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Tech and Homebrew => Turbo/PCE Game/Tool Development => Topic started by: Arkhan on January 30, 2012, 06:41:31 AM
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Squirrel has been in existence for awhile now. There has been some use by others. Some general comments lean towards it being too hard to use still.
I plan to make more tutorials, in video form so you can see the whole thing being done.
Does anyone who has tried it out have any comments so I can get an idea of what kind of things to focus on when working on these tutorials?
The goal is to get it so that everyone can use Squirrel, no excuses!
(except for using Mac's)
:)
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Make it a tracker.
*runs away*
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Make it a tracker.
*runs away*
listen. I'll stab you with a rusty C64 power connector.
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Got any tutorials on how to create musical talent? No?
* backs away slowly *
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Got any tutorials on how to create musical talent? No?
* backs away slowly *
I could make one!
or try to, at least!
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A tutorial on how to convert an existing midi file would be nice for beginners.
The other thing I found with my very basic fiddling was that I couldn't get any of the pre-set notes to sound as good as you do. That might just be my fault, but maybe some sample mml files, starting very simple and gradually getting more complex, might help.
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The preset notes? You mean the waveforms? Just apply some of the built in envelopes to the built in waveforms, and you get tons of new sounds.
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Actual working examples are a perfect way of showing how this works.
i.e. You can get 'cool sound A' by doing 'exactly this'. Here is a file where I made 'cool sound A' and used it in a tune.
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Yeah, I could give that a whirl.
The biggest hurdle I've noticed is people can't get over the "can't hear it immediately" aspect that you get in a tracker.
You have to fiddle and then run it to see what it sounds like. It's only an extra couple of seconds!
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A couple of seconds?!? But I want to hear it NOOOOOOooooooooooow!
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All that messing around in dos windows is a bit of a pain tbh.
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Maybe what we need is a GUI program that outputs MML but allows you to edit and play it in the GUI.
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http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-mml.php
There are already a ton of options for that.
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Squirrel seems perfectly usable to me. I don't see what's so difficult about testing a song... it's just as easy and simple as compiling your homebrew code (if not easier). The biggest hurdle for me while converting the nyancat tune was that I had to figure out how to read sheet music first :D
Hurry up and release a version with support for sound effects too, Arkhan! :)
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The only thing really stopping me from using Squirrel is the lack of sound effect support. A sound library is useless if it doesn't support both without workarounds or unintuitive hacks; it's merely demo fodder if it only plays music.
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The only thing really stopping me from using Squirrel is the lack of sound effect support. A sound library is useless if it doesn't support both without workarounds or unintuitive hacks; it's merely demo fodder if it only plays music.
Or ADPCM sound effect + chip music fodder! (for now).
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A tutorial on how to convert an existing midi file would be nice for beginners.
i agree with that, it's my main request ..
But a video tutorial would be great .
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It's going to be a video file on how to convert a MIDI file, probably.
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It's going to be a video file on how to convert a MIDI file, probably.
Excellent ..
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It should be interesting. I expect naysayers.
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You don't care about, all initiatives to create musics/sounds are excellent, regardless of the method.
The tutorials are even more.
A simple tutorial is better than nothing .
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Squirrel is pretty awesome, just wish I had more time to play around with it. I did for a while there.
The only thing I could think to make it easier would be to get hucard support working. (maybe it is now already - I need to catch up) People were mentioning making it easier/quicker to hear results. When I was using it I had to make an ISO, then go and mount the ISO each time before I could listen ( I couldn't overwrite an ISO if it was mounted). So would be nice to skip this step. Or maybe there is a better way than I am doing it?
But I always wanted to make music on the Turbob and Ark made this possible. It's so awesome. Thanks Ark. :dance:
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The huCard version has been available for awhile now, complete with a test program that builds a .PCE that plays teh tunez.
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The huCard version has been available for awhile now, complete with a test program that builds a .PCE that plays teh tunez.
Thanks Arkhan, haven't been around much so I didn't know if it was completed. Well, then I don't have any great ideas to improve it.
I think the more people that play with it and openly post there CODE for other to look at would be good. So, maybe just a thread dedicated to people posting there music code for others to look at and listen to. See how it's done and all. Though it already comes with bunch of great songs. A thread might drive people to innovate.
