Forums

While going through and updating a tool I'm in the process of cleaning up for release. I decided to use some old resources I had made some time ago to test Game Gear functionality. I also put together a DevKit SMS project that does some horribly coded input test scrolling. I placed that code in the github repo, and the compiled .gg file here (Note, not all the maps are compiled for the overworld):

https://github.com/xfixium/GG_LOZ_LA/tree/main

The original concept was taking Link's Awakening resources, and making them into A Link to the Past style. Which came with mixed results. I have a good deal of the resources converted over and somewhat updated to Game Gear, using the extended palette. The palettes have been about 95% vetted. I think the game is a good fit for the Game Gear.

Not a project I'm pursuing, but there are resources that are available, if interested.

Screens:
https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0001.png
https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0002.png
https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0003.png
https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0007.png
https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0008.png
https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0009.png
https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0010.png

SMS Tile Studio and project file are also located on the github repo, in the description.

Todo list:

Area 01:
Mermaid statue
River raft waves
Mabe Village green walls
Cracks in Ganon rock head
Quick sand tiles
Animate skyline and clouds
Set remaining environmental animations

Area 02:
Revamp some cracked floor tiles
Create sideview wave animations

Area 03:
Update windfish tiles in last boss room
Update house cracked floor tiles
Create sideview wave animations
Palette cycle cracked Turtle Rock lava tiles
Sideview Turtle Rock lava animation
House carpet swap colors
Secret shell mansion palette cycle
Moblin hideout palette priority color change

It looks really nice in LTTP style. Perfect game for the Game Gear.
Not sure what "vetted" means, but the colors look great :)

And I will give SMSTileStudio a go soon.

slogra wrote

It looks really nice in LTTP style. Perfect game for the Game Gear.
Not sure what "vetted" means, but the colors look great :)

And I will give SMSTileStudio a go soon.

Just means that I've tested the palette planning against the media. Not all the resources are done, but most of them are. :P

The thought of a GG port of Link's Awakening really sounds out of this world. It got me thinking... what would it sound like on the Game Gear?

I arranged the file select OST just to see what it would be like, it was a bit of an issue since the Game Gear's square channels can't dip as low as the gameboy's wave channel. I ended trying to use the noise channel to compensate for lower notes. The GG stereo output has a lot of potential emu players and headphone users on real hw.

Judging by the other BGMs, the noise channel will definitely be needed for them, especially for dungeons like Key Cavern.

If this project were to ever gain momentum, do you have any plans to restore unused/cut content? like the Kanalet Castle moat room specifically?

Here's a quick Furnace project file of the player select theme in case anyone wants to mess with it. If I have time to help out in the future, I'll happily arrange more BGMs, this one was simple so it didn't take long to make. Link's Awakening was one of my favorite childhood games, lotta escapism into another world, lotta mystery and lore in this game too. The glitches were the best tho, screen warping was crazy.

LoZLA player select theme, But its on the GG.zip (1.37 KB)

kaportza wrote

The thought of a GG port of Link's Awakening really sounds out of this world. It got me thinking... what would it sound like on the Game Gear?

I arranged the file select OST just to see what it would be like, it was a bit of an issue since the Game Gear's square channels can't dip as low as the gameboy's wave channel. I ended trying to use the noise channel to compensate for lower notes. The GG stereo output has a lot of potential emu players and headphone users on real hw.

Judging by the other BGMs, the noise channel will definitely be needed for them, especially for dungeons like Key Cavern.

Here's a quick Furnace project file of the player select theme in case anyone wants to mess with it. If I have time to help out in the future, I'll happily arrange more BGMs, this one was simple so it didn't take long to make. Link's Awakening was one of my favorite childhood games, lotta escapism into another world, lotta mystery and lore in this game too. The glitches were the best tho, screen warping was crazy.

Wow that sounds pretty awesome! It inspired me to make a bare bones player select screen. Very cool. For a change of pace, I made a video with the latest ROM (With your tune included), played on my bro's Game Gear (With a McWill screen replacement)

https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/videos/zelda_la_0005.mp4

The video is a bit janky, but it showcases some of the stuff I've been doing for the past month or so.

There's a great github Links Awakening disassembly project out there, it is very informative:

https://github.com/zladx/LADX-Disassembly

There seems to be 3 256 byte arrays that hold the map index information (So close to 768 rooms total). I try to mimic that (Although I did move rooms around, and did what I thought was optimizing) with 3 arrays as well. So in the latest ROM, you can use button 1 to cycle through each array (Area), using the current map id.

There's a bunch of little things left to do, but it's almost as far as I care to take it at the moment. A SMS version will be created as well. Once the todo list is done. I'll update the first post with that information. The project and current ROM are available on my github repo.

Quote

If this project were to ever gain momentum, do you have any plans to restore unused/cut content? like the Kanalet Castle moat room specifically?

No sure atm, it seems like a great conversion project for a person or team that understands converting GB z80 asm to GG. As there seems to be a great deal of work done in the aforementioned disassembly project.

Also, a BIG thanks again to sverx and Calindro for all your hard work.

xfixium wrote

Wow that sounds pretty awesome! It inspired me to make a bare bones player select screen. Very cool. For a change of pace, I made a video with the latest ROM (With your tune included), played on my bro's Game Gear (With a McWill screen replacement)

Glad to see it worked out, feel free to archive or host that furnace project file, I just made it for fun really. The tile work is beautiful btw, not many games in my opinion fully took advantage of the GG's colorful VDP, the animated tiles are especially good and greatly enhances the scenery. The GG sprite colors will have an advantage over the GBC's sprite color limit so that will be interesting to see.

