10 replies to this topic

[Andrew Davie]

I think I'd really like to go with original music for Atari 2600 Boulder Dash®. I know this has been discussed on threads earlier, but I'd like to start this thread to call for anyone interested in contributing to the music and sound side of this project to contact me, or post examples here. What I'd be looking for is someone to independantly implement the Boulder Dash theme on the '2600 as close as possible to the original.

The conditions are that the music must be a single call per frame, not be prohibitively time-using. More limits to be posted if/when they show up and/or I remember them.

Reward, as such, would be credit for sound and music in the final package (onscreen if this is done for programmers), at the very least in the manuals, and two production cartridges (if it ever gets this far).

I'd like to open up this thread to discussions/opinions on the music side of things -- including sound effects.

[moderntimes99]

Hi! It was some time ago, but this was my attempt (back in 2005) using Paul Slocums music kit v2.0.

 bd.zip   53.89K   291 downloads

Regards,
Moderntimes99

Andrew Davie, on Sat Jan 12, 2008 12:50 PM, said:

I think I'd really like to go with original music for Atari 2600 Boulder Dash®. I know this has been discussed on threads earlier, but I'd like to start this thread to call for anyone interested in contributing to the music and sound side of this project to contact me, or post examples here. What I'd be looking for is someone to independantly implement the Boulder Dash theme on the '2600 as close as possible to the original.

The conditions are that the music must be a single call per frame, not be prohibitively time-using. More limits to be posted if/when they show up and/or I remember them.

Reward, as such, would be credit for sound and music in the final package (onscreen if this is done for programmers), at the very least in the manuals, and two production cartridges (if it ever gets this far).

I'd like to open up this thread to discussions/opinions on the music side of things -- including sound effects.

[Andrew Davie]

moderntimes99, on Mon Feb 11, 2008 8:33 AM, said:

Hi! It was some time ago, but this was my attempt (back in 2005) using Paul Slocums music kit v2.0.

bd.zip

Regards,
Moderntimes99

To my limited music/sound capabilities, this sounds pretty good. I do recall a thread about the sound somewhere; I will have to find it and see what was done back then. Does this music kit only require one call per frame?

Cheers
A

[SpiceWare]

I did a blog entry when I added moderntimes99's music to Medieval Mayhem.

Quote

figure out the RAM requirements. Only 3 bytes are required to be preserved between calls to the music routines. Another 4 bytes are used as temp variables and can be shared from your scratch RAM pool. A 5 byte stack is also required for JSR and PHA usage. Stack requirements can be reduced by inlining part of the code and/or using another scratch RAM for the PHA/PLA.

[moderntimes99]

Andrew Davie, on Tue Feb 12, 2008 11:05 AM, said:

To my limited music/sound capabilities, this sounds pretty good. I do recall a thread about the sound somewhere; I will have to find it and see what was done back then. Does this music kit only require one call per frame?

Cheers
A

Yes, it's one call per frame only. SpiceWare specified the memory requirements much better than I could, I only remembered the three persistent bytes part of it. I'm not a very good 6502 programmer (I program both C and PL/SQL professionally, though) but my feeling is that Paul Slocum's music driver deserves much more attention than it has received so far.

Regards,
Moderntimes99

Edited by moderntimes99, Tue Feb 12, 2008 2:46 PM.

[Cybergoth]

Just redid the conversion with my current tools.

Attached Files

•  boulder.zip   610bytes   205 downloads

[tremoloman2006]

Cybergoth, on Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:29 PM, said:

Just redid the conversion with my current tools.

Just wanted to give you a shout out and say this sounds cool in Stella.

[Andrew Davie]

I picked up Boulder Dash ™ today and... well... it's pretty cool. And I thought what a shame to leave it. But then I thought... no, it's a part of my past life and I've moved on. But I kind of feel that it really really needs to have the correct official music in it, so I went and listened to a few of the examples people have done for this. There's one on YouTube which is pretty good, and a couple here too.

So, what I'd like to do is not necessarily revive the project, but at least put the correct music in and see where things go from there. Could all you music/sound geniuses with an interest in contributing please post your latest/greatest Boulder Dash Music efforts... and I'll make an effort to move things along just a little bit. Who knows what might happen.

Cheers
A

[lapetino]

Andrew Davie, on Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:18 PM, said:

I picked up Boulder Dash ™ today and... well... it's pretty cool. And I thought what a shame to leave it. But then I thought... no, it's a part of my past life and I've moved on. But I kind of feel that it really really needs to have the correct official music in it, so I went and listened to a few of the examples people have done for this. There's one on YouTube which is pretty good, and a couple here too.

So, what I'd like to do is not necessarily revive the project, but at least put the correct music in and see where things go from there. Could all you music/sound geniuses with an interest in contributing please post your latest/greatest Boulder Dash Music efforts... and I'll make an effort to move things along just a little bit. Who knows what might happen.

Cheers
A

Well, I must say that for me, that is pretty amazing news, Andrew. Even if only a little something comes out of this, it would be cool--the progress you made on this amazing game was too amazing for it to go unfinished, imo. Thanks again for all your work in the community here.

[batari]

Andrew Davie, on Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:18 PM, said:

I picked up Boulder Dash ™ today and... well... it's pretty cool. And I thought what a shame to leave it. But then I thought... no, it's a part of my past life and I've moved on. But I kind of feel that it really really needs to have the correct official music in it, so I went and listened to a few of the examples people have done for this. There's one on YouTube which is pretty good, and a couple here too.

So, what I'd like to do is not necessarily revive the project, but at least put the correct music in and see where things go from there. Could all you music/sound geniuses with an interest in contributing please post your latest/greatest Boulder Dash Music efforts... and I'll make an effort to move things along just a little bit. Who knows what might happen.

Cheers
A

Just thought I'd mention that if the availability of hardware influences your decision, Melody boards support 3E up to about 31k ROM and about 7k RAM and will be less costly than other proposed RAM boards.

Melody also can support Pitfall II-style music if you can spare about 5 cycles at least every other scanline (for others, the music may use 3 voices on one channel without the frequency limitations of normal TIA music, and leaves the second channel available for percussion or other sound effects.)

[Propane13]

Re: Music:

1) Can someone point me to "What's already done"?
A youtube video, and some postings in this thread were mentioned.
But, I'm a little lazy, so perhaps one central location would be nice.

2) Is any additional hardware support for music considered acceptable for this project?
Or, should we just use the standard 2 channels, assuming an update once per frame?

3) Is there a preferred musical reference? Personally, I always played Boulderdash on my NES, but I know there are other platforms. Is the music the same across the board? If not, which one is the "pure" version that is desired for the game, for reference?

Thanks!
-John