218 replies to this topic

[Almost Rice]

On my 5 minutes of testing last night, I found the TIA sounds adequate. I did not prefer either the 2 versions. The PoKey sounds were a bit louder, but that could be attributed to where I connected to the 7800 sound.

I am not an audiophile by any means. I may have to set up a 7800 to play the 2 versions side by side and get into the intermissions to hear the difference immediately before I could tell which I prefer.



Now if you could make a Donkey Kong with the Atari 8bit sounds. I would buy that in a heartbeat. The TIA sounds on that game hurts my ears.

[Allan]

Almost Rice, on Wed May 5, 2010 8:33 AM, said:

Now if you could make a Donkey Kong with the Atari 8bit sounds. I would buy that in a heartbeat. The TIA sounds on that game hurts my ears.

The nice thing about the Donkey Kong 8-bit sounds is the source code is available here on AA. The bad part is the source to the 7800 Donkey Kong is not, which is going to make it a LOT more difficult.

Allan

[tep392]

Allan, on Wed May 5, 2010 9:43 AM, said:

Almost Rice, on Wed May 5, 2010 8:33 AM, said:

Now if you could make a Donkey Kong with the Atari 8bit sounds. I would buy that in a heartbeat. The TIA sounds on that game hurts my ears.

The nice thing about the Donkey Kong 8-bit sounds is the source code is available here on AA. The bad part is the source to the 7800 Donkey Kong is not, which is going to make it a LOT more difficult.

Allan

I like the 7800 version but agree the sounds are painful. I have thought about upgrading the sound but I'm hesitant for a few reasons. The lack of 7800 source code is one. The other is lack of time. To be done right it really should have the 4th level added and have the intro screen with DK jumping across the girders. There are some technical issue too with it being a 48k cart. The pokey is mapped to $4000 and would overlap the rom. Even if I could keep to 48k by just adding pokey support, the ballblazer carts would require significant modification to remap the pokey chip. I'm satisfied with playing the excellent 8-bit version on my 800xl.

Perry

[opcode]

tep392, on Wed May 5, 2010 10:37 AM, said:

I like the 7800 version but agree the sounds are painful. I have thought about upgrading the sound but I'm hesitant for a few reasons. The lack of 7800 source code is one. The other is lack of time. To be done right it really should have the 4th level added and have the intro screen with DK jumping across the girders. There are some technical issue too with it being a 48k cart. The pokey is mapped to $4000 and would overlap the rom. Even if I could keep to 48k by just adding pokey support, the ballblazer carts would require significant modification to remap the pokey chip. I'm satisfied with playing the excellent 8-bit version on my 800xl.

Perry

Why bother with the existing version of DK for the 7800 (that is a port of a port) when we can have a true port of the arcade code.
That is something I have been discussing with Curt for his expansion module... Though first I need to finish Millipede...

[Underball]

opcode, on Thu May 6, 2010 8:22 AM, said:

tep392, on Wed May 5, 2010 10:37 AM, said:

I like the 7800 version but agree the sounds are painful. I have thought about upgrading the sound but I'm hesitant for a few reasons. The lack of 7800 source code is one. The other is lack of time. To be done right it really should have the 4th level added and have the intro screen with DK jumping across the girders. There are some technical issue too with it being a 48k cart. The pokey is mapped to $4000 and would overlap the rom. Even if I could keep to 48k by just adding pokey support, the ballblazer carts would require significant modification to remap the pokey chip. I'm satisfied with playing the excellent 8-bit version on my 800xl.

Perry

Why bother with the existing version of DK for the 7800 (that is a port of a port) when we can have a true port of the arcade code.
That is something I have been discussing with Curt for his expansion module... Though first I need to finish Millipede...

NICE.

[Greg2600]

Finally tried PMC Pokey on emulator, sounds great. Wish I had a flash cart to use it on.

