Should NES musicians fear Bananmos?

Discuss NSF files, FamiTracker, MML tools, or anything else related to NES music.

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tepples
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Should NES musicians fear Bananmos?

Post by tepples »

Will physical violence be threatened on somebody who writes a music engine, tests it on Nintendulator, Nestopia, and FCEU/Festalon, and makes NSFs using the engine available to the public under the disclaimer "Notice: This NSF uses a music engine which has been tested only on emulators and not on NES hardware"?
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Post by Hyde »

Probably, but what the hell...

You can always get your engine tested on real hardware by someone in here. From then on you can just keep using that same engine over and over.
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

Nah, not really (fearful sarcasm maybe), but if it was tested with only NESticle, OTOH.. :lol:

Because that's what happened with the first version of NT2. It worked, except for some unemulated features which screwed things up majorly. Bananmos had to re-write the stuff (turned out well because he added features too, heheh). Well, it wasn't publicly available the time, but you can see releasing it early without hardware tests would've resulted in a lot of music that would've sounded fine on NESticle but horrible on the real system (and would've been incompatible with later, properly working versions anyways).

If that happened, Bananmos could've been in danger of getting beatings from the musicians that relied the program. :lol:
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Post by tepples »

In that case, I'd like somebody to help test the beginning of a music engine. I've already successfully tested it in three recent emulators, but I'd like some corroboration on hardware.
Memblers wrote:but if it was tested with only NESticle
Screw that. I test with FCE Ultra, Nestopia, and Nintendulator.

NROM, 16 KB PRG + 8 KB CHR (CHR not really needed as you don't need to see but just hear what's going on)
The ROM | How it sounds in FCE Ultra
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

Yep, it sounds fine on my NES. No noise channel like in the .ogg file, but that seems to be a difference in the ROM (since it's not heard in the emus either).

The triangle sounds better on the real system. Might just be my PC config, but the first triangle note pops on FCEU, sounds totally clean on NES. Can't tell if it does that in the .ogg, the noise would drown it out.

Too bad I'm stuck with only a toploader for now, no easy way to record it for you.
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Post by tepples »

Memblers wrote:Yep, it sounds fine on my NES. No noise channel like in the .ogg file, but that seems to be a difference in the ROM (since it's not heard in the emus either).
OOPS! Turns out I had uploaded a previous version of the ROM from before I added noise support. Updated ROM.
no noise iNES ROM | OGG from FCEU
with noise iNES ROM | OGG from FCEU
The triangle sounds better on the real system. Might just be my PC config, but the first triangle note pops on FCEU, sounds totally clean on NES.
It popped on FCEU, but only on reset (F10). It sounded OK with a power cycle (F11).

Next steps for me:
  • Define a sequence format and add a sequence player.
  • Make instrument and sequence editing tools for Windows, unlike the reboot-to-DOSness that is NT2 on a modern Windows PC.
  • Add DMC support.
  • Add the ability for a program using the library to start a note and lock the channel until the note has finished; this is apparently how sound effects work in real games.
  • Encapsulate it into a reasonably self-contained library.
  • Write readable English documentation, not the engrish mess that plagued the MCK scene.
  • Put it under a free software license.
Anyway, how important is it to musicians reading this that pitch bends work on a granularity finer than semitones? Slides for triangle kick drums typically move at least one semitone per frame.
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Post by Drag »

I'm using a nsf code that someone else made. He based it off of SMB2's music engine. It works in all nsf players, and I know it's bad practice, but I'm 80% confident it'll work on the real NES, since it works everywhere else. Reason it's 80% instead of like 90% is because I modded the code slightly to implement sound effects, and to add some features. I don't know if that'll work on the nes, but I sure as heck am hoping so. I could give someone the nsf to test it on the nes, but I probably won't until later.

Anyway, what are you guys using to open ogg files?
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Post by tepples »

There exist plug-ins for QuickTime and for Windows Media Player. Pretty much everything else, such as Winamp 2.8 and later and RealPlayer 10, supports Ogg Vorbis out of the box.
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Post by Memblers »

Yep, bal_002.nes with the noise sounds fine on the NES too. Looks like you forgot to clear the name/attrib table. Oh well, that won't affect the sound anyways.

For the pitch bends, if anyone wants to do a slow or shallow one, it would almost have to be a lot finer than a semitone. Like playing a guitar, it's probably more common to bend the string and stay in the same fret instead of sliding up/down the fretboard, heheh.
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Post by tepples »

Memblers wrote:Looks like you forgot to clear the name/attrib table.
How? The init code I use is copied almost verbatim from what I posted here, and it writes $00 bytes to PPU $2400-$2BFF, which should cover H- and V-mirroring. Did you test it on a 1-screen or 4-screen mapper or a CHR RAM mapper or something? Oh wait, it doesn't write the entire palette, only the part that it actually uses ($3F00-$3F03). Is that important?
For the pitch bends, if anyone wants to do a slow or shallow one, it would almost have to be a lot finer than a semitone.
I'm still trying to think of the most efficient way to express those. Which NSFs make good use of shallow pitch bending?
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Post by Memblers »

I ran it on the Squeedo cart, which is 4-screen only. So you didn't clear nametable 0, I see now. I guess that reaffirms that my NT expansion memory works. :)
tepples wrote: I'm still trying to think of the most efficient way to express those. Which NSFs make good use of shallow pitch bending?
Like Double Dragon (though they actually used the hardware sweeps), also for doing stuff like in this song before it loops:
http://2a03.org/2A03/archive/originals/ ... ittery.nsf
mykbakur

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Post by mykbakur »

Hi. I should possibly be posting this in the newbies section, but the fact is I am at a sub-newbie level when it comes to the engineering, programming, etc.. The only thing I would elevate myself above that level in is music. I am a long time musician and fan of the soundtrack of my childhood- nintendo music. Anyway, I wa wondering how close people are to creating an idiot-friendly piece of software/hardware that can be plugged into a nintendo on one end, a midi keyboard on the other, and be used to create and play nintendo music in real time?
I remember a dilbert comic where a bunch of BA graduates were brainstorming solutions to some problem, and coming up with magical answers like a cloak of invisibility, and then passing it on to the engineers to take care of the boring stuff such as design and implementation. Consider me one such art geek.
Anything in the works? I would be a very co-operative beta tester if anyone was interested.
mykbakur@hotmail.com
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Memblers
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Post by Memblers »

Yeah, if you want MIDI hardware, check out MIDINES.
http://www.wayfar.net/

I'll be getting one of those myself pretty soon. :D

I want to work some music features into my Squeedo cart also, not sure what or how exactly.
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Post by herr_prof »

i think the coolest application of the midines for the scene would be in conjunctiuon with tom7s midi converter deal. You can write the sequences on real hardware... dump into mck and tweak and it should sound about the same on a cart....
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tepples
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Re: Should NES musicians fear Bananmos?

Post by tepples »

Given that hardware for Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS homebrew was easier to get at the time, I decided to wait before making a serious NES music engine until the PowerPak was released. It was in short supply for the first year, but once I got my hands on one at the end of 2008, I made the first version of what is now known as Pently.

And by now, there are a lot of users willing to run tests using PowerPak, EverDrive, or INL-Retro, which are about as easy to get and use as the GBA and DS flash solutions of old.

So I guess we can consider this case closed.
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