Welcome to a textfile containing some technical notes about this little program, and some stuff that didn't quite make it into the main text Sound was developed on the following configurations: Amiga A1200, 85Mb Harddrive, 2Mb ChipMem No FastMem :( Amiga A500, 52Mb Harddrive, .5Mb Chip Mem, 4 Mb Fast, .5 Mb Slow :) These tools were used in the process : SAS/C V6.5 by SAS Institute CygnusEd V3.5 by CygnusSoft Software DPaint V4.5 by Electronic Arts IffMaster 1.0 by Junix of Arcane Devpac V3.04 by HiSoft, For the few asm things DirOpus V4.11 by Innovatronics DiskMaster V2.1c by Progressive Peripherals Inc. Pro-Pack 2.08 by Rob Northen Computing The Player V6.0A (600.2) by Guru / Sahara Surfers (S2) ACE, Integrated C-Environment..... by ACL The Original data for sound amounts to : Music Data : 1097728 bytes GFX Data : 589824 bytes This was ofcourse both impractical and impossible to squeeze down to a normal 837 Kb Floppy disk, therefor it was decided quite earley on to use a special compressor for the sound data.. The natural (and only) choice was to use the program called : The Player V6, by Guru/Sahara Surfers This tool allows me to use all normal PT commands, CIA timing, and best of all, it features quite good sample packing :) Packed Music : 477184 bytes = 43.47 % !!! I also (ofcourse) used a packer for the graphics data.. I had the choice to use one of the normal crunchers flowing around. But I decided upon using the 'Pro-Packer; from 'Rob Northen Computing' (You know, the dude with CopyLock protection etc...) This also gives me some sense of security, since noone (atleast noone yet) can decrunch these data's without disassembling the whole program searching for the decruncher, and then it doesn't really matter :) Packed GFX : 94492 bytes = 16.02 % !!! I don't quite know the actual crunch algorithms used, but I think that the text 'build huffman..' inside the decrunch source, gives a hint, that it uses some sort of LZ77 algorithm or the likes... It is QUITE good at packing gfx... I created an example program to another coder, displaying a HIRES-INTERLACE 8 bitplanes piccy (327Kb), and playing some music (80Kb).. The executable was crunched down to ca. 235 Kb.. Less than the Raw File alone :).... More tech stuff: Sound has been written to take full use of the Amiga's system software: It uses Intuition to create it's display, although it looks just like any other 'scene' production.. This was not as hard to do as I thought it would be, since the system has many features just for doing these things in an orderly fashion. HINT: check WFLG_CUSTOMBITMAP & SCREEN_QUIET Also the replayer used, allocates it's resources and behaves 'nice'. This has allowed me to write 99% of the code in 'C'. The choice to write the program in C allows for greater flexibility when using system resources, and will eventually make the program much easier to update and maintain. When we started this project, we decided to make Sound compatible with all Amiga's, this has ofcourse forced us to make the program use something known as the 'common features' i.e. No AGA cols, and only Kick 1.2/1.3 system routines. The drawbacks of writing Kick 1.2 compatible means that I have had to re- write several 'system' routines, which i found I needed, such as : Alloc/FreeVec, and some others... We also decided (quite late in the project) that the planned scroller, which should have recided in the box in the bottom-middle of the screen, would have to be postponed to a later issue of Sound, since it proved VERY hard to do this without banging the system in some way.. The problem lies in using the blitterhardware directly in an interrupt routine while still al- lowing the system to do it's own stuff also in it's IRQ time.. (The system notes all calls to blitter routines in GFX.lib and does them when it remembers them again :) usually during my irq, this makes it next to impossible to combine using gfx calls and doing my own stuff) Also, I had to use LoadRGB4 instead of the prettier LoadRGB32 :) On the other hand, using Intuition allows Sound to work correctly also on Amiga's with Mode Promotion and VGA Displays, just remember to run the 'VGAOnly' driver in your startup-sequence NOTE: Although sound behaves 'nice' with intuition, and allocates/opens it's screens in an orderly fashion, it will NOT run on special graphics cards ! The reason for this is that Sound uses some self allocated bitmaps for doing it's screen stuff, it is done the legal intuition and graphics way, but I suspect that it won't work with the kind of 'cheat' that some of the more advanced displaycards use to 'emulate' the OS... NOTE THIS : The next issue of Sound (#2) will be