[Mach-X]

Just did a quick side by side in MESS (I know I know not the best, but it's what I have going, besides I own the PMC cart so I play on a real 7800 rather than emulation) and could instantly hear the improvement POKEY support adds. Just one quick thing I noticed. The in game 'alarm' sound in Ms Pac actually seems to be better in the non POKEY version. Yea i just tested Ms Pac in MAME and that one sound effect sounds closer in the original PMC than it does in the POKEY version. Either way, awesome work by all involved. All other sounds i heard in both pac and ms pac sounded improved with POKEY support except for that one ms pac sound. I am the proud new owner of PMC and Jr Pac and I am beyond impressed with the professional grade products I received. I dunno how the financials work with what you guys do here, but what about selling both POKEY and non POKEY versions with the POKEY version selling for a higher price for those who want it? I understand this is homebrew, but for all the work Bob has put in, if you could sell the POKEY version with some proceeds going back to him, I think that would be okay. For myself, I am beyond ecstatic with the cart I received and probably wouldn't reinvest in a POKEY version, in fact, Bob's PMC cart has actually prevented me from dropping $500 on a ms pac arcade machine! I am a recent pac addict, and in the span of a couple weeks invested in both arcade games through XBLA, both namco museum and pac collection for the GBA as well as PCM and jr pac 7800. Am I pac crazy?

[HammR25]

Mach-X, on Sun May 9, 2010 9:09 PM, said:

I am a recent pac addict, and in the span of a couple weeks invested in both arcade games through XBLA, both namco museum and pac collection for the GBA as well as PCM and jr pac 7800. Am I pac crazy?

You're not Pac crazy enough yet:

http://www.amazon.co...ASIN=B001E3VKC4

It comes with:
Ms. Pac-Man
Pac-Man
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Pac & Pal
Pac-Mania
Super Pac-Man
Pac-Man Arrangement

[tep392]

Mach-X, on Sun May 9, 2010 9:09 PM, said:

Just did a quick side by side in MESS (I know I know not the best, but it's what I have going, besides I own the PMC cart so I play on a real 7800 rather than emulation) and could instantly hear the improvement POKEY support adds. Just one quick thing I noticed. The in game 'alarm' sound in Ms Pac actually seems to be better in the non POKEY version. Yea i just tested Ms Pac in MAME and that one sound effect sounds closer in the original PMC than it does in the POKEY version. Either way, awesome work by all involved. All other sounds i heard in both pac and ms pac sounded improved with POKEY support except for that one ms pac sound. I am the proud new owner of PMC and Jr Pac and I am beyond impressed with the professional grade products I received. I dunno how the financials work with what you guys do here, but what about selling both POKEY and non POKEY versions with the POKEY version selling for a higher price for those who want it? I understand this is homebrew, but for all the work Bob has put in, if you could sell the POKEY version with some proceeds going back to him, I think that would be okay. For myself, I am beyond ecstatic with the cart I received and probably wouldn't reinvest in a POKEY version, in fact, Bob's PMC cart has actually prevented me from dropping $500 on a ms pac arcade machine! I am a recent pac addict, and in the span of a couple weeks invested in both arcade games through XBLA, both namco museum and pac collection for the GBA as well as PCM and jr pac 7800. Am I pac crazy?

I'll take a look at that particular sound. I'm about ready to post an update. I've made some tweaks and fixed a bug. That second Ms. Pac-man animation was just way too fast compared to the arcade so I adjusted it a bit.

[Mach-X]

HammR25, on Sun May 9, 2010 9:24 PM, said:

Mach-X, on Sun May 9, 2010 9:09 PM, said:

I am a recent pac addict, and in the span of a couple weeks invested in both arcade games through XBLA, both namco museum and pac collection for the GBA as well as PCM and jr pac 7800. Am I pac crazy?

You're not Pac crazy enough yet:

http://www.amazon.co...ASIN=B001E3VKC4

It comes with:
Ms. Pac-Man
Pac-Man
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Pac & Pal
Pac-Mania
Super Pac-Man
Pac-Man Arrangement

Now if Namco would get off their high horse and include Jr. Pac THEN we would have something to talk about

[PacManPlus]

HammR25, on Sun May 9, 2010 9:24 PM, said:

Mach-X, on Sun May 9, 2010 9:09 PM, said:

I am a recent pac addict, and in the span of a couple weeks invested in both arcade games through XBLA, both namco museum and pac collection for the GBA as well as PCM and jr pac 7800. Am I pac crazy?

You're not Pac crazy enough yet:

http://www.amazon.co...ASIN=B001E3VKC4

It comes with:
Ms. Pac-Man
Pac-Man
Pac-Man Championship Edition
Pac & Pal
Pac-Mania
Super Pac-Man
Pac-Man Arrangement

No Wii version



@tep392: Great Work, Perry!

