0xtob’s coding blog

Edit:
OK OK, I’m convinced :) PSG support will come! (sooner or later)

The PSG (programmable sound generator) is the thing that produces the Game Boy’s typical sound, which is still present in the DS (or so it seems). I have promised to include support for it in NitroTracker several times now. But after having seen the Game Boy Sound Comparison, I suspect it might be emulated in software. If that is the case, there wouldn’t be a point in going through the pain of implementing PSG support, but it would be much easier to generate the sounds in software.

Long story short: I’m looking for people with good ears who think they can tell real PSG sound from a cheap emulation :-) I wrote a test program that generates the same tone sequence two times: One time using the PSG and the other time using software. I’m not telling you the order though :-) If you have a DS, please download it here and tell me in the comments whether or not you hear a difference, and if you do, which one you think is produced by the PSG.

If you don’t own a DS, you can listen to the samples below instead. I intentionally didn’t label the sets as PSG or software, so you have to find out for yourself. Please post your guess in the comments, and whether or not you could hear a difference.

To preserve the sound, I didn’t compress the samples, so they are rather big (1.4MB each).

Set A

Pulse 1
Pulse 2
Pulse 3
Pulse 4
Noise

Set B

Pulse 1
Pulse 2
Pulse 3
Pulse 4
Noise

Here are some closeups of the puse waves:

A

B

Thanks!
Tob

As promised, I’m releasing the source code of Pictoblog. I hope someone will pick it up and develop it further. It should also be pretty easy to use my MetaWeblog API class in other projects.

I would really like to see more blog-enabled homebrew, because I think blogging and the DS go together very well. With the DS you can blog in unusual places (as long as they have WLAN) and in unusual ways (by drawing, recording voice messages etc.)

Get the it here.

If you have any questions concerning the source, don’t hesitate to post in the Pictoblog thread on the GBADev forums!

Have Fun!
Tob

Several people have been asking for it, so I decided to publically release my XM library before it’s completion.

libntxm is for you if you want to play back XM music in a homebrew game or app and still want to have the full CPU power for your stuff. Except for loading XMs, libntxm runs completely on the ARM7, and because it uses the DS sound hardware directly, even the ARM7 is rather bored while playing an XM.

The big drawback for now is the lack of most XM effects and some instrument properties. Nevertheless, many XMs already play fine with it. If you make music with NitroTracker, you’re definitely on the safe side :-) There’s a list of supported/unsupported features in the readme file.

libntxm is open source. I decided to go with the LGPL license, so you’re not forced to release your source code if you want to use it.

I’d be very happy if someone could help me with the development of effects in order to speed up the development of NitroTracker and libntxm. If you want to help out, contact me (for example via comments or the libntxm forum post)!

Get libntxm here!

Happy coding!

The problem with the first version of Pictoblog was related to a bug in the dswifi library, which is now fixed. Posting works 100% reliable now. Get the new version here.

Thanks to sgstair for fixing the bug!