I'd really like to know, whether this assembly exporter feature is going to be implemented soon or not, and how difficult it's going to be to "insert" in actual game code, because I'm probably going to "upgrade" to Deflemask for any actual game music needs, especially if PCM and SN76489 will be supported by this as well.
Are you talking about Genesis right?, the asm will include PCM and SN76489 of course,and the player routine will use the Z80 only, in order to have the main CPU free.
This will be released soon and will be very easy to add in a homebrew app.
Are you talking about Genesis right?, the asm will include PCM and SN76489 of course,and the player routine will use the Z80 only, in order to have the main CPU free.
This will be released soon and will be very easy to add in a homebrew app.
Is there any disadvantage or advantages with using the Z80?
Not really I think, developers often used the Z80 to handle the sound so the 68000 had less stuff to do even though it was included for backwards compatibility with the master system mostly (but they probably did think about the z80 a a co-processor, otherwise why would've they connected the two CPUs to begin with?)
Sample quality takes a hit (A very good place to see this is Sonic 3D Blast, sample quality is terrible, compared to when you take the clean samples out of the game, but there's barely any difference when you take a sample out of Sonic 1 and listen to the samples in game), but otherwise there's little problem with using a Z80 based sound driver.
For the purposes of music only I'd personally use a 68k based sound driver like Sonic 1, but many people prefer efficiency, not quality.
When I talked to Shiru back when he released VGM MM, he said he uses the 68K for FM and the Z80 for PCM. I asked him about this because I was wondering if he could allow tuned PCM frequency tables.
"Sample quality takes a hit (A very good place to see this is Sonic 3D Blast, sample quality is terrible, compared to when you take the clean samples out of the game, but there's barely any difference when you take a sample out of Sonic 1 and listen to the samples in game), but otherwise there's little problem with using a Z80 based sound driver.
For the purposes of music only I'd personally use a 68k based sound driver like Sonic 1, but many people prefer efficiency, not quality."
The ROM was pretty small for Sonic 1. I think they used ADPCM for the samples if I'm not mistaken. Probably even used 2channel playback in one of the latter statges of the game(messes up the sample quality with the bass and snare). This wouldn't be a problem at all if Sega included IRQ for the DAC.
Sample quality has nothing to do with the Z80 or 68k use, you could lower the sample quality if you need more CPU, but with the current DefleMask player the Z80 processor is enough to play samples @ 32000hz and the music data without problems. Also, a sample index will be added, so you can build many songs using the same sample library, this way you could have a main asm file containing the samples and other general data, and then include any particular songs.
B00daW wrote:
When I talked to Shiru back when he released VGM MM, he said he uses the 68K for FM and the Z80 for PCM. I asked him about this because I was wondering if he could allow tuned PCM frequency tables.
Hey?, there is no player done by Shiru that plays PCM and FM at the same time I think, he never programmed it. Link please?.
Linux version updated!, the roms exporting path was using "\" instead of "/" and that was creating very crazy filenames. So, those that are using Defle on Linux, update please!.
Wait, "take the clean samples out of the game", meaning to extract the sample from the game as it was before being dumbed down for use ingame? How is it possible? It would sure make something I thought of before make sense.
The ROM was pretty small for Sonic 1. I think they used ADPCM for the samples if I'm not mistaken. Probably even used 2channel playback in one of the latter statges of the game(messes up the sample quality with the bass and snare). This wouldn't be a problem at all if Sega included IRQ for the DAC.
You'd think someone who's hacked the games for four years and inserted custom music into them would know something about the sound drivers used.
The answer is no - it used a single DAC channel.
Secondly, I have been remembering wrong - Sonic 2, Sonic 3 and Sonic 3D all had compressed samples. The thing is that still doesn't explain why Sonic 3D is crunchier than Sonic 3, so there must be something affecting sample quality, and the only place I can assume that is the sound driver. But I still stand by my original statement - you will get clearer sample quality using a 68k based sound driver.
Thirdly Raijin, you can manage to take DAC samples out of games provided you know what you're looking for. In the games I've looked at they're just regular old PCM - compressed or uncompressed, depends. (Sonic 1 is uncompressed, Sonic 2 is compressed but in a known algorithm) but this will depend on the sound driver.
These are the uncompressed samples taken straight out of Sonic 3. You'll notice that, while low quality, are at least clean and not crunchy. Look at the samples played back in Sonic 3D and you'll instantly notice the difference.
But I still stand by my original statement - you will get clearer sample quality using a 68k based sound driver.
Why?, maybe you can get more sample rate without having a huge impact in the performance, but the Z80 is only a CPU, if you use it to send sample data an you have time to do it, the samples will sound the same than with the 68k.
You are blaming the Z80 because you don't know the exact reason why the Sonic's samples sounded weird, maybe they needed 40% of the Z80 free and they used samples @ 2000hz, who knows.
Whatever, the Z80 DefleMask's player will be enough to play samples @ 32000hz while playing the music without problems.
