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

[Arkhan Asylum]

All this rambling about HuC/MML/Mod players has me wanting to ask some questions, as a survey.

So

1) What actually scares you about MML?
2) How is MML any scarier than trackers, which are just columns of bullshit that look like a bad session of VIM that happens to make sounds?
3) Are you aware that you can use any fancy-as-piss DAW to craft PCE songs, and then simply MIDI-->MML---> Run it through Squirrel (for example) to get it to play something on PCE?

I am just trying to sort out why people run to the hills or completely give up on it.   It get's such a bad rap for no reason, I think.   It's not isolated to these scene.   There are people everywhere who go OMFG MML JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, NO.   GIVE ME TRACKER.

Also, perks to using MML for PC Engine:

1) If you did everything in a DAW, you accidentally made a CD soundtrack too probably
2) If you're using Squirrel, you get the magic of sound effects.  See: Atlantean.   It's got chiptunes and SFX.
3) It's super usable for creating a game.



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

1) I open up FruityLoops
2) I use the mouse cursor to pet the cute girl that is my wallpaper in FruityLoops
3) If PCE, I make a 6 channel song.  If MSX, I make a 9 channel song.
4) If PCE, I use Chip32 to approximate instruments.  If MSX, I use an MSX PSG VST, and an OPL2 FM VST.
5) I make the songs with MIDI controllers/piano roll editing.
6) Ok cool, it's done.  I hit the "midi" button and export a MIDI
7) import midi into 3MLE.  Every channel is conveniently converted to MML
If the songs are long, I use 3MLE's optimize button to shrink em up.
9) Paste into Squirrel file, or Musica file for PCE and MSX respectively.
10) Hit a button or two.  Done.

I made YouTubes about this before.   It's stupidly simple.
https://youtu.be/XeZTqqN0FtM
https://youtu.be/yy9gNPfTmgU


I really want to basically dispel all these myths about MML, and get you goons to use it and get somewhere with tunes.

[ccovell]

1) It looks like Brainfuck.  You say it's meant to be created by DAWs, but it's still a textfile, which itself makes peering into it (and recoiling in horror) an inevitability.
2) Columns are the operative word, a very good thing.  Not every MML editor I've seen offers columns of notes that are editable in those columns.  Trackers' emphasis on hex values for effects is bullshit indeed.
3) I'm not a musician, so never used one.  No comment.

[touko]

More or less like ccovell said .
A deflemask user can make music for any systems supported by the tracker,and it's obviously easy to find some deflemask musicians than MML .
I'am not a musician too, and i don't care if musics are mml or tracked, i only need musicians .

For now my fav goes with MML because there is a functional driver.

[Arkhan Asylum]

1) It looks like Brainfuck.  You say it's meant to be created by DAWs, but it's still a textfile, which itself makes peering into it (and recoiling in horror) an inevitability.

But, you shouldn't be creating the song in MML.   You can, but that would require you to be the kind of composer that is capable of sitting with a pencil and a blank sheet of staff paper to compose songs.

It was designed for people who at least understand sheet music.  It wasn't really designed for you to just start smacking at it until it sounds like music.

2) Columns are the operative word, a very good thing.  Not every MML editor I've seen offers columns of notes that are editable in those columns.  Trackers' emphasis on hex values for effects is bullshit indeed.

The MML file can be formatted however you want.   You can (and should) define patterns, and then stamp them down in each channel, similar to what you could do in a tracker.   The Atlantean music files are very tidy like this.

You don't have columns.  You have channels broken up by headers.  You can even put commentblocks to separate channels.   Every pattern that you define can be named whatever you want.

I'd go so far as to say if you do all of this, the file is clearer than looking at a song in a tracker.

Running through a converter produces some goobery looking stuff, but you can do a top-down sweep and reformat it pretty simply to make it readable. 

3) I'm not a musician, so never used one.  No comment.

I think this is the most important trait of people who are pretty averse to MML.   You're not musicians.   So, you probably can't read sheet music, which then implies MML is going to be gibberishy too.

To put it bluntly, the problem is you guys, not MML.   You could manage MML with a little bit of effort, though, I think.


http://3ml.jp/

^^^^ This program has tabs for each channel.  It shows a visual piano roll representation of the MML that you type into the editor.

It has a play button so you can hear it.

I honestly think this is more feature-full and intuitive than a tracker.    You get that visual representation instead of columns of nonsense that happen to make a eurowank demotune if you hit play, lol.

It seems one of the big scaries is that people want live-note-editing and immediate results.

You can get that with 3MLE, or this goofy thing:

http://benjaminsoule.fr/tools/vmml/

BUT BE WARNED: THIS TOOL HAS THE OCTAVE SHIFT COMMANDS BACKWARDS FOR WHATEVER REASON.

I grew up using trackers and crap like Octamed to make music.   Once stuff like FruityLoops came out though, I stopped, because the Amiga software was always a bit clunky and unintuitive.

but, here's the funny thing.

You can use a tracker, and still use MML to get music going in your games.

FOUR songs from Insanity are old MODs I had on a floppy disk that I made on an Amiga 500.   I transferred them to PC, opened them in MODPlug, exported MIDIs, and turned them into MML....

[DildoKKKobold]

I hope none of this is 'inspired' by Catastrophy. Our problem has been finding a musician willing to work with us at all. We found one of Gredler's friends, who seemed unreliable, and lazy. Gredler was just trying to give him something to do.

We found the musician for Haunted Halloween 85 and 86, but he wanted cash up front.

Cabbage has been doing a few sound effects/midi conversions on the side, but he has his own projects. Catastrophy isn't a priority to him.

So, MML is not our problem. Interested musicians are.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I hope none of this is 'inspired' by Catastrophy. Our problem has been finding a musician willing to work with us at all. We found one of Gredler's friends, who seemed unreliable, and lazy. Gredler was just trying to give him something to do.

We found the musician for Haunted Halloween 85 and 86, but he wanted cash up front.

Cabbage has been doing a few sound effects/midi conversions on the side, but he has his own projects. Catastrophy isn't a priority to him.

So, MML is not our problem. Interested musicians are.

Catastrophy didn't spark this.

People have been flailing and afraid of MML since before Insanity was finished, lol.

I am just curious what people's actual problems are, because some of them might be a tad unreasonable, or completely fixable with a bit of effort.


I'd like to help people get more into the swing of things, because it's pretty frigging useful.

What kind of music do you even need for Catastrophy.   I can do it lol

[TurboXray]

I think things being "intuitive" or not, is kind of irrelevant once you have experience with whatever procedure or toolset. What matters, is efficiency or the perception of it. What matters is the learning curve. And what matters is the community behind the toolset. There's a large community behind trackers, so that's a valuable resource. If the community support is there, then things such as asking questions, figuring out techniques, and looking at other people's work. That's what matters. There is not one concept or idea that fits all.

 Also, this:

https://youtu.be/XeZTqqN0FtM

You claim this is stupidly simple, but look at all the conversions you have to do, and things you need to check and verify. You know what's simpler than that? Not having to convert a damn thing. If I were to use Deflemask right now - then that's it. There's no conversion processes. No avoid this, or fix or change this in during step X, etc. Not only is it one and done, it has ALL the advantages of a tracker interface - "what you hear is what you get".

 People get comfortable with what they know, and don't like to change something that already works for them. And add to the fact that PCE really isn't in demand as a development system, don't except people to go out of their comfort zone just to produce something on this target platform.

 Until you make a program interface that has NO conversion process, and has "what you hear is what you get" - one step process, then you're not providing a competing product on the same level. I don't know why that's so difficult to understand.

 The fact that your "player" and Squirrel app doesn't support "samples", is a pretty big disadvantage IMO. It's one thing not to use samples, it's an entirely different thing not to have support for it.

 And I'm with touko: I really don't care what the format is, as long as it can produce whatever PCE devs have done so far - then who cares. But knowing chiptuners, at least relative to the PCE era stuffs, you need to know your audience. Rant and rave all you want, and trust me I agree with most of the philosophy of your rants on this subject, it won't change the fact.

 You want people to make music on the PCE? Make something like Fruity Loops that directly outputs PCE music files. A program that is ONLY specifically PCE. A program where "what you hear is what you get" type interface. Because chiptune musicians, the good ones, are always tweaking the sound to get something interesting or specific, and down to even just one part of a song. Visual presentation of this is important. Dicking around with MML output, is not its equivalent. 

[Gredler]

I am not a musician, so it's hard to explain why I could not get a great squirrel song, as I generally can't get a great song anywhere else either, so my complaints should be chalked up to inability to compose music and lack of knowledge on the subject entirely.

The complaints I've gotten from the friends who tried to make music are probably less to do with squirrel specifically but making actual chip-driven-tunes, but I'll try to convey their trepidation's as best I am able.

1) The gap between in editor instrumentation/sound and in game.
  The two guys that I've asked to help have had issue finding a VST or instrument that is similar to the squirrel preset wave forms. The youtube video (

is appreciated but ultimately not very useful for finding a consistent sound between authoring software and the rom playing on emulation/hardware, especially considering how different each envelope and octave shift affects the sound of waveforms.

2) Timing monitoring and beat/bar/note consistency
  The guys also had issues with their songs getting out of sync due to dropped notes and or note lengths. The songs always spiraled out of coherence and would "break". If there is anything that I was happy with about my song I made with squirrel it's that I was able to overcome this by using macros/bars that I could loop. It still gets out of sync, I think I am 1/4th a note off somewhere, but it was very methodically planned and created straight in mml. I have not been able to make a good song converting a midi to mml because of this, the only "decent" music I've been able to get out of squirrel is by hand coding the mml.

3) Getting a midi that was compatible with a clean conversion to mml.
  The midis we've found royalty free have been so outside of the 4-6 channel midi requirements that I was not able to get anything to sound even half decent (also due in part to the above two issues, the songs even when truncated to 4 channels would eventually sound way off in instrumentation, and in timing). Without creating a midi with converting it to mml in mind, in a specific application (which so far only seems like 3mle and fruity loops are confirmed as working tools for this), it seems very difficult to recreate midis in squirrel as mml. Perhaps if I worked with a musician who could create a specifically planned mid that we could pipe through 3mle and "spot check" like you mention in the tutorials, but without knowing the sheet music/what I am looking for, converting from a random midi to mml looks like converting Russian to Portuguese - I can't understand either, so spot checking is impossible because I don't know what I am looking for.

Like I said - I am about as far from a musician as you can get and still be attempting this (DK is probably further off, but refuses to even attempt it) - so many grains of salt have to be taken with my issues with squirrel. 

1) I open up FruityLoops

This might be the root of all evils. I'm a cheap (read: baf) guy and have not wanted to drop $100-200 on a music creation software sweet I would barely know how to use, but maybe if I could create midis with this all of our troubles would be over. Buying stuff makes you better at things right?

[Arkhan Asylum]

You want people to make music on the PCE? Make something like Fruity Loops that directly outputs PCE music files. A program that is ONLY specifically PCE. A program where "what you hear is what you get" type interface. Because chiptune musicians, the good ones, are always tweaking the sound to get something interesting or specific, and down to even just one part of a song. Visual presentation of this is important. Dicking around with MML output, is not its equivalent. 

I think the expectation that someone in the scene write some sort of full DAW-esque program specifically for PCE is both selfish, and borderline stupid, and misses the point of what I said completely.   

Writing something like that is a MASSIVE undertaking and realistically would require a small team, and to what end?     

It's not simple.  People have been banging away trying to do similar things on all kinds of machines for years.

The closest to successful was Prophet64 on the C64, but the player code for that is so resource intensive that it can't feasibly be used for anything but listening.

