ZZT Ultra

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Appetite4
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State of Affairs: ZZT Ultra, ZZT Sound Plus

Post by Appetite4 »

Hello All,

Chris speaking. Two hard disk crashes later, I am finally back in business. I haven't lost any of the ZZT Ultra code base (or indeed, much of anything), but my work on various ZZT-related projects has been delayed.

The thing is, events in my life and career lately have been...exhausting. I absolutely want to keep working on ZZT Sound Plus and ZZT Ultra. But as I have often stated, life gets in the way.

Never one to be satisfied with previous work (a common theme among game designers), I have decided that I don't want to update my projects at the lightning rate that I had been doing over the last few years. Working oneself to death is never worth it. Just ask any pro game developer working for an AAA company who puts in absurd hours, just to get kicked to the curb with no severance, just like that.

Hey, if it's for fun, just let it take as long as it needs, right?
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Dark-Star2018 »

:keen:

We've already lost a couple good people from the ZZT community to tragedy. Don't #cycle so hard you #endgame yourself, bro.
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ZZT @narchists unite! Turn off the dark, get free money, defeat death itself!
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Hall of Music has an upgrade!

Post by Appetite4 »

Hi All,

Merry Christmas! I've dragged my butt doing this, but I finally managed to swap out the Flash version of the Hall of Music with an HTML5 version. This one should play on all browsers now without problems!

Except IE. Of course, no one should use IE. Not even Microsoft employees.

I decided to christen the launch by adding my first "dumped" song from my ZZT Sound Plus tool:

http://www.chriskallen.com/zzt/hallofmu ... =Forefront

The song "The Forefront" from Bionic Commando is one the catchiest tunes released on the 8-bit NES. You might be wondering how I covered this with such impossibly good detail? Well, in this case, I didn't "cover" it at all--the notes were extracted from an actual WAV recording of the NES chiptune.

To put things in perspective, the Crystalis Pyramid theme took a long time to cover a few years back, because I had to painstakingly listen and re-compose it. The Forefront? Done in a matter of minutes.

The only thing lacking is percussion (FFTs are unfortunately not good at figuring out how to do that very well). But all things considered, I think this is a nice holiday gift for y'all.
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Dark-Star2018
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Re: Hall of Music has an upgrade!

Post by Dark-Star2018 »

Appetite4 wrote:Hi All,

Merry Christmas! I've dragged my butt doing this, but I finally managed to swap out the Flash version of the Hall of Music with an HTML5 version. This one should play on all browsers now without problems!
Zowie! What an early Christmas present! :keen:
Energizer - you are invincible
ZZT @narchists unite! Turn off the dark, get free money, defeat death itself!
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nanoco
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by nanoco »

Okay, it works in Chrome but not in Brave. Awesome! I'm sure the back-end is way more impressive. I kid you not. Bionic Commando was the first NES cart I ever owned! Man, you and I always had good chemistry despite working in parallel. It's been a pleasure!
Last edited by nanoco on Mon Dec 24, 2018 5:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Commodore »

Cool stuff! Can confirm working in Linux with Opera and Firefox.

Considering you already have a Huelsbeck tune in there, a humble request for R-Type c64 intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3pGP1a3JRw
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R-Type?

Post by Appetite4 »

Somebody order a video game music cover in the Hall of Music?

R-Type Title Theme

Notes about this cover:
  • Song has a tempo of exactly 125.253 Quarter Notes Per Minute.
  • Song starts in F minor, and changes to G minor at measure 60.
  • I needed to go all the way to 64th-note resolution on this one; the song has a lot of interstitial detail to it.
  • Arpeggio is the name of the game for a lot of C64 composers, such as Huelsbeck, Daglish, Gray, and the brothers Follin.
    This complicates transcription because notes are by broken up by design. I tried to use the manual merge feature of ZZT Sound Plus to mitigate this, but it has limited results.
  • Once again, percussion is mostly a no-go. FFT limitations.
  • A lot of judgment calls were necessary when characterizing high-octave aliased-instrument notes. This technique is common when making a tone sound like a different instrument, but it doesn't necessarily have the effect people might expect when transcribing the waveforms. I chose to strip out much of the high-octave stuff that was otherwise repeated at a lower pitch. If you think this wasn't the best decision, well, there is no "right" answer to this puzzle.
  • The size of the track data appears to have slammed the brakes on using my submission feature on the site for large songs. This is something I was afraid would happen; GET requests with too-large variables are blocked. There is a way to structure POST requests differently, such that you aren't bound by a 16-bit limitation. I'll have to roll my sleeves up and figure it out eventually.
ZZT Sound Plus is a juggernaut. It chews up and spits out audio like nothing else. My guess is that we'll get more cover requests. Probably will need its own request thread.
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How to do it: ZZT Sound Plus!

Post by Appetite4 »

A first for me: an instructional video of ZZT Sound Plus with a voice-over:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvlsIc1Axm0

Something this sophisticated really needs video help, not just text documentation. Unless you don't like the sound of my voice...

Also, the tool has been updated; we're now at version 1.1.

Knock yourselves out, 'yo! You're in for a special treat if you like the game "Wild Guns."
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Video series: Part 2 of ZZT Sound Plus!

Post by Appetite4 »

Did anyone get Part 1? Here's Part 2!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrQiPXt7RLI

Probably 2 or 3 more instructional videos remain to be recorded and edited. There's a lot to cover with this application. Musicians should pay special attention--the ability to find a song's tempo within a matter of minutes can't be overstated.
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nanoco
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by nanoco »

Image
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Commodore »

Spelunker! Hell yeah maybe you already know I love that tune. Also funny you mention Wild Guns. Literally just got that game on ebay a week ago.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Appetite4 »

Forgot to post Part 3 of the video series. I was very sick last week and not very motivated to do online stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgxDTh0Y2GQ

This demonstration is very important because it uses a new feature called the "chord gauge." It allows you to separate the diamonds from the rough, using energy spectral density to determine chords when there are lots of false notes that might otherwise confuse you.

I heavily used the chord gauge when I transcribed The Forefront song.
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Re: ZZT Ultra

Post by Appetite4 »

Happy Holidays, everyone! I've built a new full cover tune from ZZT Sound Plus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in7tEgA1mMg

This one is of Vital Tide from Axiom Verge. I've always been a huge Metroidvania game fan, so I thought that the moody song deserved some chiptune love.

ZZT Sound Plus converted the song nicely, but the editing process after dump was harder than usual. This was because Thomas Happ had a mind to insert a million "radio static" samples into the background of the song in its original form, giving it a freaky percussive effect that jacks up the creep factor considerably. But since my acoustical tools can pick out noise from melody, it was just a matter of labor.

I know I haven't posted much this year. The time to do non-work stuff keeps decreasing year after year. But my ZZT Ultra site ain't going anywhere, that's for sure.
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ZZT Sound Plus: Now a new "Iconic" version!

Post by Appetite4 »

I just posted ZZT Sound Plus version 1.3 to my website. Check it out here:

http://www.chriskallen.com/zzt/index.html

This version substantially improves over the others. It has more hot keys, remembers previous settings from files you had modeled previously, and has an overall better disposition towards workflow.

Oh yeah, and it supports reading of MIDI files now. Previously you could only output MIDI format, but now you can read it, too!

The image shows the import from one of many titular Lee Jackson songs from Rise of the Triad, which goes by the conspicuous name "Oww!!"
Oww!!  My spleen!!
Oww!! My spleen!!
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