Megaman PCE thread

[saturndual32]

I vote for Zonk!

[FraGMarE]

Here is the little bastard running and jumping around...

fragmare.mindrec.com/mmjump03.gif

[Nando]

Here is the little bastard running and jumping around...

fragmare.mindrec.com/mmjump03.gif

NICE!!!!!!

[pulstar]

Here is the little bastard running and jumping around...

fragmare.mindrec.com/mmjump03.gif

That is looking very nice! Great work.

[TurboXray]

I'll take a look at Squirrel. I need to see the foot print size of it (rom, ram, and cpu resource).

Squirrel is just the compiler. The asm stuff is a lightly modified version of the cd bios player (so we can test it on card images). 8K for code, 2x8K for music.  You could shrink the bios code by 1/2 with a little thought - it repeats entire sections for sound effects. IIRC, that's one of the first checks it does, and then calls one of two versions of practically the same code. Never understood why, but it works.
BTW: if your player uses the mml codes that bios uses (as listed in the psg driver section of the docs), then squirrel should be able to convert for you. Though it would need modified to support additional codes for DDA, etc. I think there are a few left open.

Yeah, I mean your hucard version of the CD PSG player. Because of how MM is done on CD, it's kind of a pain (and a little bit of overhead) to jump between MM game/my back end lib  and the CD BIOS. I'd keep the music player on the MM/Lib side of things. Even for ADPCM, I was going to do my own routines, rather than calling BIOS.

[OldMan]

...hucard version of the CD PSG player...

Just pointing out that it -should- take roughly the same amount of memory/cpu time as the bios player. I'd guess somewhere around 20% cpu, btw.
The assembler version is sorta commented; I did my best, but some of it still makes me scratch my head...Feel free to modify it, if needed. Maybe we can get a smaller footprint for the Hucard version, and some neat extra operations as well

[Arkhan Asylum]

If you want to do samples, you can always cheat and turn the samples into custom waveforms and play them back in succession while flipping through them.   Someone was doing that for voicesamples, but I can't remember who.

Either way, the player for MML doesn't really dent the CPU much, all things considered.   The entirety of MegaMan's soundtrack, converted properly into MML wouldn't take much space at all.  MegaMan 1 doesn't exactly have complicated soundtracks.   

[FraGMarE]

A little something I did for fun. 

fragmare.mindrec.com/mmtitle01.gif

[ParanoiaDragon]

Nice!  I guess I'll mention that I too am working on something special, mainly for fun, but, just incase Bonknuts ends up wanting it for this project.  I'm a Mega Man fan, so, it's hard for me to resist!

[TurboXray]

From what you guys've tested, is the hucard version 100% compatible with the CD version?

[Arkhan Asylum]

From what you guys've tested, is the hucard version 100% compatible with the CD version?

As far as we know, especially since the BIOS was mimicked for the HuCard one, and it's all pretty basic byte-code stuff to feed into it either way.. 

All tunes I've made sound the same either way.    There's even that video on YouTube of all my tunes that USED to be CD, that were playing off of a flashcard instead.    Sounds the same.

[OldMan]

From what you guys've tested, is the hucard version 100% compatible with the CD version?

As far as we know, especially since the BIOS was mimicked for the HuCard one

Is that what he meant. I thought he was asking if the HuCard and CD versions of megaman were compatible. My Bad.

I'd say 99.5% compatible. IIRC, most of the changes were actually on the interface code, to run the player in a manner compatible with how BIOS does it. The byte-code stuff I'm sure is the same; the 6 or 7 routines to set up the player might be slightly different. And the code to turn the player on/off is different from the stock HuC code.

FWIW, when I was talking about duplicated code earlier, the player has two copies of the routines - one for background music, and one for sound effects. IIRC, the background code is executed first, and sound effects 'overlay' the bg music; ie, the bg music keeps stepping along, but the sound effects code, being executed last, is what you actually hear on a given channel.
I'm sure those could be merged by a talented programmer who actually knows 65xx assembler. (Unlike me. I still have to look a -lot- of things up.)