Also, you can already get a visual representation of a song with MML if you put it into 3MLE.  Once you know where you want effects to be at, placing them into MML isn't really any different than putting them into a tracker.  You do realize this, right?  Dicking around with MML is the same as dicking around with hex columns in a tracker.  Don't sit and tell me a tracker's effects column is somehow better.  It's not. 

On the topic of "chiptune musicians, the good ones", what do you think I do with my stuff?  The deep ass kick drum sound I got wasn't an immediate result.  Nor were the lead sounds in Reflectron, or that weird bass noise I made.

It's not really much different to compose a song, get it playing, and THEN go through and sprinkle fancy shit onto it like slides, vibrato, and such.    You often start talking about sound design as opposed to musical composition.   They are two different things, but you conflate them.   This is an incorrect thing to do. 

Example:  MIDI.   What is MIDI?  It's a bunch of digital data that jams into any listening device and THEY ALL SOUND DIFFERENT.    You compose and end up with a MIDI.   You can sit and fiddledick with sounds all you want once you send it into some kind of synthesizer or software program.    You're going on about step B, missing the point completely about step A.

The conversion process required is hardly that difficult. You make it sound like it's all super difficult and cumbersome.   It isn't.   Maybe it is for someone who doesn't understand music or the software, but it's all pretty commonplace stuff to worry about.   You will have the same kind of issues in a tracker, honestly.  Your drums are mapped to notes.  If you don't make the MML drums to the same notes, you'll have to go update them later. 

Whoop. Dee.  Doo.   

I don't think it's fair to knock something as bad because you may not get it.  It's probably better to try learning it, as opposed to dismissing it, possibly because it's not what all the cool kids are doing.

The thing of it is, you're talking about hobbyish/trackertune scene people and their wants/desires.  When you have a workflow that "has ALL the advantages of a tracker interface", you forgot to mention that it also includes all of the disadvantages of a tracker interface.   Trackers are not the be all end all, despite what apparently everyone seems to think.   I think writing a song in a much more sophisticated program, and then outputting midi, going to MML-->PCE is a much smoother process than trying to compose shit in a tracker.


Why did you put player and samples in quotes, anyway? 

You have to realize, a lot of commercial software had songs written much differently than how you seem to think.

Hubbard wrote songs for C64 games on real instruments, and then converted things over to the C64.   

ALOT of musicians did this.  Mega Man's tunes were made this way, even.  Do you think they had some visual representation of all of this crap?  no.  They didn't.  I would go so far as to say people like Galway, Hubbard, and Follin are "the good ones" you speak of. 

Some of Hubbard's noises were accidents due to bugs in the SID chip.  It wasn't him sitting with some fancy ass program where he jiggled stuff around until he went OH COOL. 

1) The gap between in editor instrumentation/sound and in game.
  The two guys that I've asked to help have had issue finding a VST or instrument that is similar to the squirrel preset wave forms. The youtube video (https://youtu.be/VrS8JejvKK8) is appreciated but ultimately not very useful for finding a consistent sound between authoring software and the rom playing on emulation/hardware, especially considering how different each envelope and octave shift affects the sound of waveforms.

Yeah.  Chip32 is free, and you can get approximate sounds out of it.  You can also take those waves from Chip32 and make them as custom waves in Squirrel, to get the same sounds out of them...

Once you have the song playing though, it's really a matter of just fiddling with wave parameters and listening to the song again.  Building the ROM and relaunching is slower than getting an immediate playback, but, it's... not that bad.   Maybe an extra second or two. 
 
 

2) Timing monitoring and beat/bar/note consistency
  The guys also had issues with their songs getting out of sync due to dropped notes and or note lengths. The songs always spiraled out of coherence and would "break". If there is anything that I was happy with about my song I made with squirrel it's that I was able to overcome this by using macros/bars that I could loop. It still gets out of sync, I think I am 1/4th a note off somewhere, but it was very methodically planned and created straight in mml. I have not been able to make a good song converting a midi to mml because of this, the only "decent" music I've been able to get out of squirrel is by hand coding the mml.

Did they use 3MLE to verify that the timings were all correct?  Sometimes, all that is needed is adding rests to finish off a measure so things stay in sync.  If someone has an example, I can show you. 

Othertimes, it's just a matter of importing with a different quantization setting in 3MLE when you import the midi.
 

3) Getting a midi that was compatible with a clean conversion to mml.
  The midis we've found royalty free have been so outside of the 4-6 channel midi requirements that I was not able to get anything to sound even half decent (also due in part to the above two issues, the songs even when truncated to 4 channels would eventually sound way off in instrumentation, and in timing). Without creating a midi with converting it to mml in mind, in a specific application (which so far only seems like 3mle and fruity loops are confirmed as working tools for this), it seems very difficult to recreate midis in squirrel as mml. Perhaps if I worked with a musician who could create a specifically planned mid that we could pipe through 3mle and "spot check" like you mention in the tutorials, but without knowing the sheet music/what I am looking for, converting from a random midi to mml looks like converting Russian to Portuguese - I can't understand either, so spot checking is impossible because I don't know what I am looking for.

lol, yeah, lots of MIDIs have polyphony on channels, so converting them is going to suck.  It's better to write stuff with 6 channels, no polyphony in mind. 

[Gredler]

Yeah.  Chip32 is free, and you can get approximate sounds out of it.  You can also take those waves from Chip32 and make them as custom waves in Squirrel, to get the same sounds out of them...

I have not used any music making tools (only coded directly in mml) but I have suggested Chip32 to the musicians I've talked to. These guys don't seem to understand the correlation between squirrel youtube video's wave #'s, and what they're making in Chip32. One of the three guys I've talked to was using "renoise" and apparently was not able to get Chip32 working with that. Like I abridged above, I will need to bite the bullet and purchase some music creation software if we can't land a musician who can be shown chip 32 and make usable midis

Once you have the song playing though, it's really a matter of just fiddling with wave parameters and listening to the song again.  Building the ROM and relaunching is slower than getting an immediate playback, but, it's... not that bad.   Maybe an extra second or two. 

This is what I suggested to them as well, and how I came upon the music we have now except I was trial and error build and testing with MML programming by hand, since I don't have any music generation tools outside of free 3mle

Did they use 3MLE to verify that the timings were all correct?  Sometimes, all that is needed is adding rests to finish off a measure so things stay in sync.  If someone has an example, I can show you. 

Othertimes, it's just a matter of importing with a different quantization setting in 3MLE when you import the midi.

I don't think any of the guys except for cabbage can do this. I have been able to do it with the royalty free midis I've downloaded, but like you say below here, it's basically giberish because the midis weren't made with 6 channel polyphony in mind . I just need to make some midis and go through the process knowing how it works so I can learn this timing verification process

lol, yeah, lots of MIDIs have polyphony on channels, so converting them is going to suck.  It's better to write stuff with 6 channels, no polyphony in mind. 

Thanks for the help and tips, maybe we can get a musician to chime in and join the conversation

[Arkhan Asylum]

If you want help making Catastrophy music, I could help.   How many songs do you need?  What kind of songs?

The timing verification process is pretty easy.  You just have to look at the LAST note for a channel, and make sure it ends on the end of a measure.  Otherwise, it will slowly fall out of sync.  If you find that there's a gap, just add rests until the little white line indicates that you're at the end of the measure.

[Gredler]

If you want help making Catastrophy music, I could help.   How many songs do you need?  What kind of songs?

The timing verification process is pretty easy.  You just have to look at the LAST note for a channel, and make sure it ends on the end of a measure.  Otherwise, it will slowly fall out of sync.  If you find that there's a gap, just add rests until the little white line indicates that you're at the end of the measure.

Thanks for the offer, we're not worthy! We are just a couple guys "curious if we can make a hucard game" for education and fun, no rush or urgency to get it done quickly. We can continue the discussion in a more appropriate thread, but yeah we will want tunes and sfx in the game eventually

I honestly think the issue with MML isn't MML, it's the lack of interested parties - where are all the musicians at? You can't be the only one who wants to make rad games and has elite keyboarding skills

[Arkhan Asylum]

I don't know.  They're all using trackers, and waiting for someone to support them, I guess.

Once I finish Inferno I could probably goober something together pretty easily if you tell me about what you want out of it.

lol.  use some of the demo tunes that came with Squirrel for now.   I feel like the Shadow of the Beast example is a good choice.

[TurboXray]

You bitch and moan about why people are or aren't doing this or that, and when given answers when you ask why - you're response is complain/attack/insult.

 I'm not sure what want. Do you honestly want to know people's opinions and perspectives, or are you just interested in knocking people down or insulting them? It's like there's no compromise with you, unless it involves agreeing 100% with you.

Usually, when you posts stuff like this (one man crusade to rid the world of trackers), I try my best to ignore it and let your rant play itself out. I figured this time you wanted some honest feedback. My mistake. Whatever. Screw everybody else, right? By all means, continue on with whatever this post is supposed to be.

[elmer]

You have to realize, a lot of commercial software had songs written much differently than how you seem to think.

Hubbard wrote songs for C64 games on real instruments, and then converted things over to the C64.   

ALOT of musicians did this.  Mega Man's tunes were made this way, even.  Do you think they had some visual representation of all of this crap?  no.  They didn't.  I would go so far as to say people like Galway, Hubbard, and Follin are "the good ones" you speak of.

Yes, it was all done very differently ... and Martin, Rob and Tim were all assembly-language programmers that wrote their own music drivers.

They knew exactly how the drivers worked, and they could tweak them whenever they wanted any changes.

In those days, the game programmer just received a binary blob with a few documented entry points to call. The musicians kept their code and techniques to themselves.

Oh ... and don't forget ... they were also being paid a living-wage for making those tunes. 

That's just not how the computer-music world, and especially the homebrew game-world operates anymore.

What matters, is efficiency or the perception of it. What matters is the learning curve. And what matters is the community behind the toolset. There's a large community behind trackers, so that's a valuable resource. If the community support is there, then things such as asking questions, figuring out techniques, and looking at other people's work. That's what matters. There is not one concept or idea that fits all.

That is the world of today ... musicians don't write their own drivers. They don't need to. They just want to jump in, learn some reasonable-to-use tools, and get on with making music.

Writing something like that is a MASSIVE undertaking and realistically would require a small team, and to what end

Yep ... to what end?

It's already been done, and it's called deflemask!

Sure, it's far from perfect, but it seems to be meeting most people's needs, and it keeps on slowly getting better.

Just take a look on YouTube for chiptunes made (in the Western world) with MML rather than a tracker of some kind. I found a one, a video by you ... and that was pretty much it.

That was a search for "mml chiptune".

Then I searched for "deflemask chiptune", and pages of hits came up, lots of them for PC Engine tunes.

It really doesn't matter if your workflow is better, or if your results are better ...

... if a homebrew developer wants a chiptune from anyone other than you, then it's probably going to get done in deflemask.

Personally ... until there's a working deflemask player for the PCE (if ever), I'd just recommend that homebrew developers use the CDROM format and either ADPCM or CD-AUDIO for music.

[Arkhan Asylum]

You bitch and moan about why people are or aren't doing this or that, and when given answers when you ask why - you're response is complain/attack/insult.

 I'm not sure what want. Do you honestly want to know people's opinions and perspectives, or are you just interested in knocking people down or insulting them? It's like there's no compromise with you, unless it involves agreeing 100% with you.

Usually, when you posts stuff like this (one man crusade to rid the world of trackers), I try my best to ignore it and let your rant play itself out. I figured this time you wanted some honest feedback. My mistake. Whatever. Screw everybody else, right? By all means, continue on with whatever this post is supposed to be.

LOL, what?  Seriously.  What. in. the. fuck?