@everyone: I do have a PAL version of PMC. I need to try to fit the sounds in there, but I'm in the middle of working on another 7800 project so it might be a few before I can get to it.

Bob

[tep392]

I've made a few minor changes and fixed a bug.

- Adjusted timing and tempo of first two Pac-man animations to be closer to the arcade version. The second animation was much to fast. Added little bump when monsters run into each other.

- Found a problem with the sound that is made when a monster is eaten. The volume and sound would vary randomly. I couldn't really find the cause but it seemed to be related to the high pass filter that was used. I ended up just removing the filter. It sounds a little different but is consistent.

- Changed the Ms Pac-man background sound to be close to the arcade version. Can't replicate high frequency harmonics in the original without using another channel, but I think it sounds pretty close. Used FFT software on arcade samples to nail the 1st order frequencies though.

Let me know what you think and if there is any other tweaking you would like to see.

Perry

Attached Files

•  paccol_pokeyV2.zip   34.5K   118 downloads

[TrekMD]

Nicely done. The Ms Pac Man background sound works well. It does sound very close to the arcade.

[tremoloman2006]

The latest binary is freaking awesome - can't wait to get this on a cart!

[Mach-X]

yup you nailed it, I'm actually surprised that a lowly new member like me got such a quick respones to my input lol. but now i'm trying again in MESS and no longer hearing any differences between the pokey and non pokey versions. does MESS even support pokey properly? it does list POKEY as a sound device when you load up in MESS, but for whatever reason I'm no longer hearing the difference like I was last night. very odd.

[HammR25]

With this new release there's some garbage at the top of all the HSC screens on real hardware.

Attached Thumbnails

• 

Edited by HammR25, Tue May 11, 2010 9:17 PM.

[MrFish]

Mach-X, on Tue May 11, 2010 7:58 PM, said:

...but now i'm trying again in MESS and no longer hearing any differences between the pokey and non pokey versions. does MESS even support pokey properly? it does list POKEY as a sound device when you load up in MESS, but for whatever reason I'm no longer hearing the difference like I was last night. very odd.

It works fine in ProSystem.

[TrekMD]

Any chance of making the sound of the ghosts hitting each other on the intermission closer to the arcade? At least on ProSystem it doesn't sound like the "knock" sound from the arcade.

[NightSprinter]

Ok, very wierd glitch in Ms. Pac-Man. I just got to the third level, and a blue ghost I chomped on keeps going through the walls at the top of the screen in a continuous horizontal pattern. The settings I used were to play Ms. Pac-Man, five lives at start, and fast mode on.

Attached Thumbnails

• 

[Curt Vendel]

Perry ---

Great work... consider updating other games... I'm in the process of working on the 7800 Expansion module which will have the Pokey mapped the same as BallBlazer, will also have High Score module built in with NvRAM (No more batteries) and will have 16K of additional memory to play with. It will also have a Prototyping area connected to the Pokey pins for those looking to add even more enhancements to the module.



Curt

tep392, on Mon May 3, 2010 11:09 AM, said:

This may belong in the 7800 Hacks forum, but I thought it deserved a little more visibility, so I'm posting it here. I've always been impressed with Bob's work on Pac-man Collection, with it's excellent game play, but I've haven't been quite satisfied with the sound. I think Bob got everything he could out of the TIA chip, but I kept thinking it could sound better if it used POKEY. So I decided it would be a fun little project to change the sound to work with the POKEY chip.

This is the result. I'm still tinkering with it a little but I'm pretty satisfied with it. I copied the Ms. Pac-man sounds note for note from the 8-bit computer version. The Pac-man sounds are also based on the 8-bit version but I made improvements were I could. Most of the change was to the Introduction and intermission tunes. The music still doesn't have that sound of the arcade machines, which used wavetable sound synthesis, but I think it's pretty good. I might work on it a little more in the future, but for now, I'll use my little free time to just play it.

