MML and Squirrel

[Arkhan]

  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.

[Arkhan]

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.

[Keranu]

Your balls are bigger than all of the enemies in Vigilante, including the final boss.

HAHA! Those bosses were well endowed indeed!

[Arkhan]

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.

[2X4]

This is very very cool.  I hope this encourages some chip based home brew releases in the near future!

[Arkhan]

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.

[Vecanti]

This sounds awesome. I'm excited. 

Hmm.... MAF  --  MML Awareness Foundation

[spenoza]

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.

[nodtveidt]

...confuse the heck out of all the 4chan users.

Not like this is particularly hard to do.

[spenoza]

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.

[Arkhan]

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. 

[spenoza]

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.

[Arkhan]

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.

[Bonknuts]

The NES uses very basic waveforms. There are already PCE games that use the NES waveforms, they're pretty generic.

[Arkhan]

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.