Where did I attack or insult?  Or complain? You are going to need to point out where, because I really do not see it.    I suggest maybe going back and re-reading what I said a few times, because you've clearly misunderstood.   I'm not bitching and moaning.  I am trying to figure out and HELP people get to a better place with MML.   

This starts with asking "what's the problem", and possibly pointing out "hey, that's only a problem because you're doing it wrong" or "you're thinking about this the wrong way.  check this out."

With regards to what you said, I just pointed out the flaws in your statements that were honestly a bit short sighted.  You made incorrect or misinformed statements like you often do with this topic.   

• Where you tried to draw a line and separate two things, I demonstrated that they are actually fairly equivalent.
• Where you conflate two separate parts of the music making process, I pointed out that they are different.
• Where you bring up "the good ones" with respect to chiptune composers, I pointed out that some legendary shit was not made the way you think.
• Where you suggested a full DAW be made for PCE, I pointed out the nonsensical nature of that thought process. 

My friend has been writing something like that for MSX for like 5+ years.   That's alot of time to invest in something.



Really, though, I was more looking for musician feedback.

You're not a musician.   So, you mostly just have skewed scene perspective on the matter, biased towards what you watch *other* people do, and you can't actually comment on your own experiences, because you don't have them.   You just assume the majority must be right, or something.

What I am trying to do is dispel incorrect and/or misguided views on MML that people like you perpetuate because you don't listen or even consider the things I am pointing out before you assume I am just attacking you.

Also, this isn't a one man crusade to rid the world of trackers.   You would know that if you actually read and absorbed what I have posted here.

Especially that bit where I mentioned that four songs I turned into MML for Insanity came from songs I made in a goddamn tracker.   You can use a tracker and then make MML out of the song.

Seriously dude.   Stop and actually read/process things before you do this shit.

If you're not going to bother to do that, just fuck off already.  You're not going to help the conversation if you start commenting like a knob before your brain has caught up to your hands.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yes, it was all done very differently ... and Martin, Rob and Tim were all assembly-language programmers that wrote their own music drivers.

Yes, this is true, but, you missed the point!  

My point is that the songs were composed *externally*, and that they have an understanding of how music works, so programming knowledge aside, they would likely be able to translate the music into a simple to follow text representation of sheet music.  That sort of maneuver hasn't changed.  They didn't compose the song in some clunky beepboop assembly manner.  They just translated it to that after the fact.

MML is a similar equivalent.  I believe this is where people are getting hung up, as many seem to TRY to write the song in MML.

People need to stop doing that.  It's not really the way to go about it.

MML is basically there so you can punch sheet music into a computer. 

That's just not how the computer-music world, and especially the homebrew game-world operates anymore.

yes it does, ;)

See: MSX scene.  See Mabinogi Music scene....

Where do you think I confirmed MML functionality for PCE?  Commercial titles for MSX still use MML.

Sometimes, I feel the tracker scene is actually the vocal minority because of all the cool Nintendo chiptune stuff, lol.   

There's a plethora of MML stuff in Mabinogi, and one of the best players for MSX expects MUSICA format, which is an MML engine.

It's already been done, and it's called deflemask!

Sure, it's far from perfect, but it seems to be meeting most people's needs, and it keeps on slowly getting better.

Deflemask is a tracker.  It's hardly the DAW anyone wants.  It's no better than any other tracker in terms of usability.  Even if it supports PCE, it's still wonky to use.  You could just do the same thing with other trackers if you use the right samples.

Now, lets say it gets a fantastic feature like other, better trackers (maybe it has it?), and allows you to import a MIDI file.

Then, if there were a Deflemask player, it would be great to just import MIDIs, save them as whatever Deflemask does, and play them in PCE projects.

MIDI really is the key here, I think.  MIDI ---> Something for PCE seems to work.   Compose how you want--->Save to MIDI--->convert and go.

Just take a look on YouTube for chiptunes made (in the Western world) with MML rather than a tracker of some kind. I found a one, a video by you ... and that was pretty much it.

That was a search for "mml chiptune".

Then I searched for "deflemask chiptune", and pages of hits came up, lots of them for PC Engine tunes.

You gooned up your search, lol.

http://mabinogimusic.tumblr.com/code
http://mabinogimml.blogspot.com/
https://youtu.be/MrCb5cwASC4
https://youtu.be/ERvoLnFqx-A

[DildoKKKobold]

Bonknuts, maybe a tracker is better, but lets remember that Catastrophy wouldn't even have sound if it weren't for Squirrel. Elmer's solution of "stick to CDROMs" seems like a step in the wrong direction.

Maybe the tools aren't ideal, but for what Arkhan's done, it should be appreciated. I mean, its all good and well to say "this is how it *should* be done," but that doesn't help shit coders like me add music to their HuC game.

And yeah, I can get why Arkhan gets defensive - Squirrel was probably really fuckin' hard to do. So, I can see where he'd get defensive. When PP makes a new troll account and starts shitting on Catastrophy, I'm sure I'll get defensive too.

I'm just saying, I appreciate that Squirrel exists.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The credit doesn't all go to myself.  Squirrel is the hot mess love child of myself and OldMan, with help from the Develo book, and the MSX scene.

It initially started as a little engine that parsed and played the MML during the game loop.  Then it turned into what it is now.

anyway, I'm trying to get people who are INTERESTED in actually using MML to a good place.   What problems are you having.  Here's how to fix it.

Shit like that.

People might be surprised once they start getting probably little mishaps sorted out and go "oh", and realize it's only bad if you make it that way.

[TurboXray]

Bonknuts, maybe a tracker is better, but lets remember that Catastrophy wouldn't even have sound if it weren't for Squirrel. Elmer's solution of "stick to CDROMs" seems like a step in the wrong direction.

Maybe the tools aren't ideal, but for what Arkhan's done, it should be appreciated. I mean, its all good and well to say "this is how it *should* be done," but that doesn't help shit coders like me add music to their HuC game.

And yeah, I can get why Arkhan gets defensive - Squirrel was probably really fuckin' hard to do. So, I can see where he'd get defensive. When PP makes a new troll account and starts shitting on Catastrophy, I'm sure I'll get defensive too.

I'm just saying, I appreciate that Squirrel exists.

I'm not saying a tracker is better; I'm just saying that's what the majority of chiptuners prefer. He asked WTF the deal was, and I answered to what chiptuners particularly would give him - based on the responses I've seen. Believe it or not, this came up a LOT when there was no tracker for PCE music. Squirrel wasn't the first MML related music tool for the PCE; there have been others. And in the scenes that I visited, Squirrel was unfairly lumped with the other two simply because of MML. But that's the way it goes. I've written many music drivers for PCE - some just for fun. Be it pattern music (tracked), or command string format (underlying mml structure). I do my own stuff, so I'm in neither boat. If I'm working with a chiptune artist, I find out what they want - work around that. If they want something like mml, or tracker - I could care less as long as they have what they need.

 As far as personal preference; obviously I have more experience with trackers than midi or mml. I've used them enough in my youth that everything about them IS intuitive. I know how to massage and draw out very specific sounds for instruments in tracked music. I'm also aware of the faults of patterned music too. If I was serious about music, I'd probably ditch trackers. But I'm not. And I'm not going to get bent out of shape over it either, if people don't like them.

 In fact, the only real criticism I have about Squirrel toolset is sample support (real samples).

[Arkhan Asylum]

Using them enough that they are intuitive... is not how intuitive works.   

You are conditioned by them.   

They were never intuitive.   Theyve always been clunky, and a bit laborious at times.

Theyre a product of the time that everyone got used to, and likes as a result of little in the way of options.

I grew up on them, and happily ditched them when better tools arrived.   

And, ive never had good luck with vsts in trackers.  Renoise just barfed on them. 

But, as mentioned, by all means, compose in a tracker.   You could turn em into mml when done.

Adding effects back in is the only downside.   Those tend to get lost during the midi step.

[touko]

Using them enough that they are intuitive... is not how intuitive works.   

You are conditioned by them.   

Sorry ark i have to desagree, intuitive for me is when a musician who know shit about programming(or the need to be a tech guy) can make musics for any systems easily with a tool .
A tool with a GUI is always more intuitive than a simple file based tool which require some other tools to works .
And i don't speak about the need to compile a .pce for testing,you cannot say that MML for PCE is intuitive .

[Arkhan Asylum]

Using them enough that they are intuitive... is not how intuitive works.   

You are conditioned by them.   

Sorry ark i have to desagree, intuitive for me is when a musician who know shit about programming(or the need to be a tech guy) can make musics for any systems easily with a tool .
A tool with a GUI is always more intuitive than a simple file based tool which require some other tools to works .
And i don't speak about the need to compile a .pce for testing,you cannot say that MML for PCE is intuitive .

What are you disagreeing with?

The statement I made was with regards to trackers not being intuitive.  If you have to become accustomed to it through repeated use, it's not intuitive.  That goes against the textbook definition of the word.

Intuitive implies you can sit down and immediately get it to start working how you want based off of simple instincts.   Trackers don't do that.   Anyone who says they do, are completely lying.   Nobody sat down at a tracker for the very first time and was like "oh yes this all makes perfect sense" and started getting exactly what they wanted/thought out of it.   

Everyone's first tracker experience was more like "whats this do".  "What is that".  "Why isn't this working right?" .  "What are all these columns".   "Ok, I made a pattern now what.". 

It's goofy. 

You need a manual, and hex fiddling to create a song in a tracker.  The benefit you gain from a tracker is mostly that it forces formatting for you、because it's all locked to steps, and has defined columns for all the things.   

However, you are still just banging the alphabet into a mess of stuff that happens to play music, lol.     The effects columns in a tracker are clunky and look like total nonsense.  Even people that love trackers seem to be aware of that.   

So, trackers aren't intuitive.   More modern DAWs are, because they are  modeled after actual musical devices which, by their very nature, were designed to be intuitive.  (analog synths, drum machines, mixers, etc.)

That's why I think it's nice to make songs that way (with a more modern piece of software), and then go through a relatively painless conversion process to get it onto the PCE.   On that note, I know at least three non-programmers who successfully got things to work with Squirrel.

I never said that MML for PCE was intuitive.    MML is only truly intuitive if you can read sheet music, and understand how to compose music from a theoretical standpoint.    Most tracker users don't really seem to know any of that, have no concept of time signatures, key, or anything.   So, trying to use MML just doesn't automatically click for them.

Converting a MIDI to MML, and moving it into a more or less pre-formatted file isn't exactly a horrible process. 

Also, you COULD just write the songs in 3MLE.  It's got a piano roll and will show you exactly what you're doing as you add notes.   That's not really any different than a tracker.  It just goes >>>>> instead of VVVVVVVVVVVVVV.

3MLE supports soundfonts, so one could make a soundfont of PCE stuff for it...

and then you'd just need to have those same waves defined in Squirrel (or make the soundfont out of the waves from Squirrel that are built in).




It seems like the biggest hangup is the MIDI-->MML process.   I'd like to see what people are doing, so I could maybe help sort out any scary issues, or confusion.

[touko]

What are you disagreeing with?

About that's intuitive or not .

You can blame trackers as many times as you want,it's really the simplest way for interesting some musicians to start composing for old systems .
It's the same about coding, some people cannot want to start learning a new language,and can do some homebrews in basic as they did with BEX on MD .

MML is good if you are a musician and not affraid to put your hands in the shit,else for the others 99% a GUI tracker is by far less scary and more affordable.
In my non musician standpoint, MML or tracker are the same, i am not abble to create anything with those two method,and i know it's more easy to find deflemask musicians than MML .