Bob has actually been helping me out by providing feedback and play testing. Thanks Bob! I've tested this with the ProSystem Emulator as well as in hardware with a modified Ballblazer cart. Unfortunately, my Ballblazer cart is acting flaky so I've only been able to do limited hardware testing. Hopefully any you with CC2's or other POKEY carts can test it out for me and let me know if you find any bugs. I also welcome any feedback that would help me improve the authenticity of the sounds.

Regards,
Perry

[Austin]

Mark me down as one potential buyer for a cart version. I was planning on picking up the original release, but I may hold off if this one is in the works.

[jaybird3rd]

Curt Vendel, on Tue May 11, 2010 10:51 PM, said:

Perry ---

Great work... consider updating other games... I'm in the process of working on the 7800 Expansion module which will have the Pokey mapped the same as BallBlazer, will also have High Score module built in with NvRAM (No more batteries) and will have 16K of additional memory to play with. It will also have a Prototyping area connected to the Pokey pins for those looking to add even more enhancements to the module.

Curt

It might seem strange for me to say this, considering that I'm someone who might sell as many as 100 Ballblazer donors if Perry and Bob choose to release this on conventional POKEY cartridges, but I really think that supporting Curt's upcoming expansion module is the right way to go for releases of this kind. Putting a POKEY chip inside every cartridge, where it can only be used for one game (and only for sound effects), is terribly wasteful. It always has been, and given the relative scarcity of POKEY chips today and the difficulty of retrofitting old cartridges with new ROMs, it's even more wasteful than ever.

Personally, I never had a problem with the TIA sound effects that were used in the original Ms. Pac-Man; in fact, I think GCC did a remarkably good job with them. But if people are interested enough in having POKEY sound in this new version of the Pac-Man Collection to buy the expansion module, it will make the next POKEY-enabled game that much easier to produce, because nobody will have to worry about where to get the next round of POKEY chips. This would be a win-win for everybody.

I'm delighted to learn that the POKEY pins will be made available for later use. It would be nice to have such things as keyboard and serial ports built in from the start, but it's also important to keep the costs down, and I think exposing the pins for future upgrades is a good trade-off.

If there is one request I would make, it would be this: I've always thought the POKEY audio volume was much too low. The explanation has always been that, since POKEY was intended for background music, it shouldn't be played as loud as the sound effects from TIA. My response is that, if the background music needed to be played quieter at all, this should have been done programmatically and not as a function of the hardware, because in the latter case, it is more difficult to use POKEY for sound effects without blasting them out at maximum volume. I haven't tried Perry's version to hear for myself how he has dealt with this issue, but if it's something that can be corrected in the Expansion Module without modifying the console, I think it should be.

[HammR25]

I don't notice any difference in sound volume between this and Pacman Collection VE. I did wonder if somehow I'd screwed up installing my Pokey on my CC2 though because after installing it Beef Drop sounded muted compared to before. Now I know why.

[TrekMD]

Jaybird you raise an interesting issue. The expansion module will make it easier to offer POKEY games since it will not be necessary to find chips for individual carts. I've expressed interest in the module, so the idea works for me. I think, long-term, the module is the best way to go but it does become a matter of individual choice. How far along is Curt with the expansion module? Maybe offering the module with an updated game cart like this would encourage more folks to get the module...

[tep392]

Mach-X, on Tue May 11, 2010 7:58 PM, said:

yup you nailed it, I'm actually surprised that a lowly new member like me got such a quick respones to my input lol. but now i'm trying again in MESS and no longer hearing any differences between the pokey and non pokey versions. does MESS even support pokey properly? it does list POKEY as a sound device when you load up in MESS, but for whatever reason I'm no longer hearing the difference like I was last night. very odd.

Thanks. I was hoping to get feedback so I appreciated your input. This version no longer supports the TIA chip so you must be hearing the POKEY. The TIA actually does a fine job with sound effects and is similar to the POKEY in its basic implementation. So it could sound the same depending on how the sound was executed.

Where the TIA falls flat, literally, is in pitch control. It only uses 5bits for frequency so it doesn't do well with music. The pokey has 8 and 16 bit modes. TIA is also limited to 2 channels. The arcade machine used 3 and I'm using all four POKEY channels so more sound effects can be active at the same time. This is my first attempt at working with sound, so I'm still learning. I'm going to keep tweaking things until I can get the sound effects as accurate as I can manage. I am somewhat constrained by memory though. I don’t want to exceed 32k.