Outrun AGA

[no9]

It is not useless for music. This music here is played on 8 virtual channels created solely by Audio Mixer 3.6 ( [ Show youtube player ]). It occupies two Paula DMA channels, leaving the other two free.


For the Outrun sounds, more careful planning and a sound management system are required to determine where to place each sample. I could imagine this setup: 3 DMA sound channels played in a standard way, plus 4 virtual channels played by the Audio Mixer on the fourth Paula channel. Then you can use 2 DMA channels for the music parts and instruments that need variable pitch, and 1 or 2 virtual channels for drum sounds. The same applies to sound effects. The Outrun engine sound requires variable pitch, so it can be placed on the remaining free DMA channel in the scenario I presented. All other one-shot sounds are not much of a hassle for the mixer. And as I noted before - all samples that are not played by Paula directly can be loaded to FAST RAM instead of CHIP.

It would also be worth considering using the Audio Mixer for chord parts instead of sampling every chord inversion. However, this would need to be verified to see if there is any benefit and if the quality is good enough. Not impossible though.

[Don_Adan]

From my point of view is useless for playing normal Amiga music.
Looks a few similar like SoundTracker 8V and Octalyzer limited mixing routines for me.
Or like Tax player used in demo.
Module must be created in very special way.
How many Amiga musicians can do this?
For now even created 3 voices Amiga module is problematic for many musicians.
Or conversion MIDI module for 4 voices (good quality and size) module.
If this port of Out Run can works on naked A1200, then must works wthout fast ram too.
If You have A1200 with 8 MB fast, You can sampling music.
Then no mixing for music is necessary.

[no9]

Oh, you phrase it differently this time. If by 'normal Amiga music' you mean a plain Protracker module, then yes - the mixer is too limted. I don't see the point in comparing it to Octalyzer and such, since they are very CPU expensive. And the sound quality of Octalyzer is just bad. (What is the 'Tax player'?)
There is a problem to solve and the solutions are proposed, not an open music competition, so who cares how many musicians can do this or that? 3 (or 2, or 1) channels modules are nothing special, unless you want them to sound equally good (or complex) as 4, 8, 32... channels mods and keep the file size reasonable. They are actually easier to do than a music which utilizes more voices played at the same time. And sure, since everything can be sampled then the whole hassle of stuffing Outrun music into a Protracker module and use only 2 or 3 channels is pointless. But since we discuss exactly that then it is not, apparently.

[IM76]

it is not that everything can be sampled, on amiga everything has to be sampled,since even synths made via software are not real synths.If that time at commodore they had put side by side for example ,a synthesizer like a SID with 3 channels at paula the story would be quite different. Regarding the mixer,it is a great thing but the main problem basically is that it has not been integrated into any existing software and therefore the circle of those who can use it is reduced to a few experienced musicians (this is absolutely not my case that I have recently returned to do something with protracker after 20 years of inactivity)

[no9]

Thank God, C= didn't include any SID or FM chips besides Paula...

The only issue with the mixer as an audio player is that there is no proper player engine that can interpret existing MOD/XM files in a way that plays DMA channels and virtual channels accordingly. If there were one, then there would be no difference from the composer’s point of view. Any editor that can export MOD/XM files is good to go. Virtual channels can play samples only at a fixed frequency, but guess what... trackers can do that too. Just load samples at the given frequency and that's it. There is nothing fancy about that. The only showstopper is that we don't have such a player yet.

[Don_Adan]

Originally Posted by no9

Oh, you phrase it differently this time. If by 'normal Amiga music' you mean a plain Protracker module, then yes - the mixer is too limted. I don't see the point in comparing it to Octalyzer and such, since they are very CPU expensive. And the sound quality of Octalyzer is just bad. (What is the 'Tax player'?)
There is a problem to solve and the solutions are proposed, not an open music competition, so who cares how many musicians can do this or that? 3 (or 2, or 1) channels modules are nothing special, unless you want them to sound equally good (or complex) as 4, 8, 32... channels mods and keep the file size reasonable. They are actually easier to do than a music which utilizes more voices played at the same time. And sure, since everything can be sampled then the whole hassle of stuffing Outrun music into a Protracker module and use only 2 or 3 channels is pointless. But since we discuss exactly that then it is not, apparently.

This mixer is too limited for all other good Amiga music formats, f.e Sonic Arranger, TFMX Pro, Richard Joseph Player.
Yes, I called "normal Amiga music" aka Protracker. Because other Amiga music formats are almost unused in 202x years in Amiga games. Maybe except Pretracker.
Tax player was used in Skizzo Demo 2.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

This routine is useless for playing music.Uses same volume and same period for mixed samples.Amiga music replays changed period/volume very often.Also changed/set repeat sample start/length.Even for some SFX this routine can be not good enough.For example, if game author want to use Fade effect for SFX or want to change speed of playing SFX (f.e Hurry Up effect).But for playing easy SFX is good.

While I (as author of the Audio Mixer) mostly agree using the mixer to play back music is difficult as it's not been directly designed to do this, I do want to point out that the most recent version of the Audio Mixer (3.6) does allow you to use 'plugins'. These plugins can (amongst other things) change the volume or pitch of individual samples played on the virtual channels, without affecting the other samples playing through the mixer on the same hardware voice. Several plugins (including volume & pitch change) are supplied and more can be created through the supplied API.

