Author of Downstream Dream, Star Trek: Killer Q'egh, and TMNT: Shredder's PREvenge OST. Sound designer/programmer for Demi Daggers. Currently making poppy little dance tunes.
The upcoming Pico-8 0.2.6 release will introduce wavetable synthesis via "waveform instruments". Any of this may change before release so I will try to update it as I discover new info about the feature. The waveform instruments are stored in the same sfx indices as regular instruments (0-7) and use a similar encoding scheme to regular sfx:
Bytes 0-63
The first 64 bytes of the sfx contain one signed 8-bit sample per byte. Pico-8 uses signed 16-bit numbers, so signed 8-bit values from -128 to -1 are represented as 128 to 255, while 0 to 127 are represented normally. Signed 8-bit values outside the -96 to 96 range will appear cropped in the visual editor, although it does appear to be possible to draw values in the full range by dragging the mouse cursor beyond the border.
Regarding PCM playback, Pico-8's tracker updates at about 120.4918Hz, and at 64 signed 8-bit samples per cycle, the sample rate would be about 7711.4752Hz. However, because the closest playback frequencies available are A#-0 (A#-2 in standard pitch notation @ 116.54Hz) or B-0 (B-2 in standard pitch notation @ 123.47Hz), it appears that smooth PCM playback will not be possible by stringing waveform instruments together, as waveforms would not have the chance to play exactly one oscillation per tick; instead being slightly cropped or slightly looped (and then cropped). This will result in clipping/distortion, and weird tuning artifacts.
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Hi friends, looks like exciting changes are coming soon. I guess this might be the last song I make before 0.2.6 is out so this is my send-off to Pico-8 audio as we knew it. See u on the other side! 🙂
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Hi friends,
Here's the OST for @freds72's upcoming release, Demi Daggers. Trying to recreate the complex sound design of Devil Daggers and its OST in Pico-8 was a massive challenge. I hope I did it justice, and I hope you enjoy it!
"II"
Originally composed by Sorath
"III"
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Hi Zep! :)
I'm not sure if this is by design, but it seems printh() resolves paths differently than cstore(), reload(), etc; where printh() does path resolution relative to root_path, while the other funcs resolve paths relative to the running cart.
For example, given the directory structure:
project_dir/ |_dist/ |_foo.p8 |_log.p8l |_utils/ |_bar.p8 |
and launching with:
project_dir $ pico8 -root_path ./ ./utils/bar.p8 |
project_dir/utils/bar.p8:
cstore(0, 0, 0x4300, "./dist/foo.p8") --doesn't write to foo.p8
cstore(0, 0, 0x4300, "../dist/foo.p8") --writes to foo.p8
printh("hello world!", "./dist/log") --writes to log.p8l
printh("hello world!", "../dist/log") --bad log error |
I'm not sure which way I think all the funcs should behave, but I'm inclined to say printh() should resolve paths relative to the running cart like the other funcs, because it would probably be less surprises for the user that way.
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Originally composed by:
Jürgen "DJ Jurgen" Rijkers,
Sebastiaan "Pronti" Molijn,
Eelke "Kalmani" Kalberg,
Judith Anna Pronk
19 comments
The idea for this cart was inspired by a comment @Liquidream made to me a few months ago. 😂 Enjoy your week, everyone!
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I hope everyone is taking good care of themselves. Be safe and have a great weekend! 🙂
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Hi friends,
@Wolfe3D recently asked me to do the soundtrack for his fan game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in: Shredder's Prevenge. With such an ambitious and impressive project shaping up, how could anyone say no? I'll be posting music here and on radico8 as Wolfe3D releases the corresponding game content. The soundtrack will feature seven songs plus assorted jingles. I'll lead off here with a couple covers I couldn't resist trying to make. I hope you like them!
(This is a totally free, totally non-commercial fan project, all intellectual property contained within the content below belongs to its respective owners. Please don't sue me.)
11/15/2023: Added Super Smash Turts, Shinobi Sentai Shellranger, lowercase technodrome, Tin Grin.
Tracklist
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Hi Zep! :)
0.2.5g: In non-C-style for loops, if a multi-line comment is opened/closed before the first variable declaration, without trailing whitespace before the variable name, it will throw a syntax error. All other situations seem to be okay:
--[[ok]]foo = --[[ok]]{1}
--ok
for --[[ok]]i=0,1 do
print(foo[i])
end
for --[[ok]] v in all(foo) do
print(v)
end
for --[[ok]] k, --[[ok]]v in pairs(foo) do
print(v)
end
for --[[ok]] k, --[[ok]]v in ipairs(foo) do
print(v)
end
--not ok
for --[[oops]]v in all(foo) do
print(v)
end
for --[[oops]]k, --[[ok]]v in pairs(foo) do
print(v)
end
for --[[oops]]k, --[[ok]]v in ipairs(foo) do
print(v)
end
|
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On 0.2.5e, the following message is printed to stdout whenever a cart containing any arbitrary meta section is run:
$ pico8 -run test.p8 codo_free fail 21 0 |
test.p8:
pico-8 cartridge // http://www.pico-8.com version 39 __meta:foo__ bar |
Carts seem to run fine, so there don't seem to be any other negative effects.
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Hi, friends!
Here's a demo featuring 5 glorious channels of lo-fi audio! Making a chipbreak-style tune in Pico-8 has been in the back of my mind ever since @carlc27843 discovered the undocumented PCM channel, and now I can finally check this off my list! After almost 2 years! 😅
All the drums are samples, triggered by watching the tracker with stat(56). The samples are then fed to the PCM channel by monitoring the buffer with stat(108). I'd originally planned on building a 5-channel tracker from this demo, but I had a tough time getting the samples to sync consistently. I'm not sure if that's because of my own shortcomings, or maybe because as @zep literally said, the sync is "not perfect".
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Hi Zep! :) I think I found a bug in one of the more esoteric stat calls?
Bug:
According to the manual, stat(56) should return the number of ticks played in the current pattern. Currently (0.2.5e), it seems to poll the leftmost sfx in the pattern for the count. That makes sense bc the overall pattern length is determined by the leftmost sfx which is not a loop, but as the title says, stat(56) will reset back to 0 early if the leftmost sfx is a loop.
Expected behavior:
stat(56) should return the number of pattern ticks played regardless of looped sfx
Thanks for your time! :)
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I was going to wait to post this until the weekend, but I have no self-control. 😅 Enjoy the rest of your week, everyone!
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