AM/FM: Amiga Musicians' Freeware Magazine 11

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Text File | 1992-11-07 | 12.4 KB | 276 lines

-=* PRORUNNER Version 1.0 *=- ------------------------------------------------- * THE ULTIMATE PROTRACKER-REPLAYER * CODED BY COSMOS OF SANITY ------------------------- MAINFILE-MUSIC BY MICROFORCE OF SANITY * USE CURSOR-KEYS TO SCROLL UP/DOWN * PRESS RETURN TO EXIT TO SAVEMENU * 1. NOTE: -------- To understand all factors of PRORUNNER perfectly,it is necessary to read this DOC-file .So if you want to copy the source-text of PRORUNNER on your pack or compilation or whatever,then please copy the Mainfile on your disk, because it also contains this documentary. 2. WHY I WROTE PRORUNNER ------------------------ To tell you the reason of my work,I shall have to take you with me a long way in time: To the beginning of my career as an AMIGA-demo-coder ! At that time a great soundtool made his way through the AMIGA-scene: THE SOUNDTRACKER ( Version 2.2 ,I think ). I was fascinated by that great music you were able to compose and decided to get the replayer-routine in order to include some funky tunes in my demos.To my own surprise I even got several replayers,all of them complaining to replay modules from SOUNDTRACKER V2.2 !! But I was never satisfied with the replay-routine I built in. Most of them were too slow and the rest was a bit faster,but made some mistakes, which you could easily hear. It seemed to me,that a fast replayer outcluded a correct replay. As a demo-coder I first wanted to use one of the fast replayers to gain some rastertime,but the result was,that the music sounded terribly.Moreover I recognized the disappointment,which the musician showed,because he had a lot of work with his tune and this work seemed to be minimated by a wrong replay. And that was finally the reason, why I used the slowest ( and most correct ) replayer ! Later versions of SOUNDTRACKER came up with the same problem and even the first version of NOISETRACKER couldn't solve it. It still took some time, until NOISETRACKER V2.0 appeared, which was in my eyes a highlight for every coder because of its very fast 8-rasterlines-replayer ! Some other tools came up like : NOISEPACKER V1.0 - V3.0 , NOISERUNNER and some other replayers from several guys . NOISETRACKER V2.0 dominated the demo-scene for a long time as suddenly a new,greater,more powerful soundtool showed up: PROTRACKER V1.0 !! Much more comfortable and with new effects this tool persuaded ( nearly ) every musician. But PROTRACKER V1.0 and later versions ( V1.0A - V2.2a ) had a 'The minimum are 56 frames' - replay-routine,if you know,what I mean. Soon some rumours went around about a '10-rasterlines-PROTRACKER-replayer', but that rumours never turned out to be true and so the scene had to wait... After a long time AZATOTH of PHENOMENA wrote a PROPACKER,which was able to shorten the module,replay most of the PROTRACKER-effects and the replay was mostly done in less than 9 rasterlines. It seemed to be musicians' and coders' heaven as this great tool was released. But it wasn't !!! In fact some coders intended to include a soundfading-routine in the PROPACKER-replayer,but they failed,because the replayer was coded too complicated,so that only AZATOTH would have been able to code a soundfading- routine. Another problem was,that PROPACKER seemed to have some problems to convert some PROTRACKER-modules ( e.g. SILENT ATTACK,MYSTIKAL!-VIBES etc. ). Moreover PROPACKER made some mistakes in replaying TONE PORTAMENTO ( I'll explain that later ) and some important effects were missing as many musicians have discovered FUNK REPEAT to let the chip-tunes appear more synthetic . And to name the last point : In the case you are coding a demo and you have tested it for 2000 times and you were listening to that same song 2000 times,it could be,that this song is a bit boring after 2000 times. But you are coding at the moment and a new PROPACKER-module means : 1. Quit Assembler 2. Load PROPACKER ( with the exact parameters,otherwise you can type the whole line again ) 3. Load Assembler again 4. Load Sourcetext So loading in a new song very often turned out to be a long procedure. And for me , the owner of a 105MB Harddisk, 1 MB Chipmem and 2MB Fastmem is it more comfortable just to type in another modulename in order to load another PROTRACKER-module. And remembering the good old times ( SOUNDTRACKER V2.2 ) I didn't want to wait again until a new replay-routine appears and so I tried to code a replayer for the PROTRACKER,which is very fast,plays all effects and corrects all mistakes done by PROPACKER. I hope I didn't fail ..... 