AGA-Only !!! We have researched quite thoroughly and noted that much of the scene has migrated onto Aga-machines and we have therefor decided that we will do the same.... To those of you who doesn't have aga... We are sorry, but the features of the Aga-machines and Kick 3 are just to good for us not to use them. I know that there is no 'real scene like' intro on this program, but on the other hand, i personally find the credits sequence quite nice.. It is (slightly) music timed and uses standard stuff like faders, and different resolutions, and that was ALL written in C :) Note : If somebody would like to make an intro for Sound, I would probably consider using it, on these conditions : It MUST work on all AGA machines, preferably also on machines with VGA- displays.... Contributers should contact Christine De La Queen of SPOON for more info. Sound is ofcourse installable to Harddisk... To install it, just click the 'HDInstall' icon. The installation script uses Commodores Installer utility... This project has taken quite some time to finish, because we would like it to be a solid production, which you can enjoy and force us to make another one, thereby ensuring it's ongoing success &8^) If you like it, support it.... If you like it, vote for it... Support The Official Eurochart Sincerely. John 'SHAYERA' Hinge JUNE 1994 SPECIAL GREETINGS AND CREDITS: CBM Amiga : for making it possible :) Rob Northen Computing, for their great cruncher... ACL & BAGGER : for being there when I needed it... PIXAR : for not bugging me.. CDLQ/Spoon : for bugging me :) Erasure :for keeping my mind straight when working in the small hours... Guru/Shahara Surfers : for making the best PT-Replay ever !!! Douglas/???,Doctor/???,Speedy,Slammer/RedNex,RokDaZone/IFT, King Arthur/TMG,Curt Cool/Depth...... Small Error Guide: Q: I use an A4000 with a nice 'Eizo xx9475' VGA screen, and Sound only displays gobbledigoop !!! What's wrong ?? A: You probably run your WB in Productivity mode or such, and you have forgotten to run the 'VGA-Only' driver... (or set up the ModePromotion) Q: I use an A500 with 512 Kb Memory... Sound only says 'OUT OF MEM' ??? A: Tough.... Sound doesn't require much, but you have touched bottom... get a memory upgrade.. 512 Kb should be enough Q: On my machine, when I put the disk in the drive, it says: Unreadable disk in drive A: Retry, Fail, Abort ? A: Hmmm, a tough one this... I suspect that Sound doesn't work neither under MS-Dos Vx nor under Microsoft Windows or OS/2. I think the problem lies with the main processor... Try putting in an 68040 Overdrive... Oh, it's a PC... well Too bad Q: What about my (Mac/Next/HP Apollo.....) ??? A: In theory it would be possible to convert Sound to any format, as long as some conditions are met: There must exist a way to play 'Pro-Tracker' music modules.. There must be a Color or Greytone display with atleast 32 cols.... (preferebly able to display 320*256 and 640*256 !!) Then it would be possible to convert it, but I don't have one of those myself, so don't hold your breath waiting.... On the other hand !! If somebody would lend me one, including some sort of coding manual, etc then... You could also send me the specs, and the 'c' include files for the machine, and include files for interfacing the replayer you supply, and I wuld then be able to make a 'C' proggy for you to compile ?? Special copyrights : Sound and Sound icon (c) Copyright 1994 Spoon. All Rights Reserved The Various Music files (c) the various authors. The SoundGFX/#? (GFX data files) (c) Copyright 1994 Spoon. All rights Reserved except : SoundGFX/soundscan2.shac (c) Copyright 1994 P.I.X.A.R. modified by CDLQ/Spoon All GFX files are crunched with Pro-Pack 2.08 Copyright (c) 1991,1992 Rob Northen Computing UK. PO.BOX 17 Bordon Hants GU35 8DY U.K. Installer and Installer project icon (c) Copyright 1991-93 Commodore-Amiga, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduced and distributed under license from Commodore. INSTALLER SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS-IS" AND SUBJECT TO CHANGE; NO WARRANTIES ARE MADE. ALL USE IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. NO LIABILITY OR RESPONSIBILITY IS ASSUMED. The Sound software is provided "AS-IS" and subject to change. No warranties are made. All use is at your own risk. No liability or responsibility is assumed. The generated code for Sound is (c) John 'SHAYERA' Hinge, and under no circumstances are you allowed to DisAssemble or other- wise attempt to pry into it... If you have questions regarding the code for Sound then contact the author at this address : John 'SHAYERA' Hinge Silkeborgvej 220 B,1 DK-8230 Aabyhoej Denmark