Ultra Famitracker VRC7 Skills

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

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
Drew Sebastino
Formerly Espozo
Posts: 3496
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 4:35 pm
Location: Richmond, Virginia

Ultra Famitracker VRC7 Skills

Post by Drew Sebastino »

User avatar
Bregalad
Posts: 8055
Joined: Fri Nov 12, 2004 2:49 pm
Location: Divonne-les-bains, France

Re: Ultra Famitracker VRC7 Skills

Post by Bregalad »

Actually the trick used Stickerbrush Symphony is pretty standard FM-synthesis stuff. Lagrange point just loads a single instrument in INSTR#0 on each of its songs and never touches it again, in that respect it seriously underuses the capabilities of its (alteady very dumbed down) OPL chip.

Perhaps the fact changing instrument requires a dozen of writes to the chip's registers is the reason why ? Would it slow down the music engine too much in a game ?

It was actually cazy they simulated that using the SPC700 as a wavetabe synthesizer in the original, alternating between pre-filtered waves of different intensities.
User avatar
rainwarrior
Posts: 8731
Joined: Sun Jan 22, 2012 12:03 pm
Location: Canada
Contact:

Re: Ultra Famitracker VRC7 Skills

Post by rainwarrior »

Bregalad wrote:Actually the trick used Stickerbrush Symphony is pretty standard FM-synthesis stuff. Lagrange point just loads a single instrument in INSTR#0 on each of its songs and never touches it again, in that respect it seriously underuses the capabilities of its (alteady very dumbed down) OPL chip.
Lagrange Point got specify all 15 built in patches too, though, they're not the pre-fab OPLL patches. So, technically all the instruments in Lagrange Point are custom. (Though I think half of them are pretty similar to their original counterparts. They weren't very inventive with them.)
User avatar
Drew Sebastino
Formerly Espozo
Posts: 3496
Joined: Mon Sep 15, 2014 4:35 pm
Location: Richmond, Virginia

Re: Ultra Famitracker VRC7 Skills

Post by Drew Sebastino »

Bregalad wrote:Actually the trick used Stickerbrush Symphony is pretty standard FM-synthesis stuff.
Oh... Not many FM things I've heard sound that fine, at least not on the Genesis, because many developers used something called GEMS to make sound? I really like CPS1 FM music though, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO7JEqIPQv0 and it kind of makes me sad that they decided to pretty much stop using the same music style for the CPS2, as it used different sound hardware. Would you actually believe that there's a Street Fighter II arcade machine (along with Metal Slug 3, Hydro Thunder, and Crusin USA and Crusin World) in the crummy Nacogdoches mall? http://southernretail.blogspot.com/2010 ... texas.html I actually found a better version though, and this one actually already comes with Famitracker :lol: (although it's not the VRC7)
I did realize that the Fear Factory one wasn't actually the VRC7 and was instead the VRC6. That sounds awesome though.
User avatar
za909
Posts: 248
Joined: Fri Jan 24, 2014 9:05 am
Location: Mijn hart woont al in Nederland

Re: Ultra Famitracker VRC7 Skills

Post by za909 »

Most games with a lot of expansion audio channels are typically RPGs, or text adventure games. I don't know if processing the output for the extra channels takes that much CPU time, but with the VRC7 you need to waste cycles after every write, to wait for it to internally handle the write. At least the N163 has an automatically advancing address latch, much like the one in the PPU, and you could also generate pulse waves without having to store them in ROM. (Have a variable which tells how many times the wave will have $FF bytes written to it. "Wave size"-"varible" amount of space is filled with $00 bytes. And you can edit the variable to create a different pulse width.)
Post Reply