[TurboXray]

Yeah, I was referring to the music/sound player. It's the hucard version that I'll want to use, even for the CD project (CD version will have that option; cdda or chiptunes).

[Arkhan Asylum]

Yeah, I was referring to the music/sound player. It's the hucard version that I'll want to use, even for the CD project (CD version will have that option; cdda or chiptunes).

If you're using a CD project, you're better off using the BIOS because there's less code you need to include and deal with to get it to work.

[TurboXray]

The problem is switching back and forth between the game engine and the CD setup. I'm using a different bank of ram for the game, as well as a different stack pointer, and the sys card rom bank needs to be mapped back to MPR7 - which means different vectors as well. It's slow to switch back and forth between the two. For CD play and CD read, it's fine. But realtime music engine while the game is playing - I rather not introduce anymore processor overhead than I need to. The game is now running a lot faster than the original, but I'll also be adding in H-int scanline effects and other cpu resource additions to the game. That also complicates it. I need the music/sound engine to be local.

[OldMan]

Let's see if I have this straight....
To run megaman, you have to use a custom memory mapping (not the standard layout) to mimic the memory on the nes. Because of this, you have to save/restore several system settings when you switch between modes for the game (ie, to use bios you essentially have to re-map the system, and put it back when you are done).  Not only that, but (iirc) the basic ram stuff is different; the stack is in a different place, so if you use the pce irq vectors, it will push/pull from a different area in memory, essentially corrupting the NES variables....

kk. From what I remember (and it's been a while, so you would have to double-check the source code), the player itself is page agnostic - it doesn't care where it runs from, so long as it always runs in the same address range. I believe you could re-assemble the player in a different page/bank and it would still work.
You would, however, also have to move the variables it uses. I believe the player code actually accesses them by name, so you would just have to make sure they get assembled somewhere 'out of the way' of the NES variables. There is quite a chunk used, so it might be a bit difficult to set that up...
The other problem I see is getting the player actually called. The pce irqs map the player in and out, so you would have to make sure your modified version got called correctly. I don't think that would be a big problem, if the irq handler does it correctly.

It's going to be interesting to see how easy/hard this turns out to be, assuming you decide to try it.

[OldMan]

edit: sorry, double post.

[Arkhan Asylum]

I am pretty sure it is indeed page agnostic, because I recall moving it around with Atlantean a few times.


That might have just been the song data though.    It's been a while. 


I'm curious how bad the overhead really is for constantly switching back and forth.

[TurboXray]

Hmm..

 If I setup an h-int interrupt at a certain point during active display, to swap into sys bios mode and manually call the PSG routine, then that might work. I would have to duplicate the h-int routine, for the screen fx, on the sys card side - but that's doable. Active display after a certain point has minimal timing issues (vblank is out of the question; nes NMI is always running - timing is sensitive, etc). Since game logic is 4x faster on the PCE, there should be alot of free time during active display; the game gets to the point of waiting for vblank much faster on the PCE than the NES.

[OldMan]

the game gets to the point of waiting for vblank much faster on the PCE than the NES

If it's spending more time waiting on a vsync, then you should be able to map things in and direct call it. The pce irq system goes through some hurdles to make sure things needed are mapped in when needed, and there is a flag indicating if the psg irq is being serviced; so you would know if it was already running or not.

If you look at the modified startup.asm, (around line 900: search for psg_irqflag) you can see how it's called from a vsync().  Basically, it checks a buch of flags to make sure it needs to run the driver,   then ends up at psg_driver, which handles mapping things in/out and then runs the main/fx drivers.
If your irq routines are duplicated at the correct places in the psg_bank, it shouldn't be a problem
And keep in mind, you should be able to insert your irq routines between functions in the player, if needed. Just re-assemble that part of the code.

