

(84 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Well, for all I know, chiptunes have technically existed since at least the 1930s (older than you might expect for this kind of genre) (if we're talking about the style of the sound and the fact that these sounds are technically synthesized with relatively simplistic waveforms). I think of these for a start...
https://youtu.be/YiIB36ZY0WM
https://youtu.be/Z7Zb4rso82M

Thus, chiptune has technically existed for a very long time, and perhaps they will continue to exist for that length of time.

2

(84 replies, posted in General Discussion)

For me, personally, I see this happening over a series of decades... just like silent films and 1950s television. Even if chip music itself survives over the years, I don't know how well today's games will (or even the games from 30 years ago... yes, I almost think they might actually outlast today's games interestingly enough).

I think the SNES has had much more staying power than some of the other chips I've seen over the years for the sheer variety of sounds you can get off of it. You can even do pitch modulation with almost any sample that can fit in there. The only catch is that you have to actually program a sound driver for it or use something that most likely converts tracker modules to SNES music (I currently use a hacked version of mukunda's SNESMod when I want to get really fancy with pitch modulation and noise, and I'm thinking about making my own so I can swap data in and out). My fandom for the SNES is older than this very username, personally.

For the NES, I have an idea in my head on how to pull off some psuedo-DPCM synth, whether it be by changing the reset point or rigging the starting value each time. Other than that, I'm not as interested... and this is something that I have known since 2007, finally went authentic in 2012 thanks to Battle of the Bits  (and it2nsf), and then... I'm currently not as interested. I just don't quite see the variety (and when it came to Famicompo Pico, I ultimately failed to vote because nothing stuck out to me... not even something extraordinarily bad).

Ren and Stimpy: Veediots uses PCM samples for SFX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7wixOeI-fU

Current estimates are 25-50 (could be as high as 100), usually complete enough. Part of the reason lies in the fact that I make some of these songs in an hour... and others are designed for video game soundtracks.

I'm going obscure, but it might get the job done.

Try J.League '96 Dream Stadium. I've got an example .spc file containing the sample:

https://app.box.com/s/68muosyd8kz4xuee41uic36e3h4dxtur

Or, you can try this .spc file from Nomark Baku Haitou:

https://app.box.com/s/d7i051jk92o40gc6dsylnv7nr6oegzfe

6

(147 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

I actually have an idea for sample swapping that is theoretically possible with a sound driver. It's just that you have to do data importing and it is best done with sections of music that can loop while the samples are loading to avoid glitching (expect some samples, defined by the user, to be overwritten as samples are swapped in and our). The same can be done with actual musical data, meaning dynamic music is possible by importing sections of musical data whenever needed (or all of the data can be loaded at once and instead special branching commands can be put in there that are affected by whether or not a certain user-defined flag are set). Main problem is that this can't technically be done in .spc format (unless you want multiple .spc files for each section).

Also, I would recommend that it be able to support multiple songs in the SPC700 RAM (or even start from any point... your sound driver as-is appears to be able to support this feature on a technicality). I've invented multiple music modifiers in which the result is banked music in the sense that a variable number of songs were stored in the SPC700 RAM.

All that needs to be added on is the ability to make some sound effects (one channel or multi-channel), some command IDs to send them over, and you've got yourself a functional sound driver that could be used for a game.

7

(147 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Wait... the tracker itself is for PC??? Or is it an actual native SNES tracker that could be run through emulator?

If it were an actual native SNES tracker, then I could in theory just simply dump .spcs straight out of the tracker through emulator and then use the .spc files as is... mostly. The only modification I would have to make is to the loop points if the sample loops, because the loop points are stored in the ROM as offsets from the start of the sample. The .spc automatically makes the loop points based off of these offsets.

Also, is the aforementioned PC tool a command line utensil, and would the source be available?

For whatever reason, I'm getting the unusual sensation that this could end up like MTV Music Generator 2 or Digital Hitz Factory (both PS2 games)... or Famitracker. So far, the musical data format (which I reverse engineered directly from the .spc) is on a per-channel basis, and it looks like it's synched up to a certain delay value.

8

(147 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Augustus Blackheart wrote:
KungFuFurby wrote:

I'd be doubly happy with noise generation and pitch modulation (as well as the type of muting that allows pitch modulation to pass through). I've especially been a fan of pitch modulation lately, since I hacked SNESMod to add both noise and pitch modulation features for some of my songs.

Nice!  I've been meaning to look into this whole pitch modulation stuff.  Any plans to release your changes to SNESMod?

I have the binary on hand, although my method of implementation would require a hex editor to test .spc files. I just simply copy the binary to its predefined location (where the SPC700 code is loaded), then put in a #$03 into #$01F4, and a #$01 into #$01F5. If you want to start anywhere other than order number zero, just modify #$01F7 to be your desired order number.

