[Smarty]

Hi everyone! It's been a year, time for a new release.

Straight from the documentation:

The C012294 chip - also known as POKEY - was developed by Atari in the late seventies for their first line of Atari 8-bit home computers. It has also been used for a number of arcade hall machines through the early eighties. The chip took care of keyboard interfacing, serial port input and output, hardware IRQs, the paddle controls and random number generation. It is however better known for it's sound playback. POKEY's name is derived from POtentiometers and KEYboard.

GMPokey is a port for a library that emulates POKEY's sound output. This package is meant to bring 'retro' sound to your games, reminiscent of 8-bit home computers and game consoles. Of course similar effects can be obtained through the use of samples, but GMPokey has the added advantage that you have full control over the audio registers, allowing you to make in-game adjustments to the sound output. You can also save GMPokey output!

GMPokey does not play samples in the traditional sense - it produces (variations on) square wave output. The sound output can be rather crude, and creating interesting effects or even music may take time and experimentation.

Works in and , but the demo is only.

This extension does not work on Windows 98 and ME.

UPDATE: New version available that allows saving wave file output.

Download GMPokey 1.1 (214 Kb)

And let ye olde days revive...

This post has been edited by Smarty: 02 March 2007 - 12:57 AM

[sn0wb0arder381]

I had alot of fun playing around with the piano. The sound effects sounded just like the ones from the old consoles. Great job
-snow

[-0NL1N3-]

I liked the "Zoom!" sound and the piano Another great piece of work!

Thanks,
-0NL1N3-

[smaksak]

very cool!
I liked the explosion sound, the piano and the zooming sound most
I had a fun time playing around with your demo

EDIT: I did now realize how similair my post was to sn0wb0arder381's post and NL1N3-'s post. Sorry, didn't read them before i posted

-Isak

This post has been edited by smaksak: 06 June 2006 - 10:19 PM

[Mousier Goatee]

This is pretty good!
I enjoyed going through your example- some great sounds in there!

Nice job- very useful!

-Mousier Goatee

[I-code]

very cool !

[emwearz]

I thought that was really really awsome, great for those making retro games, great work Smarty.

[agj32mrgibbits]

This is cool. I kept making it sound like I was playing Excitebike2d.

[havoc]

That's some neat stuff. Is there a way it can be 3D directional sound ?

[Fox-NL]

In the readme.rtf file you can see this example:

Quote

gmpokey_init(44010,2,2048,8);

The parameters are: gmpokey_init(mixrate, pokeys, [updatemode, [buffersize, [buffercount]]])

first parameter: mixrate 44010 (right i think)
second parameter: pokeys 2 (right i think, stereo output)
third paramater: updatemode 2048 (wtf?!?!)
fourth paramater: buffersize 8 (lol)
fifth parameter: not there...

Is it me or is this wrong?

This post has been edited by Fox-NL: 07 June 2006 - 08:43 AM

[Smarty]

Thanks for the positive comments, everyone! Judging from your reactions I might as well have made the piano a Creation of it's own... It was only intended to showcase!

havoc said:

Is there a way it can be 3D directional sound ?

Theoretically, yes. But the sound chip has a rather coarse volume range - there are only sixteen levels (0-15). You can already hear this quite distinctly when using panning. As directional sound is based on panning and value, the volume range is just not large enough to be able to place the sound in a 3D environment.

Together with panning and volume, you could try and make a directional sound yourself of course. But based on your method either the sound fades away quickly, or you will not be able to hear a difference between certain distances.

And anyway, using directional sound with an 80s square wave chip... I think we would be pushing it.

Edit: didn't see your response, Fox-NL.

Quote

In the readme.rtf file you can see this example:

Quote

gmpokey_init(44010,2,2048,8);

The parameters are: gmpokey_init(mixrate, pokeys, [updatemode, [buffersize, [buffercount]]])

You're absolutely right, the example has a typo there. Behind the 2 there should be an indication for the auto-update. I'll fix that later on.

