Tricky question… I would say if you are looking for a fun game to play go for Blox. If you are looking for a collectors item you play once in a while go for SD Gundam Demension War.
If patient enough I would suggest to wait for either Faceball or SpaceSquash.
thunderstruck wrote:
Also… the first price is just the reproduction right? So I would have to publish everything open source only so that someone else can sell it? Will the winner at least get one of those reproductions for free?
The winner will receive all 20 copies for free and can do with them whatever he wants. Sell them, give them for free to the other contestants, make them prizes for sweepstakes… or even keep them all for himself if he wishes. 😉
thunderstruck wrote:
How does submitting a supporting tool even make sense if the first price is a reproduction of a vb game?
In the unlikely event that a tool wins, we’ll have to find another solution. The winner could choose another game to be produced for example.
Ok, I got that all wrong. That’s actually pretty cool.
Also… the first price is just the reproduction right? So I would have to publish everything open source only so that someone else can sell it? Will the winner at least get one of those reproductions for free?
Mr.Anon wrote:
The main reason for the emu check was to force you to test the game on real hardware and report bugs if you find any. There were no complaints, so I assume it’s working as it should. In future versions there won’t be any emu checks anymore.
The only thing I noticed is that if you are standing really close to your opponent he won’t be able to hit you. All of his punches go right though you. The AI is smart enough to notice this and makes a jump back after a while.
Not all android phones can be operated as an USB host. Some of the Samsung phones can do it. On one of those devices it might be possible. I did quite allot android development but never tried this out.
VirtualChris wrote:
I don’t know if I should continue with this in the light of the Hyper Fighting game.
Even though Insect Combat is a fighting game as well I consider it a different type of game. Hyper Fighting is a classic Beat ’em up while Insect Combat has a unique touch through the whole insect theme. Just due to that I would not compare them.
I understand that is kind of not motivating to see someone else deliver such a high quality game as it shows your own work in a different light. I feel the same with all the work I’ve done on my sound engine.
However, it shouldn’t matter. Homebrew is not a competition. I’m doing all of this because it is a fun hobby. What someone else releases doesn’t change that. If you enjoy making this game keep on doing it.
Holly shit. Now this I call commercial quality. Like … seriously… how are you doing this?
The music sounds exactly like the original and is superior to everything I ever did. The backgrounds look perfect. Just perfect. The animations are super fluent. I lost a couple of times just because I couldn’t stop looking at the backgrounds/fighters. And then there are the voices… You can clearly understand every single word. There is no delay in the game when they are played and there are allot of voices being played. And there is absolutely not static at all while the voices are played.
Sorry that I have to ask, but will you share some of your secrets (maybe when the game is done)?
DaVince wrote:
There’s two routes I think you can go here regarding interpreting MIDI and instrumentation, by the way:
One route:
– Use the pattern the NSF to MIDI exporter uses. By which I mean MIDI channel 1-5 always translates to square, square, triangle, noise, sample in your player.
Upside is that NES MIDIs would always export and sound great. The MIDI instrument isn’t checked at all in this case, just the channel that notes are on, so it’s relatively easy to set up.
Main downside would be that a lot of existing MIDIs wouldn’t work unless they’re simple. (I suppose all classical piano MIDIs would work.) People making music for their game would also make their MIDI according to these rules. Another downside is that you can’t make more kinds of sounds than just the above five (unless you code your player to interpret channels after channel 5 as other sounds).
The other route:
– Interpret the MIDI instruments that MIDI channels use. Is something set up to sound like a piano? Generate a piano-like tone. Is it set up to use the square wave? Use that.
Upside is that a lot of existing MIDIs could be imported without issue straight away (while usually losing a lot of channels due to VB limitations, of course). Also, making the MIDIs themselves is easier and the song composer gets a lot more freedom in how it should sound.
Downsides are that it will take a lot of time and trial and error to generate 128 distinct sounds for the 128 possible MIDI instruments. There’s also the matter of how exactly you’re going to assign the available VB sound channels properly. And you would also have to edit your NSF-exported MIDIs so channel 3 is set up properly (instrument 82, titled “lead 2”, would perhaps be a smart choice).
Right now I have the second option already implemented in a simple way. Meaning I have waveforms for 6 (I think) different instruments which I can freely assign to each vb channel. The converter checks what is set in the midi and then set the respective waveform. The UI of course allows you to change the waveform to whatever you want as well.
Converting a nsf file to a VB format actually needs one more step. What I do is I convert the nsf to a midi file, then convert the midi file to a differently formated midi file and then convert it to the vb format (nsf->midi->midi->vb). That’s because the nsf converter spits out a midi that is not compatible to my midi library. So I can just change the instruments accordingly while I’m doing the conversion.