That's what I was thinking. This may be way out there. I know you can load images and things pretty easily already. But maybe a some sort of "KIT" of graphics effects (Plasmas? Scrolling text effects? etc) to go along with MML. Then we have a Demo Scene starter tool in a box!! That would be cool to get a bunch of us making little demos to see what we can create. Maybe I'm getting too far off. ;-)
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thats a neat idea. :D
I have an entire MML section on Aetherbyte's forum... but it isn't too active. :( lol
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Maybe there's a better place to post this, but just downloaded latest Squirrel so I can play around again and start posting stuff.
Posted this as example of what happens when I compile CD vs PCE.
http://soundcloud.com/vecanti
A bunch of stuff is missing, not not mention speed is way faster on PCE.
I'm just changing the bat file and using the default rtype mml:
mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s -scd soundtest.c
pceas -scd soundtest.s
versus
mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s soundtest.c
pceas soundtest.s
Any ideas? Just have a default install of huc.
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I've had the idea for a while to use Squirrel to convert some Genesis FM chiptunes over to the Turbo to see how they might sound, and then optimize them for the hardware if the results are good (or even decent).
Sadly, I have no musical expertise and I've been far too busy to play around with Squirrel as of yet.
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I've had the idea for a while to use Squirrel to convert some Genesis FM chiptunes over to the Turbo to see how they might sound, and then optimize them for the hardware if the results are good (or even decent).
Sadly, I have no musical expertise and I've been far too busy to play around with Squirrel as of yet.
If you've got midi files and convert them with 3MLE it's really easy. Picking the right waveforms is the hard bit, and that's where I get stuck.
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Maybe there's a better place to post this, but just downloaded latest Squirrel so I can play around again and start posting stuff.
Posted this as example of what happens when I compile CD vs PCE.
http://soundcloud.com/vecanti
A bunch of stuff is missing, not not mention speed is way faster on PCE.
I'm just changing the bat file and using the default rtype mml:
mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s -scd soundtest.c
pceas -scd soundtest.s
versus
mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s soundtest.c
pceas soundtest.s
Any ideas? Just have a default install of huc.
That's... odd.
You grabbed the latest Squirrel off of Aetherbyte?
show me the file you're using, or is it the exact one I provided?
edit: I did it here, and it's goony too. I think something got borked between updates. Going to see if outdated files accidentally stuck around in the .zip on Aetherbyte.com and try to figure it out ASAP.
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Hello, all!
I've been following you guys for a while now, but this is my first post.
First off, Squirrel is the probably biggest step forward in PC-Engine dev tools since HuC. Arkhan, you're a damn good programmer, and this was a huge undertaking. Thanks for all the time you spent on it! Your balls are bigger than all of the enemies in Vigilante, including the final boss.
That said, I have only attempted to use it a couple of times, and I'm not actively using it for any of my games just yet.
What deters me is that it "sort of supports" HuCards. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't particularly want to find out the hard way. I'm currently coding for HuCard exclusively because it's the easiest for me right now. HuC is kinda flakey as it is, so I don't want to throw another wrench in the works just yet.
Also deterring me is the fact that the current version doesn't really support sound effects. I don't want to use both BT Garner's "snd.c" and Squirrel. It just seems a little redundant.
Personally, I'd prefer a newer version that resolves my two concerns, but I'll still use it when I'm farther along in my development even without one.
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:) Well, OldMan had a hand in the MML stuff as well. It was a tag team effort over the course of a few months pre-Insanity release (the original parser and player was on the fly! I had to listen to a song over and over to get the fractions working)
but then it branched out after that, using Develo and a lot of tests with songs I did that use all of the weirder features.
but, right now there seems to be some goony problem with HuCards that got over looked in an update. It was working and now it's being strange. We're on top of it over here.
as for the sound effects, they're not quite ready to be unleashed, but I wouldn't be surprised if the stuff gets released in the near future. Retrocade is taking a bit longer than expected (due to the AbCard project!), so full-range tests of the sound effects in projects hasnt gotten to take place.
They're solid in Pyramid Plunder and Atlantean so far though.