Makes you also wonder what a GG conversion of the 2 oracle games would look like... assuming they don't need more than 8KiB ram, dunno anything about their engine complexity & differences but that's just me thinking too far ahead.

Quote

There's a bunch of little things left to do, but it's almost as far as I care to take it at the moment. A SMS version will be created as well. Once the todo list is done. I'll update the first post with that information. The project and current ROM are available on my github repo.

Oooh.. FM+PSG potential for that one, for the Japanese SMS at least. Maybe I'll rework my existing player select arrangement over to the SMS-J and see how it sounds. I initially took a conservative approach to the GG arrangement and kept deviations from the original composition minimal. With the SMS FM though it gives me a little more freedom to remix the tune, already have an idea of combining the Wind Fish theme with the player select theme... if done properly, it could sound really cool, if possible that is, will have to experiment with it.

I lucked out and have several days off from work currently, might take some time to arrange more tunes and share them. I hit a brick wall with Kanalet Castle tho, the notes on that one are so low that it forces me to improvise and remix it a little, I suppose I could just play the whole thing at a higher octave but then it would sound kinda off. Other themes are more of a timing issue. I've like 6 other arrangements cooking in Furnace atm, we'll see how they turn out in a few days.

Quote

No sure atm, it seems like a great conversion project for a person or team that understands converting GB z80 asm to GG. As there seems to be a great deal of work done in the aforementioned disassembly project.

Understandable, the custom GB z80 has a few extra registers that aren't present in the regular z80.

kaportza wrote

Understandable, the custom GB z80 has a few extra registers that aren't present in the regular z80.

can you please tell, which registers? :)

toxa wrote

can you please tell, which registers? :)

My ignorance in that subject could result in me eating those words.. its been a minute since I've attempted learning z80 stuff, I guess the word I was looking for was opcode perhaps? I just remember there were some differences in the architecture but couldn't fully comprehend what I was reading when trying to study it. Gonna try it again some time tho.

Anyways as for the rest of the arrangements, I'm mostly half way there. Kanalet Castle is almost finished, here's the to do list.

Current status:
-sword search (getting there, sounds good so far)
-kanalet castle (mostly done, adding stereo effects now)
-trendy game / fishing (surprisingly difficult, timing probs)
-phone booth (done)
-underground platformer (nearly done)
-house by the bay (1/2 way done)
-dream shrine world (timing issue resolved.. I hope..)
-color dungeon (got the timing right, so putting it together should be easy now)
-under the bridge / raft shop (insanely frustrating, still can't figure out why)

Quote

Glad to see it worked out, feel free to archive or host that furnace project file, I just made it for fun really.

Definitely, and thank you for your work.

Quote

Makes you also wonder what a GG conversion of the 2 oracle games would look like... assuming they don't need more than 8KiB ram, dunno anything about their engine complexity & differences but that's just me thinking too far ahead.

Unfortunately, I'm not as familiar with the later titles.

Quote

Oooh.. FM+PSG potential for that one, for the Japanese SMS at least. Maybe I'll rework my existing player select arrangement over to the SMS-J and see how it sounds. I initially took a conservative approach to the GG arrangement and kept deviations from the original composition minimal. With the SMS FM though it gives me a little more freedom to remix the tune, already have an idea of combining the Wind Fish theme with the player select theme... if done properly, it could sound really cool, if possible that is, will have to experiment with it.

That would be very interesting!

Quote

Current status:
-sword search (getting there, sounds good so far)
-kanalet castle (mostly done, adding stereo effects now)
-trendy game / fishing (surprisingly difficult, timing probs)
-phone booth (done)
-underground platformer (nearly done)
-house by the bay (1/2 way done)
-dream shrine world (timing issue resolved.. I hope..)
-color dungeon (got the timing right, so putting it together should be easy now)
-under the bridge / raft shop (insanely frustrating, still can't figure out why)

Oh wow, looking forward to your compositions! I think I'll have to update the horizontal scrolling in the test code, right now it takes the tilemap(s) and converts it to a vertical arrangement on the fly, which takes quite a bit of processing. So I'd imagine the audio would be affected by this. It is a quick and dirty solution. Vertical scrolling shouldn't have this issue.

Status update:
-kanalet castle - done but its a little different from the original GB variant, still sounds interesting, has a slightly more chaotic tone to it
-trendy game / fishing - done
-underground platformer theme - done
-house by the bay - done, almost sounds identical to the GB variant. Added some small extra effects in hopes to enhance it.

-sword search - 1/2 way there, its been tough guessing the right notes and improvising when the note range dips too low.
-color dungeon - barely started, too focused on sword search 1st
-under the bridge / raft shop - think I finally got the timing right, gonna do this one last, also want to try an extended version too. Never liked how it always felt like it was cut short, it was a good remix of the trendy game.

I was hoping to have everything ready by today but I bit off more than I could chew, especially with the sword search theme. On a positive note, I found someone did an oscilloscope deconstruction of some of the LADX ost, which has been helping tremendously thus far. Its probably gonna be another week before I have everything ready.