[Hu-man]

So, I've only posted here a few times, but I follow all of your work a lot. My goal is to pop out of the woodwork one day and say, "Hey! Look at what I made on the PCE!" and then have everyone respond in unison, "What a piece of shit!" But till then, I'm mostly just a reader.

And before I go on my rant about MML, I should preface it by saying that I don't have much experience with trackers, and that my PCE stuff is the only experience I have with making music on a gaming platform.

That said, for someone who can read music, MML seems like a pretty decent notation. In fact, I'm hard-pressed to think of a better way. It's pretty close to modern musical notation, and that's been around for maybe a thousand years, so you'd think it'd at least be fairly good.

As far as my process is concerned, I'll usually just write on a real instrument then transfer it directly to the MML file, but sometimes I'll use a Finale NotePad-like tool to notate the music and then export to MIDI. I mention this because Finale NotePad has a free download and might help some of the people that are having a hard time with MML but can read music.

And as far as the readability of the MML is concerned, I agree that it can be kinda tough. But when it all comes down to it, it's being used to represent instructions you're giving the processor (code). So, like all code, it's easier to read when formatted. I often do something like 1 or 2 measures per line and use whitespace between notes to visually inspect that the timing matches up.

I think one of the reasons you don't hear about more people using it is that most people aren't the pros who post here most often. Compared to all the successes of everyone here, it seems to be taking me far longer than I would've expected - both in the time to develop a game and the time to figure out how to work around all of the PCE's/HuC's idiosyncrasies. Even yesterday while reading the "The new fork of HuC" thread, I saw Dave Shadoff's message about parameter-passing being bad, then I saw Elmer's message on the switch-statement being bad, and I thought, "Well that sucks for me."

So, as a verified non-pro, I find that Squirrel is probably one of the friendlier tools out there for PCE development. You don't need to worry about pointers, memory management, two's complement, or (may god have mercy on us all) learning assembly. You just feed it the MML, tell it when to play, and you're done! For the novice, learning HuC is probably enough, so I'll probably never be interested in writing a custom sound engine when all of the hard work seems to have been taken care of already. My personal opinion is that most of the non-vocal folks aren't writing in machine language, and those same folks would rather spend a little time learning MML over the (IMHO) steep learning curve that'd be required to reinvent the wheel.

Also, I could be totally wrong about this, but it kinda seems like Squirrel is the only game in town for making both music and sound effects on the PCE (other than custom sound engines). If not Squirrel, what are most developers using? And even if one uses CD-Audio for homebrews as Elmer suggests, what are people doing for sound effects?

I'm not on this forum as much as some of you other guys, but the only other sound tool I can remember was BT Garner's SoundGen tool, which I found extremely cumbersome. Also, it seemed like it took a very long time for ANY sound tools on the PCE to come around, so I don't know that waiting around for a new tool is a feasible option, especially when that theoretical tool will yield the same end result.

That said, here are my complaints about MML/Squirrel:

• Not that it's impossible, but getting triplets isn't straightforward, nor are a weird/staggered beats (I'm thinking the nasally horn riff in the lava level of Bomberman '94).
• MagicEngine doesn't emulate it faithfully (which I guess is actually a complaint about MagicEngine).
• And to Bonknuts' point, "what you hear is what you get" would be really REALLY nice, especially so that you could hear the waveform/envelope combinations. Still, I don't know if that's really the point of Squirrel. Maybe that'd be for another GUI for the future, but I kinda see Squirrel as a jam-in-an-MML-file-and-it'll-give-you-music-on-the-PCE tool.

Most other complaints seem to be around the fact that people want a GUI to write music, but there's a lot of them out there that will let you output your song to MIDI, so I don't know what the benefit of yet another GUI would be (except for the aforementioned emulation of envelope/waveform combos). If people want to use trackers to create songs, do none of them have the ability to output a MIDI file? Again, since I only have limited experience, I guess I don't really understand the benefit.

But, yeah, take all of what I say with a grain of salt. I don't have a vast knowledge of all the possibilities that are out there. I'm not trying to diss anyone or stroke anyone's ego (especially Arkhan's  ). I just think that MML and Squirrel are pretty solid, and I wouldn't want people being discouraged from using them or told to only use CD-Audio (not that this should at all be construed as a dig on you, Elmer, I think you're rockin it with your work on the HuC fork) when MML and Squirrel are totally viable options. Squirrel has made developing on the PCE easier for me, and I think other people might agree if they give it a shot.

Anyways, that's the end of my rant. Talk to you guys in five years or so!

[elmer]

My point is that the songs were composed *externally*, and that they have an understanding of how music works, so programming knowledge aside, they would likely be able to translate the music into a simple to follow text representation of sheet music.  That sort of maneuver hasn't changed.  They didn't compose the song in some clunky beepboop assembly manner.  They just translated it to that after the fact.

MML is a similar equivalent.  I believe this is where people are getting hung up, as many seem to TRY to write the song in MML.

People need to stop doing that.  It's not really the way to go about it.

MML is basically there so you can punch sheet music into a computer. 

Sure, I get it ... compose the tune in a decent package, and then convert that tune into the format that the target machine requires.

Yes, that's how things used to be done.

You're basically talking about having a musician do the same thing as TailChao was doing with his excellent HuSound package.

Now I find MML to be ugly-as-sh*t to be that format, and I find TailChao's SASS-format to be much more human-friendly, but that's just my preference.

They're basically the same process. I get it.

Here's an example of exactly the same process from the driver that I wrote for Jon Dunn (the guy that replaced Martin Galway when Martin bailed out to join Origin) ...

Code Select Expand

; ************************************************************************
;
; Music commands.
;
; *+ REPEAT    ,n      Repeat next sequence 'n' times.
;                      n=[1 to 255,0=256].
;
; *+ TRANSPOSE ,t      Transpose next sequence by 't' notes.
;                      t=[-128 to +127].
;
; *  JUMP      ,a      Jump to 16-bit address 'a'.
;
; *  END               End tune/fx/sequence.
;
;    LENGTH    ,l      Assume all notes have length 'l' until MANUAL.
;                      l=[1 to 255].
;
;    MANUAL            Assume each note is followed by a length.
;
;    TIE               Increase length of next note by 256.
;
;    REST              Play an empty note.
;
;    GLION     ,t,l    Glide to note from transpose 't'/2 over 'l' frames.
;                      'l' MUST be a power of 2.
;                      N.B. Also cancels effect.
;
;    GLIOFF            Cancel GLION.
;
;    EFFON     ,t,l    Transpose notes by 't' for their 1st 'l' frames.
;                      N.B. Also cancels glide and vibrato.
;
;    EFFOFF            Cancel EFFON.
;
;    ARPON     ,n      Arpeggio, using arpeggio table number 'n'.
;
;    ARPOFF            Cancel ARPON.
;
;    VIBON     ,d,t,l  Vibrato, delay 'd', amplitude 't'/4, over 4'l' frames.
;
;    VIBOFF            Cancel VIBON.
;
;    ENV       ,n      Use volume envelope 'n'.
;
;    DRUM      ,n      Play a 'drum'.
;
;    POKE      ,a,n    Poke location $FFaa with value 'n'.
;
;    WAVE      ,n,...  Set up the 16 bytes of waveform RAM and store ptr.
;
;    TMP_WAVE  ,n,...  Set up the waveform RAM.
;
;    OLD_WAVE          Set up the waveform RAM from the stored address.
;
;    DUTY      ,n      Set the duty register to 'n'.
;
;    SWEEP     ,v,l,n  Special glide. Sweep from note 'n' by subtracting
;                      'v' from the frequency (word value - hi/lo) for 'l'
;                      frames.
;
;
; * Only these commands can be used in a sequence list.
; + These commands cannot be used in a sequence.
;

;----------------------------------------------------------------------------
;TEMPO EQUATES
;-------------

TEMPO2 EQU 6 ;  TEMPO CONTROL
DSQ2 EQU TEMPO2/2 ;  DEMI-SEMI-QUAVER
SQ2 EQU TEMPO2 ;  SEMI-QUAVER
QV2 EQU SQ2*2 ;  QUAVER
DQV2 EQU QV2+SQ2 ;  DOTTED QUAVER
CR2 EQU QV2*2 ;  CROTCHET
QV2TRIP EQU CR2/3 ;  CROTCHET
DCR2 EQU CR2+QV2 ;  DOTTED CROTCHET
MN2 EQU CR2*2 ;  MINIM
DMN2 EQU MN2+CR2 ;  DOTTED MINIM
SB2 EQU MN2*2 ;  SEMI-BREVE
DSB2 EQU SB2+MN2 ;  DOTTED SEMI-BREVE

TEMPO3 EQU 7 ;  TEMPO CONTROL
DSQ3 EQU TEMPO3/2 ;  DEMI-SEMI-QUAVER
SQ3 EQU TEMPO3 ;  SEMI-QUAVER
QV3 EQU SQ3*2 ;  QUAVER
DQV3 EQU QV3+SQ3 ;  DOTTED QUAVER
CR3 EQU QV3*2 ;  CROTCHET
QV3TRIP EQU CR3/3 ;  CROTCHET
DCR3 EQU CR3+QV3 ;  DOTTED CROTCHET
MN3 EQU CR3*2 ;  MINIM
DMN3 EQU MN3+CR3 ;  DOTTED MINIM
MN3TRIP EQU MN3/3 ;  DOTTED MINIM
SB3 EQU MN3*2 ;  SEMI-BREVE
DSB3 EQU SB3+MN3 ;  DOTTED SEMI-BREVE

TEMPO4 EQU 5 ;  TEMPO CONTROL
DSQ4 EQU TEMPO4/2 ;  DEMI-SEMI-QUAVER
SQ4 EQU TEMPO4 ;  SEMI-QUAVER
QV4 EQU SQ4*2 ;  QUAVER
DQV4 EQU QV4+SQ4 ;  DOTTED QUAVER
CR4 EQU QV4*2 ;  CROTCHET
QV4TRIP EQU CR4/3 ;  CROTCHET
DCR4 EQU CR4+QV4 ;  DOTTED CROTCHET
MN4 EQU CR4*2 ;  MINIM
DMN4 EQU MN4+CR4 ;  DOTTED MINIM
MN4TRIP EQU MN4/3 ;  DOTTED MINIM
SB4 EQU MN4*2 ;  SEMI-BREVE
DSB4 EQU SB4+MN4 ;  DOTTED SEMI-BREVE

;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
;IN-GAME TUNE
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

INGAME3 ;TREBLE
DB 42
INGAME3LOOP DB LOOP,8
DB 84
DB 81
DB LOOP,4,80
DB 84,88,84,89
DB 87,TRANS,1,92
DB 94,84,84
DB JUMP
DW INGAME3LOOP

INGAME1 ;MIDDLE
DB LOOP,4,85
DB 82,82,79
DB LOOP,4,69
DB LOOP,6,68,91
DB LOOP,4,TRANS,1,68,TRANS,1,91
DB LOOP,4,76
DB JUMP
DW INGAME1

INGAME2 ;BASS
DB LOOP,3,83,86
DB 83,TRANS,3,83
DB TRANS,5,83,83
DB 83,TRANS,3,83
DB TRANS,5,83,83
DB 83,TRANS,3,83
DB TRANS,5,83,86
DB LOOP,10,78,90
DB LOOP,4,TRANS,1,78,TRANS,1,90
DB LOOP,4,83
DB JUMP
DW INGAME2

INGAME4 DB LOOP,4,70 ;79
DB LOOP,11,71,73
DB LOOP,8,72
DB LOOP,12,74
DB 75
DB LOOP,8,74
DB 75
DB LOOP,4,72
DB JUMP
DW INGAME4

;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
;IN-GAME TUNE
;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

