Author Topic: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?  (Read 1042 times)

alexsduo

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 377
Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« on: April 26, 2011, 08:33:15 PM »
Hey all,

I have always loved the way video games sounded, and I have been into chiptunes for a bit now.  I purchases some stuff and have made some stuff, (midines, lsdj, synthcart, )

However, I love the TG stuff, and I was wondering if anyone has made any music with some kind of PCE/TG hardware?  I have seen squirrel, and so on...I am wondering if anyone has burnt it onto the multi card or something else and used actual hardware?

this is pretty cool tho:

Manuals needed: Airzonk
hu: MC, PCE: Zero Wing

touko

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 953
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #1 on: April 26, 2011, 11:33:44 PM »
Yes tomaitheous/malducci has made a xm player for pce/tg16 ..


It works very fine.

alexsduo

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 377
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #2 on: April 27, 2011, 06:18:12 AM »
That is really cool!  I would assume that someone made a hes or other file, and then burned it to a rom to play on original hardware?

I am curious if there is any hardware like midines/lsdj, etc that you can make live music with nothing but a turbo and a hu or something similar?

thanks for the info!
Manuals needed: Airzonk
hu: MC, PCE: Zero Wing

nodtveidt

  • Guest
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #3 on: April 27, 2011, 06:27:30 AM »
Aetherbyte's Squirrel is a better option.

http://www.aetherbyte.com/

I don't think anyone's made a realtime music program for the PCE... but you could try checking on zeograd.com.

TheOldMan

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 958
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #4 on: April 27, 2011, 07:26:11 AM »
Thanks for the plug rover.

The problem with trying to do it live is the limited amount of RAM in the turbo. By the time you wrote a program to do it, you wouldn't have much space left to store the actual song.
Arkhan and I have talked about this, and sorta decided it's not worth trying to do it live, since it's pretty easy to make a song and create a simple program to play it back.
And we're not hardware guys, so making hardware to do it isn't in our future. (Though it anyone knows how to make a ram expander, let me know. I've been seriously thinking it would be nice to have, say, 128K of RAM and 128K of ROM on a card).

And come see us at the ccga show: http://www.ccagshow.com . We might have a surprise or two for you squirrel users :)
« Last Edit: April 27, 2011, 07:31:01 AM by TheOldMan »

alexsduo

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 377
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #5 on: April 27, 2011, 07:41:29 AM »
Well, I would volunteer, but I don't know anything, anything.
Manuals needed: Airzonk
hu: MC, PCE: Zero Wing

Arkhan

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 14142
  • Fuck Elmer.
    • Incessant Negativity Software
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #6 on: April 27, 2011, 11:07:57 AM »
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26xYJKunr5Q


I made that, lol.

I make chiptunes for the PCE w/ Squirrel.  Squirrel is an MML compiler.  Aetherbyte makes Squirrel (Aetherbyte is me and TheOldMan, currently.  Pending another person!).  You can take MML from stuff like MSX, PPMCK, or even Mabinogi, put it into a .txt with the proper formatting, and send it through and get a thing to play back on the real hardware.

By proper formatting I mean: Follow the empty song template that comes with Squirrel and fill in the spaces with MML.  There are tags for each channel, and other things like that.  The readme is pretty good too!  I wrote it!  I tried to be thorough and clear. 

I have a few other songs but they are for an upcoming game so I haven't released. 

I did all the chiptunes for Insanity w/ Squirrel 1.0.  Now we have Squirrel 2.0, and that will have some yayness added at some point.  Right now though, it is the most fully featured way to make music on the PC Engine.  You have the ability to do percussion, custom waveforms and envelopes, various effects, there are repeating/looping mechanisms.  Good stuff.

If you are new to MML, feel free to post any questions on the forum at www.aetherbyte.com

I like MML alot and would be more than happy to assist.  MML rules.  Screw trackers.
[Fri 19:34]<nectarsis> been wanting to try that one for awhile now Ope
[Fri 19:33]<Opethian> l;ol huge dong

I'm a max level Forum Warrior.  I'm immortal.
If you're not ready to defend your claims, don't post em.

alexsduo

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 377
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #7 on: April 27, 2011, 11:29:08 AM »
I figured!  I found it on the internets

Do you have a good guide to learning mml for idiots? I have tried tracking and it is kind of cool, but I will try some squirrel if it will make me cooler..

http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-mml.php

that seems pretty informative...

thanks!
Manuals needed: Airzonk
hu: MC, PCE: Zero Wing

Arkhan

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 14142
  • Fuck Elmer.
    • Incessant Negativity Software
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #8 on: April 27, 2011, 11:48:06 AM »
That site basically details the oldschool of MML for closed platforms.

I say oldschool because that stuff is a clusterf*ck.  It is awful.  I am big on MML and even I think the stuff is a mess.   There is alot of crap you have to setup with HuSIC/PPMCK that is a pain in the ass, and if you aren't sure what it even is, will scare you off forever.

Squirrel more closely follows what is in the Develo PC engine book, and borrows stuff from the MSX scene.

The MSX scene has used MML in commercial homebrew projects using a program called Musica.

