As more of a music tracker fan who just does covers, I posted my first (music cover) cart in the BBS just days ago which already got some praise from some members, thus marking a proper beginning of my presence. I can't properly program games for the time being but i already figured out how to post sfx embeds today, quite a great chance for me to post music without having to upload carts with boring text printed screens.
Yesterday i finished renditions of two music tracks from Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (which i have never played but i did hear of Metal Gear a lot of times, yet i might eventually try the series when i will get the chance to get a Playstation Now subscription AND a better internet connection? honestly i haven't tried playstation now's cloud streaming.) which were done around a few hours for each one. I was able to complete Night Fall with every pattern but Theme of Solid Snake couldn't be done with every pattern due to SFX slots as when i went on to make the last patterns with reduced speed from the rest of the others (every pattern is around 6 SPD except the last ones are on 12 SPD, but i think i've still managed to make it). Also due to music length (like my Gunstar Heroes cover that unfortunately suffered the same fate as my recent cover) that covered up quickly with 6 SPD, Theme of Solid Snake is overall shorter in the PICO-8 version.
Doesn't mean i'll stop, it's still fun, but i kind of don't want to upload one cart at a time so i decided to make a BBS thread of all my covers so far. It's so faster when copying and pasting from PICO-8.
(13/08/2020) Last Party on the Moon:
[sfx]
Original from: Gunstar Heroes
Original composer: Norio Hanzawa
Frames used: 00-31 (32 frames)
SFX slots used: 64 (well damn!)
SFX instruments:
- 0: Kick-snare w/Lower Triangle
- 1: Short pulse
- 2: Short tilted saw lead
- 3: Saw bass
- 4: Loud kick
- 5: Zip drum
- 6: I don't remember what was this...
Note: Only covers the first half of the track. The intro is quite sloppy compared to the rest of the song (as if it sounded like an early PICO-8 track!)
(14/08/2020) Theme of Solid Snake:
[sfx]
Original from: Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Original composer: Konami Kuheiha Club (there were a lot of composers for this game.)
Frames used: 00-55 (56 frames)
SFX slots used: 53
SFX instruments:
- 0: Kick
- 1: Hi-hat
- 2: Snare
- 3: Tilted saw lead
- 4: Deep saw bass
- 5: Tom
- 6: Tilted saw lead #2 (unused)
- 7: Saw lead
Note: Several patterns are excluded due to limitations and patterns are less repetitive. The last patterns have a reduced SPD of 12 compared to the rest of the patterns' 6 SPD.
(14/08/2020) Night Fall:
[sfx]
Original from: Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Original composer: Konami Kuheiha Club
Frames used: 00-40 (41 frames)
SFX slots used: 55
SFX instruments:
- 0: Violin saw
- 1: Piano
- 2: Unused square
Note: Complete track.
5 comments
I looked back when i purchased PICO-8 and i am surprised that i had it since Christmas 2015, and it has been quite 4.7 years since i had it around just to play a lot of games. Having it see evolve i was impressed for it to have reached a stage where it improved the interface (and specially the music interface which included sound effect instruments.). The music back when it was released wasn't too awesome as it sounded but now it seemed like the possibilies are enhanced.
By the way, doesn't PICO-8 have plans to expand their system capabilities to include new major features such as proper sampling, more music channels, etc. (likely inspired from the NES' japanese expansion chips which contained extra audio channels, a popular example being the VRC6 which included two pulse channels with a larger set of squares and a Sawtooth channel) even if actually they might be impossible. Probably since we've come to this point there's hardly anything i can think that would be needed, but Pico-8 is quite on the right track and ready to have something amazing done on it.
Anyhow, i came to PICO-8 to actually just make music covers in the end, that's a passion i had since i binge-listened on vg music too much and the use of FamiTracker made me a living out of music trackers than piano rolls.
Hello. I got Pico-8 back several years ago when it was pretty trend and i enjoyed the vast amount of content the community created. I got it back when i was on the first stages of programming in GameMaker: Studio (until however i stopped after not being able to easily think deeper on what to do.) I am also an addictive video game music fan whom actually has been continously listening to them for a bunch of years before GameMaker.
However, since i can't get the hang on the programming side of Pico-8 i messed around on the sound interface. I had tracker music experience back when i used FamiTracker, so it was easy for me to interact with the tracker interface, however, the Pico-8 tracker was something, it was so limited i can't easily make dope instrumentation with it. All i did was just a bunch of incomplete covers that sounded quite lame to me, but it was a likeable experience.
While i still play around with Pico-8's game carts, i once again came back to the music interface and discovered that i could use SFX instruments as i've seen on some game around. Even with the 64 sfx slot limits, i managed to whip up a (reduced) cover of one of my most listened videogame soundtracks. Well, i've only done the first half of the original because of the limits (all the slots are occupied just as expected!). I could do more, i really like using the music interface.
I got Voxatron thanks to Humble Bundle (despite Voxatron was available only on the $10 plan, i bought the base price which was 1$ and it also came with Voxatron by accident) and i thought about trying the designer, but i can't find a up to date youtube tutorial (many ones are made around to 2011 to 2013) and i cannot read the manual if i haven't followed a beginner tutorial.
I've started doing something in Pico-8, but when i am trying to follow the particle tutorial from Picozine 1 (even if i get the text correct) and run it i get an error like 
This is the code: http://hastebin.com/akaqebefav.lua
Any help?
I've heard of this engine and it's incredibly awesome.
Been planning to buy it but it would work if i buy Pico-8 instead of Voxatron (which it comes with Pico-8)? I'm gonna learn some LUA with this thing. :P
