MML and Squirrel

[Arkhan Asylum]

Squirrel has been in existence for awhile now.  There has been some use by others.  Some general comments lean towards it being too hard to use still.

I plan to make more tutorials, in video form so you can see the whole thing being done.

Does anyone who has tried it out have any comments so I can get an idea of what kind of things to focus on when working on these tutorials?

The goal is to get it so that everyone can use Squirrel, no excuses!

(except for using Mac's)

[_Paul]

Make it a tracker.

*runs away*

[Arkhan Asylum]

Make it a tracker.

*runs away*

listen.  I'll stab you with a rusty C64 power connector.

[Nazi NecroPhile]

Got any tutorials on how to create musical talent?  No?

* backs away slowly *

[Arkhan Asylum]

Got any tutorials on how to create musical talent?  No?

* backs away slowly *

I could make one! 

or try to, at least!

[_Paul]

A tutorial on how to convert an existing midi file would be nice for beginners.

The other thing I found with my very basic fiddling was that I couldn't get any of the pre-set notes to sound as good as you do. That might just be my fault, but maybe some sample mml files, starting very simple and gradually getting more complex, might help.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The preset notes?  You mean the waveforms?  Just apply some of the built in envelopes to the built in waveforms, and you get tons of new sounds. 

[_Paul]

Actual working examples are a perfect way of showing how this works.
i.e. You can get 'cool sound A' by doing 'exactly this'. Here is a file where I made 'cool sound A' and used it in a tune.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yeah, I could give that a whirl. 

The biggest hurdle I've noticed is people can't get over the "can't hear it immediately" aspect that you get in a tracker.

You have to fiddle and then run it to see what it sounds like.  It's only an extra couple of seconds!

[ParanoiaDragon]

A couple of seconds?!?  But I want to hear it NOOOOOOooooooooooow!

[_Paul]

All that messing around in dos windows is a bit of a pain tbh.

[spenoza]

Maybe what we need is a GUI program that outputs MML but allows you to edit and play it in the GUI.

[Arkhan Asylum]

http://woolyss.com/chipmusic-mml.php

There are already a ton of options for that. 

[cabbage]

Squirrel seems perfectly usable to me. I don't see what's so difficult about testing a song... it's just as easy and simple as compiling your homebrew code (if not easier). The biggest hurdle for me while converting the nyancat tune was that I had to figure out how to read sheet music first

Hurry up and release a version with support for sound effects too, Arkhan!

[OldRover]

The only thing really stopping me from using Squirrel is the lack of sound effect support. A sound library is useless if it doesn't support both without workarounds or unintuitive hacks; it's merely demo fodder if it only plays music.

[Arkhan Asylum]

The only thing really stopping me from using Squirrel is the lack of sound effect support. A sound library is useless if it doesn't support both without workarounds or unintuitive hacks; it's merely demo fodder if it only plays music.

Or ADPCM sound effect + chip music fodder! (for now).

[touko]

A tutorial on how to convert an existing midi file would be nice for beginners.

i agree with that, it's my main request ..
But a video tutorial would be great .

[Arkhan Asylum]

It's going to be a video file on how to convert a MIDI file, probably.

[touko]

It's going to be a video file on how to convert a MIDI file, probably.

Excellent ..

[Arkhan Asylum]

It should be interesting.  I expect naysayers.

[touko]

You don't care about, all initiatives to create musics/sounds are excellent, regardless of the method.
The tutorials are even more.

A simple tutorial is better than nothing .

[Vecanti]

Squirrel is pretty awesome, just wish I had more time to play around with it.  I did for a while there.  

The only thing I could think to make it easier would be to get hucard support working.  (maybe it is now already - I need to catch up)  People were mentioning making it easier/quicker to hear results.  When I was using it I had to make an ISO, then go and mount the ISO each time before I could listen ( I couldn't overwrite an ISO if it was mounted).  So would be nice to skip this step.  Or maybe there is a better way than I am doing it?

But I always wanted to make music on the Turbob and Ark made this possible.  It's so awesome.   Thanks Ark.   

[Arkhan Asylum]

The huCard version has been available for awhile now, complete with a test program that builds a .PCE that plays teh tunez.

[Vecanti]

The huCard version has been available for awhile now, complete with a test program that builds a .PCE that plays teh tunez.

Thanks Arkhan, haven't been around much so I didn't know if it was completed.  Well, then I don't have any great ideas to improve it.


I think the more people that play with it and openly post there CODE for other to look at would be good.  So, maybe just a thread dedicated to people posting there music code for others to look at and listen to.  See how it's done and all.  Though it already comes with bunch of great songs.  A thread might drive people to innovate.