I noticed the Switch remake of LA has new dedicated themes & remixes for areas/events that didn't previously didn't have any. Might attempt to cram one of those into chiptune in the future just to see if its possible, could add a little extra zest to the GG conversion :]

@kaportza If you're having a hard time doing it all by ear you could always download link's awakening .gbs files, run them through GBSImport.exe, and then open up the resulting .ftm files in famitracker.

badnest wrote

If you're having a hard time doing it all by ear you could always download link's awakening .gbs files, run them through GBSImport.exe, and then open up the resulting .ftm files in famitracker.

That sounds like a good idea, I've also had a few other suggestions as well. Will try it out and see, I'll need to figure out how Famitracker works first, I'm a bit of a slow learner, took me forever to learn Deflemask & Furnace.

Status update
-under the bridge - done, sounds really cool, added stereo fx too. It has a strange unintentional drum beat sound in it, I liked it so I left it in.

-color dungeon - still piecing it together, 1/3 way there
-dream shrine world - barely started
-under the bridge remixed & extended - nearly done, also sounds cool.
-sword search - hah.. that one is taking a while, the first 7 seconds of it sound good at least, the rest of it is bare-bones like a stalfos.

I've shifted focus over to finishing the other tunes and will do the sword search theme last, I'm also gonna try to finish the color dungeon today, so far the note timing is good.

If I can't finish the color dungeon by today then I'll just post tomorrow what all I currently have done. Same as before, full Furnace project files for everyone to play with.

Okay here's what I got so far. Today's special is BBQ square-wave shish kebabs lightly covered in spicy stereo sauce, with a side of noise.
Fresh outta the Furnace, enjoy. ;]

House by the Bay & Color Dungeon could've turned out better but I didn't wanna take too long on them, it took long enough already and they can always be improved later.

Sorry if I sorta hijacked your thread xfixium, if you want I can just DM you more tunes in the future if it helps the project. I could also post on a separate music thread if need be.

More LoZLA OST, but its on the GG.zip (16.66 KB)

Your music sounds amazing!

This is my take on Kanalet Castle. Feel free to use (parts of) it. Yours is quite a bit more advanced. But I made it because i felt that those low notes were missing in your version. I also tried using the periodic noise for the melody, but then those low notes not did not stand out anymore.

(edit: i didn't notice attaching fur files doesn't work. Here is the zipped fur file.)

ZeldaLinksAwakening-Kanalet Castle(Slogra).zip (947 B)

kaportza wrote

Okay here's what I got so far. Today's special is BBQ square-wave shish kebabs lightly covered in spicy stereo sauce, with a side of noise.
Fresh outta the Furnace, enjoy. ;]

These are excellent, and worth all the calories. I can't believe how great the music sounds compared to the original material.

kaportza wrote

Sorry if I sorta hijacked your thread xfixium, if you want I can just DM you more tunes in the future if it helps the project. I could also post on a separate music thread if need be.

No worries, I'm just glad there are people buzzed about this.

slogra wrote

This is my take on Kanalet Castle. Feel free to use (parts of) it. Yours is quite a bit more advanced. But I made it because i felt that those low notes were missing in your version. I also tried using the periodic noise for the melody, but then those low notes not did not stand out anymore.

I would like to hear what you came up with.

I've added the song to my previous post.

The original gb tune is quite weird. It also has volume fluctuations, which i really don't get.
Kaportza and i chose to not add those.

xfixium wrote

No worries, I'm just glad there are people buzzed about this.

Cool that's refreshing, because those were just appetizers, at some point I'd like to try and cook up the main course; the opening scene, the title screen, the overworld and all the dungeons, and possibly a few other stuff. This will take forever though, just like cooking good food does.

slogra wrote

This is my take on Kanalet Castle. Feel free to use (parts of) it.

This was almost the route I took. Early on when I was making the player select theme I found myself at a crossroads; either stick as close to the original notes as possible and improvise when necessary, or do everything at a higher octave and not have to worry about low notes, obviously I doubled down on the former. In the case of Kanalet Castle, my idea was to simply bs my way around the low notes by octave hopping to a higher note at a quieter volume and blending in the periodic noise and/or other notes at different octaves. It was sort of a "better put something there instead of nothing at all" thing. Doubt I'll make any more changes to Kanalet Castle, I pretty much burnt myself out on that one by the time I considered it done.

Either way, I knew it would sound different no matter what route I chose or how hard I tried to stick to the original source, so I figured a little deviation every now and then would be alright.

I won't bother spamming updates anymore, it will just be a random surprise if I make anything else. Same as always, full furnace project files for everyone to modify, fix and/or improve upon. Its also a good learning sample for anyone new to chiptune and are curious to see how its made, and how each artist does it differently. I'm by no means an expert, I still shotgun my way around the keys half the time until I hit the note I'm looking for, I can't tell a G key from a D# or E key without labels. The SN did burn the A key into my brain though.

Happy new year everyone. Got a big plate full of 8-bit musical deliciousness up for grabs, dig in!

LoZLA GG Music - Dungeons For Days Edition.zip (25.98 KB)

Happy new year! That is a good way to start of the year.

I love your versions of the songs. I was just wondering about the volume. It seems very quiet. Is that intentional?

slogra wrote

I was just wondering about the volume. It seems very quiet. Is that intentional?