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Updateything: Yeah, Squirrel archive for download is using the wrong player library. *facepalm*
I guess I forgot to update ALL of the files when I put the new zip up
I will fix it tonight and update the information.
:)
EVEN BETTER UPDATE EDIT:
Sit tight. Squirrel's plans have changed. More info to come. :)
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Your balls are bigger than all of the enemies in Vigilante, including the final boss.
HAHA! Those bosses were well endowed indeed!
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OK:
After this Prototype AbCards come out,
Squirrel 3.0 will be released.
What this means:
You will have full CD and HuCard support for the PSG. You will be able to do sound effects and music in all of your projects. It will come with all the stuff, ready to go. You just need to drop it in and make the appropriate C function calls. No asm hoojoo required. It's the easiest shit you're ever going to find for making the PSG do anything on the PCE.
I will update the manual the reflect sound effect usage, and tweak it a bit more where needed. The examples will still come with Squirrel 3.0, and I will toss in some sound effects along with it.
Once using it, I encourage you to go to aetherbyte.com and hit the forum for the MML section. That's where I expect to find questions/problems/examples/discussion about MML so everyone can learn from each other and assist where needed.
The only real catch here is that it's expected that you credit Aetherbyte in your game's credit screen, and if it's a published game, also in the manual somewhere (with a URL to Aetherbyte.com, so people can find and use Squirrel themselves)
and, if it's a published game... a few freebie copies for our troubles. :)
Sounds fair, yeah?
EDIT: This was my 6666th post on this forum.
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This is very very cool. I hope this encourages some chip based home brew releases in the near future!
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that's the idea. :)
That and its part of the MML Awareness Foundation.
Started by me, right now!
MML is good. Everyone should use it. :)
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This sounds awesome. I'm excited.
Hmm.... MAF -- MML Awareness Foundation
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This sounds awesome. I'm excited.
Hmm.... MAF -- MML Awareness Foundation
Or you could call it MALF, and confuse the heck out of all the 4chan users.
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...confuse the heck out of all the 4chan users.
Not like this is particularly hard to do. :)
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Is Squirrel, and, really, the PCE in general, capable of recreating most or all of the range of sounds the NES can produce? I know the sound hardware in the PCE is very different, but Tom made those NES -> PCE ports which he said used audio emulation due to the differences. But if the PCE was able to emulate that audio, it means that it is capable of generating, effectively, identical sounds and waveforms, even if it does it differently. I ask because that might give us a ready source of some difference waveforms to rip off and play with, on top of the already known PCE waveforms.
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It could do some of it, but the pulse-wave stuff isn't exactly the same kind of concept.
There's not much point to it, really. You're better off just ripping waveforms from PCE games instead.
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There's not much point to it, really. You're better off just ripping waveforms from PCE games instead.
Unless there's a specific NES waveform you want.
What is the actual, material difference between how the waveforms are generated in the PCE and the NES? I don't know this stuff, but I think I want to.
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There's not much point to it, really. You're better off just ripping waveforms from PCE games instead.
Unless there's a specific NES waveform you want.
What is the actual, material difference between how the waveforms are generated in the PCE and the NES? I don't know this stuff, but I think I want to.
Well, NES uses pulse waveforms at various duty cycles and PCE waveforms are 32-byte little samples.
basically, the PCE lets you kinda "draw" the waveforms yourself.
You can do similar things on the PCE without a lot of trouble with Squirrel. If you keep things square-y (pulsey), you'll be ok.
You'll notice alot of NES games have similar sounds, because there aren't as many waveforms as you'd think. It's the enveloping and such that are getting the NES to have various sounds. The waveforms themselves aren't much of anything.
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The NES uses very basic waveforms. There are already PCE games that use the NES waveforms, they're pretty generic.
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So, of the prospective people who would actually be using this:
What's your musical experience? I want to make sure I don't overshoot these tutorials, or make them too simple and boring/not useful for you guys.
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What's your musical experience? I want to make sure I don't overshoot these tutorials, or make them too simple and boring/not useful for you guys.
For me ,near to NULL lol
You can make 2 parts, first for lamer (like me), and a second for more advanced features .
For psg use, without basis, no chocolate .
Why a sinus ??, a squarre ?,a triangle ??, this not an oscilloscope !!