SEQ77
SEQ78
DB ENV,$B2
DB EFFON,12,3
DB C1,CR4,C1,CR4,C1,DCR4,C1,QV4,DS1,DCR4,D1,DCR4
DB C1,CR4,C1,CR4,C1,DCR4,C1,QV4,G1,DCR4,AS1,DCR4
DB END
SEQ79
DB ENV,$30
DB ARPON,MINR
DB C3,SB4+DMN4
DB ARPON,MAJR
DB DS3,SB4+DMN4
DB ARPON,MAJ2
DB F2,SB4,ARPON,SUS42,F2,DCR4,ARPON,MAJ2,F2,DCR4
DB ARPON,MIN1
DB C3,SB4+DCR4,ENV,$93,ARPON,MINR,C4,DCR4
DB END
SEQ80
DB WAVE
DB $44,$77,$99,$BB,$AA,$88,$66,$44
DB $22,$00,$11,$22,$33,$44,$33,$23
DB ARPON,EFFECT1
DB G5,QV4,REST,QV4,G5,QV4,REST,QV4,G5,QV4,REST,CR4,G5,QV4
DB GS5,QV4,G5,QV4,G5,QV4
DB GS5,QV4,G5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB G5,QV4,REST,QV4,G5,QV4,REST,QV4,G5,QV4,REST,CR4,C5,QV4
DB G4,QV4,F4,QV4,G4,QV4
DB AS4,QV4,C5,QV4,F5,QV4
DB END
SEQ81
DB ENV,%01000000
DB WAVE
DB $44,$77,$99,$BB,$AA,$88,$66,$44
DB $22,$00,$11,$22,$33,$44,$33,$23
DB VIBON,40,1,3
DB G5,DSB4+CR4
DB G5,DSB4+CR4
DB F5,SB4,AS5,DCR4
DB A5,CR4,AS5,SQ4,A5,SQ4
DB G5,DSB4+CR4
DB C6,DSB4+CR4
DB AS5,DSB4+CR4
DB A5,SB4,AS5,DCR4
DB A5,CR4,A5,SQ4,AS5,SQ4
DB C6,DSB4+CR4
DB END
SEQ82
DB ENV,$40
DB DUTY,%01000000
DB ARPON,MINR
DB C3,SB4+DMN4
DB ARPON,MAJ2
DB DS2,SB4+DMN4
DB ARPON,MAJ1
DB F2,SB4,ARPON,SUS41,F2,DCR4,ARPON,MAJ1,F2,DCR4
DB ARPON,MINR
DB C3,SB4+DMN4
DB END
SEQ83
DB ARPON,EFFECT1
DB ENV,$B2
DB DUTY,%01000000
DB C1,MN4,C1,MN4,C1,DCR4,C1,DCR4
DB END
SEQ84
DB ENV,%01000000
DB WAVE
DB $44,$77,$99,$BB,$AA,$88,$66,$44
DB $22,$00,$11,$22,$33,$44,$33,$23
DB REST,CR4,DS5,QV4,REST,DCR4,D5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB REST,QV4,DS5,QV4,REST,CR4,D5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB END
SEQ85
DB DUTY,%00000000
DB VIBOFF,ARPOFF
DB ENV,$45
DB REST,CR4,C5,QV4,REST,CR4,AS4,CR4
DB REST,QV4,C5,CR4,REST,QV4,AS4,DCR4
DB END
SEQ86
DB C1,MN4,C1,MN4,C1,DCR4
DB DUTY,%10000000
DB ENV,$B3
DB G1,CR4,AS1,QV4
DB END
SEQ87
DB VIBON,35,1,3
SEQ92 DB G5,SB4,DS5,QV4,REST,CR4,F5,QV4,REST,CR4
DB G5,DSB4+QV4,REST,QV4
DB G5,SB4,AS5,QV4,REST,CR4,A5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB AS5,SQ4,A5,SQ4
DB G5,DSB4+CR4
DB C6,SB4,AS5,QV4,REST,CR4,F5,QV4,REST,CR4
DB G5,DSB4+CR4
DB C5,SB4,G5,CR4,REST,QV4,F5,CR4,REST,QV4
DB DS5,DSB4-QV4,D5,CR4
DB DS5,SQ4,D5,SQ4
DB C5,DSB4+MN4+QV4
DB WAVE
DB $06,$78,$9A,$BC,$DC,$BA,$98,$76
DB $54,$32,$10,$01,$01,$12,$34,$56
DB LENGTH,SQ4
DB G2,AS2,D3,F3,G3,AS3
DB C4,DS4,F4,G4
DB AS4,MANUAL,D5,SQ4+4,F5,SQ4+5,G5,SQ4+6
DB END
SEQ88
DB REST,CR4,DS5,QV4,REST,DCR4,D5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB REST,QV4,AS4,QV4,REST,CR4,D5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB END
SEQ89
DB REST,CR4,DS5,QV4,REST,DCR4,D5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB G3,QV4,G5,QV4,REST,QV4,F3,QV4,F5,QV4,REST,QV4
DB END
SEQ90
DB C2,CR4,C2,CR4,C2,DCR4,C2,QV4,DS2,DCR4,D2,DCR4
DB AS1,DCR4,C2,DCR4,DS2,CR4+7,D2,CR4+8
DB END
SEQ91
DB ARPON,MIN1
DB REST,CR4,C4,CR4,REST,CR4,ARPON,MIN2,G3,CR4
DB ARPON,MIN1
DB REST,QV4,C4,CR4
DB ARPON,MIN2
DB REST,QV4,G3,CR4
DB ARPON,MIN1,C4,DCR4,ARPON,MIN2,G3,DCR4
DB ARPON,MIN1,C4,CR4+7,ARPON,MIN2,G3,CR4+8
DB END
SEQ93
DB AS1,SQ3,C2,SQ3,REST,CR3,G2,QV3,F2,SQ3,REST,SQ3
DB DS2,SQ3,AS2,SQ3,REST,SQ3,D2,SQ3,DS2,SQ3,REST,SQ3
DB END
SEQ94
DB WAVE
DB $44,$77,$99,$BB,$AA,$88,$66,$44
DB $22,$00,$11,$22,$33,$44,$33,$23
DB G5,DSB4+CR4
DB REST,DSB4+CR4
DB END


[Arkhan Asylum]

What are you disagreeing with?

About that's intuitive or not .

You can blame trackers as many times as you want,it's really the simplest way for interesting some musicians to start composing for old systems .
It's the same about coding, some people cannot want to start learning a new language,and can do some homebrews in basic as they did with BEX on MD .

MML is good if you are a musician and not affraid to put your hands in the shit,else for the others 99% a GUI tracker is by far less scary and more affordable.
In my non musician standpoint, MML or tracker are the same, i am not abble to create anything with those two method,and i know it's more easy to find deflemask musicians than MML .

None of this gives any indication that a tracker is intuitive, though.   Neither MML nor Tracker is actually intuitive.

Trackers are just such old juggernauts that tons of people have gotten a handle on them.   

I don't disagree that a tracker is pretty accessible, and gives you immediate(ish) results.  they are popular.   I'm not blaming them for anything, so I am not sure what you mean there.

As said though, trackers can 100% be used to end up with MML.    

As far as my process is concerned, I'll usually just write on a real instrument then transfer it directly to the MML file, but sometimes I'll use a Finale NotePad-like tool to notate the music and then export to MIDI. I mention this because Finale NotePad has a free download and might help some of the people that are having a hard time with MML but can read music.

And as far as the readability of the MML is concerned, I agree that it can be kinda tough. But when it all comes down to it, it's being used to represent instructions you're giving the processor (code). So, like all code, it's easier to read when formatted. I often do something like 1 or 2 measures per line and use whitespace between notes to visually inspect that the timing matches up.

That said, here are my complaints about MML/Squirrel:

• Not that it's impossible, but getting triplets isn't straightforward, nor are a weird/staggered beats (I'm thinking the nasally horn riff in the lava level of Bomberman '94).
• MagicEngine doesn't emulate it faithfully (which I guess is actually a complaint about MagicEngine).
• And to Bonknuts' point, "what you hear is what you get" would be really REALLY nice, especially so that you could hear the waveform/envelope combinations. Still, I don't know if that's really the point of Squirrel. Maybe that'd be for another GUI for the future, but I kinda see Squirrel as a jam-in-an-MML-file-and-it'll-give-you-music-on-the-PCE tool.

Most other complaints seem to be around the fact that people want a GUI to write music, but there's a lot of them out there that will let you output your song to MIDI, so I don't know what the benefit of yet another GUI would be (except for the aforementioned emulation of envelope/waveform combos). If people want to use trackers to create songs, do none of them have the ability to output a MIDI file? Again, since I only have limited experience, I guess I don't really understand the benefit.

Formatting is *definitely* key.  Using any of the available MML editors out there gives a bit of highlighting so it's more readable than notepad.  This is why I go with 3MLE, as it also lines up a piano roll to improve readability and give a visual representation of your tunes to make sure timings are right.  If you run it through a converter, it pays to take the 5 minutes to break out things and make it more readable. 

3MLE's conversion process actually puts measure comments in front of EACH measure, which is pretty nice.

Is there a tracker that has an accompanying piano roll?  The piano roll is probably one of the most brilliant things to ever be added to music software.

Triplets are a pain in trackers, too.  You sort of have to trick things either way into working right.  Getting the little triplet riff in Atlantean's level music was a bit efforty.   

But, you do it once, you can always reuse it.

MagicEngine's built in SystemCard has really.really.wonky. PSG.  Is that what you were using?

I agree having a way to immediately hear stuff would be nice, but I take what I can get.  I might look into sampling the default Squirrel waves, to make a Soundfont that can be dropped into FruityLoops or 3MLE, or even a Tracker.

It won't have the envelopes, though. 

I usually just approximate with Chip32, and get it "about how I'd want", because I usually have an idea in my head already.   Sort of like how composers wrote entire symphonies on a piano, just by imaginging what the rest of the crap would sound like.

To your last question, yes, trackers typically output a MIDI.  MODPlug did for sure.  I used that to get some songs I made years ago onto PCE. 

So, you can use a tracker to go to MML, but you will have to re-do the effects part manually (slides, vibrato), because those are generally lost in the MIDI shuffle. 

I don't find it too painful to keep changing waves and relaunching the tune.  I do similar things on the MSX when I am fiddling around in Musica to make songs.  Granted, Musica just requires pressing F5 to play the song, as opposed to rebuilding.

...but that's why I made that little batch file for Squirrel, so you can just press a button and hopefully have it launch and play!

Sure, I get it ... compose the tune in a decent package, and then convert that tune into the format that the target machine requires.

Yes, that's how things used to be done.

You're basically talking about having a musician do the same thing as TailChao was doing with his excellent HuSound package.

Now I find MML to be ugly-as-sh*t to be that format, and I find TailChao's SASS-format to be much more human-friendly, but that's just my preference.

They're basically the same process. I get it.

Here's an example of exactly the same process from the driver that I wrote for Jon Dunn (the guy that replaced Martin Galway when Martin bailed out to join Origin) ...

That's how things can still be done.  I don't know about anyone else, but composing songs with real instruments beats the shit out of a tracker, or any DAW, anyday.  That's why so many people get midi controlled drums/pianos/guitars to plop stuff into software. 

It'd be great if that SASS thing from TailChao had a midi--->SASS conversion. 

I think MIDI is kind of the key to making life easy, personally.  and as I've said numerous times, it also allows you to recreate the songs for CD audio, too. 

2 birds, 1 stone.

[Gredler]

Anyways, that's the end of my rant. Talk to you guys in five years or so!

Please make it sooner than 5 years, I appreciate you chiming in and adding more perspective to the conversation!

