If I'm to pull off this thing, the 4x refresh speed for the audio engine means screen display updating has to be kept to an absolute minimum.
Which currently is meaning it looks a *lot* like LSDJ. LOL 
417 Jul 21, 2010 5:41 pm
Re: "Pulsar" demo (224 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
418 Jul 20, 2010 9:16 pm
Re: Forbidden knowledge? (13 replies, posted in Commodore Computers)
I personally think it's a fucking ridiculous situation. Nice that someone's hard work (10 years in the case of LSDJ!) can be rendered irrelevant by these idiots and then you've got this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Brothers
or this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Kids_on_the_Block
or this;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Andre
Muppets 
419 Jul 20, 2010 1:35 pm
Re: "Pulsar" demo (224 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
bleo wrote:
Totally 2 per table...... then you'd also be able to use 2 FX simultaneously in a particular pattern step.
Ah, that's quite a good point. I wasn't thinking along those lines but that makes sense.
*furiously rubs out pencil memory map*
420 Jul 20, 2010 1:24 pm
Re: "Pulsar" demo (224 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Well if nobody else chips in, I'll rename it MaynardTracker and you'll get my complete attention
421 Jul 20, 2010 10:04 am
Re: "Pulsar" demo (224 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Quick poll for the LSDJ users:
Would you rather Pulsar had;
2 FX per pattern (phrase) step and 1 FX per table step
or
1 FX per pattern step and 2 FX per table step
(And don't say 2 FX each )
422 Jul 20, 2010 7:09 am
Re: "Pulsar" demo (224 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
I'd like to hear from anyone who has ideas for Pulsar. At the moment I'm planning to steal ideas from LSDJ - I told Johan and he's cool
One of the big issues I need to address is the amount of screen updating per-frame because the synth engine will be refreshed 4 times per frame (as you can see). LSDJ has a much simpler screen layout than NTRQ so I need to head in that direction.
Any and all ideas welcome.
423 Jul 19, 2010 7:36 pm
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Outstanding dude, absolutely outstanding 
I'd just documented all my code too but it looks like you've got all the bases covered with that update. You can still have it if you want, just let me know. I'm sure there's nothing in there that's beyond you though.
I'm officially bowing out. It's been awesome to be involved in this project, really good fun.
424 Jul 17, 2010 1:36 pm
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
We have talked briefly about a convergence - it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to maintain two.
However, our two approaches are currently slightly different. Blargg's is by far the best code base though - he's in a different league to me when it comes to technical coding, or any coding TBH He's also taking a more methodical approach - his code is aiming to create an engine for the litewall that can be used by other people (coding) and it's a great piece of work.
I don't have a great deal of time to spend on it and when I do it's currently easier for me to prototype ideas on my system. I'm just lazy - I should take the time to adopt Blargg's method really. The other factor is that while the technical stuff is in a state of flux, I'm a bit loathe to start converting all my FX code. That's where we are at the moment.
At some point we'll take the best ideas and merge them into Blargg's code.
425 Jul 17, 2010 11:02 am
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
blargg wrote:
Have you run it with music for over a minute? I had to do quite a bit to get even a simple tempo to stay in sync.
I'm only capturing the button taps at 60hz so it will never stay exactly right (unless you're really lucky )
That's one reason I suggested slurring the playback by holding SELECT - it then gives you the ability to tweak the timing on the fly if you see it drifting out (OK, only one way but hey).
Works well if you tap along to a (NTSC) NES song obviously because it's based on the same timing system. Works better better still if you reduce the timing resolution ( ANDing the delta to mask off the bottom bit or two).
Oh, I've updated litewall9 to remove the colour cycling background - that was a debugging feature that I forgot to take out. Oops
426 Jul 17, 2010 9:41 am
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
OK, so it didn't take me too long to roughly knock up the rhythm recording;
To start/continue recording - hold SELECT and tap A in time with your music
To end recording and start playback - hold SELECT and tap B
It's not perfect, still need to work out why it's not flashing when you hit B (as it should) and it could do with a retard key (maybe hold SELECT briefly to slow the flashing) but the idea is cool. Tried it with a few tracks, tapping out different patterns and it looks brilliant in time with music
Oh, and it's limited to 32 taps. If you do more before tapping (SELECT+) B it will wrap back to the first one.
427 Jul 17, 2010 7:56 am
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Blargg - I was thinking about the tempo tap and the idea that you could expand button tapping into recoding rhythmic patterns i.e.
1) Tap A and recording begins.
2) Record delta, in frames (16 bit probably), until next tap of A
3) Keep recording A taps until B is tapped - this marks the end (loop) point.
4) At the same time B is pressed, start playing the pattern of A hits from the beginning.
You could then tap along to whatever music is playing and this rhythm would be used as the basis for some of the animations. It would also double up as a tempo - tap A then B, the delta between them would be used to set the speed.
428 Jul 16, 2010 7:55 am
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Thanks to the cat waking me up at some ungodly hour, I did another animation (sorry blargg )
New mode has a snake!
Cycle through and you'll find it. Once in Snake Mode pressing LEFT will change the number of snakes (up to 4). Pressing RIGHT will change the type of movement. Changing the animation speed (A) changes the speed, as you'd expect. Because of the way I did the animation for the tails, a nice side effect is that the colour-fetching speed (B) changes the length of the tails.
Each time you enter Snake Mode they'll be assigned new random colours.
429 Jul 16, 2010 5:39 am
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
blargg wrote:
Wow, shapes are cool. Left and right change between them. I only made up four. I was experimenting with morphing them, but for now I think simple is better.
Heh, shapes do look good
I was thinking if you switched to a mapper that had CHR RAM, the morphing could be done quite easily, though I for one wouldn't like to have to draw the morphs by hand - I wonder if we could strong-arm someone from here with pixel skills...
430 Jul 15, 2010 10:43 pm
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
OK so I did a few new bits and bobs on mine, again only to serve as inspiration to blargg
There's 3 new things;
- I tried a different graphic for the squares, gives quite a different effect.
- there's a new animation mode which puts random bright (the near-white versions) in random coordinates, with a random delay while the cell is black and a random speed for fading down towards the dark version of the colour. It also randomly works it way through all the hues. Really nice and organic As with other modes the animation speed scales the delay and fading speed.
- I added "Epilepsy Mode". Toggle it with SELECT. The flashing speed is tied into the animation speed.
431 Jul 15, 2010 6:21 pm
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Blargg - I haven't done any work on it since we last spoke, I just realized there were a couple of effects in the code that weren't in the last version I uploaded so I changed the code a bit to make them accessible (instead of being commented out )
Having said that I actually did a bit of stuff on it today while eating lunch one new effect and a load of different palette ideas.
Let's get together on irc as we planned.
432 Jul 15, 2010 7:55 am
Re: Lightwall: Concept for VJ oriented NES rom (353 replies, posted in Nintendo Consoles)
Here's where I'd left off. Just uploading to throw some ideas out there.
Controls:
A - cycle through speed at which new colours are fetched from the current palette
B - cycle through animation speed (not the same as the colour speed, as you'll see)
START - cycle through the different palettes
- first one is all colours grouped by hue
- second is all colours grouped by brightness
- third and subsequent palettes are individual colour cycles i.e. all blue, all red, all yellow etc.
U/D cycle through animations.
- Only new one I did was one that radiates outwards. Oh, and I did the full character set for the scroller plus a little surprise towards the end of the message