The white noise is not implemented right now though. I will have to do something special here as I don’t need to switch the waveform but to use the noise channel in that case.
DaVince wrote:
No, unfortunately, I can’t test it on hardware… I’m basically a VB fan without a VB. ^^’
I’m sure the NSF->MIDI conversion has some kind of standard in what instrument channels it picks. Perhaps you could base it off that? I suppose if you’re having trouble differentiating the sound of specific tones though, that might be very difficult indeed. Perhaps I can help determine what type of tone what instrument should be if you share the MIDIs you’re using?
It seems to either pick squares or piano as an instrument. I just checked some of the NES specs. I might be wrong but for me it sounds like you can only choose between square and triangle waveforms or use the noise channel.
I attached the nsf file as well as the midi I used for the Zelda track. I might have some free time on the weekend to try out some of your suggestions.
DaVince wrote:
Oh, okay. I was wondering since the NES Zelda music uses some sine waves for its bass tones (that channel that goes up an entire octave like C1-G1-C2 in the intro theme, for example). But in your example that instrument plays as a square wave indeed. Compare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg I also think the main melody is done with a triangle wave? Or perhaps a mix of triangle and square wave, since that melody is playing on two channels, after all.
It also has to be noted that that main tune uses one of those tiny white noise bits for its percussion! So now you’ve got a nice reference of what a hi-hat approximately should sound like.
I also suggest you just keep the original tunes handy in case you want to do a quick comparison. 😉
Edit: I suppose another observation here is that in Mednafen your tune is a bit too slow compared to the original one! Is this because of the input MIDI or is something going on with how the timing is read?
What I do is I take a nsf file and convert it into a midi file. I use a program from someone else for that as you basically need a NES emulator to read those files. The result does not contain the proper instruments anymore though. So I can only guess what was originally used.
My converter allows me to play the Midi as well as the converted VB track with the click of a button. However, it is really hard for me to compare music. I never played an instrument (other then then my GuitarHero guitar).
I’m not sure about the timing. Maybe there is something lost in the nsf->midi->vb conversion. Maybe my player is not accurate enough. Maybe it is just mednafen. Did you try it on hardware?
DaVince wrote:
White noise is actually used a LOT in old consoles for percussion, especially on the Game Boy. It usually consists of short bursts of white noise, accompanied by a quick fade. You can generate white noise with the noise channel; any random noise that channel makes will do fine. If you can set a noise frequency, even better (to distinguish between lower and higher percussion-type sounds).
Attached are some WAV samples of NES and Gameboy white noise percussion. Perhaps they can help.
Also included: a Kick and Tom sound which are actually constructed of square waves that lower their notes and fade out quickly. This also creates percussion-like sounds.
Speaking of using other noises… Have you experimented trying to give different MIDI instruments different sounds? I’d imagine that setting a MIDI channel to bass and then having an appropriate bass-like sound coming from the player could work really well for the general sound.
Never used the noise channel on the VB but I will definitely try it out. Thanks for all the samples.
I actually use different waveforms for different instruments. The music in the sample uses squares for everything though. It is really hard for me to compare the original music and my results.
DaVince wrote:
Returned to the forums for a bit only to find this! Impressive work, great job so far! (Especially since I hear from some people how annoying MIDI files are constructed. :P)
I’m noticing the notes are (almost?) always an entire octave too high. This seems to go for all instruments, so the Zelda and SMB3 tunes all sound much too high-pitched.
As for the percussion, it might be a good idea to convert those into white noise percussion. Currently the percussion track seems to play regular notes, instead.
Thank you. Those comments are more then welcome. I was thinking about adding an octave fix again. Ben told me that the music might be an octave off before. Not sure how to do a white noise percussion. Would that be a different kind of waveform? How should that one look like?
Benjamin Stevens wrote:
The thing about Mario games is that all of them are fun and enjoyable to some extent, so even if you rank them and have to put some at the bottom of the list, the ones at the bottom can still be considered fun and enjoyable, just not as much as the rest. After looking at the list of all Mario games, I really have no idea of which ones would be at the bottom. The ones that would interest me the least would be the educational titles made for small children, but it wouldn’t be fair to call them bad games on account of the different target audience.
I find it more surprising that Mario Tennis is on this list rather then the Mario Tennis Open for the 3DS. If you don’t look at the shortcomings of the Virtual Boy Mario Tennis is a solid tennis game and shows of the 3D effect pretty nicely. After that the series evolved and got much better. Mario Tennis Open however was a huge step back. They boiled it down to a very basic Tennis game again. Much worse is that the game offers no challenge whatsoever. If you know how to react to the moves of your opponents you can use one strategy to easily win every single match. I haven’t been that disappointed by a Mario game in ages.