What software are you using to create your midis right now, or am I reading it correctly that you currently play music and then manually write the mml to match what you enjoyed hearing from your playing?

Do you have a musical background? I cannot play any instruments and have 0 musical background, so I should probably not even be in this conversation

That's how things can still be done.  I don't know about anyone else, but composing songs with real instruments beats the shit out of a tracker, or any DAW, anyday.  That's why so many people get midi controlled drums/pianos/guitars to plop stuff into software. 

This is my biggest disconnect from the process. My real instruments are a WASD keyboard and a mouse

I think a midi keyboard is being added to my Christmas wishlist, unless you guys have a suggestion for where to go from straight trial and error MML coding

[Arkhan Asylum]

A MIDI keyboard is definitely a good life choice.  Using WASD + mouse for music kind of blows a lot.  It's probably one of the most awful things I've ever personally tried doing.  I would rather go play sports than try and poke music out with WASD, lol. 

some of those midi keyboards come with free-ish versions of some nice DAWs too.

I'm pretty partial to FruityLoops, as it's been the most intuitive of all of them with respect to acting like you've got real shit sitting in front of you, and having it work like you would expect.

Cakewalk and Cubase had a few things that made them kind of irritating where FruityLoops didn't.

but, I believe, with trackers like Renoise, you can also use MIDI input.   MilkyTracker might too, IIRC.   I haven't used MilkyTracker since I got FruityLoops like 12 years ago.

[elmer]

You can blame trackers as many times as you want,it's really the simplest way for interesting some musicians to start composing for old systems .
It's the same about coding, some people cannot want to start learning a new language,and can do some homebrews in basic as they did with BEX on MD .

MML is good if you are a musician and not affraid to put your hands in the shit,else for the others 99% a GUI tracker is by far less scary and more affordable.

This.

That's 100% of the argument.

Approachability for people that want to experiment who aren't hardcore musicians with hundreds or thousands of dollars of MIDI software/instruments.

I can bitch and moan as much as I like about how programmers aren't "real" programmers if they use HuC instead of 6820 assembly-language, but that would be both extremely rude, and absolutely pointless.

I've come to appreciate how HuC has enabled new progammers to experiment and create things on the PCE, and I now see a wisdom in its creation that I missed a couple of years ago.

Exactly the same argument applies to Trackers, especially Deflemask.

Deflemask is a tracker.  It's hardly the DAW anyone wants.  It's no better than any other tracker in terms of usability.  Even if it supports PCE, it's still wonky to use.  You could just do the same thing with other trackers if you use the right samples.

The point is, that it is more usable for folks doing chiptunes, because it emulates the audio hardware of a bunch of consoles.

It's the classic WYSIWYG ... the tunes that people make in it are supposed to sound exactly the same when they're played back on real hardware.

You specifically say that that's not the case with the FruityLoops/3MLE/Squirrel process.

That's a problem, from my POV.

Yes, you can say how folks should just man-up and be like Beethoven, but that doesn't encourage people to your side.

But, the reality of the current situation is that ...

Also, I could be totally wrong about this, but it kinda seems like Squirrel is the only game in town for making both music and sound effects on the PCE (other than custom sound engines).

Until there's a usable Deflemask player for the PCE, then nobody is going to be using it in homebrew, and it is only going to be used to create stand-alone chiptunes for fun.

Hu-man, you might consider taking a quick look at TailChao's HuSound to see if it offers you anything.

If nothing else ... the excellent demo/test environment and the PCM playback channels are both something that it would be nice to see in the Squirrel package.

Yes ... I know that PCM playback in particular would break compatibility with the System Card ... but that's the point.

The System Card player has been stagnant for decades.

Having some extra features would be rather nice ... and the 8KB cost for a new sound driver isn't very much with the 256KB environment of the Super System Card, and even less in the 768KB environment of a Turbo Everdrive 2.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The System Card player hasn't been stagnant for decades, lol.  Nobody was really using it until Insanity.  We just hit the 7th year anniversary of that dumpster fire of a game. 

\o/

It does suck that you don't get *exactly* the same sounds, but I think you get close enough that it doesn't hinder you *writing* a song.  Melody, progression, and beat aren't dependent on the instruments and effects really.    That's why you can hum Soldier Blade's music and smack your hands on a table, and people know what you're doing still. 

Maybe that's where the real difference is.  I'm trying to make music that's functional in the games I am making.    So, I make the slight sacrifice while composing, and then go fiddle with it as much as I want once it's playing on real hardware.   I can change the waves and envelopes by changing @# and @E# values to different #s.   I can add some effects, or mess with detunes/slides.

The sound design part can (and should probably) come after you have a functional song.    You don't do audio mastering before the band shows up and starts strumming.

and *again*, I'm not blaming trackers.  Go ahead and use them.

I am just saying, here's this thingy you can use to produce sounds, so let's work together to get everyone on the same page so more people can go "oh" and realize it's really not as bad as everyone thinks.


To your point about thousands of dollars for MIDI hardware and software...

3MLE is free.
MIDI controllers are roughly 30$.
There are free MIDI programs...

https://routenote.com/blog/the-10-best-free-daws-available/

The only thing you ought to buy is a MIDI keyboard.  But, I would suggest that even if you're using a tracker, because punching notes in with a WASDboard blows. 

There are lots of great tools out there to deal with MML.


EDIT: Is there something wrong with Squirrels demo/test setup?    It was made assuming you at least have HuC installed, but other than that, is just "press this button to go".

[elmer]

The System Card player hasn't been stagnant for decades, lol.

"Stagnant" as in "not improving".

The System Card player was frozen in time with the System Card 1.0 in 1988.

Think of how many PCE HuCard games were released after that, a lot (most?) using their company's own custom sound drivers.

Chris Covell's great new video shows some of the fun techniques that developers used to make their tunes sound more interesting.

I'm curious ... do you believe that the System Card 1.0 Player can recreate ALL of those effects???

But again, apart from academic curiosity, it doesn't really matter ... the System Card Player is one of the only two alternatives that's available and working right now, and I agree that a lot of folks can learn to use it, and maybe even learn to love it.

Your Squirrel converter is the tool without-which they wouldn't be able to do that.

Maybe that's where the real difference is.  I'm trying to make music that's functional in the games I am making.    So, I make the slight sacrifice while composing, and then go fiddle with it as much as I want once it's playing on real hardware.   I can change the waves and envelopes by changing @# and @E# values to different #s.   I can add some effects, or mess with detunes/slides.

And that's great! That's how it all used to be done. 

To your point about thousands of dollars for MIDI hardware and software...

3MLE is free.
MIDI controllers are roughly 30$.
There are free MIDI programs...

My point was more about how much gear you have to play with that makes things more familiar, and easier for you. 

**************

Gredler - if you haven't seen this, it might help with your investigations into MML.

The page also has a download with approx 12,000 tunes. There should be something in there that you can tweak and use.

http://forums.archeagegame.com/showthread.php?16741-The-Complete-Composing-Guide

[Arkhan Asylum]

The System Card player hasn't been stagnant for decades, lol.

"Stagnant" as in "not improving".

Yeahhhhh, I know what you meant, lol.

I'm curious ... do you believe that the System Card 1.0 Player can recreate ALL of those effects???

But again, apart from academic curiosity, it doesn't really matter ... the System Card Player is one of the only two alternatives that's available and working right now, and I agree that a lot of folks can learn to use it, and maybe even learn to love it.

Your Squirrel converter is the tool without-which they wouldn't be able to do that.

I'm not sure.  I haven't had time to sit and watch all of that video.   Do you have any in particular that I should look at?  I've made some pretty fucking weird/interesting noises with Squirrel, just by goofing around.

I really do think people can learn it and mostly just need to get over the fact that it's not a tracker.   If it's still functional for the MSX, there's clearly some merit to it.

And that's great! That's how it all used to be done. 

Eh, its still done that way in a pretty good amount of places.

My point was more about how much gear you have to play with that makes things more familiar, and easier for you. 

Well, for what it's worth, Insanity's tunes were composed with a MIDI keyboard I got at a garage sale for 10$, FruityLoops (but could be replaced with a free thing), and 3MLE.   So, I didn't really use anything spectacular for this stuff.

The only weird thing I did, was I ran the MIDI out to a C64 with a MIDI board in it, and captured that for the leads on the CD version.   I mostly did this because I had it and was like "hmmm". 

The MIDI was all done in real time, though.  All of those songs were made by me pressing record, and playing.   


Gredler should also check out all the Mabinogi MML archives for stuff.   There's lots of good stuff out there, already in functional MML.

http://mabinogimusic.tumblr.com/code

so many songs

There are a few things in Mabinogi that you need to omit as they're not part of the MML standard, but it's nothing crazy.

[OldMan]

Think of how many PCE HuCard games were released after that, a lot (most?) using their company's own custom sound drivers.

I do not think many companies developed their own sound drivers; I suspect it is more likely they modified the 'stock' system card one. 

...do you believe that the System Card 1.0 Player can recreate ALL of those effects???

No, but I think a new modifed version could. Although I can't swear it would be compatible with all existing games.
I would especially like to incorporate the bonk trumpet sound. I think bonknauts Azazel (?) driver could do that.

And just out of curiosity, has any one put the plan all together, yet?
We can make a new bios card (right, desh?) with 512K ROM (lots of room for extra code), 512K RAM (for bigger games...or maybe streaming video buffers) that should be backwards compatible with bios 3.1.  Just saying.....

[Arkhan Asylum]

You can do the bonk trumpet sound with Squirrel.  I made it before.  It just requires the right enveloping.   Reflectron has a similarish sound going on.

[elmer]

I do not think many companies developed their own sound drivers; I suspect it is more likely they modified the 'stock' system card one.

Nope, that's just not how the industry worked back then.

And ... how-on-earth would they have gotten the System Card sound player in HuCard games???

Back then good musicians were specialists, and either their company, or they themselves, created custom sound drivers for their own use.

A good sound driver, like a good musician, was a "competitive advantage".

The only reason for putting a damned sound driver into System Card 1.0 was to save folks from needing to spend some of the measly 64KB of program RAM on including their own driver.

A basic music-driver is not a difficult thing for an assembly-language programmer to write, if a musician can describe, in reasonably technical terms, what it is that they want to achieve.

Looking at the CD Development System docs, and the disassembly of bank 2 that was done in 2001 (sorry, it's just easier to read than your version in Squirrel) ... it's not a particularly complicated sound-driver.

It's just another bytestream-per-channel driver, with a set of override-channels for the sound effects ... just like the example that I posted a few messages ago that I wrote for Jon Dunn.

I didn't know WTF I was doing back then (and still mostly don't), but having a good musician describe how things are supposed to work in musical terms made it easy to produce the correct code to interface with the hardware (on a number a different platforms, over a number of years).

It's all pretty-simple stuff in technical terms. The "magic" is all in the mind of the musician that knows how to use those capabilities to create a complex, beautiful, morphing soundscape.

No, but I think a new modifed version could. Although I can't swear it would be compatible with all existing games.

But Arkhan has specifically told people that the code cannot be modified.

Which is is why I rejected it a year-or-so-ago when this all first came up ... back when I thought that it was Aetherbyte's own proprietary code, and not just a disassembly of Hudson's proprietary code.

"Yes", it could be modified ... there are unused bytecodes that could be assigned to implement new features (like a sample-playback channel for decent drums).

But ... you guys have specifically dumped on that idea in your licensing terms ... and even if it were possible, it would still be a "derivative work" under copyright law, and thus "tainted".

We can make a new bios card (right, desh?) with 512K ROM (lots of room for extra code), 512K RAM (for bigger games...or maybe streaming video buffers) that should be backwards compatible with bios 3.1.  Just saying.....

