Giana Sisters STE - New Game!

[junosix]

Awesome! Plays beautifully in Hatari.

EDIT - Oddly, the music's still exactly an octave higher than the original.

[Zamuel_a]

Oddly, the music's still exactly an octave higher than the original.

I haven't changed anything in the music and when I compare it with the normal ST version, it sounds the same. Atleast from what I can hear. Is it a emulation issue or something?

[junosix]

Don't think it's an emulator issue, but I'll hopefully be grabbing an HxC floppy emulator soon so will be playing it on the real thing and will compare.

This is how I remember the original sounding (from an original uncracked copy): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sr58eAozSM4

[junosix]

I've attached a copy of how it sounds on my machine in Hatari (default sound settings, the sampled music at the start sounds as it should).

EDIT - sound effects are also an octave above the original.

[evil]

EDIT - Oddly, the music's still exactly an octave higher than the original.

You are right.

Here's a video I did to compare. Same emulator for the STe improved version and the old ST version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hpLTSawIKE

[Zamuel_a]

Yes I can hear it's different when I compare the youtube video with my version. Don't understand how it can have changed. I don't know so much about play routines and haven't touched that part at all. The only thing I did was changing the frame rate from 25 to 50fps, but that can't have affected the sound player. I don't think there is a "octave" register either that I might have changed, so don't know were to look.

[troed]

changing the frame rate from 25 to 50fps, but that can't have affected the sound player

That really only depends on whether the "play_vbl()" routine is called from the game loop or VBL Depending on the play routine of course, since it's still the pitch and not the time.

(If it's in the game loop just call it every second time)

[Zamuel_a]

I think it's called from the vbl, but that would anyway just affect the speed, not the pitch.

[junosix]

Possibly a frequency look-up table has been shifted along by a byte or so? I could have a look later, I'm fairly confident poking around with sound registers (I did an STE DMA sound patch for Droid a while back: http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24324)

[Zamuel_a]

I found the music error! I know more or less were to find the code part that handles the music and I cross checked it with the original and after some time I found something. I have renamed all the fixed addresses to get them more readable. For example if a read is made from an address, when it is done like this: L0123(pc),d0, but if a write is done to the same address, when it is done like this: d0,$ABCD. So to make it easier, I have a big EQU list were I rename it so a write becomes d0,f_L0123 and f_L0123 EQU $ABCD

One of these renamed addresses was wrong and that caused the problem!

[junosix]

You beauty!

I've downloaded the Amiga .adf image for the game and the sound effects are uncompressed signed 8-bit samples. They seem to be different frequencies for each sound effect but I can try to figure out the playback frequencies for each sound then resample them to 12517Hz in Audacity if you wanted to have samples in the game? Have you located the code which triggers sound effects in the game?

[Zamuel_a]

Have you located the code which triggers sound effects in the game?

Yes I know more or less were to look. I know what routine handles the effects so I can disable them if wanted to, so adding DMA samples for the effects shouldn't be to difficult and would be great to add. What are the original sample rate? (the highest one). In case it would be better to use 25khz instead of 12.

EDIT:
There seems to be 13 different effects used in the game. A variable is trigged with a value from 1 to 13 depending on effect, but I can't find nr 6 or 9 anythere so maybe it was something that never got used or so. Depending on this, there should be 13 or 11 effects in the Amiga version.

[Zamuel_a]

A funny thing is the speed of the shots in this game. If you compare the speed of the STE version you will see that it's twice the speed of the ST one. First I had the speed reduced so that it matched, but when I tried the Amiga version I noticed that it was much faster, so I adjusted the STE one to be like that. I'm not sure what it should be, but it's alot easier to use them if they are fast

[junosix]

There only seems to be 9 in the Amiga version, but I'll have another hunt. It doesn't seem that any of the sound effects go above about 8kHz, so upsampling to 12517Hz will sound fine. I'm ripping them and converting them in Audacity right now so I should be able to upload them this evening.

Hadn't noticed the difference in shot speed but now you mention it I do remember the original ST version was slow, the faster shots do feel better. I noticed also that the Giana movement feels a little different in the Amiga version too, she seems to have more inertia when changing direction on the Amiga. This is true comparing it to both the original ST version and the STE one so I don't see any need to alter that.

[Zamuel_a]

It's abit tricky to get the speed of everything right when going from 25 to 50fps. The Giana movements are calculated from tables and to make it work for 50fps I have to double the size and fill in the "missing" entries with a value of my own. Without knowing what the Amiga version used, I just picked something. For some cases it's easy, like if I have the values 1,3,5. When I expand it to 1,2,3,4,5,6, but in some tables the values are already 1,2,3, so I need float numbers, which is not possible so I just had to test something that looked ok. I could ofcourse just double the values, 1,1,2,2,3,3 but when the movements would still look like 25fps.

