[Coco] Re: MINIHOG Demo Here Now!

[Roger Taylor]

At 07:20 PM 7/29/2004, you wrote:
>Yeah, that part isn't programmed yet (getting hurt and detecting when you
>fall off a cliff), so when that happens, funky stuff will happen since the
>coordinate values for mini are off the charts.  As for the music, that's
>still being debated.  I will have sound effects for sure, but for music
>that's where it gets hard since the CoCo doesn't have a separate chip for it
>(just a 6-bit DAC driven straight from the CPU).  I've discovered a way to
>do it without external hardware, but it's going to sound pretty bad.  I
>found a MIDI to TEXT converter on the net for the PC.  I downloaded some
>Sonic MIDI's and ran it through the program.  It creates a text file
>detailing the midi on every note and when it plays.  This is GREAT for
>programmers.  I can take this info, transfer it to a CoCo disk and then
>reformat it for the game.  Of course I can't have 10 different channels
>going on at once.  I'll be lucky to get 3 and make it sound somewhat okay.
>2 may be the max.

You can play 4-voice MUSICA files in the background of a CoCo 
game/program.  Yes, it hogs a little bit of CPU time but it works 
okay.  Write me and I'll dig up the source code to my old Spider-Hype game 
which uses this feature.  FIRQ is used to pulse the waveforms to the DAC 
while IRQ is used to supply FIRQ with it's pointers and handle note 
advancement and timing, etc.


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Roger Taylor