Sounds and music for chess4uzebox

[martinsustek]

Here is how title/menu screen looks now.

Do you have any idea, how to make it better? I think, there should be some animation, maybe rotating or bouncing 3D pre-rendered piece. Or picture of people playing chess somewhere in the park (but it will probably look ugly in 256 colors).

[cosam]

I've build my uzebox today, and saw graphics on real TV for the first time, and it overcame my expectations. It's great!
(I don't have controllers yet, so I've only watched demo)

Wow, cool to see those pieces in action - nice work!

Here is how title/menu screen looks now.

Do you have any idea, how to make it better? I think, there should be some animation, maybe rotating or bouncing 3D pre-rendered piece. Or picture of people playing chess somewhere in the park (but it will probably look ugly in 256 colors).

Maybe find a nice picture on Wikimedia Commons or similar and convert it to the Uzebox palette? You may be surprised how good a photo looks in 256 colours. Would cost a bunch of memory though, of course, and you need to reserve some tiles for the menu. Animating rotation of a single piece should work out quite efficient though as, being basically round, most look very similar from all angles, so you can reuse a lot.

[DaveyPocket]

Here is how title/menu screen looks now.

Do you have any idea, how to make it better?

I think that looks great! (Maybe I'm looking at it differently)

[D3thAdd3r]

I like the title like that too.. Pretty sure you'll find the 256 tile limit is quickly exhausted for any photo type graphics, likely end up with a tiny 10x10 tile picture(due to needing font indexes too) costing 6.4k! I like the entire visual style you have going right now, very much anticipating this title.

[uze6666]

Hey Martin,

I found a bug in the latest kernel update that can disable sound randomly. It's been fixed, just update from SVN.

-Uze

[D3thAdd3r]

Taking a stab at the capture effect, really wasn't coming up with anything I liked...If you know of an effect in any NES game that you would want for any of the sounds, I'll convert it over for you(but really Uze's set is near perfect IMO). I looked at some of the sounds I have made and thought this seems fitting and unobtrusive for a simple capture sound:

const char patchCapture[] PROGMEM ={
0,PC_WAVE,2,//might want to experiment with different waves
0,PC_PITCH,25,
1,PC_PITCH,26,
1,PC_PITCH,25,
2,PC_PITCH,24,

1,PC_PITCH,46,
1,PC_PITCH,47,
1,PC_PITCH,46,
2,PC_PITCH,45,

1,PC_PITCH,35,
1,PC_PITCH,36,
2,PC_PITCH,35,

1,PC_NOTE_CUT,0,
0,PATCH_END
};

The best I could figure. What kind of flash budget do you have planned for music?

[martinsustek]

Now game has 43538B, and I'm not planning to add next features.
I want some short melody for menu screen and some long for the in-game screen.

[EvilAlex]

Hi, are you still looking for songs for your game? It's realy hard to make music for a chess game... damn well i made this... not finish and a bit too final fantasy

[uze6666]

Hi, are you still looking for songs for your game? It's realy hard to make music for a chess game... damn well i made this... not finish and a bit too final fantasy

I like it! Warm and cozy, should be perfect for the title page.

-Uze

[martinsustek]

i made this...

Sounds good, I'll try to convert it, and use it in menu.

Actually I was experimenting with another midi, but wasn't successful (I've generated some .inc file, but nothing was hearable, not sure about right midi format).
Are there any tutorial for converting music in Linux? Or music data format specification? How can I figure out which patch numbers are used in song? Can I change it manually in case of conflicts?