Amiga Games - Sound design & Audio production discussion

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag

i also experimented with chords made up in whole-number ratios, so you can get perfect-looping samples created from short waveforms in about 1k each, although i never tried actually using it in music, it was just a quick and dirty test. One of these days i'll get round to trying it...

Sounds interesting, I'd be more than happy to be a tester

Originally Posted by Akira

Spend some time with an Ensoniq Mirage, where you can't even see the wave (just hex numbers), and you'll master the art of looping . I still need more time with mine, but basically, it's really hard. But you can sample properly to compensate, too. So it helps if the source material is of your own creation.

Sounds life witchcraft to me hehe, so it's a synth with a built in sampler? I seem to remember a friend using something similar, always scared me because I was hopeless at playing live.

[Toni Galvez]

Hi guys, I find this thread very interesting, I want to talk about my experiences with the sound of Amiga.

First of all, I want to say, there are most wonderful games in Amiga that sounds MUSIC+SFX. Turrican saga, Soccer Kid, Xenon, Alien Syndrome, Arabian Nights, Mr Nutz, Apidya, Lethat Xcess, Uridium 2... and many more.

Some time ago, we made, 2 games for MSX computers:

[ Show youtube player ] and [ Show youtube player ] (yes, with the Graftgold and Hewson agreement)

I made the graphics and SFX for this games, using this tool:

[ Show youtube player ] by Shiru.

This tool allous to make, visually and easily, the same as most 80s and 90s developers do by coding in ASM for 8bit computers. It can change the volume and tone each Vblank frame.

If you try to do a game for Amiga and you want to use a lot of different SFX as a single complete samples, you will spend a lot of memory, that is why some games have not too much different SFX.

But, you know? this is not new, the Amiga games I mention use the same way that AYFX and 8bit games do, they reproduce and small looping sample and change the pitch and volume each vblank frame, Turrican saga and David Whittaker do in the 80s, games for 512k memory, with MUSIC+SFX at once with lots of different SFX.

Maybe someone can code a tool like AYFX for Amiga, can be the same, with the extra of choose between some looping small samples. And, we can make our wide variety of SFX with smalll memory expense.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Toni Galvez

But, you know? this is not new, the Amiga games I mention use the same way that AYFX and 8bit games do, they reproduce and small looping sample and change the pitch and volume each vblank frame, Turrican saga and David Whittaker do in the 80s, games for 512k memory, with MUSIC+SFX at once with lots of different SFX.

Maybe someone can code a tool like AYFX for Amiga, can be the same, with the extra of choose between some looping small samples. And, we can make our wide variety of SFX with smalll memory expense.

Mr Beanbag's sound effects also work this way, and my AMOS Protracker extension also includes the code for this. So this is written already.

[FromWithin]

If you go to this thread:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=23347

You can download the source code for my sound effects players that I wrote at Psygnosis. The main ones were used on Brian The Lion, Wiz'n'Liz, and Last Action Hero.

It works like a single channel tracker and can play/switch samples and manipulate pitch and volume over time just like you're asking. There's no GUI, but it's pretty easy to add sounds in there and is a lot more flexible than the program you linked.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by FromWithin

If you go to this thread:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=23347

You can download the source code for my sound effects players that I wrote at Psygnosis. The main ones were used on Brian The Lion, Wiz'n'Liz, and Last Action Hero.

It works like a single channel tracker and can play/switch samples and manipulate pitch and volume over time just like you're asking. There's no GUI, but it's pretty easy to add sounds in there and is a lot more flexible than the program you linked.

I`m curious, when those games were being developed, at what stage was the sound design factored in? Were they ideas you had already been experimenting with?

[FromWithin]

Originally Posted by lordofchaos

I'm curious, when those games were being developed, at what stage was the sound design factored in? Were they ideas you had already been experimenting with?

I wrote the FX player originally for Wiz'n'Liz. Rik Ede had done the music and sound effects, but he'd just sampled the sound effects from the original Megadrive version. They took up too much RAM to fit in the game and sounded like arse so I wrote the FX player to solve that. The Megadrive one had been finished and released a while before that point, so it was just a case of creating sounds that were equivalent to the Megadrive version. I then started on the music for the SNES version of the game, but it got canned.

Last Action Hero music was started pretty early. We had info about the film from Sony quite a while before it was released. The game was originally meant to be an in-house-developed game for the MegaCD. That got canned leaving me to do the music only on the Amiga version that I put far too much effort into considering how the game ended up. I probably spent about 6 weeks on it. For the sound effects it was just a case of sampling any old punch noises I could get from various films. I think they probably sent me a list of things that they wanted but I didn't spend much time on them.

Brian The Lion was done reasonably late on. Rik had done the music and I used my player again for the sound effects. Reflections sent me a list of sounds for each level. I don't think I even saw most of the levels so didn't see what the sounds were being applied to for the most part. I wish I could go back in time and replace that awful jump noise.

[turrican3]

I think about the game "awesome" from psygnosis, really good soundtrack.
[ Show youtube player ]

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by FromWithin

I wrote the FX player originally for Wiz'n'Liz. Rik Ede had done the music and sound effects, but he'd just sampled the sound effects from the original MegaCD version. They took up too much RAM to fit in the game and sounded like arse so I wrote the FX player to solve that. The MegaCD one had been finished and released a while before that point, so it was just a case of creating sounds that were equivalent to the MegaCD version. I then started on the music for the SNES version of the game, but it got canned.

Interesting tidbits of information! Thanks for sharing.

Have you ever been interviewed by CodeTapper? You should ping him so he does, I am sure you and him would have a very fruitful exchange for our reading pleasure.

[lordofchaos]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Interesting tidbits of information! Thanks for sharing.

Have you ever been interviewed by CodeTapper? You should ping him so he does, I am sure you and him would have a very fruitful exchange for our reading pleasure.

+1

[s2325]

new Tim Wright interview [ Show youtube player ]

[lordofchaos]

Nice find, this makes for very interesting listening