MML: What are people's actual complaints with the damn thing

[Bonknuts]

The cooked format version isn't a bad idea, and it does kinda future proof things if he adds new PCE features. But the format as it, won't work. It needs another layer of compression (because something like 100k is too large for a single song without samples), and the sample system needs to be redone. It might be easier to look at the PCE VGM format and convert from that.

I don't know how-on-earth you'd go back from that cooked format and get any sensible compression on it. 

I'll be interested in hearing the results if you choose to go down that path! 

In my experience, chiptune data (basically transformed-MML) only needs approx 2KB per tune (+samples).

There's a saying an old manager used to tell us, "Don't put your wallet in someone else's pocket". I always found that saying funny, because why in the hell would anybody do that? His point, though, was that we always think things from our own perspectives and expectations. This would be an example of me, doing just that. I can see the appeal of cooked format having almost zero overhead compared to a more complex player processing overhead. So.. that's where that line of thinking came from - haha (the demoscener or system pusher).

So (I assume) he's playing 16KHz samples at 1-per-hblank (nominally 15.7KHz). The 2% error shouldn't be noticable on short instrument samples.

I guess that's fine for their purpose, but not what would normally be used in-game (either 8KHz for 2-hblanks-per-sample, or 7KHz if using the timer interrupt).

But it wasn't hblank interrupt driven (from what I remember).  It was timer interrupt + timed code. In other words, you couldn't do anything else. That was my point.

Going forward ... what's the problem if he improves things? Wouldn't you want things to get better for users? Perhaps he could add a 7KHz sample rate option?

 The only problem, is if no one keeps up with him and it's not apparent of where to find the older builds (of deflemask). It's not a big concern, but just something to point out.

[elmer]

His point, though, was that we always think things from our own perspectives and expectations. This would be an example of me, doing just that. I can see the appeal of cooked format having almost zero overhead compared to a more complex player processing overhead. So.. that's where that line of thinking came from - haha (the demoscener or system pusher).

That's perfectly valid thinking, and I'm just-as-guilty of looking at things from my own "game-production" perspective.  :oops:

You're right ... it's all just a case of trade-offs.

I'm pretty-confident that for general-purpose homebrew usage, any new driver should try to minimize both CPU and memory usage as much as possible, even if that has some effect upon the theoretical-best quality that the PCE might produce.

The System Card player certainly takes the same route!

But it wasn't hblank interrupt driven (from what I remember).  It was timer interrupt + timed code. In other words, you couldn't do anything else. That was my point.

OMG, that's horrible! 

The only problem, is if no one keeps up with him and it's not apparent of where to find the older builds (of deflemask). It's not a big concern, but just something to point out.

It's definitely a valid concern. It would be sensible to archive old versions just-in-case they disappeared from his forum, and are needed in the future.

But ... I'm still hoping that he's going to be sensible-enough to keep the version-upgrades reasonably compatible.

As I said ... from what I've seen *so far*, everything for the last few versions can be handled by a few simple "if" statemants in the converter code.

This is my workflow for creating music for PCE and MSX:

1) I open up FruityLoops

OK, I'm curious enough to try it out.

Since you're the "music" guy around here, I figure that I'd better see what you're seeing on the screen if I'm going to even *think* about trying to improve the process.

It's on sale at the moment, down from $99 to $69 at Musician's Friend ... so I'll bite.

Just in case anyone else is interested, that price comes up on Google, and on the Musician's Friend "Special Deals" webpage, but the price jumps up to $99 when you go to order it.

I telephoned them, and they were happy to sell it to me at the $69 price ... so make sure to do that if you're interested in it.

But now I wish that I hadn't looked at Musician's Friend ... it's too easy to get sucked into all the pretty toys. There's a really good "upgrade" offer at the moment for my copy of Cakewalk Sonar. 

[Gredler]

It's on sale at the moment, down from $99 to $69 at Musician's Friend ... so I'll bite.

Just in case anyone else is interested, that price comes up on Google, and on the Musician's Friend "Special Deals" webpage, but the price jumps up to $99 when you go to order it.

I telephoned them, and they were happy to sell it to me at the $69 price ... so make sure to do that if you're interested in it.

But now I wish that I hadn't looked at Musician's Friend ... it's too easy to get sucked into all the pretty toys. There's a really good "upgrade" offer at the moment for my copy of Cakewalk Sonar. 

