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View topic - [Music competition 2018] Troublemaker by Supper

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  • Joined: 19 Oct 1999
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  • Location: London
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[Music competition 2018] Troublemaker by Supper
Post Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 11:11 am
When this year's competition was announced, I tossed around a few ideas for games I could make for the coding competition. I came up with something I wanted to do but couldn't decide whether to go through with it or not, so I decided that if I could come up with a title theme for it that I liked, I'd give it a go. So I wrote this, and... well, the game I'm working on is a bit too ambitious for me to have something presentable by the contest deadline, but I figured I could at least submit this for the music competition.

This VGM wasn't created using any existing tool. Instead, it was converted from an IT module using a program I wrote, it2snvgm. I wasn't happy with the options I could find for creating SMS VGMs; all the tracker programs were closed-source and in some cases already abandoned by their developers, and the only other option I could find was to write my tracks in MML. I didn't want my compositions to be tied to a moribund proprietary format, and I didn't want to have to spend a bunch of time manually converting my tracks to a scripting language, so I wrote my own converter (which killed any chance I had of getting the actual game done on time, but oh well).

The ZIP file for this track includes the final VGM, the original IT file it was converted from, and the GPLv3-licensed source code for a "pre-release" version of it2snvgm. Anyone who's interested in the converter is welcome to try it out, though it's rather rough around the edges and needs further work before I give it an official release.

As for the actual music, how on earth did I end up writing this? I never listen to stuff like this, and I'm not even sure what genre it is (jazz? blues?). I thought it fit with the ideas I had for the game, though, so I went with it. It's too bad it's not some flashy ten-minute technoprog odyssey that shows off all the features of the converter, but it was fun to make. Hope someone out there enjoys it.

By the way, the periodic noise part in the middle was totally unplanned. I realized after I'd finished the track that some of the notes were below the legal tone range, and I didn't want to have to transpose everything up, so I redid the drums and bass at the last minute to make it work. Seems like it came out all right.


http://www.smspower.org/Music/Troublemaker-Homebrew

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Revo
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:06 pm
Wow amazing track!
 
  • Joined: 30 Mar 2009
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 12:26 pm
Really cool track.
Good use of vibrato and the nice use of the noise channel.

Really interesting and refreshing to hear.

Great work.
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  • Joined: 28 Jan 2017
  • Posts: 540
  • Location: Málaga, Spain
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Post Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 1:10 pm
Hi!

Thanks for the converter. The song is good, full of effects, but the converter is a dream for me!!!!
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Post Posted: Thu Mar 29, 2018 6:06 am
Revo wrote
Wow amazing track!


Thanks! Now to finish the game...

tibone wrote
Really cool track.
Good use of vibrato and the nice use of the noise channel.

Really interesting and refreshing to hear.

Great work.


Glad you liked it. It's not the showiest track in the world, but for this style of music it's probably better not to go too overboard with techno effects and stuff anyway.

eruiz00 wrote
Hi!

Thanks for the converter. The song is good, full of effects, but the converter is a dream for me!!!!


Thanks, and you're welcome :) The converter probably still has some bugs, so if you try it, let me know if you have any problems. I'll eventually clean it up and make an "official" release. Mainly I want to make the periodic noise mode easier to use, since right now you have to mute the tone 2 parts like you would on the real machine, which is very cumbersome.
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  • Joined: 23 Mar 2013
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  • Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 5:01 am
Great tune - I think that "jazz" is a somehow suitable label. Looking forward to play the related game when it comes out :) When you compose a chiptune - do you plan it out/compose it up front, and then get down to the computer to 'write it down'?
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  • Joined: 28 Feb 2016
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Post Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:35 am
Hi!

Very well track! Intro is amazing! ;)

And thanks for your converter Troublemaker
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2018 6:31 am
hang-on wrote
Great tune - I think that "jazz" is a somehow suitable label. Looking forward to play the related game when it comes out :) When you compose a chiptune - do you plan it out/compose it up front, and then get down to the computer to 'write it down'?


Thank you. The game will be a while yet and I have no idea how it'll actually turn out, so don't get too excited just yet.

I'm pretty much always winging it, in music and in everything else, but in this case I started out by writing the main part on the piano, then transferred it to the tracker and built things up from there. Other times, I'll put something down in the tracker from the get-go and tweak it until I get something I like. Being able to quickly test different ideas and check how they'll actually sound on the hardware is pretty important to me, which is why I ended up writing the converter.

BcnAbel76 wrote
Hi!

Very well track! Intro is amazing! ;)

And thanks for your converter Troublemaker


Thanks!
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