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FamiTracker
One of the appeals of using FT, for me anyway, is the sense that you're using tools similar to what old NES developers used, which at least in regards to the sounds you create is true. But I imagine that whatever they were making music with was much more difficult to work with, which makes me admire their art more than ever.
That said, what kind of tools DID developers have in the day? I'd like a better sense of scope.
Back in the 1980s, computer is not standarized and most of the programs are made of assembly language, every manufacturer has its own operating system that build on their hardware. The market was splitted on pieces at that time. Japan has its independent computer market structrue either, don't forget NES was called "Family Computer" in Japan, needless to say Atari and Commodore has their own "computer".
Yes, there are some tools to build NES games and music at that time, but there's rarely a commonly used tool as Visual Studio or Eclipse etc, most of the tools are just used for intracompany, so different company has different tools, perhaps some of them even has UI interface but not like the convinent nowadays.
I fortunately experienced the last period gloaming of the individual electric market in Asia, when Windows 95 was released, it has to be different versions for different brands of computers, but after time, more and more manufacturer selected to compatible with Windows and PC, and gradually gave up their own hardware structure to meet the standard.
I believe that some composers in the day used MML, and there is an MML parser available at [url=http://www.mmlshare.com/]http://www.mmlshare.com/.
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There was no official tools offered by Nintendo back then, only some brief documentation on the hardware. So most game companies had their own in-house tools for making the music, graphics, maps etc for their games. I don't know if any kind of commercial tools was available at all (beside assemblers and text editors), but I don't think so.
I don't know much about the details, but I'd imagine the tools was rather simple, where music sequences was just strings of bytes entered manually into an assembly file. Perhaps some kind of intermediary format was used in the composing process, such as MIDI or similar, but I hardly believe any kind of fancy tools was made for converting songs to the music format actually used in games. It's just not that hard to write it by hand.
So, while the result from my tracker (or any modern tool) actually runs on the NES, the similarities kinds of ends there when it comes to how the old developers made it. If you want to do it that way then you should try using a text editor and 6502 assembler instead. ;)
I recommend these excellent series, Diggin in the carts: [url=http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/diggin-in-the-carts]http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/diggin-in-the-carts. It contains interviews with some of the old NES game music composers and gives some insight on the topic.
[quote=poodlecock]I believe that some composers in the day used MML, and there is an MML parser available at [url=http://www.mmlshare.com/]http://www.mmlshare.com/.[/quote]
Nevermind the fact that MCK, the first NES MML compiler, only came about in the early 2000's.
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Yeah the MCK software used today for MML appeared first in 2001, but as MML itself was used already in the 70s and 80s it's not unlikely that it was used at some stage, for example for prototyping music. But the idea that it was used for creating actual music is just speculation, and entering music commands manually in an assembly file would be just as complicated as using MML.
I can only speak for myself, but back in the day I used 6052 assembler. Every byte of memory and CPU cycle was precious and all had to be very optimized. At that time it was very common, at least in Europe, that game musicians were also programmers.
In my early days I used to code the music directly into the sound driver, but this was a really slow process for me because I don't know sol-fa and it was an endless trial and error process until I found the notes I wanted for the music. Because of this I programmed a very simple tracker on the ZX Spectrum computer to help me in the composition of the basic ideas of the music. Then I used another tool to convert the tracker binaries to source code and the rest was all done in assembler again: changing code, compiling, listening, and back to the start until the music sounded as I wanted on each specific platform.
I was so familiar with that way of working that I used it for nearly 14 years on many different platforms: Spectrum, Amstrad, MSX, NES, Game Boy, Game Gear, Master System and even one GBA soundtrack.
Let me share an interesting thread from NesDev where this topic was discussed some years ago. There's a lot of information there that can't be reproduced here in a single post.
Thanks a lot for sharing some information about this, that's much appreciated! That kind of setup doesn't seem too different from my own tracker then, it's possible to export assembler source instructions as well if one would wish. My code is not too optimized for game usage though, that's one big difference.