3. WHY USING PRORUNNER ? ------------------------ Well,I think,the first advantage is,that PRORUNNER really handles ALL effects,which you are allowed to use in PROTRACKER V2.2a. I don't want to mention them,because they are listed up at the beginning of the source- text. To explain you the second advantage I have to tell you the situation. Imagine yourself a channel looking like this: C-2 1000 ; No Effekt 0301 ; TONE PORTAMENTO 0301 ; TONE PORTAMENTO As you can see,the replayer first has to play sample no.1 with the note C-2. After that he finds neither a note nor a samplenumber,but he shall play TONE PORTAMENTO. And so do most of the replayers,but they do wrong !!! Because at the last time,when they played a sample,TONE PORTAMENTO wasn't included,every following TONE PORTAMENTO ( without any note ) mustn't be played. And that's a fact PRORUNNER pays attention on. I admit,that was a very special situation,but if such a situation appears, you have to replay it as correctly as other situations. I tested PRORUNNER with lots of modules ( all modules I had on my harddisk ) and some special- written modules to confrontate the replayer with abnormal situations ( e.g. several loops ( one in another ) on several channels ) and I hope, that I have removed all bugs now, but who knows ? The third advantage is ( in my eyes ),that PRORUNNER replays NORMAL PROTRACKER-MODULES. That means: If you are coding and you want to listen to another music,then you just have to type in another modulename. NO COMPLICATED PROCEDURES TO PACK ANOTHER MODULE -> JUST ANOTHER MODULENAME !!! The fourth advantage is,that in the sourcetext of PRORUNNER a musicfade- routine is already implemented . I'll explain later how to handle it. The finally last advantage is the fact, that PRORUNNER is the first replayer, which is coded totally PC-relative ! That means,you can copy PRORUNNER freely through the whole memory,it will always play the music correctly ( At least I hope so. I tried it myself and it worked fine. And pay attention: If you copy PRORUNNER from $30000 to $80000 and you call the Init-Routine at $30000 and the Replay-Routine at $80000, then PRORUNNER obviously can't replay the music ). 4. HOW TO USE PRORUNNER ----------------------- I. Write the address of your module to the label 'pr_module'.To give you an example: move.l #moduleaddress,pr_module II. Write the number of the startposition to the label 'pr_startposition'. A short example: move.w #45,pr_startposition If the startposition is 0, you can of course leave that point.If the number of the startposition is too high, then it will be automatically set to 0 ! I just implemented this option as i saw some modules,which were 2 songs in 1.That means,they used the same instruments and the patterns of song 1 were followed by the patterns of song 2. To ease the coder's attempt to start the second song i implemented that option,maybe you can use it. III.After that you can call the subroutine 'pr_init'. I will later explain a bit more to the Init-routine. IV. Call the subroutine 'pr_music' once in every frame to replay the module. Please remark,that PRORUNNER can only replay the samples,when the DMA-Mainbit ( Bit No.9 ) is set and the Interrupts are allowed ( that's because PRORUNNER works with LEVEL 6-Interrupt ). V. To end the song,call the subroutine 'pr_end',which will close all music- channels. REMARK : The PRORUNNER Init-Routine converts the PROTRACKER-module in an own format and replaces the four letters 'M.K.' by 'SNT.' This converting will surely take some time,but it needs max. 1 second. As I know,that many of the coders read their datas ( gfx,music ) in MASTERSEKA or ASMOne with '>extern' once to thier addresses and assemble their