Truth be told I really didn't know how to go about it, in my 1st hand experience from playing a physical game gear I noticed it was way louder than my gameboy color ever was, so I wasn't sure if it would be too loud or not. My GG is still broken so I cant really test to be certain, I suppose I could just test it on my SMS if I can find the cables for it.

The volume levels could be the biggest flaw in all of these tracks so far, so make any improvements you see fit to any flaws that I overlooked, that's what the project files are there for, feel free to add your name into the credits afterward too. :] I don't even want to deal with Tail Cave or Bottle Grotto anymore at this point, I'm so burnt out with those.

Up next, I have my sights set on the following:
-prologue (storm & beach scene), sounds good enough so far
-title theme, this one will be interesting, gonna try and pull off a new technique I learned.
-game over (pretty easy to do, trying to add improvements to it)
-store theme
-overworld
-mysterious woods (this one will be a good challenge)
-Mr. Write & Chistine's themes
-midway boss battle theme
-main boss theme
-turtle rock entrance battle theme

-all the dream shrine music (I especially loved these tracks)

Difficult tracks I also have my sights on, these will likely be last to avoid risking total burn out:
-sword search theme, I'm considering scrapping what I currently have and re-implementing it in a different manner, lest I repeat a similar disaster that happened with Tail Cave.
-Tal Tal Heights, this one uses all 4 channels on the GB, if I can somehow pull that off on the GG *and* adapt it in a way that sounds good at the same time it will be amazing.

There are a few other tracks I'm fixing/improving like trendy game or the extended under the bridge remix but I'll add those to the next bundle of tracks.

The highest volumes in your songs are 7, often even less.
That seems low when the max is F. Although F is not recommended as i it very similar to E, so then E is max. But i don't have much experience on real hardware though, so don't take my word for it.

You can export it as VGM and then compare the volume to VGM music of other games.

That being said. What about the sound effects? If you know how loud those are, then you can tune your music to that.

kaportza wrote

-Tal Tal Heights, this one uses all 4 channels on the GB, if I can somehow pull that off on the GG *and* adapt it in a way that sounds good at the same time it will be amazing.

I usually combine (noise) bass and drums into channel 3 and 4. So bass and drums take turns on the channels. And never play at the same time.
But that easier when the drums are loud, and not subtle hihats/snares like in Links Awakening.
The bass is short in that song, so i think it'll sound fine when the hihat/snare are missing during that short time when the bass plays.
Perhaps increase the volume of the bass a bit, so you will notice missing the hihat/snare even less.

slogra wrote

What about the sound effects? If you know how loud those are, then you can tune your music to that.

That's one thing I'd like to look into, if I can get a few samples of sfx's then it will give me a better perception on what I'm working with. Specifically the explosion sound effect which is used for Link's bombs and also for the lightning bolts in the prologue scene. Also the sea sfx that plays in the prologue music when Marin finds Link on the beach.

Idk, maybe I'll come back to the dungeon tracks after a while with a renewed attention span to fix the volume levels a little. I'll just edit the original post with the updated tracks if I do. All I can currently focus on is the dream shrine stuff which I might post in a week or two from now if all goes well, badnest's advice has been a godsend in helping me identify notes and timings and pattern designs for all the music thus far. I'll have to resort to other methods for getting sound effects, but I got a few options to try.

Here's the Dream Shrine tracks, I'd say they turned out good. I tried to make them sound a little creepier than their original GB counterparts.

LoZLA GG Music - Nightmare Fuel Pack (Dream Shrine).zip (4.76 KB)

Alright, here's what I got so far. I had a lot of fun making these and it gave me a chance to sharpen my chiptune skills as well. Its mostly new tracks along with some updated tracks. Hopefully this will give the project the momentum it needs and possibly attract others to help make this odd GG conversion a reality.

I got a few more I plan on doing at some point but it will probably be a while before they're ready. It will most likely be the last few I can do for the rest this year.

Also some other good news, I acquired a semi-functional VA0 GG, recapped it and got it up and running (along with a usb-c power mod) so I'm back in the real hardware testing business. I will happily do alpha & beta testing in the future if I have the time for it.

There's frikn 24 tracks in crammed into this one, have fun with these! :]

Contents: cave, main boss fight, mid boss fight, turtle rock guardian (+ extra variant), game over, Christine's house, Write's house, Prince Richard's house, overworld, prologue (beach and storm), shop (3 variants), title screen, Eagle's Tower fight scene, overworld start, overworld epic start, and the last 4 are just new revisions of older tracks.

LoZLA GG Music - Biggest Bundle Yet.zip (47.94 KB)

oh heck yes! GB ports to GG!!!

