Ok, I've just approached a Beeb fan who also happens to have produced some great Gameboy-based chiptunes, and I asked him if he'd be interested writing background music for one of our games.

This was his reply:


So ... erm ... what should I say in reply? (I guess I should have done this kind of research before asking really, doh! ).

From what I can gather, Rich didn't actually write a creator for his player (or at least he hadn't back in Nov 07) and whilst I think that both Francis and TomW have dabbled in writing a tracker for the Beeb (as has a user on the STH Forums I believe ["Mode 7"] ) ... am I right in thinking that there aren't any Beeb trackers out there "in the open" at all (that either run on native hardware or on a modern OS e.g. Windows?).

Anyway, if anybody can provide *any* info or guidance I'd appreciate it!

... also touted the idea of him composing music with existing GB tools (but bearing in mind the Beeb's limitations e.g. frequency) and us writing a convertor, and he advised the following:


So if Tom's reading, any chance of a quick feasibility study of GB > BBC conversion (I know you're real busy now so please don't spend /too/ long looking into it!).

Quick opinion - not very feasible. There are too many differences between the two.

My suggestion would be to use an Atari ST tracker. There are loads on http://www.dhs.nu, my advice on a quick look through would be something like Megatizer 2.4, with certain restrictions. Or maybe Xlr8? I'll have a play with them later and make a recommendation.

Actually, I've just found a Master System tracker - Mod2PSG2 (http://mod2psg.kontechs.de/). I haven't tried it but that's the same soundchip as the Beeb, so might be ideal.

The only tracker software that I am aware of for the Beeb was part of the Murom package.

Kind regards,

Francis

I haven't vanished Dave... sorry I haven't had a chance to reply to your PM, but I'm absolutely up to my neck in Nintendo DS at the moment (work) and it ain't pretty!

My music player was designed to be called in an interrupt every VSync and it makes sound by direct soundchip access rather than through OSWORD. It would be perfect, apart from that it's very hardwired to use certain 'envelopes' and it expects channel 1 to be tuned periodic noise (to produce a 'bassline'), which means there's no opportunity for 'drums'.

As far as creating music was concerned, I made one-and-a-half tunes to demo it - they were created out of DATA statements in Basic - not quite as obscure as lists of numbers, but more like:

DATA C3, 8, D3, 4, E3, 4, F3, 16

meaning: C (octave 3, length 8); D (octave 3, length 4) ..etc...

It also allowed you to create phrases, i.e. small passages of music, which could then be placed anywhere in the sound stream, in order to avoid duplication all the time - kinda like a melody macro

All this was done in the same DATA statements, with some vaguely user-readable syntax; likewise selection of 'envelopes'.

All in all, it's very hacky (but aren't these things always), and probably not particularly user-friendly for a professional muso - particularly given the need for awareness of repeating phrases which can be "macro'd".

I'd be up for trying my luck with composing a small tune myself, but really I can't imagine where the time's gonna come from at the moment

Because I can't use trackers but can manage dots I used the program called THEME in the Acorn User April 87 edition to create tunes - it creates a file in a format it calls "AUTUMN". The Magazine is available to have a look at at Acorn Electron World.

http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/au/ills/057/lc-p086.jpg

IIRC the tune for Repton Infinity was written on this program. The magazine contains a machine code routine for playing back tunes in AUTUMN format.

Cheers for the detailed info Rich, no need to worry 'bout what I said on the PM now as I'll probably be running off the discs in the next week or two ...

Dave, thanks for pointing out Theme ... VERY interesting ... gonna check it out now

I've recently got hold of a piece of tracker-style software by Beebugsoft called Studio 8. It offers musical sequencing etc. The playback seems to get held up very slightly but I expect this could be overcome with a rewritten in-game player.

Conversion software would presumably have to deal with envelope definitions. I don't know what the limitations of Studio 8 are, or what info is stored in the GB tracker files either.

I can investigate further if there's interest, but unfortunately am not a programmer.

Yeah - go for it!

It'd be good if we could offer authors a selection of options for how to compose their in-game music ...