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Pretty much all of the allocated space for (and the number of) objects is designed to be scalable.

It's pretty straightforward to, say, double the number of steps per song, but that extra 140 (hex) bytes has to come from somewhere - what would you sacrafice? Given that each Song step can contain one Chain that can contain 16 Patterns, a Song, even with the 8kb save file model, is 40 x 10 (hex) Patterns long. I know it's not ideal but it's usable. I think the number of Patterns and Tables is the more critical aspect but that's just my point-of-view.

It's all a juggling act at the moment and fairly arbitrary as 8kb is (hopefully) only a temporary memory model.

Sort of true, I guess. You'd definitely be hard pressed to do any sort of demo or game with the music taking about 4/5ths of the CPU time

But NSF export is a definite possibility. LIke I said earlier, there's no technical reason it can't be done as the format support higher-than-60hz refresh rates.

The bigger hurdle, I think, is somehow managing 32kb of music data in ROM. Though having said that, I'm going to have to split up the data into banks anyway as you can only access 8kb of SRAM at a time, even with a 32kb SRAM configuration.

OK, this is the situation.

I'm running it on PowerPak right now. I have to for testing purposes and it works fine. However, the amount of 'objects' is really limited;

Songs : 1
Steps per Song : 40 (hex)
Total Chains : 20 (hex)
Total Patterns : 20 (hex)
Total Instruments : 20 (hex)
Total Drumkits : 2 (12 samples each)
Total ADSR Envelopes : 20 (hex)
Total Tables : 10 (hex)
Total Vibratos : 10 (hex)
Total Duty Tables : 10 (hex)

The worst of these being the Patterns and Tables as while they are the most used, they are also the objects that take the most space :S

This is using 8kb save files. Using 32kb save files, as I intend once it has wider support, I'll obviously be able to multiply up a lot of those limits.

I have been in contact with Retro USB about adding support and I'm told that it can be done. It's just something I have no control over and I don't like to nag the guy so until I know otherwise it's a case of 'eventually'.

It may be the case that I'll end up releasing Pulsar using an 8kb save file memory model but I don't want to do that because any song files created using this are not going to be compatible when I eventually implement the 32kb memory model (it's not simply a case of scaling up the data sizes, the 32kb NVRAM is bank switched so I'll have to totally reconfigure the layout to work around this).

Beta testers, once I'm at that stage, will get a working, PowerPak-compatible, 8kb save file version.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: fuck NS-...... yeah, probably, at some point....

I was thinking about it the other day actually and there's no real reason it can't happen. The problem I can see though is that the actual music data is going to be pretty big so some deft bank handling/switching would be required.

For the sake of your sanity though, don't be waiting on this feature. It's a long way off.

Another video update with two videos! (Well, one that I had to split into two part because of the 15 minute YouTube limitation).

http://blog.ntrq.net/?p=350

Well, the charity link is still active from when I set it up for NTRQ. Don't feel pressured to donate but I'd sure appreciate it, and feel appreciated, if you did. You can wait until Pulsar is released though - that's cool.