SoundTracker for ZX81 ?

[Moggy]

FECKING SUPERB:D

Keep at it Andy we're all loving this.


Regards.

Moggy

[1024MAK]

What can I say, I'm gobsmacked

Well done Andy, keep at it

Mark

[sirmorris]

Yes. Quite good.

Charlie

[Andy Rea]

You lot wanna play with the Beta version ?

I thought as much....

so first a few links to the best instructions i could find to the original spectrum version..
part 1: http://www.debraclayton.webspace.virgin ... inst-1.pdf
part 2: http://www.debraclayton.webspace.virgin ... inst-2.pdf
part 3: http://www.debraclayton.webspace.virgin ... inst-3.pdf

Many Many Thanks to Gasman (Mathew Westcott for writting this a good few years ago now)

and then of course you'll be wanting the files...

in a zip with a few song (.SNG) files that you can load and play with. right it's written mostly in ASM, but drops into basic to do the load and saving on ZXpand, this will be streamlined with the helps of Sirmorris at a future date hopefully, but as it is it's useable. you must set ram high, ' CONFIG "M=H" ' and set ramtop to 28282 ' CONFIG "R=28282" ' or POKE 16388,122 : POKE 16389,110 : NEW for none ZXpand users, before loading.

mostly navigating the menus is with ' U & O, left & right and I & K, up & down ' and you select with NEWLINE. switch menus with SHIFT NEWLINE, from the either menu you can quit with SHIFT Q, you can start again by typing GOTO 5. from the first menu you can switch to the editor with SHIFT E and back to the menu's with SHIFT E again, whilst in the editor SHIFT I & SHIFT K take you to the next and previous patterns without having to leave the editor.

Forgot to mention when playing song or pattern key A,B,C mute/unmute channels and I/K speed up and slow down playback.

When you do a load or save, you can STOP at the input do a cat find your file name and then CONT.

DON'T type RUN.... either CONT or GOTO 5
+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+_+*+

um file extensions used are...

.SNG complete song file loads at 28282, length 20865
.SMS all 15 samples file loads at 46138, length 1950
.ORS all 15 ornaments file loads at 48633, length 480
.SAM single sample file loads at 46008 + (130 * sample number), were sample number is 1 to 15, length 130
.ORN single ornament loads at 48601 + (32 * ornament number), were ornament number is 1 to 15, length 32

for our German friends a couple of handy pokes...
writting data to the AY-chip is done with ' OUT (c),a ' instruction the b register is always $ff

you can poke 17564,register select port number
and poke 17568,data port number

if you look at the basic you should be able to work out how to change the load/saves for mefidos (hopefully)


Have fun, suggestions and feed back welcome, i know there is a good bit of tidying up to, and also implement sound when in the editor like in spectrum version, also maybe add a copy text from-too but i'm not so sure how useful that is.

Regards Andy

zxstbeta.zip

[siggi]

You lot wanna play with the Beta version ?

Yes, after I have soldered Sascha's "MrX" sound boards, which arrived today ..

Thanks for that great work!

Siggi

[Moggy]

Andy just got My hands on this and at first crack I have to say what a piece of work, 2020 came early

the screen layout is simple and intuitive controls easy to use (now that I have found the "s" for stop key!)
I notice the format SNG is a lot bigger than say PT3 , 20k as opposed to 5-7k does this format contain extra information? (samples ornaments etc)

Fantastic beta release Andy more than usable, nice one Mate


Regards.
Moggy

[Andy Rea]

oh urm yeah 'S' to stop it playing...

.SNG is the raw tracker file, a Compiler will follow that will spit out .STC files that are usually smaller than .PT3 for the same song, and the player code is much quicker (about 40% quicker), so er for the moment you'll only be able to use the tracker to play back your master piece.

keep you eyes open, i'm going as fast as i can, just putting the logic down on paper for the compiler now, i know what i'm supposed to end up with given any song data but with limited memory it looks like i'm going to have to start overwritting the raw data with the compilied data,

Regards Andy

P.s <geek mode> i've shaved about 80 bytes in the soundtracker by replacing a few occurences of very similar code with a more generic sub <.geek mode>

[Moggy]

Thanks Andy really grateful for all Your hard work.

Regards.
Moggy

[sirmorris]

<claps loudly> great stuff Andy!

Let me know what you need from me and I'll set to.

C

[Moggy]

Hi Andy.

You asked for feedback etc.

After much figuring out what does what, the only thing I can find "musically" wrong with this fantastic creation as opposed to technically wrong (of which I'm not qualified to speak ) is the pattern length editor.

If I wanted to create say patterns consisting of eight "bars" then the length should be set at seven (0-7=8 bars). As per the Spectrum tracker, as it stands the Zeddie tracker fixes the pattern length at sixty four bars and the length counter is merely indicating how many different patterns are in the whole composition. So set it at one and all that will play is sixty four bars of pattern one set it at two it plays sixty four bars of pattern one then sixty four bars of pattern two.
This is important because if there are eight notes only in a given pattern then a change to pattern two what will happen is that the tracker will play the first eight notes of pattern one then 56 notes of silence before changing to pattern two. Pattern length has to be set at the start.

If I am doing something wrong or this is due to it being in the beta stage then apologies Andy but no matter how I mess with it the length editor only denotes how many of the compositions patterns will sound and each one is sixty four bars long which is incorrect .

sorry for being long winded but this is worth it.


Regards.
Moggy.