Giana Sisters STE - New Game!

[MacFalcon]

I really hope for a Falcon version, too! In fact this one should work out of the box, but I don´t know how to set the STE cookie on my Falcon. Couldn´t you simply just make a warning alert box "this is not an STE... try to run it anyway YES/NO" instead of the message and exit immediately? That would help a lot...

[AtariZoll]

I really hope for a Falcon version, too! In fact this one should work out of the box, but I don´t know how to set the STE cookie on my Falcon. Couldn´t you simply just make a warning alert box "this is not an STE... try to run it anyway YES/NO" instead of the message and exit immediately? That would help a lot...

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.ph ... 00#p251346

[npomarede]

I'm not trying to be negative, but will write my thoughts: I think that it went in bad direction. Idea of using YM and DMA at once for sound seems for me as bad. I looked couple quality games: Magic Boy and Lethal Xcess , and both have only DMA audio on STE (Magic Boy will have YM on ST) . Both work with only 512KB RAM . So, I really don't think that background music in levels must eat lot of CPU power and/or RAM

Hello
Lethal Xcess is not only DMA audio. Jochen Hippel's music player will use either YM + MFP timer on STF to play "digidrums", or DMA audio on STE to play the same samples. But music is definitely using YM2149 on 3 channels, SFX / samples are added to the mixer through DMA audio running at 6258 Hz mono (lowest replay freq on the STE). So, this is the same thing that was suggested for Giana Sisters : YM for the music and DMA sound for the SFX.
In Lethal Xcess, we can hear that the sample sound are not very good, this is certainly due to the same problem we saw here : when mixing YM and DMA sound, sample must be amplified somehow to match the output volume of the YM.
The fact that samples are played in mono mode is also easier, no more L/R channels data to interleave

Nicolas

[Zamuel_a]

I'm not sure I like the DMA samples in Giana sisters so much. They are not better than the original YM effects I think, just different. The Giana jump sound is better but the rest I'm not sure about. For example the sound when getting coins / diamonds sounds more accurate than the DMA sample. So maybe not worth spending alot of time to solve the volume problem and stick with 100% YM instead. (maybe just keep the Giana jump sound since it seems to be at a rather high volume as it is )

[AtariZoll]

Lethal Xcess is not only DMA audio. Jochen Hippel's music player will use either YM + MFP timer on STF to play "digidrums", or DMA audio on STE to play the same samples. But music is definitely using YM2149 on 3 channels, SFX / samples are added to the mixer through DMA audio running at 6258 Hz mono (lowest replay freq on the STE). So, this is the same thing that was suggested for Giana Sisters : YM for the music and DMA sound for the SFX...

Well, I checked writes to $FF8800 . But it writes to $FF8840 (this was popular by German coders somehow). So, maybe to check how they set volume levels and mixer ?

[junosix]

I'm not sure I like the DMA samples in Giana sisters so much. They are not better than the original YM effects I think, just different. The Giana jump sound is better but the rest I'm not sure about. For example the sound when getting coins / diamonds sounds more accurate than the DMA sample. So maybe not worth spending alot of time to solve the volume problem and stick with 100% YM instead. (maybe just keep the Giana jump sound since it seems to be at a rather high volume as it is )

Ah well, it was worth a shot Well done on implementing them so quickly.

[Zamuel_a]

The code is made so that it's very simple to swap / mix YM and DMA sounds. I didn't remove anything of the orignal. Everythere a sound is triggered, the number of sound is written to a variable. I just commented that line and replaced it with my own write to a variable that I later on check to set the sound. So it's very easy to keep some of the original YM effects and replace some with DMA samples.

[npomarede]

Lethal Xcess is not only DMA audio. Jochen Hippel's music player will use either YM + MFP timer on STF to play "digidrums", or DMA audio on STE to play the same samples. But music is definitely using YM2149 on 3 channels, SFX / samples are added to the mixer through DMA audio running at 6258 Hz mono (lowest replay freq on the STE). So, this is the same thing that was suggested for Giana Sisters : YM for the music and DMA sound for the SFX...