Author	Message
xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	GG Links Awakening Repository Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2023 4:43 am Last edited by xfixium on Sun Nov 19, 2023 6:58 pm; edited 1 time in total
xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	While going through and updating a tool I'm in the process of cleaning up for release. I decided to use some old resources I had made some time ago to test Game Gear functionality. I also put together a DevKit SMS project that does some horribly coded input test scrolling. I placed that code in the github repo, and the compiled .gg file here (Note, not all the maps are compiled for the overworld): https://github.com/xfixium/GG_LOZ_LA/tree/main The original concept was taking Link's Awakening resources, and making them into A Link to the Past style. Which came with mixed results. I have a good deal of the resources converted over and somewhat updated to Game Gear, using the extended palette. The palettes have been about 95% vetted. I think the game is a good fit for the Game Gear. Not a project I'm pursuing, but there are resources that are available, if interested. Screens: https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0001.png https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0002.png https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0003.png https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0007.png https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0008.png https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0009.png https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/screens/zelda_la_0010.png SMS Tile Studio and project file are also located on the github repo, in the description. Todo list: Area 01: Mermaid statue River raft waves Mabe Village green walls Cracks in Ganon rock head Quick sand tiles Animate skyline and clouds Set remaining environmental animations Area 02: Revamp some cracked floor tiles Create sideview wave animations Area 03: Update windfish tiles in last boss room Update house cracked floor tiles Create sideview wave animations Palette cycle cracked Turtle Rock lava tiles Sideview Turtle Rock lava animation House carpet swap colors Secret shell mansion palette cycle Moblin hideout palette priority color change

slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2023 7:19 pm
slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	It looks really nice in LTTP style. Perfect game for the Game Gear. Not sure what "vetted" means, but the colors look great :) And I will give SMSTileStudio a go soon.

xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2023 7:50 pm
xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	slogra wrote It looks really nice in LTTP style. Perfect game for the Game Gear. Not sure what "vetted" means, but the colors look great :) And I will give SMSTileStudio a go soon. Just means that I've tested the palette planning against the media. Not all the resources are done, but most of them are. :P

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Sat Nov 18, 2023 8:22 pm
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	The thought of a GG port of Link's Awakening really sounds out of this world. It got me thinking... what would it sound like on the Game Gear? I arranged the file select OST just to see what it would be like, it was a bit of an issue since the Game Gear's square channels can't dip as low as the gameboy's wave channel. I ended trying to use the noise channel to compensate for lower notes. The GG stereo output has a lot of potential emu players and headphone users on real hw. Judging by the other BGMs, the noise channel will definitely be needed for them, especially for dungeons like Key Cavern. If this project were to ever gain momentum, do you have any plans to restore unused/cut content? like the Kanalet Castle moat room specifically? Here's a quick Furnace project file of the player select theme in case anyone wants to mess with it. If I have time to help out in the future, I'll happily arrange more BGMs, this one was simple so it didn't take long to make. Link's Awakening was one of my favorite childhood games, lotta escapism into another world, lotta mystery and lore in this game too. The glitches were the best tho, screen warping was crazy. LoZLA player select theme, But its on the GG.zip (1.37 KB)

xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2023 6:54 pm
xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	kaportza wrote The thought of a GG port of Link's Awakening really sounds out of this world. It got me thinking... what would it sound like on the Game Gear? I arranged the file select OST just to see what it would be like, it was a bit of an issue since the Game Gear's square channels can't dip as low as the gameboy's wave channel. I ended trying to use the noise channel to compensate for lower notes. The GG stereo output has a lot of potential emu players and headphone users on real hw. Judging by the other BGMs, the noise channel will definitely be needed for them, especially for dungeons like Key Cavern. Here's a quick Furnace project file of the player select theme in case anyone wants to mess with it. If I have time to help out in the future, I'll happily arrange more BGMs, this one was simple so it didn't take long to make. Link's Awakening was one of my favorite childhood games, lotta escapism into another world, lotta mystery and lore in this game too. The glitches were the best tho, screen warping was crazy. Wow that sounds pretty awesome! It inspired me to make a bare bones player select screen. Very cool. For a change of pace, I made a video with the latest ROM (With your tune included), played on my bro's Game Gear (With a McWill screen replacement) https://www.pyxosoft.com/projects/gg_zelda_la/videos/zelda_la_0005.mp4 The video is a bit janky, but it showcases some of the stuff I've been doing for the past month or so. There's a great github Links Awakening disassembly project out there, it is very informative: https://github.com/zladx/LADX-Disassembly There seems to be 3 256 byte arrays that hold the map index information (So close to 768 rooms total). I try to mimic that (Although I did move rooms around, and did what I thought was optimizing) with 3 arrays as well. So in the latest ROM, you can use button 1 to cycle through each array (Area), using the current map id. There's a bunch of little things left to do, but it's almost as far as I care to take it at the moment. A SMS version will be created as well. Once the todo list is done. I'll update the first post with that information. The project and current ROM are available on my github repo. Quote If this project were to ever gain momentum, do you have any plans to restore unused/cut content? like the Kanalet Castle moat room specifically? No sure atm, it seems like a great conversion project for a person or team that understands converting GB z80 asm to GG. As there seems to be a great deal of work done in the aforementioned disassembly project. Also, a BIG thanks again to sverx and Calindro for all your hard work.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Mon Nov 20, 2023 4:59 pm
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	xfixium wrote Wow that sounds pretty awesome! It inspired me to make a bare bones player select screen. Very cool. For a change of pace, I made a video with the latest ROM (With your tune included), played on my bro's Game Gear (With a McWill screen replacement) Glad to see it worked out, feel free to archive or host that furnace project file, I just made it for fun really. The tile work is beautiful btw, not many games in my opinion fully took advantage of the GG's colorful VDP, the animated tiles are especially good and greatly enhances the scenery. The GG sprite colors will have an advantage over the GBC's sprite color limit so that will be interesting to see. Makes you also wonder what a GG conversion of the 2 oracle games would look like... assuming they don't need more than 8KiB ram, dunno anything about their engine complexity & differences but that's just me thinking too far ahead. Quote There's a bunch of little things left to do, but it's almost as far as I care to take it at the moment. A SMS version will be created as well. Once the todo list is done. I'll update the first post with that information. The project and current ROM are available on my github repo. Oooh.. FM+PSG potential for that one, for the Japanese SMS at least. Maybe I'll rework my existing player select arrangement over to the SMS-J and see how it sounds. I initially took a conservative approach to the GG arrangement and kept deviations from the original composition minimal. With the SMS FM though it gives me a little more freedom to remix the tune, already have an idea of combining the Wind Fish theme with the player select theme... if done properly, it could sound really cool, if possible that is, will have to experiment with it. I lucked out and have several days off from work currently, might take some time to arrange more tunes and share them. I hit a brick wall with Kanalet Castle tho, the notes on that one are so low that it forces me to improvise and remix it a little, I suppose I could just play the whole thing at a higher octave but then it would sound kinda off. Other themes are more of a timing issue. I've like 6 other arrangements cooking in Furnace atm, we'll see how they turn out in a few days. Quote No sure atm, it seems like a great conversion project for a person or team that understands converting GB z80 asm to GG. As there seems to be a great deal of work done in the aforementioned disassembly project. Understandable, the custom GB z80 has a few extra registers that aren't present in the regular z80.