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What about your experience with using various music softwares like FruityLoops, or other MIDI software?
Can you play a keyboard or anything, even at a very basic level?
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Lol, have i a head to play with keyboard ???
i know only how to manipulate samples for sfx, that's all ;-)
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I think we need to decide that it is rare that one person can do everything. I hope we get some folks in here who decide they want to learn the MML stuff and other folks who want to learn HuC, and then the two of them can get together and make games!
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That's the other thing. It's awfully hard to cater a music program to people who don't do music. If you're making game music, it's assumed you at least know the basics of music. If not, it's sort of your responsibility to go read up on it.
If you don't do music much, pretty much any music program is difficult. Even trackers. The only upside to a tracker is you can hear shit as you smack at it.
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The only upside to a tracker is you can hear shit as you smack at it.
That's a pretty big upside for folks who are discovering music through creating it.
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The only upside to a tracker is you can hear shit as you smack at it.
That's a pretty big upside for folks who are discovering music through creating it.
trackers are a horrible device to use for learning by doing. They're unintuitive and non-musical.
If you want to learn by doing, there are far better choices. Trackers are just attached to chiptunes, so for whatever stupid reason, newcomers do this.
Chiptunes = awesome
trackers = chiptunes
trackers = awesome
and, that is not so great.
Squirrel isn't a music creating program. It's an MML compiler.
Create the MML elsewhere and compile it with Squirrel. lol that is where people are missing things.
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There are some aspects about trackers that are attractive and the main one is what you hear is what you get. But it's more than just as simple as that. Once you get familiar with them, it's how you massage/sculpt the sound in real time. I mean, it's more than just hearing a note or sound immediately. This usually comes in the form of typical tracker FX column. I'm not saying it's the best method (not at all), but once you get used to it - it's a rather powerful feature IMO. I think more than anything else, this is why trackers are still around today for old school systems. And trackers aren't just for musically uneducated (or self learners that follow no traditional layout or form). I've seen music created on trackers by real musicians/classically learned. But there are definitely downsides to the tracker format in general (all trackers that I've seen). The ridged note timing format can be a real pain in the ass. I have some stuff I originally did on my keyboard, only to have really alter the note timing to fit the tracker format - which sounded quite a bit different. That sucked. It didn't sound as fluid and overall disappointed me. I think triplets and some other things are pain to do as well.
That said, what about creating a rom or ISO that runs on the PCE/emulator that you can build out an instrument sound? Tweak with in realtime. Something that follows the MML format and PSG envelope structure. Then you'd just have to jot down into your mml song file definition areas or whatever. It wouldn't be so different than an SFX editor. What you hear is what you get sort of thing.
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There are some aspects about trackers that are attractive and the main one is what you hear is what you get. But it's more than just as simple as that. Once you get familiar with them, it's how you massage/sculpt the sound in real time. I mean, it's more than just hearing a note or sound immediately. This usually comes in the form of typical tracker FX column. I'm not saying it's the best method (not at all), but once you get used to it - it's a rather powerful feature IMO. I think more than anything else, this is why trackers are still around today for old school systems. And trackers aren't just for musically uneducated (or self learners that follow no traditional layout or form). I've seen music created on trackers by real musicians/classically learned. But there are definitely downsides to the tracker format in general (all trackers that I've seen). The ridged note timing format can be a real pain in the ass. I have some stuff I originally did on my keyboard, only to have really alter the note timing to fit the tracker format - which sounded quite a bit different. That sucked. It didn't sound as fluid and overall disappointed me. I think triplets and some other things are pain to do as well.
Trackers are robotic and unintuitive. They work, they're neat, and they can do some neat effects, but they are very mechanical. MML offers more flexibility in that regard. It's sheet music. You lose the per-step tweaks, and you lose the hear it immediately (unless you use Musica, or other MML parser/players) aspect... but you make up for it with flexibility, portability, and efficiency.
That's what I like most about MML. MIDI and MML allow you to take your songs nearly anywhere. Some of the Insanity tunes started off as Amiga mods I made when I was 12. I just exported to MIDI and turned it to MML.
Also took the MIDI and turned it into the redbook stuff fairly quickly.