Well, I checked writes to $FF8800 . But it writes to $FF8840 (this was popular by German coders somehow). So, maybe to check how they set volume levels and mixer ?

Here're the traces when they init LMC. It's quite similar to the default TOS value, except bass/trebble, where TOS uses "6".

Code: Select all

Microwire data write: 0x4e8 video_cyc=47252 148@92 pc=3cc20 instr_cycle 12
Microwire new master volume=0x28
Microwire data write: 0x554 video_cyc=59340 460@115 pc=3cc20 instr_cycle 12
Microwire new left volume=0x14
Microwire data write: 0x514 video_cyc=71428 260@139 pc=3cc20 instr_cycle 12
Microwire new right volume=0x14
Microwire data write: 0x488 video_cyc=83516 60@163 pc=3cc20 instr_cycle 12
Microwire new trebble=0x8
Microwire data write: 0x447 video_cyc=95604 372@186 pc=3cc20 instr_cycle 12
Microwire new bass=0x7
Microwire data write: 0x401 video_cyc=107692 172@210 pc=3cc20 instr_cycle 12
Microwire new mixing=0x1

Nothing special in fact, as you can't give a different volume for the YM input and the DMA input, the same volume will apply to both inputs.

[Hippy Dave]

Hello
from your tests, what does mixer=0 sound like ? Is it the same as mixer=2 ? But from the doc it seems mixer=2 gives no sound output too.
So in the end, mixer=1 would be the only value that produces sound (mix ym and dma) ?

The outcome is that, whether you choose Input1/2/3/4 or Open - SMDA sound is always audible (with the same volume level). But YM is only present when you activate Input1.

Thank you for the test. This result agrees with the schematic. Hatari must be corrected.

[npomarede]

The outcome is that, whether you choose Input1/2/3/4 or Open - SMDA sound is always audible (with the same volume level). But YM is only present when you activate Input1.

Thank you for the test. This result agrees with the schematic. Hatari must be corrected.

In fact, from the STE schematic, we see that YM output AUDIOS is connected to left/right input1 of LMC and audio input AUDIOI is connected to left/right input2 of LMC.
So, maybe no one really used AUDIOI (some kind of micro ?), but the mixer values would be :
00 : DMA sound only
01 : DMA sound + input 1 (YM)
10 : DMA sound + input 2 (AUDIOI) -> DMA sound only most of the time if there's no AUDIOI
11 : DMA sound + input 3 (not connected) -> DMA sound only

What do you think ?

[alexh]

AUDIOI is an analog audio input on the STe's 13-pin monitor port, presumably design for a Genlock type application.

You could overlay ST graphics and sound over incoming analog AV to do stuff like video titling?

[Hippy Dave]

The outcome is that, whether you choose Input1/2/3/4 or Open - SMDA sound is always audible (with the same volume level). But YM is only present when you activate Input1.

Thank you for the test. This result agrees with the schematic. Hatari must be corrected.

In fact, from the STE schematic, we see that YM output AUDIOS is connected to left/right input1 of LMC and audio input AUDIOI is connected to left/right input2 of LMC.
So, maybe no one really used AUDIOI (some kind of micro ?), but the mixer values would be :
00 : DMA sound only
01 : DMA sound + input 1 (YM)
10 : DMA sound + input 2 (AUDIOI) -> DMA sound only most of the time if there's no AUDIOI
11 : DMA sound + input 3 (not connected) -> DMA sound only

What do you think ?

The schematic that I'm looking at has AUDIOI (a.c. shorted) to the YM output at all times.
Note that one could put a 330 ohm resistor between ground and AUDIOI to get -12dB on the YM2149.

Note that LMC1992 input 2 is low pass filtered (LPF) to the extent that only d.c. is present, thus input 2 would be silent.

