Bad Mood : Falcon030 'Doom'

[dml]

Last night I got texture changes working for buttons and switches.

Almost all of the important gameplay areas are now done. It's mainly just some game effects / Atari-fication and a lot of loose ends left.

[dma]

Marvelous news, i'm still amazed to see it being done, and now even close to finish!

[dml]

Hopefully a release isn't very far away now.

[dml]

I have started looking at YM/SNDH for ingame music, at least as an option.

This needs tested properly before deciding to use it, as I'm not sure what sort of issues I might run into. But it seems like it should work alongside the SFX/DMA stuff without conflict.

I have also considered pushing 'music events' into the SFX mixer using the priority system but that's a bit more speculative - not so easy to author/adapt existing music to use fixed instruments and it's not exactly modplayer compatible at the moment (doing so would create other problems, like L/R separation and panning for existing SFX). But it's there as an idea and might grow, esp. if I can synth the instruments (that's fun). The nice thing about pushing music events it is that it won't cost any more since it's just overloading what's there already.


Anyway.. by far the most important part of the YM/SNDH approach is the music itself. So if you want to author some music just for this game, get in touch I'll provide some very rough guidelines. (I'm trying to learn MaxYMiser but if I'm too slow or don't like my own output I won't use it. Likewise, if I also don't get any submissions that's another reason it may not be able to happen).

At the risk of reducing probabilities even further - standards should be high. Only 'good stuff' will go in. But a high bar is what makes people creative and want to try stuff, right?

I'm very much aware that SNDH files could just be dropped into a folder by a user - and it probably will work that way - but the point here isn't to provide a pure DIY system - there should be some new/original content for people to be interested enough to fire it up and play. I'll be doing the same in other areas (graphics, etc)...

When I've tested the idea and confident it's safe to use in the game, I'll probably make a louder call on this topic. But don't let me stop you experimenting early If you do something you know how to find me.

[Eero Tamminen]

Last night I got texture changes working for buttons and switches.

Almost all of the important gameplay areas are now done. It's mainly just some game effects / Atari-fication and a lot of loose ends left.

Maybe it's time for another intermediate release (with the HD textures) for people to try?

I have started looking at YM/SNDH for ingame music, at least as an option.
...
Anyway.. by far the most important part of the YM/SNDH approach is the music itself. So if you want to author some music just for this game, get in touch I'll provide some very rough guidelines. (I'm trying to learn MaxYMiser but if I'm too slow or don't like my own output I won't use it. Likewise, if I also don't get any submissions that's another reason it may not be able to happen).

At the risk of reducing probabilities even further - standards should be high. Only 'good stuff' will go in. But a high bar is what makes people creative and want to try stuff, right?

Can something like the 9 Inch Nails music in Quake be done with YM/SNDH? Or does one need sampled instruments & MOD for that kind of stuff?

[dml]

Last night I got texture changes working for buttons and switches.

Almost all of the important gameplay areas are now done. It's mainly just some game effects / Atari-fication and a lot of loose ends left.

Maybe it's time for another intermediate release (with the HD textures) for people to try?

I have cleaned up a lot of bugs and other problems this evening so it's in better shape for a release, but the keyboard issue still needs dealt with. I have local modifications which provide a better layout with WASD + arrows, but still not completely trouble free.

The HD textures are also very sparsely populated and far from final so I'd like to do some work on that before a release. None of the special shaders are tied up yet either (nor have I figured out yet *how* to tie them except maybe by explicit texture names, which I don't like - will need to study the special attributes in DoomBuilder/Slade editors).

I have started looking at YM/SNDH for ingame music, at least as an option.
...
Anyway.. by far the most important part of the YM/SNDH approach is the music itself. So if you want to author some music just for this game, get in touch I'll provide some very rough guidelines. (I'm trying to learn MaxYMiser but if I'm too slow or don't like my own output I won't use it. Likewise, if I also don't get any submissions that's another reason it may not be able to happen).

At the risk of reducing probabilities even further - standards should be high. Only 'good stuff' will go in. But a high bar is what makes people creative and want to try stuff, right?