The other odd thought I had was to use the timer irq: do a timer setup to de-sync by 1/2 frame, then use the normal psg timer routine. Should stay off by 1/2 frame. That might cause other problems, though.

[TurboXray]

Cool. It sounds doable. I'll take a look when I'm closer to that area of the project. For DDA, I'll probably just interpret certain notes as sample #'s. Will see how well that plays out.

[PukeSter]

Friendly bump to see if this is still alive.

[esadajr]

you bet it's still alive. When you least expect it bam! Bonknuts will surprise us

[NecroPhile]

Have you guys checked his blog?  The latest megaman news is a couple weeks old, but more interesting is the recent bit about him working on a film and using a PCE. 

[ParanoiaDragon]

AFAIK Tom is still working on it(though he's busy according to his blog) & I'm still working on my own version of the soundtrack in the hopes that he atleast will want it as an alternate soundtrack.  I'm keeping the sounds I'm using tight knit, so that the entire game has the same sound set, as if it were limited(I have thousands of instruments on my keyboard).  I've got basic versions of all the Robot Masters tunes & Dr. Wily's first tune, along with the selection screen & the stage select all done.  Iceman was probably the hardest to nail down, that melody is allll over the place & off beat. 

I'm currently working on the regular boss tune.  It's a short song in the NES version, but I have some ideas to help expand it a little.  I just have to figure what the average is for fighting a boss to determine how long to make it, maybe 1:30?  I'm figuring around 4 minutes for level tunes should be good.  When I get to the other boss tune, I may make 2 versions, as IIRC, it's used for the Wily bosses, & Wily himself.

[TurboXray]

PD, once you finish all your tracks - I'll post the music pak on the site ;)

 Update: Well, read the blog. Work brought things to a crawl for a bit (this is about the time of the year that I almost lose my place; no work = can't pay bills). Work>anything hobby related. It has priority, unfortunately. This is why I wanted to do a kick starter for a new PCE game, and give it my full 10 hours a day attention for 3 months straight. But I doubt you (err I) could get enough people together for just a 'PCE' game.

 Anyway, I had some time off for jan/feb and really got a lot of stuff done on MM. But some things have come up with higher priority (movie stuff, work stuff). I do want to finish MM, regardless. I figured, even if I don't get any monetary reward for it - I'll get 'cred' for doing the work. And I can use that, if nothing else, for future PCE projects. Or, at the very least - I'll have put out something for the community that's unique and people will want to play (no other system, modern or otherwise, will have anything like this re-imagined MM game).

 So unless people want to pay my bills - haha, progress will slowdown from time to time. It is what it is; a hobby project.

[NightWolve]

This is why I wanted to do a kick starter for a new PCE game, and give it my full 10 hours a day attention for 3 months straight. But I doubt you (err I) could get enough people together for just a 'PCE' game.

I wonder if one could pull that off for a PCE game, yeah. If Kickstarter members are willing to spend $100,000+ to send a major libelous/slanderous cunt to Japan to write his little book and sell back to them, or $8 million+ on this now failed Ouya gaming platform, surely it could be feasible for a PCE game.

Actually, did you see my friend Chris' "Insanity's Blade" project ? He was able to raise $7000 for his videogame, reaching his goal by over $1k. He recently bought licensing from Nintendo to port it on the Wii U platform making him an official developer and it's just a two-man team, so purty cool.

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=15903.0

It started off originally as an 8-bit game as an ode to the NES, but he wound up changing his mind and upgrading it to 16-bit quality. He is interested in somebody porting the game to the NEC/PCE platform BTW, I asked Arkhan, but he's too busy. So might as well float the idea to you in case you'd be interested.

Anyway, his success does make me think you could do it as well with the right planning, ideas for the game you have in mind, etc. If you want tips, check with me on Facebook and I'll direct you to his account there. He'd be happy to share info.