It's also not completely safe for video games because there aren't any checks for the sound effects on the last two channels (it's especially bad if noise were to be on those two channels... although pitch modulation can allow for some unusual effects to the music through the SFX if you want really unusual magic.). Technically I could make it public, but it would come with a few caveats... one of them being global volume should always be maximum, or else your pitch modulation might be weak. Technically the binary is already rippable if you look up my SPC files that use them. Just copy the data from #$0500-#$1AF6 in the SPC file and paste them into your own compiled copy (or save it for SNES ROM use) and there you go, your own SNESMod with pitch modulation and noise. But for everyone else's convenience, I'll just put the binary up here:

Get SNESMod with Pitch Modulation (.bin format)

The amount of bytes this takes up is dangerously close to where the module file starts (at #$1B00 in the .spc file)... a mere 10 bytes left. Thus, I would have to update the source code for the converter if I were to make additional modifications to account for pointer modifications to the module (and I can't build Windows or Intel Mac binaries from here because I have XCode 2.0... yeah...).

You need your instructions for how to apply pitch modulation to your modules and all you need are these brand new effects (not used by Impulse Tracker):

S05 ~ Turn on pitch modulation for one channel
S06 ~ Turn off pitch modulation for one channel
S07 ~ Turn on pitch modulation for all channels
S08 ~ Turn off pitch modulation for all channels
S09 ~ Turn on noise generation for one channel
S0A ~ Turn off noise generation for one channel
S0B ~ Turn on noise generation for all channels
S0C ~ Turn off noise generation for all channels

S1x-S2x ~ Noise frequency (take away 10h to get your frequency)
Warning: Noise frequency applies to all channels that have noise on

S92 ~ Mute channel (but still give it an output for pitch modulation)
S93 ~ Unmute channel

These might overlap with unofficial add-on effects that have been applied since the original Impulse Tracker... but SNESMod doesn't support those effects in the first place. Thus, I use them for the bonus features instead. They might affect playback when you're originally making the song in an unintended fashion, just to note.

I am able to get away with this for pitch modulation and noise generation because of the DSP register setup, which means I simply recycle the echo code with some parameter modifications. Since SNESMod uses gain to fool around with the volume, I can simply zero out the actual volume to perform the channel mute that allows pitch modulation to pass through.

I end up doing many more builds when using pitch modulation and noise because I have to double check and make sure they're not accidentally carrying over to other channels (plus, I have to make sure they sound good). I actually have a very good sine wave on hand if anyone wants it in either .brr format or in an .it module (it uses a non-zero loop point because I couldn't get a proper sine wave with a loop point at the start of the sample). I also have my own set of pulse waves that I use for my SNESMod songs that I manually created through creating them in a hex editor then saving as .txt and raw importing them into Schism Tracker.

9

(147 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

I'd be doubly happy with noise generation and pitch modulation (as well as the type of muting that allows pitch modulation to pass through). I've especially been a fan of pitch modulation lately, since I hacked SNESMod to add both noise and pitch modulation features for some of my songs.

10

(87 replies, posted in Releases)

I get nothing but a blue screen trying to view the Weekly Treats website. It probably doesn't help that I still use Firefox 3.6.28 (then again, I'm still using an iMac G5 running Mac OS X 10.4.11).

11

(24 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Thanks! ^_^ If you have any other SNES soundtrack requests, I am the person that can invent a music modifier (I've done well over a hundred of those... and I don't even need a debugger!). I have a music modifier for the majority of the games that can't be dumped to SPC format because they appear to stream the note data so you can listen to the entire soundtrack even if you can't preserve it in SPC format.

Uwol does reveal one thing about SNESMod: you can put more than one piece of music in an .it file, convert it over for usage with the SPC sound driver, and then if you're actually playing the game, you can send a "play order x" command to play another tune. I can do this by simply using a hex editor and modifying a few bytes. The only thing I haven't done is attempt to correct a first-note sticking problem for a driver that doesn't match with any of the known first-note sticking SPC games (if I have, it's because someone else already did it before, or I found a sound driver match with one of the games... with Marko's Magic Football, the sound driver was a match with Theme Park).

There are actually a few Flash games that I composed music for that are real SNES music. All of them that have been completed were games by AdventureIslands. They are Dangerous Dungeons and its sequel Dangerous Christmas, and both of their SPC sets can be found on the SNESMusic.org forums:
http://snesmusic.jukor.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=706
http://snesmusic.jukor.net/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=732

Dangerous Dungeons has twelve of its fifteen tracks packed into one .it file (I maxed out the number of patterns you can put in there for one .it file: there is a 64-pattern limit, and I am probably the only person that has hit this ceiling.), with the other three in separate banks. Dangerous Christmas has all of its tracks in one .it file.

I just recently did the music for another game by this same person in a SNES style, and it is called Steam Rogue. The game is not quite complete yet, but if you want to hear it, for now, just simply play its beta, up on Newgrounds:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/598918

12

(24 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)

Hey, I found out about this via a Google Search for SNESMod SPC, and I thought I would put in my two cents, since I myself am a SNES music composer.

I don't really use samples that have been used in real SNES games (and if they have been used, they're not ripped directly from the game itself), but I do make SNES music using SNESMod, and I have a real SPC file to prove it. Here it is...

https://www.box.com/s/71d6a74f1fc74ff67ae1

Very interestingly enough, I even assisted with getting SNESMod implemented into a real game (not Skipp and Friends, which uses an earlier version of SNESMod and was done by mukunda, but a SNES port of Uwol - Quest for Money by alekmaul... I assisted with implementation, and ported over the music). Here's a YouTube video of it...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxN1HTYPCVw