toxa Joined: 09 Aug 2021 Posts: 131	Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2023 3:18 pm
toxa Joined: 09 Aug 2021 Posts: 131	kaportza wrote Understandable, the custom GB z80 has a few extra registers that aren't present in the regular z80. can you please tell, which registers? :)

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2023 1:35 am
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	toxa wrote can you please tell, which registers? :) My ignorance in that subject could result in me eating those words.. its been a minute since I've attempted learning z80 stuff, I guess the word I was looking for was opcode perhaps? I just remember there were some differences in the architecture but couldn't fully comprehend what I was reading when trying to study it. Gonna try it again some time tho. Anyways as for the rest of the arrangements, I'm mostly half way there. Kanalet Castle is almost finished, here's the to do list. Current status: -sword search (getting there, sounds good so far) -kanalet castle (mostly done, adding stereo effects now) -trendy game / fishing (surprisingly difficult, timing probs) -phone booth (done) -underground platformer (nearly done) -house by the bay (1/2 way done) -dream shrine world (timing issue resolved.. I hope..) -color dungeon (got the timing right, so putting it together should be easy now) -under the bridge / raft shop (insanely frustrating, still can't figure out why)

xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2023 3:14 am
xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	Quote Glad to see it worked out, feel free to archive or host that furnace project file, I just made it for fun really. Definitely, and thank you for your work. Quote Makes you also wonder what a GG conversion of the 2 oracle games would look like... assuming they don't need more than 8KiB ram, dunno anything about their engine complexity & differences but that's just me thinking too far ahead. Unfortunately, I'm not as familiar with the later titles. Quote Oooh.. FM+PSG potential for that one, for the Japanese SMS at least. Maybe I'll rework my existing player select arrangement over to the SMS-J and see how it sounds. I initially took a conservative approach to the GG arrangement and kept deviations from the original composition minimal. With the SMS FM though it gives me a little more freedom to remix the tune, already have an idea of combining the Wind Fish theme with the player select theme... if done properly, it could sound really cool, if possible that is, will have to experiment with it. That would be very interesting! Quote Current status: -sword search (getting there, sounds good so far) -kanalet castle (mostly done, adding stereo effects now) -trendy game / fishing (surprisingly difficult, timing probs) -phone booth (done) -underground platformer (nearly done) -house by the bay (1/2 way done) -dream shrine world (timing issue resolved.. I hope..) -color dungeon (got the timing right, so putting it together should be easy now) -under the bridge / raft shop (insanely frustrating, still can't figure out why) Oh wow, looking forward to your compositions! I think I'll have to update the horizontal scrolling in the test code, right now it takes the tilemap(s) and converts it to a vertical arrangement on the fly, which takes quite a bit of processing. So I'd imagine the audio would be affected by this. It is a quick and dirty solution. Vertical scrolling shouldn't have this issue.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2023 2:10 am
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Status update: -kanalet castle - done but its a little different from the original GB variant, still sounds interesting, has a slightly more chaotic tone to it -trendy game / fishing - done -underground platformer theme - done -house by the bay - done, almost sounds identical to the GB variant. Added some small extra effects in hopes to enhance it. -sword search - 1/2 way there, its been tough guessing the right notes and improvising when the note range dips too low. -color dungeon - barely started, too focused on sword search 1st -under the bridge / raft shop - think I finally got the timing right, gonna do this one last, also want to try an extended version too. Never liked how it always felt like it was cut short, it was a good remix of the trendy game. I was hoping to have everything ready by today but I bit off more than I could chew, especially with the sword search theme. On a positive note, I found someone did an oscilloscope deconstruction of some of the LADX ost, which has been helping tremendously thus far. Its probably gonna be another week before I have everything ready. I noticed the Switch remake of LA has new dedicated themes & remixes for areas/events that didn't previously didn't have any. Might attempt to cram one of those into chiptune in the future just to see if its possible, could add a little extra zest to the GG conversion :]