I'd just like to ask, as the ZX Spectrum audio is a bit different from the NES, how did you map the channels from your tracker to the actual NES channels? Also, how often did you have the chance to hear the end results? (Did you have access to EPROM emulators or similar hardware for that purpose?)
I've got to say it's amazing to see you here by the way, I haven't noticed earlier. Welcome! :)
[quote=jsr]I'd just like to ask, as the ZX Spectrum audio is a bit different from the NES, how did you map the channels from your tracker to the actual NES channels?[/quote]
Thanks for the welcome
Well, the sound of the ZX Spectrum and the NES are quite different. I could have used any other tracker or sequencer instead of my editor for the same purpose, as long as I could end with a plain text with the notes used. It was like a music score, the sound didn't matter at that point. However I composed imagining how it would sound in the target console, only in my head. Many times I didn't compose the entire song, only fragments of it to be used and tweaked in the music code by hand. As I pointed before, it just saved me the time of typing the notes directly by trial and error, but it wasn't intended to be like Famitracker where you can directly listen to the final result. Well it was at first but only on the ZX Spectrum!
Only when I had the text with the notes things could start taking shape on the console itself, finishing the sequence, adjusting volumes, instruments, effects, notes, drums, etc. Sometimes a tune didn't sound OK to me on console, and I had to compose another one more suitable for it. That's why the soundtracks of Smurfs and Asterix are different between NES and Game Boy.
[quote=jsr]Also, how often did you have the chance to hear the end results?[/quote]
I had a "ROM emulator" device which was connected between the PC and the console. The compiler would send the compiled code to that device and it would behave as a regular console cartridge. Turning on the console would load the music code along a simple test program where I could see the driver registers and select the music and FX to play. And that's it!
Now imagine how much time the process of adjusting a simple envelope would take, let alone the entire soundtrack! I had to think ahead, making as many changes as I could before sending them to the console and listen to the results. Normally I didn't send the entire tune, just the fragment I was working at that moment. Coding the music was like coding the game itself, there weren't many other ways of doing it...
Attached is a screenshot of the test program I used on the NES. Don't mind "Jack" or the 3.0 version noted. That was a nick I used for a short time after dropping "McAlby", but then I started to sign my works as "Alberto Gonzalez". 3.0 refers to the third iteration of the sound driver: First was ZX Spectrum, second Game Boy and third NES.
How exactly were DPCM samples made back in the day? Did it involve a conversion process similar to ADC? Or bit by bit editting?
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[quote=AlbertoG]Attached is a screenshot of the test program I used on the NES. Don't mind "Jack" or the 3.0 version noted. That was a nick I used for a short time after dropping "McAlby", but then I started to sign my works as "Alberto Gonzalez". 3.0 refers to the third iteration of the sound driver: First was ZX Spectrum, second Game Boy and third NES.
Hope you find that interesting!
Cheers[/quote]
This might me the second-ever look ant an NES sound driver ROM, the first being the Software Creations driver by Tim Follin and company. This is amazing, thank you.
If you all want to know a bit more on how a lot of developers/composers did it back in the day, [url=http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page]this is a good place to look. [url=ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/screens/in-game/c/CompactEditorV3.0.gif]Here is a screenshot of Compact Editor, an old ZX Spectrum tracker that Alberto Gonzalez made and used.
[quote=mmkthecoolest]How exactly were DPCM samples made back in the day? Did it involve a conversion process similar to ADC? Or bit by bit editting?[/quote]
Sincerely I don't know. Our games were very small and DPCM used a lot of ROM space. I never had the chance to use the delta channel. But I'm sure it wasn't edited bit by bit! I don't think it was problematic to write a simple command line tool to convert samples to DPCM format.
[quote=Thom]Do you perfer compsoing the traditional or the modern way?[/quote]
Now, modern of course. Traditional was OK at the time because there was no other way, and it was fun to explore the limits of the machines tweaking their registers in assembler. I had my time!
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