Again, you're going in a totally different direction to me.

You seem to want to make a brand-new System Card that acts as some kind of copy-protection for the homebrew developers that are willing to pay the licensing/manufacturing costs for it.

I'm more interested in just booting off the existing System Card, and then providing an 8KB or 16KB library of fast CD & Music library source-code that lives in the top 2 banks and completely replaces the old System Card routines.

For me ... that's a damned-good use of RAM, and it's 100% customizable on a game-by-game basis!

[OldRover]

We can make a new bios card (right, desh?) with 512K ROM (lots of room for extra code), 512K RAM (for bigger games...or maybe streaming video buffers) that should be backwards compatible with bios 3.1.  Just saying.....

Again, you're going in a totally different direction to me.

You seem to want to make a brand-new System Card that acts as some kind of copy-protection for the homebrew developers that are willing to pay the licensing/manufacturing costs for it.

I'm more interested in just booting off the existing System Card, and then providing an 8KB or 16KB library of fast CD & Music library source-code that lives in the top 2 banks and completely replaces the old System Card routines.

For me ... that's a damned-good use of RAM, and it's 100% customizable on a game-by-game basis!

Both of these ideas are good. I dunno about the copy protection bit (I don't much care about it myself, copy away) but double the system RAM would be a blessing for those of us who still use HuC... and faster CD routines are always a bonus no matter if you use C or assembly.

[elmer]

Both of these ideas are good. I dunno about the copy protection bit (I don't much care about it myself, copy away) but double the system RAM would be a blessing for those of us who still use HuC... and faster CD routines are always a bonus no matter if you use C or assembly.

Absolutely, more RAM is always nice! 

BTW, don't forget that the new HuC seems to be generating code that is only 60% of the size of the old HuC (from Catastrophy), and Artemio's bank packing improvements make that even better.

And if 512KB of RAM is nice ... then the 4MB of RAM on the Turbo Everdrive v2 is even nicer!

And that's even not even considering the possibility of reading overlays from its SD-CARD instead of the CD.

But ... and it's a huge "but", I do understand that a lot of folks really want to have a nicely boxed brand new game package to display on the shelf and lovingly plug into the console.

I guess that you could do that with a custom SD-CARD in a CD case, but I suspect that some people wouldn't find that to be an "acceptable" alternative.

[Arkhan Asylum]

But Arkhan has specifically told people that the code cannot be modified.

Which is is why I rejected it a year-or-so-ago when this all first came up ... back when I thought that it was Aetherbyte's own proprietary code, and not just a disassembly of Hudson's proprietary code.

"Yes", it could be modified ... there are unused bytecodes that could be assigned to implement new features (like a sample-playback channel for decent drums).

But ... you guys have specifically dumped on that idea in your licensing terms ... and even if it were possible, it would still be a "derivative work" under copyright law, and thus "tainted".

There may have been some kind of miscommunication between the three of us (we're good at that), as Squirrel also implies(d) (I thought) distributing the compiler piece, with the code for that. 

I guess, maybe for future reference, we should call the actual player part something else in discussions, lol.   

Squirrel = MML compiler
SquirrelPlayer = the tainted precious.



I personally don't have any grand aversion to redistributing the player, as long as credit is maintained, and any future fiddle-dicking with it are properly noted and mentioned.    Besides, there's really nothing stopping anyone from doing that already, because you are handed the code for it when you download Squirrel. 

but, if you go goobering around with it and break compatibility with the compiler it was made to go with, then I don't know what to tell you about that, lol.   You're on your own for getting stuff into it.

but again, as we've all now clarified:  The HuCard piece that you want to distribute is 80s disassembly copy-pasta from Hudson's stuff, with some fiddling to get it to work right.

It's all a gray area.  How IS copyright handled when the company who owns the copyright to this stuff acknowledges, encourages, and asks for copyright infringement?  Does that mean they kind of legally admitted "fuck it".   .... , and this stuff is kind of thrown out the window?

You seem to want to make a brand-new System Card that acts as some kind of copy-protection for the homebrew developers that are willing to pay the licensing/manufacturing costs for it.

I'm more interested in just booting off the existing System Card, and then providing an 8KB or 16KB library of fast CD & Music library source-code that lives in the top 2 banks and completely replaces the old System Card routines.

For me ... that's a damned-good use of RAM, and it's 100% customizable on a game-by-game basis!

One of the driving forces for the HuCard for homebrewery is that it would stop fuckhead Tobias from being a fuckhead. 

[Arkhan Asylum]

I suspect that this was made with MML:

https://youtu.be/5YjYEJ9WHt4


Even if not, its a good time.

[TurboXray]

I'm more interested in just booting off the existing System Card, and then providing an 8KB or 16KB library of fast CD & Music library source-code that lives in the top 2 banks and completely replaces the old System Card routines.

For me ... that's a damned-good use of RAM, and it's 100% customizable on a game-by-game basis!

This is what I already do, with just the regular Sys card 3.0. I really don't like all the system card functions just sitting in MPR7. *IF* I need specific CD access, then I'll map syscard bank $00 back into MPR7 for whatever and then switch right back. I do adhere to the reserved ram requirements of what syscard routines use. So there's no conflicts for me.

 I also totally agree about the sys card PSG player and the original 64k of ram. It really did make sense in that context. And sound engines, or rather "music" engines, are super easy to write from scratch. That has never been the problem for PCE. The issue has always been the supporting tools around it.

 The Azazel music is Air Zonk reverse engineered; it's not a disassembly. It took me awhile only because I had to figure what all the original code was doing (I traced through it in the debugger, but I never disassembled it) - so what I wrote is 100% source. I could have done that in 1 day, if I were just given the instructions of what was needed. So my point is, Azazel was just for fun. And the whole; "Hey! make music using the Air Zonk sound engine". There's honestly nothing impressive about it, but it has enough features to get stuff done. I even wrote a music compiler for it; human readable music notation - not code or data defines. It's mml-ish too. But definitely not as fancy or advanced as Squirrel. But at the end of it the day, if someone wanted to support a new music engine - Azazel is not it. Just as I think the syscard PSG player is not it. A good solid month would get you something soo much better.

 Given my experience with writing about 6 different "music engines" for the PCE, and the ones I've trace code through in PCE games, I've found that nothing out there delivers everything that the PCE is capable sound-wise. But see, I'm not a musician, so I'm always looking at this from a perspective of: how far can we push the PCE sound system and what new and interesting sounds can we get out of it? How can we make the sound more advance. I realize that not everyone shares that perspective. For some people, "it's good enough - let me just make music for it". I also realize that the whole "how far can we push it" mentality is a never ending game. It's a fun game to play, IMO. But that's not the point. The point is, is that quite a bit of techniques are now known about how to do more advance stuff with PCE sound. So why not take that, what we know, and simply make a new open source music engine?

  Just to note: A tracker does not have to specifically output "patterned" music, just because that's how the interface layer works form the musician's perspective. The final output can easily be "command string" format. I would argue that it SHOULD be command-string based. Why? Because that supports everything.
 

[Arkhan Asylum]

The issue has always been the supporting tools around it.

This.   This is literally why I said "fuck it" so many years ago, and we went with something that would be functional, rather than:

A) Waiting for a mystical tracker to appear from the mists, ready to do what we all want
B) Wait for whatever that MOD thing was that #utopiasoft's topic line said was coming next week, back in 2008.
C) Use that other weird ass music program that was on Zeograd's site that made my face itch.

I got tired of waiting.  I said something like "hey oldman, look at this.  there's a BIOS PSG player just sitting there ready to be used.  What the fuck are we waiting for?"

Dave had some kind of demo for the PSG player on Zeograd.  I once asked for info on it and a document he wrote awhileeeee ago, unfortunately, he blew me off.  I don't know why.  Playing dumb, legitimately forgot he wrote something, who knows.  Who cares.

So after some of our poking, prodding, buying Develo book, looking at "how does MSX do it" complete with conferring with others who did or have done this commercially, and experimenting lead to the various iterations of Squirrel. 

I wonder if I still have the one laying around that I wrote.  It parsed and played from included MML data, instead of using the compiled one.   There might even be a demo floating around of the Frog theme from Chrono Trigger that used it.   I one day intended to use it for a live-play MIDI interface, but never got around to it because games.

I even wrote a music compiler for it; human readable music notation - not code or data defines. It's mml-ish too. But definitely not as fancy or advanced as Squirrel. But at the end of it the day, if someone wanted to support a new music engine - Azazel is not it. Just as I think the syscard PSG player is not it. A good solid month would get you something soo much better.

Oh.  I didn't know you finished that compiler.   That was awhile ago.  Where is it?   

So why not take that, what we know, and simply make a new open source music engine?

Because, I see a few things going down.
1) It will be made by non-musicians*
2) Egos and overconfidence will fuck up an open source project pretty bad.  (Please, never say "I could've done that in a day" or "a solid month".  It almost always leads to foot-in-mouth, lol)
3) Endless chasing of the dragons will lead to it never being done. 

Just to note: A tracker does not have to specifically output "patterned" music, just because that's how the interface layer works form the musician's perspective. The final output can easily be "command string" format. I would argue that it SHOULD be command-string based. Why? Because that supports everything.
 

This is what my friend's software for MSX is going to do, AFAIK.



*= What I mean by this is not meant to be insulting.  I noticed this first when I looked at Dave's documentation he wrote.   He had translated stuff about MML and put a ??? next to the translation of Dal Segno, implying he had no clue what the hell the katakana was trying to say, or what it even meant.   I was like "shit, I forgot there's people who don't know how to read sheet music."

There is a strong difference between musicians, and programmers.   I happen to be both, and had to help bridge the gap with OldMan when we were doing Squirrel to make sure the thing was usable and made sense.  Some stuff that makes programmatic sense makes nearly no sense from a musical usability standpoint. 

LOL, I remember at one point, I said "if we do that, you can't really do hopping bass lines" and OldMan said "so don't do those", and I was like "agjioagagajiogajioajasdfj34f4f", because yknow, hopping octave-shift bass lines are more or less some of the quintessential stuff from the 80s.  We got it all sorted out.  lol.

Now, because many (most? all?) of you that code are not musicians/composers, you will likely have issues with getting usable, functional stuff without the direct input and considerations of people who make the music.

I draw a line between musicians and composers, too.

All composers are musicians.
Not all musicians are composers.

Musicians may be better to survey for usability (how do I touch this), but composers are probably better for functionality and "is this how it should work."




EDIT: Oh, here it is http://aetherbyte.com/downloadables/pgd.pce

It's still on Aetherbyte, lol.

_{► /downloadables/Defender.wav}

Oh, a version of Atlantean's level tune from before I changed the leads.

_{► /downloadables/sotb.mp3}

SHADOW OF THE BEAST.

yeahhhhhh.

[Gredler]

I suspect that this was made with MML:

https://youtu.be/5YjYEJ9WHt4


Even if not, its a good time.

danm this is great thanks for sharing

[TailChao]

It'd be great if that SASS thing from TailChao had a midi--->SASS conversion.

It has one here, which is also under zlib.

I'd like to write a Win32 tracker eventually with export support for the current SASS targets (BupBoop, HuSound, and HandyMusic), and HuSound needs a rewrite but this is all for way later.

[elmer]

"Yes", it could be modified ... there are unused bytecodes that could be assigned to implement new features (like a sample-playback channel for decent drums).

There may have been some kind of miscommunication between the three of us (we're good at that), as Squirrel also implies(d) (I thought) distributing the compiler piece, with the code for that. 
...
but, if you go goobering around with it and break compatibility with the compiler it was made to go with, then I don't know what to tell you about that, lol.   You're on your own for getting stuff into it.