That's what I was thinking.  This may be way out there.  I know you can load images and things pretty easily already.  But maybe a some sort of "KIT" of graphics effects (Plasmas? Scrolling text effects? etc)  to go along with MML.  Then we have a Demo Scene starter tool in a box!!  That would be cool to get a bunch of us making little demos to see what we can create.  Maybe I'm getting too far off. ;-)

[Arkhan Asylum]

thats a neat idea.   

I have an entire MML section on Aetherbyte's forum... but it isn't too active. lol

[Vecanti]

Maybe there's a better place to post this, but just downloaded latest Squirrel so I can play around again and start posting stuff.  

Posted this as example of what happens when I compile CD vs PCE.

^{♫ https://soundcloud.com/vecanti}

A bunch of stuff is missing, not not mention speed is way faster on PCE.


I'm just changing the bat file and using the default rtype mml:

mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s -scd soundtest.c
pceas -scd soundtest.s

versus

mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s soundtest.c
pceas soundtest.s


Any ideas?  Just have a default install of huc.

[nat]

I've had the idea for a while to use Squirrel to convert some Genesis FM chiptunes over to the Turbo to see how they might sound, and then optimize them for the hardware if the results are good (or even decent).

Sadly, I have no musical expertise and I've been far too busy to play around with Squirrel as of yet.

[_Paul]

I've had the idea for a while to use Squirrel to convert some Genesis FM chiptunes over to the Turbo to see how they might sound, and then optimize them for the hardware if the results are good (or even decent).

Sadly, I have no musical expertise and I've been far too busy to play around with Squirrel as of yet.

If you've got midi files and convert them with 3MLE it's really easy. Picking the right waveforms is the hard bit, and that's where I get stuck.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Maybe there's a better place to post this, but just downloaded latest Squirrel so I can play around again and start posting stuff.  

Posted this as example of what happens when I compile CD vs PCE.

^{♫ https://soundcloud.com/vecanti}

A bunch of stuff is missing, not not mention speed is way faster on PCE.


I'm just changing the bat file and using the default rtype mml:

mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s -scd soundtest.c
pceas -scd soundtest.s

versus

mml2pce MMLSongs/rtype.mml
huc -s soundtest.c
pceas soundtest.s


Any ideas?  Just have a default install of huc.

That's... odd.

You grabbed the latest Squirrel off of Aetherbyte?

show me the file you're using, or is it the exact one I provided?

edit: I did it here, and it's goony too.  I think something got borked between updates.  Going to see if outdated files accidentally stuck around in the .zip on Aetherbyte.com and try to figure it out ASAP.

[Hu-man]

Hello, all!

I've been following you guys for a while now, but this is my first post.

First off, Squirrel is the probably biggest step forward in PC-Engine dev tools since HuC. Arkhan, you're a damn good programmer, and this was a huge undertaking. Thanks for all the time you spent on it! Your balls are bigger than all of the enemies in Vigilante, including the final boss.

That said, I have only attempted to use it a couple of times, and I'm not actively using it for any of my games just yet.

What deters me is that it "sort of supports" HuCards. I don't know exactly what that means, but I don't particularly want to find out the hard way. I'm currently coding for HuCard exclusively because it's the easiest for me right now. HuC is kinda flakey as it is, so I don't want to throw another wrench in the works just yet.

Also deterring me is the fact that the current version doesn't really support sound effects. I don't want to use both BT Garner's "snd.c" and Squirrel. It just seems a little redundant.

Personally, I'd prefer a newer version that resolves my two concerns, but I'll still use it when I'm farther along in my development even without one.

[Arkhan Asylum]

  Well, OldMan had a hand in the MML stuff as well.  It was a tag team effort over the course of a few months pre-Insanity release (the original parser and player was on the fly!  I had to listen to a song over and over to get the fractions working)

but then it branched out after that, using Develo and a lot of tests with songs I did that use all of the weirder features.

but, right now there seems to be some goony problem with HuCards that got over looked in an update.  It was working and now it's being strange.  We're on top of it over here.

as for the sound effects, they're not quite ready to be unleashed, but I wouldn't be surprised if the stuff gets released in the near future.  Retrocade is taking a bit longer than expected (due to the AbCard project!), so full-range tests of the sound effects in projects hasnt gotten to take place.

They're solid in Pyramid Plunder and Atlantean so far though.

[Arkhan Asylum]

Updateything:  Yeah, Squirrel archive for download is using the wrong player library. *facepalm*

I guess I forgot to update ALL of the files when I put the new zip up

I will fix it tonight and update the information.



EVEN BETTER UPDATE EDIT:

Sit tight. Squirrel's plans have changed.  More info to come.

[Keranu]

Your balls are bigger than all of the enemies in Vigilante, including the final boss.

HAHA! Those bosses were well endowed indeed!

[Arkhan Asylum]

OK:

After this Prototype AbCards come out,

Squirrel 3.0 will be released.  