That's what I don't like as much about trackers. If you get really entrenched into using a tracker, you've killed your portability. All those effects and tweaks you do aren't going to survive any quick conversion. It would require a fine-tuned approach.
I respect what has been done with trackers in the European world. Jeroen Tel for example...
but, I'd be really curious to see what someone like him would have done if he was given MML as his tool kit. C64/Amiga kind of made trackers a standard thing in the European scene. It's expected that trackers be used. Kinda blows. The MSX scene is split, thankfully, since it came from Japan.
That said, what about creating a rom or ISO that runs on the PCE/emulator that you can build out an instrument sound? Tweak with in realtime. Something that follows the MML format and PSG envelope structure. Then you'd just have to jot down into your mml song file definition areas or whatever. It wouldn't be so different than an SFX editor. What you hear is what you get sort of thing.
I dunno. I mean you could just play a note and keep rebuilding/launching it. It only takes a few seconds to build and launch a PCE.
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I dunno. I mean you could just play a note and keep rebuilding/launching it. It only takes a few seconds to build and launch a PCE.
Sure, you could, but why even that? It's about the effort it would take to make it simpler. I'd say there's likely an audience here for that suggestion.
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Sure, you could, but why even that? It's about the effort it would take to make it simpler. I'd say there's likely an audience here for that suggestion.
an audience to do what, create an entire music program on the PCE?
Sorry, I don't think there is, at least not as far as I care to make. I've got games to write.
MML is *not* a composition device. It's expected that you compose this shit elsewhere first. Making a program to hear it as you go is time consuming. I know someone working on one for a different platform. It's a huge undertaking.
Compose the music elsewhere. Use a VST for approximations. Import into Squirrel and listen/fiddle til you get the sounds you want out of your ALREADY WRITTEN song.
If you can't be bothered to do that, then you probably shouldn't be making music. There are plenty of viable methods to COMPOSE songs. Koichi Sugiyama (Dragon Quest) composed the music for DQ on a piano. We, being in 2012, with fancy ass computers, are at a massive advantage over what he had to work with. There are 32 byte VSTs that can sound like the PCE.
When you use a tracker, you have to sample the sounds in from somewhere. They're not just there, waiting to be used. It's expected that you have the brains to at least grab sounds and start dicking around. This is not much different.
This is how my tutorial video is going to go
Step 1) Open fruityloops
Step 2) Slap 6 VSTs down (AKA 6 channels for the PSG)
Step 3) Compose some kind of song. The notes are what matters, really
Step 4) export to MIDI, feed through MML converter
Step 5) place into Squirrel sheet, compile, listen
Step 6) Fiddle with waveforms and envelopes til the song sounds nice.
Using a tracker goes something like
1) Open the tracker
2) f*ck around for awhile until you find samples you like
3) Punch in music and keep dicking around til you get it like you like
4) This shit doesn't work in a PCE game, so export to MIDI?
5) Put midi thru MML
6) Squirrel again
I am sure none of you are that disabled.
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an audience to do what, create an entire music program on the PCE?
No, I was thinking more the other proposal: "That said, what about creating a rom or ISO that runs on the PCE/emulator that you can build out an instrument sound? Tweak with in realtime. "
That way we can anticipate what things will sound like. Being able to check waveforms and envelopes in real time would be great, especially if it could load up an MML and let you tweak the stuff associated with each voice (save maybe the percussion line, since that tends to get messy). You'd still have to compose the structure of the song elsewhere, but you could play with different sounds for the song using the PSG capabilities of the system in real time.
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MML is compiled. You can't really wack the waveform around in real time with Squirrel. It's set in stone once you run the .pce/iso.
You can change waves and envelopes in notepad in about 2 seconds, hit save, and rebuild/launch and listen.
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OK then, how about this. Forget the MML component. Just an interactive PCE generator that lets you play with waveforms and envelopes so you can muddle with sounds in real time to figure out what you want to plug into your MLL when you compile.
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I'm pretty sure that already exists http://zeograd.com/download_presentation.php?lang=en&id=176
sort of.
Though, I'm not sure how this is really more beneficial than just trying waveforms with your song. Seems like a waste of time.
I'm sure as hell not going to bother writing a program to do that. Make a riff, try a waveform/envelope, repeat til you like it. Why use a second program, really? lol