[WIP] Tetris conversion

[DanyPPC]

Originally Posted by franeti

Working fine on my real A1200 with 030. It seems only sfx and music and that’s it!

Is this normal to load it? No icon and i dont see whdload window

You can use my glowicon
https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=48

but it need atleast OS3.5

[DanyPPC]

Here a new Romicon (Standard Workbench 3.1):

[franeti]

Originally Posted by DanyPPC

You can use my glowicon
https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...9&postcount=48

but it need atleast OS3.5

Hi, thanks!

Do you know why the window is asking to execute?

[DanyPPC]

Originally Posted by franeti

Hi, thanks!

Do you know why the window is asking to execute?

The Icon must be in the same dir of the game, so you must have:

readme.md
tetris
tetris.info
tetris.slave

The Associated tool for the Icon is WHDLoad, so you must have it in C of your Amiga OS installation.

[jotd]

If you click on "tetris", it will run the game too (no whdload) which explains why it works but since my shell startup code doesn't handle workbench, I suppose that will crash when exiting... Use a script & iconx to run from wb without whdload.

About the music, I wanted to add that I have compiled Harry source (delitracker plugin) but failed to make it work. No sound is outputted. The code emulates one pokey on 4 channels, I want to emulate 2 pokeys in 2-channel mode each, which would require to adapt the code, which looks very complete but not simple AT ALL.

So I think a better strategy will be to try to fix issues channel by channel with my emulation code, and make up for missing/wrong sfx by not playing them and playing samples instead.

Asking no9 to redo ALL the tunes and then hack the game to play them at the proper times would be huge and unrewarding work considering that all the logic works.

Apart from that the game is complete and I'm very glad of the result.

[franeti]

Originally Posted by jotd

If you click on "tetris", it will run the game too (no whdload) which explains why it works but since my shell startup code doesn't handle workbench, I suppose that will crash when exiting... Use a script & iconx to run from wb without whdload.

About the music, I wanted to add that I have compiled Harry source (delitracker plugin) but failed to make it work. No sound is outputted. The code emulates one pokey on 4 channels, I want to emulate 2 pokeys in 2-channel mode each, which would require to adapt the code, which looks very complete but not simple AT ALL.

So I think a better strategy will be to try to fix issues channel by channel with my emulation code, and make up for missing/wrong sfx by not playing them and playing samples instead.

Asking no9 to redo ALL the tunes and then hack the game to play them at the proper times would be huge and unrewarding work considering that all the logic works.

Apart from that the game is complete and I'm very glad of the result.

Hi! Talking about this port with Estrayk, member of this forum and a classic of the demoscene, told me that the problem is that 2 pokeys are 8 channels (4+4)
And he understands that what you want to do is to trigger a full pokey and when he has to trigger sfx it will override one channel of the pokey and the sfx will play.
Yes, that will work even if it "cuts" the music, it would be a solution for this problem even if it is a little bit noticeable.

Again, thanks for your hard work in this port! Kind regards.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by jotd

If you click on "tetris", it will run the game too (no whdload) which explains why it works but since my shell startup code doesn't handle workbench, I suppose that will crash when exiting... Use a script & iconx to run from wb without whdload.

About the music, I wanted to add that I have compiled Harry source (delitracker plugin) but failed to make it work. No sound is outputted. The code emulates one pokey on 4 channels, I want to emulate 2 pokeys in 2-channel mode each, which would require to adapt the code, which looks very complete but not simple AT ALL.

So I think a better strategy will be to try to fix issues channel by channel with my emulation code, and make up for missing/wrong sfx by not playing them and playing samples instead.

Asking no9 to redo ALL the tunes and then hack the game to play them at the proper times would be huge and unrewarding work considering that all the logic works.

Apart from that the game is complete and I'm very glad of the result.

Wrong sounds can be related how You handled repeat part of samples. If in Protracker style, You must clear first 2 bytes for every sample. If in other style, You must play empty/null 2 bytes from chip memory as repeated part. Of course AudLen must be set to 1 too.

[jotd]

Wrong sounds can be related how You handled repeat part of samples. If in Protracker style, You must clear first 2 bytes for every sample. If in other style, You must play empty/null 2 bytes from chip memory as repeated part. Of course AudLen must be set to 1 too.

I'm using ptplayer mt_loopsfx and there are 2 zeroed bytes at start. I have quite some experience with sound (Amoric emulator sound was written without any library) and I know now that people who write libs are better than me at it. I have a positive experience with ptplayer since I'm redoing games. I even removed Supercars 2 audio system to replace it by ptplayer so I'm able to play music in-game.

The problem here is that I probably misinterpret pokey commands. Yesterday I reversed the audio system more. I may be able to work channel by channel on simpler songs, also check commands from vgm files.