Can something like the 9 Inch Nails music in Quake be done with YM/SNDH? Or does one need sampled instruments & MOD for that kind of stuff?

A skilled YM musician can do pretty much anything but it is chip music so it's going to sound like chip music If it is to sound like the NIN Quake CD then it would have to be tracker or similar. Given the nature of that music I'd say pretty hard to make it convincing. (Sampled guitars never sounded great on Amiga IMO due to limited variation and polyphony. Some other types of sound worked better).

The music doesn't need to be metal either (i.e. be your own style guide). I think it's more important that it's a good track.

I have these vague guidelines in mind:

appropriate:
- melodic/interesting tracks, if they sounds edgy
- thumping tracks for every other level
- a track which just creates an atmosphere is good for occasional levels
- no single track needs to be more than one of the above (but a masterpiece won't be rejected )

not appropriate:
- chirpy, happy blippy bloopy isn't good for this (!)
- overly harsh YM instruments leading. shouldn't have the user reaching to turn it off after 30 seconds, it needs to last a level

Since this is an opportunity for original content, might as well make something new if possible. Conversions of familair music don't always work well since you just notice the flaws or differences.

Having said all that, I should be happy if anyone tries to do even one track!

...drums and certain other 'sound canvas' instruments could probably be sampled, and pushed through the SFX mixer with the game SFX. But normal YM digi drums should also work and wouldn't require hacking of the player. Separte DMA digi drums not possible via the player alone, because the SFX system is busy.

[Eero Tamminen]

I don't actually miss the music during game. Music could be e.g. played just during Doom initialization and in the setup screen?

Btw. With Doom I timedemo there's the problem that these breakpoints:

Code: Select all

b pc=_P_DeathThink :once :trace :file profile-frames.ini
b (_gameaction) ! (_gameaction) :once :trace :file profile-frames.ini

Don't catch exact point when the player dies / timedemo ends, like they do with Doom II timedemo. There's some credits screen showed for a while before profiling ends. Could you suggest a symbol which isn't called, or doesn't change during normal gameplay, but does when timedemo ends?

[dma]

Considering it's already a hard-drive requiring game (due to .wad files sizes), maybe you could stream music from the hard-drive?
I mean as uncompressed mid-fi audio files, appropriate for Falcon audio system (like mono 16 bits 25khz, iirc).

[dml]

Considering it's already a hard-drive requiring game (due to .wad files sizes), maybe you could stream music from the hard-drive?
I mean as uncompressed mid-fi audio files, appropriate for Falcon audio system (like mono 16 bits 25khz, iirc).

It's an interesting thought. The sample stream could be pushed through one of the SFX channels at low priority so it gets interrupted by action but continues in the background otherwise.

My main worry is the cost of the PIO/IDE disk activity. Unless the source is SCSI DMA, the action might jerk on every disk access (reading 50kb / sec). However, I haven't tried it so I'm not sure what would happen. Maybe it would just get absorbed into all the other overheads.

I would guess CFlash transfers would cost a tiny fraction of the old IDE read times too.

Has anyone here tried this sort of thing recently in a realtime project?

[FedePede04]

Hi...
could you not have a sampled song, there was split up in smaller pieces (the repeating parts) and stream it from the ram?

Considering it's already a hard-drive requiring game (due to .wad files sizes), maybe you could stream music from the hard-drive?
I mean as uncompressed mid-fi audio files, appropriate for Falcon audio system (like mono 16 bits 25khz, iirc).

It's an interesting thought. The sample stream could be pushed through one of the SFX channels at low priority so it gets interrupted by action but continues in the background otherwise.

My main worry is the cost of the PIO/IDE disk activity. Unless the source is SCSI DMA, the action might jerk on every disk access (reading 50kb / sec). However, I haven't tried it so I'm not sure what would happen. Maybe it would just get absorbed into all the other overheads.

I would guess CFlash transfers would cost a tiny fraction of the old IDE read times too.

Has anyone here tried this sort of thing recently in a realtime project?

[dml]

Hi...
could you not have a sampled song, there was split up in smaller pieces (the repeating parts) and stream it from the ram?