What this means:

You will have full CD and HuCard support for the PSG.  You will be able to do sound effects and music in all of your projects.  It will come with all the stuff, ready to go.  You just need to drop it in and make the appropriate C function calls.  No asm hoojoo required.  It's the easiest shit you're ever going to find for making the PSG do anything on the PCE.

I will update the manual the reflect sound effect usage, and tweak it a bit more where needed.  The examples will still come with Squirrel 3.0, and I will toss in some sound effects along with it.

Once using it, I encourage you to go to aetherbyte.com and hit the forum for the MML section.  That's where I expect to find questions/problems/examples/discussion about MML so everyone can learn from each other and assist where needed.  

The only real catch here is that it's expected that you credit Aetherbyte in your game's credit screen, and if it's a published game, also in the manual somewhere (with a URL to Aetherbyte.com, so people can find and use Squirrel themselves)

and, if it's a published game... a few freebie copies for our troubles.

Sounds fair, yeah?

EDIT: This was my 6666th post on this forum.

[2X4]

This is very very cool.  I hope this encourages some chip based home brew releases in the near future!

[Arkhan Asylum]

that's the idea.   

That and its part of the MML Awareness Foundation.

Started by me, right now!

MML is good. Everyone should use it.

[Vecanti]

This sounds awesome. I'm excited. 

Hmm.... MAF  --  MML Awareness Foundation

[spenoza]

This sounds awesome. I'm excited. 

Hmm.... MAF  --  MML Awareness Foundation

Or you could call it MALF, and confuse the heck out of all the 4chan users.

[OldRover]

...confuse the heck out of all the 4chan users.

Not like this is particularly hard to do.

[spenoza]

Is Squirrel, and, really, the PCE in general, capable of recreating most or all of the range of sounds the NES can produce? I know the sound hardware in the PCE is very different, but Tom made those NES -> PCE ports which he said used audio emulation due to the differences. But if the PCE was able to emulate that audio, it means that it is capable of generating, effectively, identical sounds and waveforms, even if it does it differently. I ask because that might give us a ready source of some difference waveforms to rip off and play with, on top of the already known PCE waveforms.

[Arkhan Asylum]

It could do some of it, but the pulse-wave stuff isn't exactly the same kind of concept.

There's not much point to it, really.  You're better off just ripping waveforms from PCE games instead. 

[spenoza]

There's not much point to it, really.  You're better off just ripping waveforms from PCE games instead. 

Unless there's a specific NES waveform you want.

What is the actual, material difference between how the waveforms are generated in the PCE and the NES? I don't know this stuff, but I think I want to.

[Arkhan Asylum]

There's not much point to it, really.  You're better off just ripping waveforms from PCE games instead. 

Unless there's a specific NES waveform you want.

What is the actual, material difference between how the waveforms are generated in the PCE and the NES? I don't know this stuff, but I think I want to.

Well, NES uses pulse waveforms at various duty cycles and PCE waveforms are 32-byte little samples.

basically, the PCE lets you kinda "draw" the waveforms yourself. 

You can do similar things on the PCE without a lot of trouble with Squirrel.   If you keep things square-y (pulsey), you'll be ok. 

You'll notice alot of NES games have similar sounds, because there aren't as many waveforms as you'd think.  It's the enveloping and such that are getting the NES to have various sounds.  The waveforms themselves aren't much of anything.

[TurboXray]

The NES uses very basic waveforms. There are already PCE games that use the NES waveforms, they're pretty generic.

[Arkhan Asylum]

So, of the prospective people who would actually be using this:

What's your musical experience?  I want to make sure I don't overshoot these tutorials, or make them too simple and boring/not useful for you guys.

[touko]

What's your musical experience?  I want to make sure I don't overshoot these tutorials, or make them too simple and boring/not useful for you guys.

For me ,near to NULL lol
You can make 2 parts, first for lamer (like me), and a second for more advanced features .
For psg use, without basis, no chocolate .

Why a sinus ??, a squarre ?,a triangle ??, this not an oscilloscope !!

[Arkhan Asylum]

What about your experience with using various music softwares like FruityLoops, or other MIDI software?

Can you play a keyboard or anything, even at a very basic level?

[touko]

Lol, have i a head to play with keyboard ???

i know only how to manipulate samples for sfx, that's all ;-)

[spenoza]

I think we need to decide that it is rare that one person can do everything. I hope we get some folks in here who decide they want to learn the MML stuff and other folks who want to learn HuC, and then the two of them can get together and make games!

[Arkhan Asylum]

That's the other thing.  It's awfully hard to cater a music program to people who don't do music.  If you're making game music, it's assumed you at least know the basics of music.  If not, it's sort of your responsibility to go read up on it.

If you don't do music much, pretty much any music program is difficult.   Even trackers.  The only upside to a tracker is you can hear shit as you smack at it.