code to another part of the memory,I built in the option,that PRORUNNER recognizes an already converted module ( signed by 'SNT.' ) and doesn't convert it again,so that these coders don't have to read in the whole external datas every time they assemble their code. 5. HOW TO USE THE MUSIC-FADE-ROUTINE ------------------------------------ This routine works with 2 labels: pr_musicfadect pr_musicfadedirection pr_musicfadect: It is the counter to fade the music.It runs from 0 to 64.Value at the beginning is 64. pr_musicfadedirection: This gives you the direction you want to fade your music to.Two Possibilities are sensible: 1 = Add 1 to pr_musicfadect in every frame -1 = Sub 1 from pr_musicfadect in every frame Higher values would fade the music away too fast.By the way: If the counter 'pr_musicfadect' reaches the values 0 or 64,then pr_musicfadedirection will be automatically set to 0 !! Anyway. Here are two examples for fading: a) Start of Demo: Fade Music in. ; Fadecounter is still 64 clr.w pr_musicfadect ; Set Fadecounter to 0 move.w #1,pr_musicfadedirection ; Fade Music in b) End of Demo : Fade Music out. ; Counter is still set on 64 move.w #-1,pr_musicfadedirection ; Fade Music out Easy,isn't it ? And the PRORUNNER-Musicfade-routine really fades all channels correctly, no matter, if a longer sample is played without any effects or if some volume-effects ( e.g. tremolo,volume-slide etc. ) are played. 6. HOW FAST IS PRORUNNER ? -------------------------- Well,it of course depends on the effects you are using. I tested it ( as mentioned above ) with lots of modules and I have to say,that PRORUNNER never needed more than 8 RASTERLINES,but many complicated effects together with FUNK REPEAT can surely push it up to 9 or even 10 RASTERLINES ( e.g. Using VIBRATO+VOLUME SLIDE together with FUNK REPEAT on all 4 channels could cost 10 RASTERLINES ). A problem in the replayer is the musicfade-routine,because it uses 4 MULUs, which surely take their rastertime.The problem is,that in most of the demos no fading of the music is needed. In that case you can remove the musicfade- routine to gain a bit more rastertime.Normally the source-text should look like this: . ; \ . ; \ . ; \ Header of . ; / PRORUNNER . ; / . ; / YES EQU 1 NO EQU 0 INCLUDEFADINGROUTINE EQU YES There you just have to change the last line in: INCLUDEFADINGROUTINE EQU NO The Assembler now assembles the PRORUNNER-routine automatically without the musicfade-routine and its labels 'pr_musicfadect' and 'pr_musicfade- direction'. Just some words to the speed of PRORUNNER: Some effects ( e.g. ARPEGGIO, GLISSANDO ) I speeded up a lot. The problem of ARPEGGIO and GLISSANDO was for the replayer,that it had to look through a periodtable until it found the value it searched for. That meant : Even PROPACKER ( which is really a fast replayer ) needed up to 19 RASTERLINES ,when you played ARPEGGIO on all channels. PRORUNNER indeed uses a shorter,but exact(!) method to play ARPEGGIO,so that ARPEGGIO on all channels ( without FUNKREPEAT ofcourse ) takes not more than 7 RASTERLINES ( 6 RASTERLINES, when you switch the musicfade-routine off ) !! 7. IMPORTANT ------------ As I tested PRORUNNER,I also took some older NOISETRACKER-modules, which have a bit different song-format from PROTRACKER-modules. I heard a little difference,because PRORUNNER calculated wrong startaddresses for the samples. I loaded PROTRACKER , read in the module and saved it again. And as I started PRORUNNER again,it replayed the module in a correct way. So if you want to replay old NOISETRACKER-modules, then you first have to save them under PROTRACKER. Otherwise it can be, that PRORUNNER makes trouble in replaying the module. 8. SOME LAST WORDS ------------------ Yep. Some last words have to be said. I hope, that for some guys out there I was able to solve the 'replayer-problem', that I was able to help you. In the case,that you've found a bug in the replayer or if you want to write or call me for any reason, here's my address and phonenumber: COSMOS of SANITY MARC HEYL ROBERT-KOCH-STRASSE 4 6650 HOMBURG-SAAR GERMANY TEL. 06841 / 65164 ****************************************************************************