I foolishly spent any wiggle room from the budget on black friday games, I should've picked this up but even 70$ is high for me to spend on a hobby right now, especially since I have no musical experience and will just be learning it to hope something decent comes out of it or at least train someone on a workflow. If its still on sale next payday I will try to pick it up then

A guy on the facebook threads posted a link to his "Turbo Graphics 16 Album" of music he made in deflemask, he sounded kinda interested in using it outside of an "album" but also said he has no idea what to do with his work to get it into mml. I tried to spark the discussion between he and Arkan, but not much dialog sprung from it. I was hoping we had a community musician to work with.

[elmer]

... especially since I have no musical experience and will just be learning it to hope something decent comes out of it or at least train someone on a workflow. If its still on sale next payday I will try to pick it up then

It certainly could just be a good end-of-year sale, who knows?

But be careful ... I shared a house with a professional-musician-turned-programmer for a few years, and ended up with $1000's of dollars worth of beautiful equipment that I never learned to play, except for the factory-demo. 

I suspect that you need a certain exposure to it all as a kid in order to really be able to pick it up later as an adult.

But that's the "creative" side.

A "technical" understanding of what goes on isn't that hard for anyone with a reasonable brain.

A guy on the facebook threads posted a link to his "Turbo Graphics 16 Album" of music he made in deflemask, he sounded kinda interested in using it outside of an "album" but also said he has no idea what to do with his work to get it into mml.

There is no way for him to do that at this time.

Deflemask has NO native import or export capability to/from MIDI or MML.

It's one of the biggest problems with it from my POV.

But, it can hopefully be worked-around, eventually.

Do you have a link to that guy's work?

This is one of my favorite deflemask tracks at the moment ...

Noroi no Fuuin - Bloody Tears

[DarkKobold]

Noroi no Fuuin - Bloody Tears

You know, you raise an interesting point with this, one that has bothered me for a long time.

While music appreciation is subjective, there are pieces of music that are objectively good. If we look at just the nes, no matter what top 10 list you look at, the same 3-5 tracks appear, in some random order, 90% of the time.

Mega Man 2: Dr. Wily Level 1

Duck Tales: Moon Theme

Castlevania 2: Bloody Tears

Silver Surfer

Here's the thing about music. No one can make you like it. It doesn't matter what someone tells you about a music's complexity or history, you either like it or you don't. But here is the crazy thing about this. Despite the variety of opinion on what is good or bad music, the majority opinion tends to agree that the tracks listed are the 'best' of the NES. This means, despite the variety in taste, there is something intrinsic that can make a music track exceptional.

To me, that is basically magic. As someone with near zero music ability, there is a zero percent chance that I could ever create something that most people would consider exceptional. I just wish I understood what made the difference between a 'good' track on the NES (which there are plenty of) and something truly exceptional, which time and time again, are demonstrated to be the best of the best, despite how they are remixed (as elmer showed.).

I guess, in short, I'm just in awe of truly amazing music.

[Bonknuts]

All this rambling

 Apparently someone uploaded a "longplay" of Squirrel on youtube... LOL!

Edit: Opps.. oh yeah, here's the link:

[Gredler]

All this rambling

 Apparently someone uploaded a "longplay" of Squirrel on youtube... LOL!

Edit: Opps.. oh yeah, here's the link:

Dannnnnng who is the mystery person, and does any one recognize the tune or is it original? A masterful performance.

[touko]

i love this tune made with deflemask :

[Punch]

All this rambling

 Apparently someone uploaded a "longplay" of Squirrel on youtube... LOL!

Edit: Opps.. oh yeah, here's the link:

Someone needs to add it to pcedaisakusen.net, that would go nicely along my System Card clears.

[elmer]

i love this tune made with deflemask :

I was more impressed with it before I saw the crazy list of samples that it uses ...

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[Bonknuts]

i love this tune made with deflemask :

I was more impressed with it before I saw the crazy list of samples that it uses ...

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Yeah, but that's not bad at all. The "beat loops" he has, translates into a single pattern frame at the most in length. I.e. those longer loops (which are the largest ones there) are like 13kbytes if you converted to 7khz 8bit output (5bit in but in bytes). If you can get the timing down right, beat loops are a nice aid IMO. That's what I'd be doing if I was using ADPCM for drum stuff on the PCE with PSG; beat loops.

