Hi

I'm a newbie to PICO-8. I'm not a coder at all but I dabble in chiptune. I purchased PICO-8 last night and I've been having a blast making tunes and teaching myself how to use the music editor!

I have one question though and I was wondering if anyone knows the answer. Is it possible to delay or offset the playing of an sfx in the music editor?

I'll try and explain why I'm asking and hopefully I can articulate it in a way that makes sense! 😅

the reason I ask is if, for example, I'm making a song where most of the sfx are speed 16, the only way to increase the resolution of notes is to double the speed of an sfx, to say, 8. But if I want a drum fill to play at the end of a bar there's no way I can delay the playing of that sfx so that it plays at the end.

If I'm playing a speed 8 sfx concurrently with a speed 16 sfx, they both start at the same time. I can loop the speed 8 sfx but then I'll get my drum fill twice.

I hope that makes sense. If anyone knows the answer to this I'd be really grateful. The ability to play sfx at different speeds seems to me a like a very powerful tool for music making and a lot of potential for some fun polyrhythmic stuff, but would be a lot more powerful if you could control WHEN each sfx begins playing.

Thanks,
GB ^_^

Unfortunately it is not possible to have a pattern delay the start of an SFX. The pattern sequencer is pretty simple and straightforward (I think the only non-obvious thing is that if the left-most non-looping SFX in a pattern ends, the whole pattern ends early; this makes it feasible to do non-duple-meter stuff where SFXs end early)

In your situation I think you have two choices:

• make all the SFX (i.e. the ones that need to play during the drum fill section) have a length of 8 (even if it's just a temporary switch for two patterns) which you could do by just duplicating notes at that double speed so it sounds the same
• make an SFX instrument (now that we have that cool new feature :D) out of the drum fill, then trigger the instrument at the right time in a pattern that is length 16 and plays with the other ones

Hey, thanks for your reply that's really helpful!

I didn't know that thing about the left most sfx column, that's really helpful to know!

I haven't experimented with SFX instruments yet! That sounds like the way to go, cheers!

GB ^_^