Yes, however it's one more different kind of replay and somebody would need to write music to work that way.

I tried an automatic approach last year which took a MIDI track and rendered it out as channel permutations using some simple wave synthesis for instruments. The fragments were about 500 bytes each, and the total song ended up at 300k -> 2mb depending. The replay was 'free' in the sense that it was just a frame sequencer, no mixing required. However there are great difficulties with loop points in small fragments like that, requiring fancy blending and serious limits on the instrument waveforms, and it really only begins to work well if you can afford a few MB on the song, instruments are basic waves and there are not too many channels...

I'm fine with having a YM route *and* a sample-oriented route, but it needs to work if several people want to submit songs in the same format. This is where the frame-sequencing thing makes things quite difficult for anyone trying to make the music.

However if somebody feels they can make good tracks that way and wants to provide more than one, I'd implement it for sure the track should be under 4MB though, ideally! The SFX replay freq is set quite low anyway for mixing & panning performance so that helps with size, although it doesn't help with audio quality for high freq source samples. Songs would need authored to sound ok at low cutoff freq.

[dml]

I'm having some problems with SNDH replay already, conflicts with existing DMA replayer during startup - it's hitting a bunch of Falcon hardware registers which are already carefully configured by my player. I'm guessing it will also hammer some of those registers during replay as well.

I will need to read up on the replay module for Maxymiser to see if this can be avoided. It might be possible to work around it by fooling the replayer into thinking its running on an ST so it avoids all the DMA/TimerA event config paths. But there's probably a better way (advice welcome?).

[dml]

Well I tried editing the _CPU, _MCH cookies around the SNDH init call to fake an STF environment, and the music plays without crashing now. However my replayer has gone silent so I think SNDH is still fiddling with bad stuff in the MFP or DMA config. I'll need to doublecheck on a real Falcon.

[dml]

Traced the SNDH init call and it's hitting nearly all of the MFP registers and some other stuff. Saving/restoring MFP state around it doesn't help as it has already stopped TimerA events, cancelling the sample replayer.

I can try re-initializing the sample replay after the SNDH call but it's not very nice. Apart from causing clicks, I'm not really sure what state the machine is in after that call...

Perhaps there is a 'light' replay routine for this format kicking around somewhere which doesn't touch anything except the YM registers?

[EvilFranky]

Doug,

Do you feel music is a necessity?

I know the PC version has midi play back, but I actually liked that the jag version was music less...it added to the atmosphere.

How about maybe some additional ambient sound effects to enhance the situation the player finds themselves in instead of music?

Just an opinion! Maybe it's a personal goal of yours

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

[dml]

Do you feel music is a necessity?

Not a necessity, no - but it seems like a good way to customize it in a creative way, especially if other can get involved with track submissions. New content is nice. So much effort for a replica of the PC version is less interesting than one which has extras and specializations. I've done a lot of work on rendering quality but at a glance it looks/sounds like any other (non-GL) Doom port.

I'm sure a lot of people just won't bother firing it up (well, not more than once) if it doesn't look and/or sound different.

How about maybe some additional ambient sound effects to enhance the situation the player finds themselves in instead of music?

Yes I was going to try to handle that through the existing game code - it spawns AI tickers for flickering lights and stuff and I think the same should be possible for ambient SFX placed on the map. Not tried it but it should work.

Just an opinion! Maybe it's a personal goal of yours

Just want to get as far from the PC version as possible, and get some original content in

[dml]

Traced the SNDH init call and it's hitting nearly all of the MFP registers and some other stuff. Saving/restoring MFP state around it doesn't help as it has already stopped TimerA events, cancelling the sample replayer.

I can try re-initializing the sample replay after the SNDH call but it's not very nice. Apart from causing clicks, I'm not really sure what state the machine is in after that call...

Well that didn't work either. The sample replay won't restart after the SNDH call even with a full MFP/DMA re-initialization. Hmm.

[dma]

You can contact gwem (maxYMiser coder), who usually answer, if you got questions about his replay rout.

