Makin' noise in bAtari basic | Making an Atari 2600 game pt.6 | 8bitsinthebasement

[@alexandermirdzveli3200]

I don't care about programming the 2600, but I absolutely love listening to Peter.

[@8bitsinthebasement]

I'm not entirely sure but you may need help, see most people tell me to shut up after about 15 seconds ;) Nonetheless I'm delighted with your comment, thanks buddy ;)

[@RudysRetroIntel]

Excellent work!! You should be teaching on schools! Very much appreciate all the work you are doing. Thanks for sharing

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Thanks Rudy, I had a job teaching for a while back in '97 I don't know what the students made of me but I know that it wasn't a job for me. Thanks for watching ;)

[@CaptainCommodore]

Very nicely done, the tia chip is the most musical but I'm constantly amazed what bataris capable of

[@8bitsinthebasement]

True, the TIA is not the most musical of chips (it can't produce any pure notes as such) but in the right hands it can make some really nice tunes, unfortunately mine are not the right hands ;)

[@stevanr_]

A very good tutorial about making sounds in bAtari basic !

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Thanks, bAtari really makes all this stuff very easy. What's more it's a great gateway into assembly programming as every time you compile your basic code an assembly listing of your code is also created. It's the language that keeps on giving. Thanks so much for watching ;)

[@filmbit]

Please keep making these videos, They've been nearly fundamental to my Atari dev dreams!!

[@8bitsinthebasement]

I've been nearly fundamental to making your dreams come true? I'm delighted to hear it! I've watched some of your videos and honestly they made me really laugh. I'd love to know about any game you come up with in the future. If I'm honest I've plans for just one and a half more shows, one to wrap up all the extra stuff i haven't covered and a half one to explain the code for the game I managed to write. Delighted that you like the bAtari series though ;)

[@talideon]

The one problem with programming music for the TIA is that not all frequencies it can generate are musically useful and it can't generate all the notes on the scale. That said, some people have done some really impressive work getting around its limitations!

[@8bitsinthebasement]

What you're saying is true, the TIA gets a really bad rap when it comes to music making. I've read that it can be made to produce quite a few sounds but very few true musical notes as such. So harmonics and sub harmonics are used to produce near enough notes. I read about it but if I'm honest I didn't understand a whole lot of it.

[@viditibi]

great video, an obvious way to give background music for the game is just play a note once in the game loop having a little song in an array or something like that, but I wonder if there's any kind of interrupt you can tell TIA (or any other chip) to play music in an unattended way

[@8bitsinthebasement]

You can write a piece of music and send it as a data stream to the TIA chip. Using this technique you could have a large piece of music loop constantly on one channel while playing the game (BGM). Or you could have multiple pieces converted to data and play any piece you wanted when a game event occurred. I imagine that you could play around with the rand command in bAtari to change tones, voices and frequency if you wanted to mix up sound or music playback a bit too (but you would have to get creative with your code). Thanks as always for watching and your comment ;)

[@arturius7462]

Thank you for your tutorials, they are very helpful!

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Thank you for watching, I'm glad that they are useful to you ;)

[@tenminutetokyo2643]

Outstanding dood!

[@YARC-1981]

Nice vid, Peter. Keep up the good work.

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Thanks Todd ;)

[@byWilliamJMeyer]

Interesting break-down. I really like the low drone in the background of some games like YARS' REVENGE.

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Yars' is one of my all time favourite games on any system. Warshaw somehow found a sound that doesn't drive people mad while playing, not an easy feat. I played around with sound quite a bit while searching for sounds for my Bob game and I can safely say that any sounds I found would make your ears bleed if they were played for the duration. Glad you found the episode interesting William ;)

[@JosipRetroBits]

Great explanation Peter! It's nice to hear TIA chip sounds and play with it :) Cheers!

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Glad you liked it!

[@8BitRetroReFix]

Great video mate 👍.. keep them coming ..

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Still a few more to come, get your Atari out ;)

[@TRONMAGNUM2099]

Another great lesson. Later this month I have some time off work. I'll try to dig in and get some practice with Batari Basic. Already thought of a game idea. You are a Pizza maker, and you need to collect the correct ingredients. Time is limited and if you collect the wrong ingredient you have to start over. If time expires, and you haven't made your pizza you lose a life. To make things harder rats chase you around the maze and steal your ingredients. It'll be a while before I can make something complicated like that, but It'll be fun to start learning how to do it.

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Sounds like it could be a fun game and quite a challenge too. I'm sure that you'll manage to pull it off, just take it in small pieces. A big program is just a bunch of small programs stitched together. So break your game idea into parts and work on them one by one. If you get stuck or can't figure out how to make a part work just move onto the next part and work on that. If I'm honest at times bugs creep into the code that can make you want to pull your hair out but that only makes it all the sweeter when you get something to work just the way you wanted it to. Have fun with it ;)

[@thomo5]

Excellente vidéo, c'est vraiment un langage de programmation intéressant.

[@8bitsinthebasement]

bAtari est génial à bien des égards, vous voulez écrire des jeux facilement ? Batari. Vous souhaitez apprendre le langage assembleur mais vous n'avez pas d'exemple de code ? Batari. Et en plus c'est fun ;)

[@GORF_EMPIRE]

Fine job of it lad!

[@8bitsinthebasement]

Gorf, I've not heard from you in quite some time! Thanks very much ;)