Hi! Talking about this port with Estrayk, member of this forum and a classic of the demoscene, told me that the problem is that 2 pokeys are 8 channels (4+4)
And he understands that what you want to do is to trigger a full pokey and when he has to trigger sfx it will override one channel of the pokey and the sfx will play.
Yes, that will work even if it "cuts" the music, it would be a solution for this problem even if it is a little bit noticeable.

Actually 8 channels of detuned sound wasn't the point of Atari when they built this hardware. They put 2 pokeys so they can join channels and have 4 high-precision channels for music. They seem to use only 3, so it will leave 1 channel for SFX. I'm not saying that they're not using 8 bit mode at times for SFX to get temporarily more channels.

I think I'll "cheat" for SFX by using properly recorded samples from MAME like I'm usually doing for my other ports. I would have loved to be able to plug Harry pokey emulation but it's too complex and not a twin pokey emulation anyway. I'm not recreating MAME, I'm recreating Tetris, so I'll hack into the code until it's right and that will be the end of it

Thanks for your interest everyone!

[Bren McGuire]

wow this is amazing! thank you so much jotd
one question i have that always bothered me about the arcade tetris is that sometimes the way the blocks move down "breaks them" visually like if the display was tearing do you think that can be fixed?

[jotd]

It is expected as the game uses only tiles, not sprites. So since the CPU is slow, draw occurs during refresh hence the tearing effect.

With a fast amiga this doesn't occur. On a slow machine, it could happen, unless I implement some double buffering.

[jotd]

New version on https://jotd666.itch.io/tetris1200

music is so much better now. Also highscore saving. Not far from finalized version.

[DanyPPC]

Originally Posted by jotd

New version on https://jotd666.itch.io/tetris1200

music is so much better now. Also highscore saving. Not far from finalized version.

Good

jotd, could you add the icons directly to your archive ?

[ransom1122]

Sound seems much better then before.

Being over dramatic here's some neg's.
...I do here some pops and high tones if a careful watch in my video and youll hear it. @1:34 to @1:37 you hear two sound pops

...When Shapes turn they flicker, slowing down the video you can ssee the shapes don't change with clear cut shape swaps

[ Show youtube player ]

Slowed down video playback screenshot on shape change




Positives.
...Sound is clear
...Sound is perfect when doing a 4 line Tetris

[Don_Adan]

Yes, now sounds good, even better than original for me. But i dont have perect ears. Then only problems mentioned by ransom1122 to fix.

BTW. Seems that jotd is very good musician too.

[ExiE]

Looks great.
I'm just sad we don't have classic Tetris from the NES on the Amiga. I think it's the most exciting to play...

[jotd]

thanks for the support everyone

Making the music right took me a week, started from an awful mess to something better, then working out the bugs. There may be still glitches, as the emulation isn't perfect and will never be. I'll see about the pops, though as they're annoying.

About the lines sfx, it's normal that it's perfect as it's a ... sample from MAME like the other sfx ! The 4th channel is reserved for SFX and I used samples to avoid fully emulating pokey all modes. I pulled this out by only emulating twin pokeys in 16 bit high precision frequencies, using triangle waveform (which is probably different from the original as well). I'm a musician, but hardly a composer. I can play songs by ear which is very helpful. There I just "tuned" the frequencies by using MAME with fixed pokey frequency which played and a test program on WinUAE at the same time, on various frequencies until I got the divider value right for each sample. I remember doing the same for the Oric emulator: I used my keyboard to find C tune and the required value for the amiga AUDPER, for several octaves, then all notes were correct.

The screen tearing could be improved too, not by double buffering which would mean twice as much memory copy but delayed screen refresh synced on copper interrupt. I'll try this.

Also for NES version I find it very poor graphically. Music is great & instruments are better than arcade, but would need complete rewrite as a .mod file. Better use an emulator for that ATM.

[franeti]

What a breakthrough in music! We are sure you'll be able to improve it for the final version.

Thank you very much for this great work.

Best wishes.

[Toni Galvez]

I would love the chance of a good sound mixer for people like me, with accelerated Amigas. I know is a big job to do 2 sound engines to choose (standard 020 or 040 multichannel mixer).

[jotd]

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

I would love the chance of a good sound mixer for people like me, with accelerated Amigas. I know is a big job to do 2 sound engines to choose (standard 020 or 040 multichannel mixer).

I do not understand this sound mixer choice? can you explain?


New version on itch. Almost complete, still missing drums in music, icons, but tearing should be minimal now with screen update on copper interrupt, and music glitches fixed. Played on A1200/020/vanilla config from floppy and it was fine.

[ransom1122]

I may be wrong but I tried it on Quickstart A4000 with some fastram, and I dont hear the sound pops nor see any gfx issues with shape swaps ingame and in a recording played at slow speed