48 replies to this topic

[pboland]

Looks and sounds great!

This may be a dumb question but, can your program import any standard midi song and convert it to ColecoVision sound output? The reason I ask is, as a musician it is much easier to compose a piece via midi and then just import it. That would speed up the music process for a game quite a bit.

[jblenkle]

I would also like to see it be able to save back to midi format, as well...selfish, probably, as I have a midi device attached to my ADAM computer.

pboland, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:48 AM, said:

Looks and sounds great!

This may be a dumb question but, can your program import any standard midi song and convert it to ColecoVision sound output? The reason I ask is, as a musician it is much easier to compose a piece via midi and then just import it. That would speed up the music process for a game quite a bit.

[RKGames]

pboland, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:48 AM, said:

Looks and sounds great!

This may be a dumb question but, can your program import any standard midi song and convert it to ColecoVision sound output? The reason I ask is, as a musician it is much easier to compose a piece via midi and then just import it. That would speed up the music process for a game quite a bit.

jblenkle, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:15 AM, said:

I would also like to see it be able to save back to midi format, as well...selfish, probably, as I have a midi device attached to my ADAM computer.

pboland, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:48 AM, said:

Looks and sounds great!

This may be a dumb question but, can your program import any standard midi song and convert it to ColecoVision sound output? The reason I ask is, as a musician it is much easier to compose a piece via midi and then just import it. That would speed up the music process for a game quite a bit.

Thanks for the feedback! I will hopefully be able to add full midi file load/save support. I admit the focus for now is to get files to load and save in the coleco sound format first which is crucial to this being a useful tool for developers. But it's great to hear from musicians that midi support will help! I'll be sure to look into that as this progresses!

Thanks again,
Russ

[Pixelboy]

I remember Daniel Bienvenu telling me about his experience with trying to do a midi converter. He encountered a few difficulties along the way... Can't remember what they were though, but some stuff was harder to convert.

[Tursi]

Looking nice! I'm going to post a reference in the TI forum to direct people there to this thread.

As far as instruments go, if you are don't mind taking inspiration from others, have a look at the MOD2PSG tracker - it seems to be removed from the original home page, but SMSPower still has it up: http://www.smspower.org/Music/Mod2PSG

It's not very good at conversion from MOD or MIDI IMO, but it definately has wonderful capabilities for composition (listen to some of Shiru's samples). The output format is proprietary, though.

If you don't want to be potentially accused of copying, just keep your instrument format flexible - the SID waveform is ADSR (http://en.wikipedia....r#ADSR_envelope), so go with something like that. Something that can modulate the frequency is nice too (vibrato or such). You can take inspiration for effects from the MOD format, too. (http://www.mediatel....rmat/h_mod.html)

I don't know anything about the native ColecoVision playback code myself, but I always wondered -- does anyone actually use it? Is it powerful enough that it's worth using to save the ROM space of your own playback routine?

[Pixelboy]

Tursi, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 2:46 PM, said:

I don't know anything about the native ColecoVision playback code myself, but I always wondered -- does anyone actually use it? Is it powerful enough that it's worth using to save the ROM space of your own playback routine?

Unless I'm mistaken, Daniel uses the native Coleco format for all the tunes he created. Ever heard the Ghostbusters theme which he used in his Ghostblaster game? I'd say it's powerful enough.

[Tursi]

Pixelboy, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:35 PM, said:

Unless I'm mistaken, Daniel uses the native Coleco format for all the tunes he created. Ever heard the Ghostbusters theme which he used in his Ghostblaster game? I'd say it's powerful enough.

His music is fantastic! But it doesn't tell us a lot about the music player. For example, VGM format is capable of reproducing any sound the chip is capable of generating, but a VGM playback engine in a game would not be a great idea, because VGM does so by just recording the commands sent to the chip, intermixed with additional command/timing bytes (ie: it takes a lot of space to store even simple tunes).

Just something I've always been a bit curious about. When I started looking at Coleco code I was never able to find any good documentation on the BIOS routines.

[GroovyBee]

Tursi, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 5:38 PM, said:

Just something I've always been a bit curious about. When I started looking at Coleco code I was never able to find any good documentation on the BIOS routines.

Programmer's manual :-

http://www.colecovis...rogrammers.html

[Tursi]

Nice, GroovyBee, thanks! That answers my question. The BIOS playback code seems (in a quick read) to handle priorities, frequency sweeps, and volume sweeps.

[skosh]

Wonderful progress and glad that you were able to utilize Cogwheel! Thank you for taking the time to produce this as I am sure that many will benefit from it. I look forward to using it.

[RKGames]

Tursi, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 6:53 PM, said:

Nice, GroovyBee, thanks! That answers my question. The BIOS playback code seems (in a quick read) to handle priorities, frequency sweeps, and volume sweeps.