-----

Also a possible idea would be configuring 3 channels from each original DOOM midi tune (configuration specific to each tune) then replaying those MIDI channels on YM based instruments.

But some tricks would required for best result, like converting chords (several notes played to once on a single instrument), to chip arpeggios on some channels.
And maybe even overlaying channels over some other channel (to have 2 or more instruments on a single channel).

[Eero Tamminen]

I also feel that music would be distracting and that some good sampled sound effects would be good way to differentiate.

I used to play "Starglider I" a lot and its only music was very short loop in the title screen where a chorus sang "Sta-a-arglider". I really liked that, maybe BM could have something similar?

I can already image male voice growling/shouting "(in) BAD MOOD" and hell's imps screaming "it's our doom!" in terrified falsetto in response, with suitable background instrumentation. The Bad mood logo would of course be splashed to screen synched with the "BAD MOOD" shout and "based on Doom I/II from ID" text with "it's our doom" scream. Somebody could have fun in producing such samples.

During the game, there could be occasional "b-a-a-d mood" and "d-o-o-m" whispers/mutterings, maybe accompanied with some cliched wind chimes. Best would be if it could be tied to environment, e.g. so that "d-o-o-m" whispers come only at dark places and "bad mood" e.g. when seeing marine corpses, wading across poison etc.

[FedePede04]

i have a question, how much processing time can the replay routine take, if you want to played sample drums, and maybe SID sound, wont it hurt the FPS
and you normally don't know how much a SNDH play takes, it depend on which player there was use in the first place.
how about finding a editor where the source code for the player was released.
then you always know the max processing it will take, and you can easily change the code to fit you program.
just a thought

[dma]

I also feel that music would be distracting and that some good sampled sound effects would be good way to differentiate.

Sure some people play games without the game's music, to play their own CD along.
Especially on multiplayer sessions, or when replaying singleplayer games for reaching the best time/score/kills.

But having the original music in a form or another would make it a complete port.

...and maybe SID sound...

I would say that even plain YM could achieve a likeable result.

[FedePede04]

I also feel that music would be distracting and that some good sampled sound effects would be good way to differentiate.

Sure some people play games without the game's music, to play their own CD along.
Especially on multiplayer sessions, or when replaying singleplayer games for reaching the best time/score/kills.

But having the original music in a form or another would make it a complete port.

...and maybe SID sound...

I would say that even plain YM could achieve a likeable result.

I am with you on that one, i also love the sound of pure YM.
but i do have an idea to a YM format (like then one on the PC) it takes a more spaces then a normally Score+Instruments, but where you can make a fast and very simple replay routine, that should not interferer with the code.

[dml]

i have a question, how much processing time can the replay routine take, if you want to played sample drums, and maybe SID sound, wont it hurt the FPS
and you normally don't know how much a SNDH play takes, it depend on which player there was use in the first place.
how about finding a editor where the source code for the player was released.
then you always know the max processing it will take, and you can easily change the code to fit you program.
just a thought

This is currently what I'm thinking. Shoggoth suggested direct YM playback and that looks like it should be fine, but it would be nice to have some more control/effects on the instruments.

Currently SNDH is not working despite much hackery and experiments, and hand-patching bits of it out in the debugger. Unclear exactly whats going on in there and why it needs all those timers and stuff for normal YM playback. I should perhaps get in touch with gwEm and ask for a MFP/DMA-clean replay rout, although I can imagine what the response might be! Could be a lot of changes involved.

Failing that, another tracker replay or direct YM replay. Or abandon YM and push MIDI midi events through the SFX system. Will need to think about it all a bit more.

[dml]

But some tricks would required for best result, like converting chords (several notes played to once on a single instrument), to chip arpeggios on some channels.
And maybe even overlaying channels over some other channel (to have 2 or more instruments on a single channel).

I actually tried this a while ago! Ooh that was painful. In fact it wasn't too hard to implement but it's very difficult to make all but the very simplest MIDI pattern sound anything better than awful Yes it does require channel merging and other tricks and its best done by redoing the music I think.

[Stefan jL]

Zdoom has midi playback for several formats.. maybe it could be used for BM?
http://zdoom.org