Hahaha ... yeah ... there's our continuing misunderstandings and different generational-uses of terminology to deal with. At least we're reasonably polite about them these days.

In "practical" terms, even if it were OK to legally distribute a modified version of the SquirrelPlayer with new features, it would be absolutely pointless without changes to the Squirrel MML compiler in order to support the new features.

I think that it's just best to leave your Squirrel package the way that it is ... it accomplishes exactly what you wanted it to do, and it's an excellent way for folks to develop sounds for the System Card player.

If, and it's a huge "if", there's a reason to develop a new sound driver, then it will need new tools to go with it.

It's all a gray area.  How IS copyright handled when the company who owns the copyright to this stuff acknowledges, encourages, and asks for copyright infringement?  Does that mean they kind of legally admitted "fuck it".   .... , and this stuff is kind of thrown out the window?

It's not "gray", it's full-on "black" if someone uses the "SquirrelPlayer" in a HuCard.

But, once again, in practical terms, Konami are very unlikely to give a damn. There's not even enough money/pride involved for them to bother digging up a lawyer from the crypt and having them write a C&D letter.

And that's the process if you piss someone off enough ... a "Cease & Desist" probably at the same time as contacting your ISP to have all your web pages taken down under the DMCA.

One of the driving forces for the HuCard for homebrewery is that it would stop fuckhead Tobias from being a fuckhead.

That's definitely a noble goal ... but has Tobias shown *any* interest in copying people's homebrew?


***************

This is what I already do, with just the regular Sys card 3.0. I really don't like all the system card functions just sitting in MPR7.

Yep, it bugs me, too! 

But see, I'm not a musician, so I'm always looking at this from a perspective of: how far can we push the PCE sound system and what new and interesting sounds can we get out of it?
...
So why not take that, what we know, and simply make a new open source music engine?

That would be the "sensible" course ... except for the "Elephant in the Room" in that there isn't anyone clamoring for it, or projects that need it, or any musicians lined up wanting to use it.

Squirrel exists because Arkhan wanted to use it for his own projects.

HuSound exists because TailChao wanted something better (to him) than the System Card player for his music.

I'm just not detecting the pent-up desire for something else.

Has anyone here even *tried* using TailChao's HuSound to make a tune???

Just to note: A tracker does not have to specifically output "patterned" music, just because that's how the interface layer works form the musician's perspective. The final output can easily be "command string" format. I would argue that it SHOULD be command-string based. Why? Because that supports everything.

Yep, if a tracker is used as the user-interface, then outputting into a command-string format would seem to be the best option to me, rather than just trying to process a MOD data in realtime on the PCE.

That's pretty-much what Arkhan was saying earlier with his comment about exporting a MOD into MML format.

[TurboXray]

The issue has always been the supporting tools around it.

This.   This is literally why I said "fuck it" so many years ago, and we went with something that would be functional..

And honestly you deserve a lot more credit than I've ever said. Sometimes I get caught up in the criticism of smaller details, that I forget to publicly acknowledge the larger picture. I mean, I'm thinking it - I just don't say it because sometimes I feel its implied.

Oh.  I didn't know you finished that compiler.   That was awhile ago.  Where is it?   

Probably sitting on a hard drive somewhere - lol. It was an exercise in writing something like that I hadn't done before. I let a few chiptune sceners from.. some IRC channels mess with it, test it - but nothing ever came of it other than I finished it. It wasn't supposed to be a tool for the PCE community, just both an experiment and to complete the music driver project.

Because, I see a few things going down.
1) It will be made by non-musicians*
2) Egos and overconfidence will fuck up an open source project pretty bad.  (Please, never say "I could've done that in a day" or "a solid month".  It almost always leads to foot-in-mouth, lol)
3) Endless chasing of the dragons will lead to it never being done. 

I totally understand. But by advanced, I didn't mean the really craze shit. The really crazy shit, is for people to do for themselves; write their own driver and toolset for it.

 Things like: more envelopes. I like the idea of synths and in particular FM. Not that I want FM on the PCE, but I think envelope control concept makes instrument sounds easier to understand.

 - envelope to control waveform updating (happens while a note is in play)
 - envelope to control when vibrato or tremolo kicks in
 - envelope to control the amplitude of vibrato and tremolo envelopes
 - envelope to control the speed of vibrato and tremolo envelopes
 - envelope to phasing (i.e. detune - linear though)
 - envelope to control pitch slides (which can terminate if you use slide-to-note option)
 - all envelopes to support key on/off
 - volume ADSR envelopes with key on, that allows you to set global decay
 - a linear finetune step between notes (no exposure to the underlying period system)
 - other obvious things like transpose
 - ADSR envelope in relation to frequency (based on octive:note:finestep)
 - detune should be done with finestep linear notation, and is always the same regardless of the note or octave - that includes vibrato and pitch sliding
 - envelope for panning each channel.
 - all envelopes should have loop points for the key on, which can be placed anywhere.
 - envelopes should not be restricted to "ADSR" format: they should be points on a time line. You can construct an ADSR envelope, do so something more advanced. How many points there should be, is up to the design stage.
 - ability to enable time stretching of envelopes relative to note and octave position

 And sample support (DDA, not waveform). Samples that have loop points. Not only loop points, but "key on" for loop points. I.e. A single sample has three parts: attack, sustain, decay. These are three individual samples parts that make up the whole sample. It doesn't need to have three parts: It can be AD or just simply A (regular samples). Super easy to do. Note: Batman on the PC-Engine does this - it's where I got the idea from. No frequency scaling or any of that fancy stuff.

 That would be my entire suggested blue print for a music engine driver, minus the obvious stuff that's in every music engine driver.

 That's the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Some of this stuff might sound like it'll eat up some resource, but the resource is only relative to the stuff you use. If you're not using an envelope that time stretches something else (which is one 16bit multiplication operation per 'point' calculation - the delta is created but doesn't need constant multiplication: only when a new "point" is encountered), then it won't be processed.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Hahaha ... yeah ... there's our continuing misunderstandings and different generational-uses of terminology to deal with. At least we're reasonably polite about them these days.

I'm always ... polite.   I think.   Blunt/whatevery, but never ill-intenty, lol.   Most people that talk to me online think I'm a total asshole until they meet me in person and hear me talk, and go "oh.".

Half the time I'm swearing, I don't even realize I'm doing it.  Nailed it.

In "practical" terms, even if it were OK to legally distribute a modified version of the SquirrelPlayer with new features, it would be absolutely pointless without changes to the Squirrel MML compiler in order to support the new features.

I think that it's just best to leave your Squirrel package the way that it is ... it accomplishes exactly what you wanted it to do, and it's an excellent way for folks to develop sounds for the System Card player.

If, and it's a huge "if", there's a reason to develop a new sound driver, then it will need new tools to go with it.

I would prefer to always support MML, myself.   In theory, squirrel could output stuff for a different engine.    I would always want to go that route, though.

but you could just the same write a new compiler entirely for a different thing.

It's not "gray", it's full-on "black" if someone uses the "SquirrelPlayer" in a HuCard.

But, once again, in practical terms, Konami are very unlikely to give a damn. There's not even enough money/pride involved for them to bother digging up a lawyer from the crypt and having them write a C&D letter.

And that's the process if you piss someone off enough ... a "Cease & Desist" probably at the same time as contacting your ISP to have all your web pages taken down under the DMCA.

Well, I am not sure HOW we might piss off Konami.   Tobias bootlegged Dracula X, complete with stealing their art and logos, AND THEIR GAME, and has been reselling them in boxed sets.  Konami's reply was "cool, we want one too".

If THAT doesn't piss them off, I highly doubt using the system card player is going to make them mad.  lol.

That's why I'm calling it a gray area...   I think Konami has the rights, and literally gives negative fucks about it.

That's definitely a noble goal ... but has Tobias shown *any* interest in copying people's homebrew?

Does Tom's Rockman game count?
He's also profiteered off of fan-translations.

Anything that looks like something he can dupe people into paying $$$$ for, he grabs and produces.

He's a douchebag.

That would be the "sensible" course ... except for the "Elephant in the Room" in that there isn't anyone clamoring for it, or projects that need it, or any musicians lined up wanting to use it.

Squirrel exists because Arkhan wanted to use it for his own projects.

HuSound exists because TailChao wanted something better (to him) than the System Card player for his music.

I'm just not detecting the pent-up desire for something else.

Has anyone here even *tried* using TailChao's HuSound to make a tune???

I've never tried using HuSound.   I haven't had a reason to yet.  When it was still being made, or whatever, it required "programming" stuff, and I was like "ehhhh", but since there's a MIDI way to do it, it's tempting to try.   I don't have an itch in my pants to write music like a C program.   I already did weird shit like that on the C64 with the one synth program that had this ASM-scripty language to program the SID, and it was *awful*.

It sounded cool in the end, but holy crap, it was not worth the effort, lol.

and yes, there really aren't .... people making PCE games, so Deflemask works fine for people that just want 32byte beewoopdoodlebops to show people on YouTube.    Before that, people were just sampling the PCE directly, or using their own 32 byte waves to sound close enough, and just using basically any tracker.    It's like how people were sampling C64 on the Amiga because they were attached to that shweeeeooooooeoooooooeeeeeooooo noise that Galway basically invented, lol.

I'd say what we really need are people wanting to make games.   There's Me, and Rover.  And Gredler, and Cabbage / Touko when they're not busy, basically?  lol

Yep, if a tracker is used as the user-interface, then outputting into a command-string format would seem to be the best option to me, rather than just trying to process a MOD data in realtime on the PCE.

That's pretty-much what Arkhan was saying earlier with his comment about exporting a MOD into MML format.

Yep. 

I guess that's my real gripe with trackers.  Stop trying to fuck around with playing back that nonsense directly.  Make it something more practical before you do that part.


How performant is that XM player thing Tom made? 



FWIW:  You can make new envelopes and such with Squirrel.  You do have a bit of control over stuff, but you really have to just sit and experiment with it.

That's generally how you get sounds that are good, anyway.   Real synths, you twist knobs and sliders.

MML, you just change numbers and listen.


One day, maybe I'll fuck around with putting samples into Squirrel, but it would only exist for the HuCard player, obviously.   

I think the most obvious use of samples is for tom rolling. 

[TurboXray]

How performant is that XM player thing Tom made? 

Which one? This:

Or this (bare bones):
http//www.pcedev.net/HuPCMDriver/HuPCMDriver_Demo_HuXMPlay.zip

Or this.. hybrid thing (command string that has specific XM features):

I wouldn't use any of them. Dude.. stick with what you have and hack in sample support, or lets do an open source music engine. Or we all race to make the best one and the losers can suck it. Either way, none of my music drivers have universal appeal. They were all tailored with very specific goals in mind.

 Just to note: My HuPCMDriver is not a music engine. It could work along side of the PSG player or any other music engine. But it's specifically if you wanted the PCE to have "sampled-based synth" capability. I like the thing. I'm proud of the design (the whole thing is octave:note:finestep format - no weird period system or frequencies. Also does transposing. And the whole thing is linear scale in frequency). But it's not a music driver. It's a sound driver to emulate hardware that's not part of the PCE.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Either.   I was just curious.  It's always been my impression that using XM/trying to do all that directly will basically eat too many resources to make games a viable thing.

[TailChao]

Either way, none of my music drivers have universal appeal. They were all tailored with very specific goals in mind.

This is probably true of most sound drivers and their associated toolchains for dinosaur hardware.
Which is not a bad thing, really. I don't think there should be so much paranoia related to writing audio tools.

Whatever works best for your needs and allows the product to ship is what should be used.