Obviously, because these plugin effects use the CPU to non-destructively change the played back sample data in real time they do take (much) more resources and are more limited than simply playing back a sample at a different period or volume directly through Paula. That said, the option does exist if you have the CPU time to spare.

For reference, on a Blizzard 1230MK IV with Fast RAM, changing either the pitch or volume of a single sample will take about 1,1% CPU time @22KHz playback (on top of the roughly 0,8% CPU time the mixer takes to play back four virtual channels @ 22KHz on such a system).

[no9]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

This mixer is too limited for all other good Amiga music formats, f.e Sonic Arranger, TFMX Pro, Richard Joseph Player.

I get it, you don't get it. Don't worry, it happens. At no point did I talk here about general-purpose players or a mixer that can prepare a milkshake for you. I tried it. It is bad. Believe me. But the whole point is that while it is limited, it has advantages that we can put to good use.


For example, there is nothing overly intricate about creating a drum track in a normal 4-channel module that is compatible with the Audio Mixer and can be easily redirected to one of its virtual channels and played along with the game sound effects. Thus, you can have a full 4-channel module and sound effects. It's CPU-efficient. Are there any more objections?

[saimon69]

The audio discussion above is one of the "gender of angels debate" that i meant before, though, and the topic is polarizing: from the "audio as good as the arcade" to "no music" (or cd track, is another possibility).

I personally was surprised on what was done with the music on the PC engine port and the built-in (wavetable) chip: might be crappy but give the IDEA of the arcade - and as long as you get the idea right all should be good

[ Show youtube player ]

[agermose]

Originally Posted by saimon69

There are already two in the works- yours and the arcade port - is just that sometimes the overzealousness and big expectation of the (non) paying audience frustrates me;

Yes I know, those were the same two ports I was referring to :-)
We’re working as fast as possible in our spare time to complete this.
What will go into it, is entirely up to us, suggestions/ideas from the audience are always welcome.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by pink^abyss

That's a lot. I guess you sampled each chord for each basenote then? I mean if there is a Dur chord you sampled each Dur chord separately for each note that its played on?

A decent workaround is having beside "dur" and "moll" chords (those german definitions make me chuckle, as in italian are kinda sus) a tenth chord C-E-G-C+ that seems to cover most of the middle cases but then someone will say that does not sound EXACTLY right to him

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by malko

something related was mentioned but I don't know if it has been done : https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p...1&postcount=52

Ironically the thread above is where the Outrun STE rework was unveiled

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Don_Adan

This mixer is too limited for all other good Amiga music formats, f.e Sonic Arranger, TFMX Pro, Richard Joseph Player.
Yes, I called "normal Amiga music" aka Protracker. Because other Amiga music formats are almost unused in 202x years in Amiga games. Maybe except Pretracker.
Tax player was used in Skizzo Demo 2.

Let me remind you that TFMX seven channel was used mostly in game titles and credits, not in-game

[agermose]

Originally Posted by saimon69

But you leave ocs/ecs behind - and AGA is comfy, no: if you want high quality port do the impossible AND do what is done for AGA on ocs/ecs - if i have no right to ask for a port of the patch i even have less right for someone to break its back on the old chipset, even though THAT would be the miracle that is sought for

This thread is about the port of Outrun for AGA only.
From the beginning of the project an AGA architecture was chosen, and it cannot be “downgraded” to OCS. Some gfx could be repurposed for 16 colours, but most of the code and data would have to be rewritten/simplified.

I would also love for someone to make a new OCS version or improve the old US Gold version to a playable state. I don’t have the time to take it on.

[saimon69]

Agermose, I knew I was OT yesterday talking on OCS/ECS but got caught in bad mood for other things, so nothing is bad on your port - actually so far you did an excellent job, and even the arcade port is considerable!

[agermose]

Originally Posted by saimon69

Agermose, I knew I was OT yesterday talking on OCS/ECS but got caught in bad mood for other things, so nothing is bad on your port - actually so far you did an excellent job, and even the arcade port is considerable!

All good.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by Cris1997XX

If you really want a better Outrun for the Amiga 500, just take Lotus 1 or 2 or whatever and change the car graphics and music tracks

With all due respect, it's not that simple.

The "secret sauce" to the Lotus engine's speed and smoothness began with a hard limit of 16 on-screen colours and leveraging the copper to shift the palette while drawing the road. This permitted what was in effect "triple-buffering" - in other words the screen was being drawn two frames ahead and what the player was actually seeing was the previously completed frame being switched into the viewport. This also relied on hard-coded values for OCS/ECS chipset timing, which is why neither Lotus 1 nor 2 ran on AGA machines in their original form (and why Lotus 3 - which did - wasn't quite as smooth).

In terms of in-game visuals this also meant that Lotus's stages were somewhat static in terms of palette, which is why the different scenarios had to be loaded from disk for each stage.

Don't get me wrong, I did look pretty hard into the notion - but the Lotus approach simply wouldn't work in terms of attempting an OutRun conversion.

[TuRRIcaNEd]

Originally Posted by no9

The only issue with the mixer as an audio player is that there is no proper player engine that can interpret existing MOD/XM files in a way that plays DMA channels and virtual channels accordingly.

Technically, there's DeliPlayer - alas I can't get it to work reliably on anything later than WinXP...

[Seiya]

if from some pages you speak about music, the game is 100% finished (a part music)?

[no9]

The audio topic should be moved to another thread since it is mostly unrelated to the game presented here, but rather pertains to general principles that can enhance the audio experience on the low-spec Amigas.