[nativ]

Just to add another potentially STe upgraded title
Robotz
Heavy Stylus remade the GFX for a PC release. But you could boost the game in a few was possibly for STe, hardware scroll playfield? Overscan?
http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.ph ... 15#p169415

[Marcer]

About music (again) it is quite easy to modify the original tune with timer fx, and if wanted im pretty sure there is many volenteers for special versions. I am one of them

Skickat från min C6903 via Tapatalk

[junosix]

Here are the samples, ripped as raw samples from the Amiga .adf image. They're all different replay frequencies in the Amiga version so I've matched the pitch for each then upsampled them to signed mono 8-bit 12.5kHz, luckily the highest sample rate used in the Amiga version was around 12.4kHz so that's worked out nicely! I don't think there are any effects missing, let me know if there are. Haven't normalised them or adjusted the DC offset because I wanted to leave the sounds as intact as possible but I'm happy to do that if you'd prefer. Let me know if any don't sound right to you, I can redo them.

Sounds are:

boulder_fall.raw - boulder hits the floor after falling from a headbutted brick block
destroy_block.raw - headbutt a brick block (doesn't play when you hit one with a boulder in)
diamond.raw - diamond collected / star block or multiple diamond brick block headbutted
end_of_level.raw - time x bonus = score screen at end of each level, triggers every time another 10 seconds have been counted down
enemy_death.raw - enemy stomped/shot
giana_maria_death.raw - killed by enemy/fall down hole
jump.raw - jump
powerup.raw - powerup collected
shoot.raw - pink bubble thing fired
warp.raw - hidden warp block headbutted

EDIT - the 25 to 50 fps explanation makes sense. I think the controls felt a little different in the original 80s ST version anyway when compared to the Amiga, yours doesn't feel notably dissimilar to the original ST one so I don't think there's any need to tweak it to match the Amiga, as it's still true to the Atari version.

[Zamuel_a]

Thanks! I will try and implement it!

[junosix]

I just had a play around with the original ST version and my memory had been playing evil tricks, turns out the movement does happen to be pretty close/the same as the Amiga version. In the STE version the momentum/intertia is quite a bit less pronounced.

[Zamuel_a]

I tried to implement samples and did it the same way as I have done before, but something is not so good, so as soon as I start the sample, everything crash. No bombs or anything. It just reset.

The routine I use is:

Code: Select all

	move.l	#sample_1,d0		;set start address
	move.w	#$ffff8902,a0
	movep.l	d0,-1(a0)
	move.l	#sample_2,d0		;set end address
	move.w	#$ffff890e,a0
	movep.l	d0,-1(a0)

	move.w	#%01,$ffff8900		;play sample

sample_1 incbin 's1.snd'
sample_2 incbin 's2.snd'

[AtariZoll]

Not good idea to use movep.l while there is only 3 HW register to fill. With that you write 0 in HW register below, and that may have some bad effect.
DMA registers are actually 8-bit ones, on odd addresses.

Code: Select all

    * Writing DMA begin address
   lea            dmaBuf1,a1
   move.l      a1,d1
   
   swap        d1
   move.b    d1,$FFFF8903.w   * Order important, first Hi-byte !
   swap        d1  
   move.b     d1,d2
   lsr.w          #8,d1
   move.b      d1,$FFFF8905.w
   move.b      d2,$FFFF8907.w

Little longer code, and never had problems with.
For Falcon compatibility you should not write constant directly to control register, but mask required bits.

[junosix]

The code I use isn't at all elegant and is probably a bit rubbish but it works well:

In the DATA section

Code: Select all

st_spl        dc.l        0
en_spl        dc.l        0

sound_1       incbin      sound_1.snd
sound_2       incbin      sound_2.snd

etc.

Then set up the sound effect with:

Code: Select all

move.l        #sound_1,st_spl
move.l        #sound_2,en_spl
bsr           do_snd

Which calls:

Code: Select all

do_snd:
move.b        #0,$ff8901         ; stop current playback

move.b        st_spl+1,$ff8903
move.b        st_spl+2,$ff8905
move.b        st_spl+3,$ff8907

move.b        en_spl+1,$ff890f
move.b        en_spl+2,$ff8911
move.b        en_spl+3,$ff8913

move.b        #1,$ff8901         ; play sample

rts

[dma]

By the way, this MOD version of the title tune is pretty cool (author unknown).
Maybe it could be used in this STE version?

[junosix]

How about pumping the tracker routine for the existing tune through the DMA chip? I've got a real soft spot for the ST version of the sampled music, I'd miss it if it was taken out!