The great thing about MSX mml w/ musica is that it is very tidy and very easy to get into.  Because of this, I borrowed alot of concepts from it for Squirrel's file layout.  The proof that it is a good working idea is the fact that MSX sceners have used it for decades now.  So if anyone feels like badmouthing something Squirrel is doing or thinks its a bad idea or doesnt work, take it up with 20+ years of MSX development. 

I suggest you download Squirrel from aetherbyte.com and read the instruction file.  It breaks things down as best as I could.   If you have more questions, ask away on my forum! 

It has some preset waveforms and envelopes.  You are all set to make noise from the get-go.  No dicking around defining waveforms or setting up hardware information.  Once you are more comfortable you can always experiment!

I packed in some example files as well so you can see stuff in action.


The other nice thing about MML is that it was designed as a way to easily punch sheet music into a computer for playback.  If you know how to read sheet music or are a composer, learning MML and then putting it to use will be a very nice way to make music.

If you aren't like that, don't worry!  You can always cheat.  Grab some kind of MIDI song creating program.  Make sure you account for PCE hardware limits (6 channels!), and make MIDI songs.  Then theres this program called 3MLE that converts MIDI tunes to MML for Mabinogi (a newer MMO that uses .mml files.  More proof that MML kicks ass).

You can take the converted data out of the 3MLE program and copy paste it into a squirrel file and be listening to bleepbloops in no time.

The only things to be wary of with 3MLE are the following:

Since percussion on the PCE is done strangely, you will almost always have to fix your drum sounds/beats/timing.  Its not too awful, especially since my demo files have pretty nice drums defined.  Drums are the hardest part of MML/chiptuning.  Once you get familiar with it, you'll quickly find it as no big thing.

Mabinogi made up some special commands with respect to octaves.  Sometimes they use shortcuts to drop/raise octaves.  Its annoying.   If you see errors during Squirrel compilation, theyre probably from that.  I might make a program to fix these things.  To fix them you have to manually edit the MML.  it is usually just a matter of putting octave shifts, and the note in question back in place of the shortcut.

[Fri 19:34]<nectarsis> been wanting to try that one for awhile now Ope
[Fri 19:33]<Opethian> l;ol huge dong

I'm a max level Forum Warrior.  I'm immortal.
If you're not ready to defend your claims, don't post em.

TheOldMan

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 958
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #9 on: April 27, 2011, 01:47:13 PM »
Quote
The other nice thing about MML is that it was designed as a way to easily punch sheet music into a computer for playback.  If you know how to read sheet music or are a composer, learning MML and then putting it to use will be a very nice way to make music.

Yeah, it really is folks. I spent about 2 hours entering the majority of Godzilla by Blue Oyster Cult a couple of weeks ago. Most of that time was actually spent fixing typos and octave shifts, and re-building the test program. It's not flaming guitars or anything, but that's actually quite easy to fix once the melody is in :)

nat

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 7085
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #10 on: April 27, 2011, 03:29:45 PM »
Blue Oyster Cult rules.

roflmao

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4822
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #11 on: April 27, 2011, 05:28:18 PM »
Blue Oyster Cult rules.

...as does Godzilla. :D

Arkhan

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 14142
  • Fuck Elmer.
    • Incessant Negativity Software
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #12 on: April 28, 2011, 02:12:21 PM »
Blue Oyster Cult rules.

Don't fear the TURBOB!
[Fri 19:34]<nectarsis> been wanting to try that one for awhile now Ope
[Fri 19:33]<Opethian> l;ol huge dong

I'm a max level Forum Warrior.  I'm immortal.
If you're not ready to defend your claims, don't post em.

TheOldMan

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 958
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #13 on: April 28, 2011, 03:28:35 PM »
Is that a request??

Bonknuts

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 3292
Re: Anyone making chiptunes with PCE or TG?
« Reply #14 on: April 28, 2011, 03:29:19 PM »
Yes tomaitheous/malducci has made a xm player for pce/tg16 ..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPg73WFemAA

It works very fine.


 MooZ and I have something else in mind ;) The XM converter was cool, but doesn't touch the PCE's capabilities. It was just fun to mess around with. We want a native tracker, that runs on the system itself. And something extremely specific to the PCE/TG16. Both MooZ and I working on making PS/2 KB and PC mouse to PCE converters (I'm doing PIC since I've already done some pic 16' assembly projects and have spare chips, and he's doing Atmega 8bit versions). Although mednafen is still an option (since it supports Tsushin PCE keyboard and official PCE mouse) and is the only emulator to handle most of the new FX/etc that's been discovered (and some old ones used in the entire fire pro wrestling game line that most emulators still don't do). The problem is getting the data off the real system. I wrote a single bit output FM modulated square clock output on the sound channels, but that's a bit too technical for most people (requires some specific tools I wrote to decode the recorded wave file back into data. Originally wrote it to backup my BRAM from my real system to my PC. The other option was data-to-tilemap video output and capture card -> to decode utility. More complex than worth the effort for just 2k of data, but much faster transfer rate). MooZ looked into SD card reading/write via Atmega series. There's already a lib for it. Probably go that route (and hand assemble these to the fab'd PCBs for our selves and people that are interested).