Squirrel 3.0 coming next week (4/10ish)

Arkhan Asylum · 04/06/2012, 07:11 PM

Hey, since the protocards are now released, as promised,

Squirrel 3.0 is going to come out. Soon.

It is what was used for the Protocards for the snappy tune in GNOP, and all of the sound effects in every game.

It will include:

All the samples as before
a new sample w/ some sound effects shown. This will mostly apply to developers.
an updated manual about how to use squirrel.
HuCard and CD support

It will all be released as soon as I finish updating the manual basically, since the rest of it is already done. I could release it right now, but it needs a manual!!!!

So, happy Easter, from the Easter Squirrel.

I encourage anyone seriously considering using it to register and post about it on Aetherbyte.com's forum in the MML section.

lol

cabbage · 04/06/2012, 08:30 PM

Great news, I've really been looking forward to this. Thanks for all the hard work, I'm drooling thinking about what I'd like to make with it

I tried to register for your forums (I thought I already was but I guess not), but couldn't because the confirmation code won't show up for me on the registration page... any way to fix this?

Arkhan Asylum · 04/06/2012, 10:43 PM

hmm thats stupid ill try fixing it.

touko · 04/07/2012, 03:36 AM

cool,I will test it for the mini game i'm doing .

JoshTurboTrollX · 04/08/2012, 01:02 AM

sweetness, I hope it's as user friendly as milky tracker now ;)

Hu-man · 04/09/2012, 10:39 AM

What a success for me!

Regarding Aetherbyte.com's forum, I too am having an issue with the visual confirmation code, but I'll register ASAP.

grahf · 04/09/2012, 11:24 AM

I'm more interested in seeing the manual!

Arkhan Asylum · 04/09/2012, 02:31 PM

Quote from: Hu-man on 04/09/2012, 10:39 AMWhat a success for me!

Regarding Aetherbyte.com's forum, I too am having an issue with the visual confirmation code, but I'll register ASAP.

I set it to use Recaptcha now. do it helps?

The manual should be done tomorrow or weds.

spenoza · 04/09/2012, 05:00 PM

Will it include ways to do pitch bending and vibrato without having to hand code weirdness?

Arkhan Asylum · 04/09/2012, 05:03 PM

I'm not sure what you mean by hand-code weirdness.

You just make a vibrato envelope and stick it on the instrument.

Nando · 04/09/2012, 05:06 PM

so that means that you'll be finshing up that thesis and then working on that tutorial thingie, right?

Arkhan Asylum · 04/09/2012, 05:09 PM

im proofreading my thesis right now. and trying not to stab my eyes out.

spenoza · 04/09/2012, 05:54 PM

Oh, I thought the envelopes were volume only, not pitch, which I thought was a bit weird...

Arkhan Asylum · 04/09/2012, 06:26 PM

Quote from: guest on 04/09/2012, 05:54 PMOh, I thought the envelopes were volume only, not pitch, which I thought was a bit weird...

It helps to read the manual that I spent a lot of time typing up for users.

Arkhan Asylum · 04/09/2012, 07:00 PM

http://aetherbyte.com/psg.php

It's up.

Go get it, and post questions/concers...

here, or on Aetherbyte.com Preferably Aetherbyte.com

roflmao · 04/09/2012, 07:17 PM

Cool! I've downloaded it. I'll check it out soon. Thanks!

Arkhan Asylum · 04/09/2012, 07:46 PM

yay

grahf · 04/09/2012, 10:16 PM

Captcha isn't showing up.. can't register.

Arkhan Asylum · 04/09/2012, 10:17 PM

wtf!

I thought I fixed it. God damn lol

spenoza · 04/09/2012, 10:26 PM

Sorry Arkhan, my mistake. I was thinking back to the discussion of LFO and for some reason I assumed that vibrato and pitch-bending were hard to do on the PCE without doing a little bit of weird stuff based on the discussion there. I must've misunderstood the context a bit.

touko · 04/10/2012, 04:19 AM

hi ark your modified startup.asm, is only for hucard, you're using cd bios psg driver for cdrom ??

Arkhan Asylum · 04/10/2012, 12:51 PM

Quote from: touko on 04/10/2012, 04:19 AMhi ark your modified startup.asm, is only for hucard, you're using cd bios psg driver for cdrom ??

yes

touko · 04/10/2012, 01:14 PM

ok, because i don't use a standard startup .

And do you think that squirrel 3 is suited for a 64k cd game ???

OldMan · 04/10/2012, 02:19 PM

Quoteok, because i don't use a standard startup .
And do you think that squirrel 3 is suited for a 64k cd game ???

The changes are minor ones, mostly dealing with enabling/disabling the player routine. (And that stuff was broke in Huc anyway). Do a diff against the stock HuC startup, and you'll see - and get an idea of what to change in -your- startup to make it work.
But yeah, the player was just moved to work on a card. Works great for testing the sounds before they get used on a CD. Once you have sounds you like, you should only have to re-compile for CD to have it work on one.