00 : DMA sound only
01 : DMA sound + input 1 -> (AUDIOI + YM) full frequency range.
10 : DMA sound + input 2 -> (AUDIOI + YM) LPF -> DMA sound only. (prevents popping when switching from input 1 to input 2)
11 : DMA sound + input 3 (not connected) -> DMA sound only

[MrMaddog]

I'm not sure I like the DMA samples in Giana sisters so much. They are not better than the original YM effects I think, just different. The Giana jump sound is better but the rest I'm not sure about. For example the sound when getting coins / diamonds sounds more accurate than the DMA sample. So maybe not worth spending alot of time to solve the volume problem and stick with 100% YM instead. (maybe just keep the Giana jump sound since it seems to be at a rather high volume as it is )

Oh well, it's nice to have an option of having either pure YM or Amiga style audio so I kept both versions on my hard drive.

The code is made so that it's very simple to swap / mix YM and DMA sounds. I didn't remove anything of the orignal. Everythere a sound is triggered, the number of sound is written to a variable. I just commented that line and replaced it with my own write to a variable that I later on check to set the sound. So it's very easy to keep some of the original YM effects and replace some with DMA samples.

Just curious, would it be possible to switch between YM/DMA audio on the fly or would that take up too much memory?

[Zamuel_a]

Just curious, would it be possible to switch between YM/DMA audio on the fly or would that take up too much memory?

Yes it's no problem. Everything is included all the time anyway. The problem is that the sound volume didn't match, which makes it "useless"

[MacFalcon]

I really hope for a Falcon version, too! In fact this one should work out of the box, but I don´t know how to set the STE cookie on my Falcon. Couldn´t you simply just make a warning alert box "this is not an STE... try to run it anyway YES/NO" instead of the message and exit immediately? That would help a lot...

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.ph ... 00#p251346

Okay, thanks

[Zamuel_a]

I tried to just subtract a value from the YM volume registers and I can't say that it sounds distorted or anything, so it's an easy way to get the volume in level with the DMA. I think it is more or less ok as it is now. I have tried it on a real machine to.

The download on first page is updated.

[dma]

I tried to just subtract a value from the YM volume registers and I can't say that it sounds distorted or anything, so it's an easy way to get the volume in level with the DMA.

This is quite how we work when composing in maxYMiser with some STe voices along the YM, having maximum YM instrument volume level at E instead of F.
(also YM volume being non linear, volume step between D and E is less important than the one between E and F, interesting for composing)
(and as we're then on STe, the microwire bass and treble modulation also work better with a non maxed level, less distortion)

[junosix]

Sounds excellent!

[Zamuel_a]

I subtract 3 from each of the YM channels and that's the same as I did on Pacmania and I think it sounds like it should, so if it's not linear, it's probably not something you would hear anyway.

[junosix]

Just tried it on my real STE, looks, sounds and plays BRILLIANTLY!

Had it crash a couple of times on the scrolling title screen, vertical white lines then a few dots, then black. 4MB STE, TOS 2.06, running from floppy. Have tried a few other games and they seem okay, will have another go later on to see if it does it again.

[Zamuel_a]

Had it crash a couple of times on the scrolling title screen, vertical white lines then a few dots, then black.

Strange. It didn't show any errors on my machine. Need to test it some more to see what it is. The last version with the samples takes more RAM so maybe its something related to that.

[junosix]

Never crashes in the emulator, and if I catch it quickly enough on my STE by pressing the left joystick direction then the game starts and all is okay. I'll try to see if there are any memory test programs (do you know any? EDIT - found a couple) that I can run to try to rule out my machine being at fault.

[Zamuel_a]

The title scroller uses the same memory as the level inside the game so if it works there, it must be something else. I'm not home at the moment so can't check on my STE, but will test it on all the machines I got to see what it can be.

[thothy]

Zamuel, just wanted to say thank you for this enhanced version of Giana Sisters - I always loved this game and it's great to see it with proper scrolling now!

[Marakatti]

Awesome version. Just the way it should have been from the very beginning

Many thanks!