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View topic - [Coding competition 2021] Van Halen Demo by SteveProXNA

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[Coding competition 2021] Van Halen Demo by SteveProXNA
Post Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2021 11:10 am
https://www.smspower.org/Homebrew/VanHalenDemo-SMS



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Van Halen Demo for the SMS Power! 2021 Competition.
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Post Posted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 8:32 pm
 
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Post Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2021 7:26 am
Cool slideshow-type demo you've got there. Roughly digitized images like those always make me want to touch them up manually with some clean pixel art, though, but that would obviously miss the point.
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Post Posted: Mon Mar 29, 2021 2:56 pm
Interesting homebrew, the covers look cool. Without meaning to state the obvious, music to accompany each cover would improve it immensely. Could you have a PSG version of a song on each album play whilst viewing the artwork?
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 6:53 pm
Kagesan wrote
Cool slideshow-type demo you've got there. Roughly digitized images like those always make me want to touch them up manually with some clean pixel art, though, but that would obviously miss the point.

Thanks Kagesan. The graphics files are included in the source zip and implemented as "Programmer Art" but could be great if you wanted to touch them up! What is your budget? ;)
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 7:02 pm
BKK wrote
Interesting homebrew, the covers look cool. Without meaning to state the obvious, music to accompany each cover would improve it immensely. Could you have a PSG version of a song on each album play whilst viewing the artwork?

Thanks BKK. Vintage Van Halen on the Sega Genesis/MegaDrive has 40x VH riffs which are played directly as WAV files. I did search but couldn't find any homebrew Van Halen VGM files that could be converted to PSG, unfortunately. If someone was able to compose a song on each album then I could certainly code this up :)
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Post Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2021 9:34 pm
Unfortunately the many graphical limits of the SMS (256×192 pixel resolution, 16 colors per tile, not enough tiles to do a full screen bitmap...) means you can barely recognize the record covers.

As for the audio, Maxim's pcmenc would have been a possible option to play a short sample from a representative song while the display showed the art.
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 4:00 pm
Nice work. I think this is the first time in my life that I lay eyes on a Van Halen cover, so there is also some general education in this for me... :)
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Link
Post Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:14 pm
sverx wrote
Unfortunately the many graphical limits of the SMS (256×192 pixel resolution, 16 colors per tile, not enough tiles to do a full screen bitmap...) means you can barely recognize the record covers.

Thanks sverx. Yeah, the original 256 x 192px images quickly became 192 x 144px unfortunately!

sverx wrote
As for the audio, Maxim's pcmenc would have been a possible option to play a short sample from a representative song while the display showed the art.

Wow! Thanks for the link - I had no idea about this. I took a look and big thanks to kusfo SMS FX Sample as I was able to play a Van Halen riff OK using his code so hopefully will be able to find some time to properly implement in V2.0 :)
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Post Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2021 9:21 pm
hang-on wrote
Nice work. I think this is the first time in my life that I lay eyes on a Van Halen cover, so there is also some general education in this for me... :)

Thanks hang-on. Hopefully you will also enjoy their music :) BTW: thanks very much for your Car Racer tutorials as these were very helpful for the Z80 ASM code. I also blogged about it here.
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Post Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2021 9:51 pm
Yeah, I might as well go all the way now and listen to some tracks on Youtube... I grew up with Dr. Dre, Snoop and all the west coast / east coast hip hop - not Van Halen so much :) Regarding the tutorials; you are welcome. I’m glad you found them useful! I read on your blog that you plan to move to 16-bit... I hope you don’t leave us / 8-bit completely!
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Post Posted: Mon Apr 05, 2021 11:05 am
hang-on wrote
Yeah, I might as well go all the way now and listen to some tracks on Youtube... I grew up with Dr. Dre, Snoop and all the west coast / east coast hip hop - not Van Halen so much :) Regarding the tutorials; you are welcome. I’m glad you found them useful! I read on your blog that you plan to move to 16-bit... I hope you don’t leave us / 8-bit completely!

Thanks hang-on! I wanted to see if it was possible to transition development setup and ideas from 8-bit Sega Master System in C using the devkitSMS to 16-bit Sega MegaDrive / Genesis in C using the SGDK as a programming challenge... the org. SMS was the first console I ever owned so loyalty stays here for sure :)
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Post Posted: Tue Apr 06, 2021 9:14 pm
Following up suggestion from BKK to have music accompany each cover, I am attaching a Work In Progress V2.0 build. Thanks again to sverx for sending link to Maxim's pcmenc utility and huge thanks goes to kusfo for helping trouble shoot all issues during development!

The one thing I did notice is that when the converted WAV plays on cover art load, the demo does block until riff completes playing i.e. no input is detected or pause button etc. I'm not sure if anything can be done here with this but somebody pls correct me if I'm wrong... thanks!
VanHalenDemo-2.0.zip (553.34 KB)

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Post Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 8:26 am
You’d need a custom player to check for button presses.
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Post Posted: Wed Apr 07, 2021 9:02 am
Maxim wrote
You’d need a custom player to check for button presses.

Wait... You mean tightly couple the sample playback code with the input detection and interrupt service routine code?? Noooooo...!! [Just kidding]
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Updated video
Post Posted: Thu Apr 08, 2021 9:09 pm
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