[ParanoiaDragon]

PD, once you finish all your tracks - I'll post the music pak on the site ;)

Shweeet!  That solidifies my plans on how I want to handle the length of the tracks & the adding of variety to them in general.

[esteban]

PD, once you finish all your tracks - I'll post the music pak on the site ;)

Shweeet!  That solidifies my plans on how I want to handle the length of the tracks & the adding of variety to them in general.

Dude, I am glad you are doing the music with some extra spice

[TurboXray]

This is why I wanted to do a kick starter for a new PCE game, and give it my full 10 hours a day attention for 3 months straight. But I doubt you (err I) could get enough people together for just a 'PCE' game.

I wonder if one could pull that off for a PCE game, yeah. If Kickstarter members are willing to spend $100,000+ to send a major libelous/slanderous cunt to Japan to write his little book and sell back to them, or $8 million+ on this now failed Ouya gaming platform, surely it could be feasible for a PCE game.

Actually, did you see my friend Chris' "Insanity's Blade" project ? He was able to raise $7000 for his videogame, reaching his goal by over $1k. He recently bought licensing from Nintendo to port it on the Wii U platform making him an official developer and it's just a two-man team, so purty cool.

https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=15903.0

It started off originally as an 8-bit game as an ode to the NES, but he wound up changing his mind and upgrading it to 16-bit quality. He is interested in somebody porting the game to the NEC/PCE platform BTW, I asked Arkhan, but he's too busy. So might as well float the idea to you in case you'd be interested.

Anyway, his success does make me think you could do it as well with the right planning, ideas for the game you have in mind, etc. If you want tips, check with me on Facebook and I'll direct you to his account there. He'd be happy to share info.

I honestly think this wouldn't be the case for PCE. It'd have no problem for SMS or Genesis project, but there isn't a wide enough audience for a kick starter type of project for PCE. It's too small; it's pre-order when you're close to finished, or front all costs until it's complete, or nothing.

[ParanoiaDragon]

PD, once you finish all your tracks - I'll post the music pak on the site ;)

Shweeet!  That solidifies my plans on how I want to handle the length of the tracks & the adding of variety to them in general.

Dude, I am glad you are doing the music with some extra spice

My main plan is to try to draw some extra stuff from the Gameboy MM to help flesh out the songs, along with any ideas I can glean from any other versions of the same songs that have come out over the years.

[esteban]

Paranoia, I know you were updating us in other threads, but can you give an overview of which songs are (nearly) "completed" and which ones remain "in progress" or "not even started"?

I'm just curious. 

[ParanoiaDragon]

Okey dokey:

Title Screen-this song will be an extra, it'll probably be the last song I do, incase I need to switch gears, or foresee an extreme lack of time coming up.

Stage Select-done

Stage Start-done

Cutman-done

Fireman-in process of fleshing it out & finishing it

Iceman-basic tune done, need to flesh it out

Gutsman-basic tune done, need to flesh it out

Bombman-basic tune done, need to flesh it out

Elecman-basic tune done, need to flesh it out

Boss fight-done, but may go back & tweak it slightly

Boss Victory-done

Wily Stage 1-basic tune done, needs fleshing out

Wily Stage 2-done, but might do some tweaking to the drums

Wily Stage Bosses-done

Dr. Wily Final Battle-done, this is an extra special song I did, since Wily doesn't have his own tune in the original game, so I compiled my song from a few different Mega Man sources.  If there's any song I'd love to show off, it's this one!

Final Victory-done

Ending Credits-done

Game Over-done

There's a few lil' jingles I may find a way to include in this, but, like with the Title Screen, I'd like to get all the regular songs done first.

[esteban]

Paranoia, I know you have a lot of work to do yet, but you definitely have made a lot of progress!!!!

 

[shubibiman]

Great !

[ParanoiaDragon]

Fire Man's theme is DONE!  Next up, Elec Man!

[esteban]

Fire Man's theme is DONE!  Next up, Elec Man!