badnest Joined: 26 Aug 2022 Posts: 21	Posted: Sat Nov 25, 2023 2:43 pm
badnest Joined: 26 Aug 2022 Posts: 21	@kaportza If you're having a hard time doing it all by ear you could always download link's awakening .gbs files, run them through GBSImport.exe, and then open up the resulting .ftm files in famitracker.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2023 10:29 pm
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	badnest wrote If you're having a hard time doing it all by ear you could always download link's awakening .gbs files, run them through GBSImport.exe, and then open up the resulting .ftm files in famitracker. That sounds like a good idea, I've also had a few other suggestions as well. Will try it out and see, I'll need to figure out how Famitracker works first, I'm a bit of a slow learner, took me forever to learn Deflemask & Furnace. Status update -under the bridge - done, sounds really cool, added stereo fx too. It has a strange unintentional drum beat sound in it, I liked it so I left it in. -color dungeon - still piecing it together, 1/3 way there -dream shrine world - barely started -under the bridge remixed & extended - nearly done, also sounds cool. -sword search - hah.. that one is taking a while, the first 7 seconds of it sound good at least, the rest of it is bare-bones like a stalfos. I've shifted focus over to finishing the other tunes and will do the sword search theme last, I'm also gonna try to finish the color dungeon today, so far the note timing is good. If I can't finish the color dungeon by today then I'll just post tomorrow what all I currently have done. Same as before, full Furnace project files for everyone to play with.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Wed Nov 29, 2023 7:34 pm
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Okay here's what I got so far. Today's special is BBQ square-wave shish kebabs lightly covered in spicy stereo sauce, with a side of noise. Fresh outta the Furnace, enjoy. ;] House by the Bay & Color Dungeon could've turned out better but I didn't wanna take too long on them, it took long enough already and they can always be improved later. Sorry if I sorta hijacked your thread xfixium, if you want I can just DM you more tunes in the future if it helps the project. I could also post on a separate music thread if need be. More LoZLA OST, but its on the GG.zip (16.66 KB)

slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Posted: Thu Nov 30, 2023 7:00 pm Last edited by slogra on Fri Dec 01, 2023 8:46 am; edited 1 time in total
slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Your music sounds amazing! This is my take on Kanalet Castle. Feel free to use (parts of) it. Yours is quite a bit more advanced. But I made it because i felt that those low notes were missing in your version. I also tried using the periodic noise for the melody, but then those low notes not did not stand out anymore. (edit: i didn't notice attaching fur files doesn't work. Here is the zipped fur file.) ZeldaLinksAwakening-Kanalet Castle(Slogra).zip (947 B)

xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2023 1:18 am
xfixium Joined: 18 Jul 2020 Posts: 378	kaportza wrote Okay here's what I got so far. Today's special is BBQ square-wave shish kebabs lightly covered in spicy stereo sauce, with a side of noise. Fresh outta the Furnace, enjoy. ;] These are excellent, and worth all the calories. I can't believe how great the music sounds compared to the original material. kaportza wrote Sorry if I sorta hijacked your thread xfixium, if you want I can just DM you more tunes in the future if it helps the project. I could also post on a separate music thread if need be. No worries, I'm just glad there are people buzzed about this. slogra wrote This is my take on Kanalet Castle. Feel free to use (parts of) it. Yours is quite a bit more advanced. But I made it because i felt that those low notes were missing in your version. I also tried using the periodic noise for the melody, but then those low notes not did not stand out anymore. I would like to hear what you came up with.

slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2023 8:52 am
slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	I've added the song to my previous post. The original gb tune is quite weird. It also has volume fluctuations, which i really don't get. Kaportza and i chose to not add those.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2023 3:30 am
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	xfixium wrote No worries, I'm just glad there are people buzzed about this. Cool that's refreshing, because those were just appetizers, at some point I'd like to try and cook up the main course; the opening scene, the title screen, the overworld and all the dungeons, and possibly a few other stuff. This will take forever though, just like cooking good food does. slogra wrote This is my take on Kanalet Castle. Feel free to use (parts of) it. This was almost the route I took. Early on when I was making the player select theme I found myself at a crossroads; either stick as close to the original notes as possible and improvise when necessary, or do everything at a higher octave and not have to worry about low notes, obviously I doubled down on the former. In the case of Kanalet Castle, my idea was to simply bs my way around the low notes by octave hopping to a higher note at a quieter volume and blending in the periodic noise and/or other notes at different octaves. It was sort of a "better put something there instead of nothing at all" thing. Doubt I'll make any more changes to Kanalet Castle, I pretty much burnt myself out on that one by the time I considered it done. Either way, I knew it would sound different no matter what route I chose or how hard I tried to stick to the original source, so I figured a little deviation every now and then would be alright. I won't bother spamming updates anymore, it will just be a random surprise if I make anything else. Same as always, full furnace project files for everyone to modify, fix and/or improve upon. Its also a good learning sample for anyone new to chiptune and are curious to see how its made, and how each artist does it differently. I'm by no means an expert, I still shotgun my way around the keys half the time until I hit the note I'm looking for, I can't tell a G key from a D# or E key without labels. The SN did burn the A key into my brain though.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2024 1:14 am
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Happy new year everyone. Got a big plate full of 8-bit musical deliciousness up for grabs, dig in! LoZLA GG Music - Dungeons For Days Edition.zip (25.98 KB)

slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2024 8:33 am
slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Happy new year! That is a good way to start of the year. I love your versions of the songs. I was just wondering about the volume. It seems very quiet. Is that intentional?