Glad to see someone is reading the manual.

This post has been edited by Smarty: 07 June 2006 - 08:52 AM

[coolsmile]

This is awesome!!! Sweet sounds, the synthesizer was awesome

[Jack Meroc]

LOL, really nice.

[FredFredrickson]

I enjoyed playing around with it... I'm not even into retro game creation much, but this made me feel like making something I could use it with. Brought back some nostalgia of my 8-bit gaming days. Excellent work!

[Simpson_Software]

Awesome! I thought you might've been fooling us with real sounds so it just plays a sound but it wasn't, lol. Very nice work! I was also wondering if you know a of old school tune website? Cause I saw a friend at school with some cracks and they had the best tunes! What tunes/software would they use to make that sort of sound?

Cheers,
Simpson_Software

[DefuzionGames]

is it ok to use this as part of ones program?
crdeit required?
liike the piano

[Smarty]

Thanks again everyone for the positive comments.

FredFredrickson, on Jun 8 2006, 05:46 AM, said:

I enjoyed playing around with it...  I'm not even into retro game creation much, but this made me feel like making something I could use it with.  Brought back some nostalgia of my 8-bit gaming days.  Excellent work!
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I did hope it would bring some inspiration. But you're a 3D man and this definitely cries for 2D pixelated thingies.

Simpson_Software, on Jun 8 2006, 09:09 AM, said:

Awesome! I thought you might've been fooling us with real sounds so it just plays a sound but it wasn't, lol.

Nah. The GM6 source would have been MUCH bigger if it was.

Quote

I was also wondering if you know a of old school tune website? Cause I saw a friend at school with some cracks and they had the best tunes!

This is a great one for the C-64: http://remix.kwed.org. The SID files are the actual C-64 originals, which can be played through Winamp using the SidAmp plugin - but these days I think you'd prefer the remixed MP3 versions.

Quote

What tunes/software would they use to make that sort of sound?

Not sure what they use, but I would personally recommend using a program such as Modplug Tracker. Load a few square, saw and sine wave samples into it and you're ready to go.

For the POKEY chip emulated here there is actually a Windows Tracker, but it looks rather DOS-like and cannot export into any regular sound formats. Still, it's nice to hear what the chip can do. See here.

DefuzionGames, on Jun 8 2006, 03:28 PM, said:

is it ok to use this as part of ones program?
crdeit required?<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Information on this is in the documentation. But I wouldn't post it here if you couldn't use it, would I?

A last question to anyone who used it - the Sound Effects demo has an effect called Transposition. There is a song in there for which I remembered the notes, but I have no clue where the actual melody comes from. Does anyone have an idea?

Edit: Typo in manual fixed in download.

This post has been edited by Smarty: 08 June 2006 - 10:34 PM

[Alex]

Can i just ask, how does this 8bit sound actually work? (in your example)

Is the length of the entire sound a max of 8 bits (looping)
Or is 8bit the range of the frequency?

Because when you think about it, 8bit wavs are pretty high quality (almost mp3 quality), but the 8bit in 8bit wav is refering to the number of frequencies.

So im assuming that perhaps the 8 bit frefers to the harmonics?

Heres a diagram of range:


Is that what you mean?

This post has been edited by /\lex: 10 June 2006 - 12:17 PM

[ragarnak]

/\lex, on Jun 10 2006, 01:19 PM, said:

So im assuming that perhaps the 8 bit frefers to the harmonics?<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

8-bit stands for the 256 different amplitudes (or output-voltage levels) you can generate (just like you've shown in your diagram).

Hope that clarifies it.

[Alex]

yeah but how does the sound that this engine output differ to a traditional 8bit wav? Because the difference in detail is fairly large. Im guessing perhaps the frequency of the sound is very low?

This post has been edited by /\lex: 10 June 2006 - 12:56 PM