L'awesone.

[EvilEvoIX]

Such amazing work and passion.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Thanks!  I'm currently still in the planning stage, trying to find other "electric" related tunes to mix with Elec Man.  I'm going thru the entire series, X, Zero, ZX, Battle Network, Legends, you name it.  A lot of "electric" tunes are fairly dark, & don't match up well with the lightheartedness of Elec Man's tune, but I've found some good stuff that I think will work, just trying to nail it all down.

[ParanoiaDragon]

Sorry to double post, but I thought I'd point out something I just learned. While I knew about the original MM was slated to have 8 char's, I didn't know that 1 of them came to fruition before Capcom decided to just do the 6.  Enter Bond Man!

http://kotaku.com/the-origin-of-battle-network-and-other-fascinating-mega-1656592506

[ParanoiaDragon]

Triple post!!OWERIW?EROPweolvasdlfkvn asel;kfn w3p49ru

Still working on Elec Man, RL stuff getting in the way as usual, but also, the plan I have for the song is more difficult to pull together then I thought.  Was hoping to have it done in a month, but, it's almost been a month since Fire Man, so, yeah.....  I originally started this project I think this past February, so, it would've been nice to have it finished in a year if not way sooner, but, it is what it is!

[Ayce]

I love the idea of reworking Megaman for the TG, keep up the good work.

[esteban]

Triple post!!OWERIW?EROPweolvasdlfkvn asel;kfn w3p49ru

Still working on Elec Man, RL stuff getting in the way as usual, but also, the plan I have for the song is more difficult to pull together then I thought.  Was hoping to have it done in a month, but, it's almost been a month since Fire Man, so, yeah.....  I originally started this project I think this past February, so, it would've been nice to have it finished in a year if not way sooner, but, it is what it is!

A year, give or take 6 months, isn't so bad.

[ParanoiaDragon]

I think one of the things that slowing me down, is that I want the filler material used to lengthen the songs, to have more variety.  So far, the games I pull other material from, are mostly Mega Man's 9 & 10, Mega Man Soccer, & Battle Network/Network Transmission(not to mention the stuff from the first GB game & a tune or 2 from Power Fighters). 

Trying to branch out more, throw some X(including Command Mission), Zero, ZX, & Legends tunes in the mix. I do have atleast 1 song with some stuff pulled from Mega Man & Bass, 1 with some X4, 1 with some Legends.  I have nothing from from Zero or ZX.  Musically, those games tend to be more serious & dark, which doesn't match up with the mostly light tunes of MM1.  I'd rather pull from them then Battle Network, as I never cared for that series, but I did enjoy Zero & ZX.  Ever so gradually, it's coming along though!

[Nighttrate]

Bonknut get at me please, I wouldn't mind helping you with your RPG game I could design the Manual & CD, this is what I did for my son.

/Users/nighttrate/Desktop/untitled folder/MM4.jpg

[Nighttrate]

Bonknut get at me please, I wouldn't mind helping you with your RPG game I could design the Manual & CD, this is what I did for my son.

[JoshTurboTrollX]

Bonknut get at me please, I wouldn't mind helping you with your RPG game I could design the Manual & CD, this is what I did for my son.

I've seen some of Nighttrates work, really professional looking stuff!!  It's great to have so many of you talented peeps creating stuff for the Turbonuts of the world!!

[esteban]

Bonknut get at me please, I wouldn't mind helping you with your RPG game I could design the Manual & CD, this is what I did for my son.

Damn, I want to see a clearer picture.

[Nighttrate]

Bonknut get at me please, I wouldn't mind helping you with your RPG game I could design the Manual & CD, this is what I did for my son.

Damn, i want to see a clearer picture.

not sure if i can post a Facebook link but will do in the hope the mods don't get mad & kill me in my sleep lol

facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205389748363344&set=pcb.803505529717226

[Bernie]

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