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2024 4:27 pm
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	slogra wrote I was just wondering about the volume. It seems very quiet. Is that intentional? Truth be told I really didn't know how to go about it, in my 1st hand experience from playing a physical game gear I noticed it was way louder than my gameboy color ever was, so I wasn't sure if it would be too loud or not. My GG is still broken so I cant really test to be certain, I suppose I could just test it on my SMS if I can find the cables for it. The volume levels could be the biggest flaw in all of these tracks so far, so make any improvements you see fit to any flaws that I overlooked, that's what the project files are there for, feel free to add your name into the credits afterward too. :] I don't even want to deal with Tail Cave or Bottle Grotto anymore at this point, I'm so burnt out with those. Up next, I have my sights set on the following: -prologue (storm & beach scene), sounds good enough so far -title theme, this one will be interesting, gonna try and pull off a new technique I learned. -game over (pretty easy to do, trying to add improvements to it) -store theme -overworld -mysterious woods (this one will be a good challenge) -Mr. Write & Chistine's themes -midway boss battle theme -main boss theme -turtle rock entrance battle theme -all the dream shrine music (I especially loved these tracks) Difficult tracks I also have my sights on, these will likely be last to avoid risking total burn out: -sword search theme, I'm considering scrapping what I currently have and re-implementing it in a different manner, lest I repeat a similar disaster that happened with Tail Cave. -Tal Tal Heights, this one uses all 4 channels on the GB, if I can somehow pull that off on the GG and adapt it in a way that sounds good at the same time it will be amazing. There are a few other tracks I'm fixing/improving like trendy game or the extended under the bridge remix but I'll add those to the next bundle of tracks.

slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2024 9:06 am
slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	The highest volumes in your songs are 7, often even less. That seems low when the max is F. Although F is not recommended as i it very similar to E, so then E is max. But i don't have much experience on real hardware though, so don't take my word for it. You can export it as VGM and then compare the volume to VGM music of other games. That being said. What about the sound effects? If you know how loud those are, then you can tune your music to that.

slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2024 9:21 am
slogra Joined: 09 Jun 2014 Posts: 378	kaportza wrote -Tal Tal Heights, this one uses all 4 channels on the GB, if I can somehow pull that off on the GG and adapt it in a way that sounds good at the same time it will be amazing. I usually combine (noise) bass and drums into channel 3 and 4. So bass and drums take turns on the channels. And never play at the same time. But that easier when the drums are loud, and not subtle hihats/snares like in Links Awakening. The bass is short in that song, so i think it'll sound fine when the hihat/snare are missing during that short time when the bass plays. Perhaps increase the volume of the bass a bit, so you will notice missing the hihat/snare even less.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2024 2:28 am
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	slogra wrote What about the sound effects? If you know how loud those are, then you can tune your music to that. That's one thing I'd like to look into, if I can get a few samples of sfx's then it will give me a better perception on what I'm working with. Specifically the explosion sound effect which is used for Link's bombs and also for the lightning bolts in the prologue scene. Also the sea sfx that plays in the prologue music when Marin finds Link on the beach. Idk, maybe I'll come back to the dungeon tracks after a while with a renewed attention span to fix the volume levels a little. I'll just edit the original post with the updated tracks if I do. All I can currently focus on is the dream shrine stuff which I might post in a week or two from now if all goes well, badnest's advice has been a godsend in helping me identify notes and timings and pattern designs for all the music thus far. I'll have to resort to other methods for getting sound effects, but I got a few options to try.

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 2:57 am
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Here's the Dream Shrine tracks, I'd say they turned out good. I tried to make them sound a little creepier than their original GB counterparts. LoZLA GG Music - Nightmare Fuel Pack (Dream Shrine).zip (4.76 KB)

kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Posted: Thu Feb 29, 2024 4:10 am
kaportza Joined: 14 Sep 2018 Posts: 50 Location: Earth	Alright, here's what I got so far. I had a lot of fun making these and it gave me a chance to sharpen my chiptune skills as well. Its mostly new tracks along with some updated tracks. Hopefully this will give the project the momentum it needs and possibly attract others to help make this odd GG conversion a reality. I got a few more I plan on doing at some point but it will probably be a while before they're ready. It will most likely be the last few I can do for the rest this year. Also some other good news, I acquired a semi-functional VA0 GG, recapped it and got it up and running (along with a usb-c power mod) so I'm back in the real hardware testing business. I will happily do alpha & beta testing in the future if I have the time for it. There's frikn 24 tracks in crammed into this one, have fun with these! :] Contents: cave, main boss fight, mid boss fight, turtle rock guardian (+ extra variant), game over, Christine's house, Write's house, Prince Richard's house, overworld, prologue (beach and storm), shop (3 variants), title screen, Eagle's Tower fight scene, overworld start, overworld epic start, and the last 4 are just new revisions of older tracks. LoZLA GG Music - Biggest Bundle Yet.zip (47.94 KB)

Maztr_0n Joined: 02 Mar 2024 Posts: 21 Location: Dullsville	Posted: Sat Mar 02, 2024 8:39 pm
	oh heck yes! GB ports to GG!!!

Forums

View topic - GG Links Awakening Repository