AFAIK, there weren't any changes in the psg code between versions 2.0 and 3.0 of the bios, so it should be okay.

...And, if I forgot, you can comment out the debug variables (the globals in the example HuC code). They aren't required for the player. <oops>

touko · 04/10/2012, 03:07 PM

Thanks Man for explanations

Arkhan Asylum · 04/10/2012, 06:39 PM

I left those variables in since they're handy for people dicking around with this.

This stuff is perfectly suited for a 64k CD game, Touko.

You can use the CD bios to your ultimate advantage with it.

CrackTiger · 04/10/2012, 09:47 PM

I won't be able to make use of this and it may be old news/common knowledge but... does Squirrel support mixing in regular sound samples with the PSG/WSG/chip sounds?

Arkhan Asylum · 04/10/2012, 10:03 PM

no but you can force samples with Squirrel if you make your own waves and string them together.

TurboXray · 04/11/2012, 10:39 PM

Looking forward to messing with this.

Hey Ark, does the PSG bios (for CD setup) parse the sound channel for you (the binary) or do you have to manually feed it the PSG commands?

Arkhan Asylum · 04/12/2012, 12:01 AM

I'm not sure what you're asking.

The CD bios processes what Squirrel outputs, which is MML that's been compiled into the bytecode stuff that the BIOS expects. If you look at the file generated by Squirrel, you will see all of the stuff that is expected by the player.

You basically just load up the data, setup the call to the bios, and then call it, and it goes on its merry way doing what it should do.

Is that what you meant? I may have answered the wrong question here, lol

EDIT: Also, to clear it up more, maybe: If you check the squirrel.c test file, you will notice that the psgPlay(0) call, which is the one to play .TRACK 0 of any of the included files, is outside of the main loop.

ONE single call is all it takes to make the BIOS know what to do to sit and play the whole entire song.

It doesn't have to be track 0, but that is what the numbering starts at, so the first song of an MML file is always track 0 (see any of the examples).

OldMan · 04/12/2012, 12:30 AM

QuoteHey Ark, does the PSG bios (for CD setup) parse the sound channel for you (the binary) or do you have to manually feed it the PSG commands?

Think of it as Basic for sound. You write a program (the MML), run it through squirrel, set it up in your program, and then run it. All of the parsing/wave loading/effects processing happens in the background (well, in the irq routines)

You'll laugh at how simple it is to use. Seriously, the hardest part is writing the songs and effects

And that's not too bad if you can read music.

[There is a lot of power there, though. You can put a lot of compiled MML in 2 banks of memory]

Arkhan Asylum · 04/12/2012, 02:28 PM

Yeah,

For example (I think this was mentioned before), Insanity's chiptune soundtrack fits into 1 bank.

It's all magic

TurboXray · 04/12/2012, 04:09 PM

Ahh ok. So you set the channel pointer to the track binary/data and the PSG bios parses it for you? So if I wanted to have sample support (7khz DDA or ADPCM), I have to kinda follow along externally to the PSG bios routine? I'd need to be able to read/track the PSB bios tempo control variable.

Arkhan Asylum · 04/12/2012, 09:31 PM

Quote from: TurboXray on 04/12/2012, 04:09 PMAhh ok. So you set the channel pointer to the track binary/data and the PSG bios parses it for you? So if I wanted to have sample support (7khz DDA or ADPCM), I have to kinda follow along externally to the PSG bios routine? I'd need to be able to read/track the PSB bios tempo control variable.

Right. The PSG Bios doesn't really handle samples, and trying to do so is pretty tricky. It throws the player off completely. I have a pretty OK way of using hand-rolled samples, and someone else who I don't think posts here, was actually using the same method for voice samples.

It's sort of tedious though, and not very flexible if you want a sample-crazy song. Would be good for a kick and snare

Arkhan Asylum · 06/06/2012, 11:45 PM

I created the video for this.

I'm working on relining up the audio as it fell out of sync

also, it compressed funny. Hypercam is dumb.

It's solid for a tutorial vid though.

So, soon it will be ONLINE!

Nando · 06/07/2012, 09:20 AM

NICE!!!!

Arkhan Asylum · 06/07/2012, 09:50 AM

Quote from: Nando on 06/07/2012, 09:20 AMNICE!!!!

yeah, there are times where the screen gets kinda goofy while flipping from program to program, but in a second or so, it clears up. It doesn't remove from the usefullness, it just looks like a Sega CD movie sometimes.

I could redo it all, but its a 25 minute video.

Nando · 06/07/2012, 09:58 AM

HAHAH you should include a Sega logo in between, just a few seconds worth. Non linear editing style ;)

Arkhan Asylum · 06/07/2012, 10:34 AM

lol

I might put subliminal messages saying TRACKERS BLOW.

Nando · 06/07/2012, 11:20 AM

Quote from: Psycho Arkhan on 06/07/2012, 10:34 AMlol

I might put subliminal messages saying TRACKERS BLOW.

Arkhan Asylum · 06/07/2012, 11:24 AM

exactly.