I'm working on adding a Volume and Frequency sweeps editor as part of the instruments editor. I'm planning on staying with Dan B's (newcoleco) music format as my goal is to make something that will use the existing music format. who knows. maybe sometime later on if CV Tracker has enough effects and interest from users, maybe it will be open the door for Dan to create a new music format? But i must admit the amazing work Dan has done with the Side Trak and GhostBlaster music is proof enough to me that the current music format is pretty solid. I know there is always room for improvement with most things, but it's good as is for now I just checked out your site and was amazed to see you where the coder on cool herders! i followed the DC hombrew scene for a little and always thought that was a great looking home brew!

Thanks for all the great info and suggestions on adding sweep effects and so on!
Russ

[RKGames]

skosh, on Sun Jan 29, 2012 10:10 PM, said:

Wonderful progress and glad that you were able to utilize Cogwheel! Thank you for taking the time to produce this as I am sure that many will benefit from it. I look forward to using it.

Thanks again for the info and pointing me to cogwheel again! There is some amazing finds in that project that will help me as a coder for future projects as well! thanks again! I know it's way to early to speculate on a CV Beta Release but that was a huge step getting the sound chip emulation working! I'm really hoping i'll have a nice update to show on youtube this weekend!?

Take care,
Russ

[Tursi]

RKGames, on Mon Jan 30, 2012 8:51 PM, said:

I just checked out your site and was amazed to see you where the coder on cool herders! i followed the DC hombrew scene for a little and always thought that was a great looking home brew!

Thanks, I like to tinker with various machines. The ColecoVision is one of my favourites, partially because it was always the "cool" system when I was a kid, and partially because it's so very close to the TI-99/4A, which was my first home computer.

So I'll be watching your tracker! It's always nice to see new utilities to help people out!

[RKGames]

Here is the latest update to my Coleco Vision Music Tracker, aka CV TRACKER. I show some volume effects that allow for some c64 style SID effects, and a quick overview of the music editor it self.



Take care,
Russ

[skosh]

Nice job Russ! Glad to hear the fixed sharps and flats(black keys) and overview on how this is going to work. It is going to be fun playing around with this and look forward to the next update.

[RKGames]

skosh, on Thu Feb 9, 2012 8:01 PM, said:

Nice job Russ! Glad to hear the fixed sharps and flats(black keys) and overview on how this is going to work. It is going to be fun playing around with this and look forward to the next update.

Thanks, I've made some progress this past week and will continue this weekend! I'll post a new video once i get some more goodies in there! Thanks for the support on this!

[RKGames]

Just wanted to give a quick update on CV Tracker. I've been fixing lots of bugs and making head way! Volume effects for instruments is working good, i also added an independant volume entry track for each voice, this allows much finer tuning of volume effects on specific notes. I just started to add support for saving project files to a .CVT format (.CVT = CV Tracker). It's a very easy to read text file format, so it would be possible to edit the raw text file if needed. I'm getting very close to a beta release!

Let me know what everyone thinks i should do? Release a beta for all to test and play or limit it to a select group? I'm hoping to release something in the next 2 weeks that should allow anyone to start creating music and saving your projects as .CVTs (I still need to work on how to save to coleco format, but it's coming soon i hope). my file format has future upgrades in mind so there should NOT be any .CVT files that would not upgrade to future releases so there should be no fear there to coleco musicians. I'm not sure if I'll have Pitch sweeping instrument effect added by the initial release (but will sometime), I'm hoping to get the tracker to a point where users will be mostly happy with it and should allow for much needed coleco tunes while i slowly continue to add goodies in the future.

I'm itching to get back to game developing so I'm hoping to get a good release out soon, giving me time to dev games and support CV Tracker! I'm not sure about adding direct midi recording abilities like i initially thought, if someone out there has an ultra ultra cheap or FREE midi keyboard with cable they want to sell/donate i can look into this feature! I don't know if there is any demand for this, let me know.

Take care,
Russ

Edited by RKGames, Mon Feb 20, 2012 8:57 PM.

[AtariBrian]

a beta for all to test

[retroillucid]

Man! I can't wait to get my hands on this!!!

This will be SO USEFULL for ANY homebrewers out there!!


Would finally be able to create some music for CV......SWWEEET!!!

Thanks alot Russ for bringing this to the community, really well appreciated!!

[AtariBrian]

yeah, alot of these homebrews are missing good music.

[RKGames]

Quick update on my Coleco Vision Music Creation tool for windows, aka CV Tracker. In this update i explain the new .CVT file format for loading and saving CV Tracker projects. We are getting closer and closer to a release.



Take care,
Russ

[RKGames]

Here is the latest Video Update on CV Tracker, along with new demo songs from Castlevania 2 and Zelda 2.



Take care,
Russ

[Pixelboy]

Looks like this project is moving along at a nice pace.

Keep it up!

[Jordiway]

Yea nice job Russ