 And I'm not sure he's even using all of them (the HES in a raw wave editor would suggest he's not).

[elmer]

Yeah, but that's not bad at all. The "beat loops" he has, translates into a single pattern frame at the most in length. I.e. those longer loops (which are the largest ones there) are like 13kbytes if you converted to 7khz 8bit output (5bit in but in bytes).

I think that you're mixing up "samples" in that printout with "bytes"

Sample  1 : NTSC loopbasup.wav
Size      - 83148 samples
Rate      - 22050 Hz

-> 27716 samples @ 7KHz

And sorry ... but 7-or-so 27KB samples is effing horrible IMHO! 

Nobody BITD would allocate half of their cartridge space for a bunch of instrument samples.

It's the same kind of "retro" bullsh*t as all of those "NES-like" games made in Unity on the PC that try to claim that they're developed with the old hardware restrictions, and then include megabyte textures or put hundreds of sprites on the screen.

I have a lot more respect for people like Mirichin9801 and JIR-O who are more interested in keeping their tracks a bit more "honest" with respect to the limitations that musicians were really faced with (and worked-around) back when all the original tunes were made that people love so much.

[Bonknuts]

Yeah, but that's not bad at all. The "beat loops" he has, translates into a single pattern frame at the most in length. I.e. those longer loops (which are the largest ones there) are like 13kbytes if you converted to 7khz 8bit output (5bit in but in bytes).

I think that you're mixing up "samples" in that printout with "bytes"

Sample  1 : NTSC loopbasup.wav
Size      - 83148 samples
Rate      - 22050 Hz

-> 27716 samples @ 7KHz

And sorry ... but 7-or-so 27KB samples is effing horrible IMHO! 

Nobody BITD would allocate half of their cartridge space for a bunch of instrument samples.

It's the same kind of "retro" bullsh*t as all of those "NES-like" games made in Unity on the PC that try to claim that they're developed with the old hardware restrictions, and then include megabyte textures or put hundreds of sprites on the screen.

I have a lot more respect for people like Mirichin9801 and JIR-O who are more interested in keeping their tracks a bit more "honest" with respect to the limitations that musicians were really faced with (and worked-around) back when all the original tunes were made that people love so much.

 Ahh samples not bytes. But still 7 x 27k = 189k.

 Hardly a dent in later gen 16bit softs though. Maybe for PCE where hucards didn't get a chance to evolve, but just looking at SF2 mapper 256k is only 10% of the total rom size. There are roms out there where original devs devoted space to whatever importance. IIRC, SF2 on the PCE has over 120K worth of samples. Bloodshot on the Megadrive is an 8megabit cart and 768k of that is precalculated code paths to render the game! Night Creatures on the TG16 wastes a lot of rom space on a large 128x128 dynamic tile set animation, as well as just using uncompressed tiles/sprites. Batman on the PCE is 384k and the sample pack (just for music instruments) is 64k. I'm sure official devs BITD have "wasted" rom resources on all kinds of things. Supposedly that "Sega" sample at the beginning of Sonic 1, took up 1/8 the cart space. And that was only used in one instance of the game. A dev even developed a mapper with a built in FM chip and shoved it into a Japanese Famicom game. I dunno. I just don't see this chiptune with some beat loops as a big deal.

 I like pushing the system. That means audio and video. It's ok in my book.

[touko]

I was more impressed with it before I saw the crazy list of samples that it uses ...

Effectively,not really the PCE standard .

And sorry ... but 7-or-so 27KB samples is effing horrible IMHO! 

i agree , but with bit packed, you can reduce this by 1/3 =>18 ko (still big, but more acceptable)

Of course like bonk said with a SF2 mapper and a 32/64 Mb hucard it's easily dooable,and with a good PCM driver and clean samples even at 7khz you can do an impressive PCM quality for a 8 bit system,better than MD @14/16 khz ones(with stef's driver), due to hardware .

[nodtveidt]

A dev even developed a mapper with a built in FM chip and shoved it into a Japanese Famicom game.

This reminds me of the special sound chip shoved into Pitfall II on the Atari 2600. Even back then, people were doing new things to overcome the inherent limitations of the system they were working with.